Innovative Ways of Making a Difference

The MicroLoan Foundation Malawi Training Centre

Courtesy of some generous funding by some individual UK based donors MLF Malawi has recently built a training centre to support their operations. The centre will train MLF staff but will also provide specific training services in IT and the knitting and sewing businesses.  The opening ceremony was a lively and moving affair with local singers and dancers there to add a splash of colour and noise and a number of representatives of the women’s groups who make up the majority of MLF Malawi’s customer base and who explained in quite moving terms the very real difference that securing funding from MLF Malawi had made to their lives and the lives of their families.

Innovative Ways of Making a Difference

One interesting sideline that MLF Malawi has developed recently is a solar power product (known within the organisation and to client groups alike as ‘sunny money’). These are basically small solar panels  (about the size of a paperback book) which a client borrows money to purchase but which they can then use as they see fit. Most use the stored solar power either to light their homes (thereby reducing their expenditure on expensive and scarce other fuels such as paraffin) or for other purposes such as charging their own or (for a fee) somebody else’s mobile phone.  Given many villages have no electricity such a service is particularly valuable especially if it saves a long and costly journey to the nearest charging point. On the face of it it seems odd how many people including the very poorest have mobile phones in Malawi but on the other hand across Africa mobile telephony is being put to all sorts of innovative uses for example securing up to date information on agricultural prices and sales trends. This allows people to decide whether a time consuming and costly journey to market is really worthwhile. Of course without a fully charged mobile such benefits won’t arise which is why ‘sunny money’ is such an attractive option. All in all a great example of how high technology can provide a solution to a significant problem in rural Africa. 

Football in Malawi

Football, especially English Premier league football, is hugely popular in Malawi and almost everyone seems to be affiliated to one or other of the Premier League’s ‘big four’ (which for these purposes includes Liverpool but excludes Manchester City notwithstanding this year’s final league positions).
Of course there is also a lot of local football and one Saturday afternoon I wandered down to the local football venue to watch a match which I think was some kind of play off or perhaps a cup semi-final between two teams from out of town (I think Kasungu was a convenient neutral venue). As you may be able to tell from the accompanying photo the pitch was enclosed within a kind of wooden stockade and certainly wouldn’t have favour with Messrs Ferguson, Wenger , Dalglish and whoever is brave/fortunate enough to take up the vacant hot seat at Stamford Bridge being rock hard and  totally bare in patches.  Despite this the match was highly competitive with loads of flair and skill on show to excite the fairly sizeable crowd which I would guess was around 700/800 people. 
One characteristic of I have notice from football in Europe is a willingness to shoot whenever they have a sight of goal and this match proved no exception. The slight problem was that some of the more erratic shots went over the fence which often meant a lengthy delay as someone had to jump over the fence (a not inconsiderable feat in itself given it was at least 10ft high on average) and then hunt for the ball in the surrounding area most of which was pretty densely vegetated. As it was a hot day perhaps the players in question just fancied a breather. 

When travelling around the country almost every village and hamlet has makeshift set of goalposts with kids kicking around the traditional ball made up of tied rags. Truly this is the ‘world game’ – which is something perhaps the bigwigs at FIFA need to recall from time to time.

The Inland Sea

Malawi isn’t just the name given to a land; it is also the name given to a sizeable lake. Lake Malawi is one of the largest inland bodies of water in the world and plays a key role in life of the country. Fishing is an important local industry with most of it done by very small boats that put out from numerous fishing villages. The lake is so large that the wind can generate quite large waves which makes the fishing hazardous but adds to the seaside feel at some of the larger resort towns dotted around the lake. Swimming in the lake can be a rather strange experience. The waves and currents suggest you are in the sea but if you inadvertently swallow the water it is, of course, fresh – and of course you don’t float as well as you would in the sea.  This particular area was not particularly developed but some of the other resorts are becoming havens for traveller and/or adventure sports such as windsurfing, canoeing and even diving.

Getting About

The Malawian people show great ingenuity when travelling round their country. Obviously only a very small proportion of the population is able to afford a car or even a motorbike so other methods are needed.  In some towns, including Kasungu, bike taxis are used. These are essentially bikes with padded seat added over the rear wheel. The guys who own these taxis must have leg muscles that Sir Chris Hoy would envy as the bikes do not have gears and the town, though not hilly, is not exactly flat either. It also seems to be an absolute point of principle amongst the riders that they do not get ‘out of the saddle’ under any circumstances. Apparently the riders have regular races which can be rather ‘feisty’ events with plenty of jostling for position and other thrills and spills during the races.  

The other method of transport is the bus and essentially there are two types of bus – the minibus and the coach. One thing that they have in common is a business model which says that the bus will only leave when the operator has enough passengers to make a profit. If a bus isn’t full it won’t leave until it is. This of course leads to a fair bit of ‘cat and mouse’ between the passengers and operators with former trying to decide which of various buses parked up in the bus station is likely to leave first and the latter adopting various ruses to convince potential punters that their bus is the one to choose. One common trick seems to be to pay people who actually have no intention of travelling to sit on a bus to create the illusion that it is full. The other is to rev the bus noisily as if it about to leave. Undecided passengers then rush to get one and the quick witted conductor takes as many fares as possible before people realise that the departure is actually not all that imminent.

Using these buses is the quintessential African experience – another unwritten rule seems to be that at least one passenger must be transporting chickens to market – but the presence of a white face is a good ice-breaker. It is quite assuming to see toddlers absentmindedly look around the bus to check out what is happening and then do a ‘double take’ when they see what might well be their first white face.