African JAG

February 2009 The Realities in Malawi

-Announcements-We will be organizing an exhibition entitled “African Wind” at CoCoLo Cafe in Shinjuku 2-chome (Tokyo) from April 1st until the 30th. There will be various presentations such as artworks by Osogbo School artists in Nigeria, and in addition to the textiles, statues & masks from West Africa, photos of the children in Malawi that I took within the last few years will also be displayed.
Open from 5pm on weekdays (mon thru fri) & from 3pm on weekends, until the morning throughout the week. Please take a little bit of your spare time to enjoy the whole space.
For more details, visit http://www.africanjag.org
Or call 03-5366-9899 (CoCoLo Cafe)

OK, so this happens to be the first “African Wind” this year. It’s not that I was being lazy, but time flew past and it’s now a cherry blossom season. Sorry for such a long absence.
The reason for such a long silence was because I had been in Republic of Malawi & South Africa for 5 weeks from January 29th - March 06, 2009 for local support activities & research of African JAG Project, and upon return home, got hit by tons of pollens (hay fever) & yellow sand, making both my body & head cease to work properly.
I’m finally recovering,…and here are the latest updates on the realities of the land we support, Republic of Malawi.
Malawi: Jan 29 - Feb 20, 2009 US$1=MWK160
In Malawi, which is located in the southern hemisphere, it is summer and a rainy season at this time of the year. The temperature in the village at the shore of Lake Malawi that we support reaches well over 30℃ everyday, with strong UV rays. The rainy season here is much different from that in Japan, with occational torrential rains = so-called “squalls” as if turning a bucket full of water upside down. That’s why it’s not so humid, cools off heat and pretty pleasant. Even during the day, go under the trees, and nice cool breeze will welcome you.
At Lake Malawi, children are having a great fun splashing water every day, under the strong sunshine.

Spreading Diseases

In Malawi, contagious diseases such as Malaria and Cholera tend to spread at this time of the year. People like us who aren’t used to such diseases in Africa must not take ANY risk. Hand wash & gargles are obvious mandatory, you must not forget to take the preventive medicine for Malaria. I’m especially cautious because I had experienced one of the worst type of Malaria called “Tropical Malaria” in Nigeria which got me to the verge of death. Inside my medicine box, which originally is a collapsible cooler box, is stuffed with various medications in addition to the medicines useful in our local support activities, such as medicines for my chronic illness, poultices, digestive medicines, fever reducers, preventive medicines for Malaria, curative medicines, test kit, etc, etc.The period of our stay this time had been the starting period of Malaria disease spread, but normally around end of February to end of March, their staple food, maize, ends its harvest time, malaria vector called “anopheles” place eggs to the remains of maize, lots of people get bit by them, and suffer from the fever of Malaria. Recently, test kits for Malaria have become available at local drug stores, but local people rarely buy them. In a lot of cases, if you take preventive medicine, you won’t be in a bad state, and taking a proper medication won’t put you in any danger of losing your life from Malaria, but people in poverty cannot afford any money to purchase any medication. So a lot of physically weak ones such as children & old folks are losing their lives every year.
Cholera has also begun to show its spread. As with Cholera, the biggest cause is said to be the unsanitary environment, but as far as I know, the country’s environmental sanitation hasn’t improved except for urban areas, since 2006 when I first arrived to this country.
Currently, there is no garbage collection system in Malawi except for urban areas. Due to such situation, in the countryside, the increasing amount of unburnable garbage such as plastic bags that don’t return to dust are causing serious problem, being left on the ground, rot with filthy water giving off terrible smell, making the sanitary state worse than ever. Especially in this time of the year (rainy season), small fishes from Lake Malawi that are being dried outside rot before they become dried fish, and thrown back into the lake - which means polluting the lake water. Needless to say, the sanitation is at its worst state in poor lakeshore villages, causing a high rate of Cholera and Dysentery. They obviously don’t have sewage lines either, so they dig hole for toilets. When a hole is filled with wastes, they dig another hole. Within such situation, the water from the pumping well that villagers think is safe to drink, cannot be considered safe.

Medical System

I’ve made a report about this before as well, but Malawi has an extremely low rate of hospitals compared to their total population & the needs. Only 60 national hospitals. The rest are clinics & hospitals run by oversea NGOs which counts only around 30. The country’s total number of hospitals wouldn’t even reach 100. Not only the number of hospitals, they are also in a huge lack of doctors & nurses. I once visited a hospital administered by the government back in 2006, but 60 patients in one of its wards was looked after by only 1 nurse.
Totally unbelievable. Because of that, the patients could not stay at the hospital unless they have their own family or someone to look after them. Local doctors have all gone abroad due to low salary, so they recruited doctors from nearby countries in a few years contract deal. The amount of salary for doctors is said to be improved recently, but nevertheless, the rate of doctors & nurses to the number of patients is still definitely low.
One other thing which I feel is a problem with Malawi is the fact that there are no drug stores in any part of the country besides Lilongwe (capital) & Blantyre (2nd biggest city). People in other areas of the country must travel to hospitals in order to get any medication. For instance, Malaria which booms around this time of the year can be cured by drinking medicine, but because people cannot afford to travel to the hospital, a lot of people are dying from the disease. Even if there is no nearby hospital, if there was a nearby drug store, a lot of lives could have been saved.
To build a hospital would require a lot of construction fee & a lot of work to achieve decent number of doctors & nurses, but to make a drug store, it should take much less tasks, and should not be impossible. There should be a way to make it happen…
In our countries, if we feel a little sick, we could easily run to a drug store. We could cure ourselves by taking the medicine from the drug store, eat nutritious food, and have a good amount of sleep. Common sense for us. But in Malawi, our common sense is not necessarly their common sense. Even if they want to go to the hospital, just because they couldn’t afford 50￠, people lose their lives. That is the reality of the people in poverty.

Food Situation

This time of the year is also a period that the maize harvested in the previous year gets out of stock, and food prices go rocketing high. The most difficult period for poor people. In the recent years, government begun to administer a system where they buy all maize from the farmers, and sell the maize only through storages called ADMAC to maintain a level of stocks and to avoid inflation, but the reality is that most of the ADMAC in the countryside have no maize in stock… There also are a lot of farmers selling their maze to the black market that offers much higher rate than the government, and just when the government’s stocks of maize ran out, the maize through black market is made available in retail stores at mad expensive prices. At any rate, people who suffer most are the people in poverty. The inflation on their staple food only makes their difficult lives even more harsh, and such situation requires immediate solution.
I also would like to make a note that based on our research this time, the growth of the maize in the area where we do our support activity is extremely bad. The maize are eared but the cobs themselves are thin with almost no kernels. The rain may advance the growth, but if not, this area will definitely fall into a serious food famine. Considering the fact that in Malawi, a slight change in area makes a big difference in growth of crops, so I just hope that the other areas aren’t in the same state.

Education

The state of education is not good, to say the least. Especially the schools run by the government have a lot of problems that needs to be solved. The word school here means primary schools (1-8th grade) run by the government, but most of the children in the area where we do our support activities don’t have a textbook. A lot of them don’t even have notebooks and pencils either.
All the children say that they want to go to school, but as far as what I saw on the notebooks of the students, I have no idea what they are learning. Especially the children in lower grades. They normally go to their schools at 6:30am, and come back home by 10am. 3 hours of studying. And the amount of notes they took is less than a page. That’s why there are lots of 2nd and 3rd graders that can’t even write ABCs. A lot of the children in higher grades still don’t know the multiplication tables, some even have difficulties with addition of large digits.And now, in addition to such state, a requirement to wear uniforms, which is said to be the rule set in favor of the country’s President. Setting such rule for private schools are still understandable, but students at national schools are all required to wear uniforms as well, and those without uniforms cannot attend classes.
For children from poor family, wearing uniforms is almost impossible. Why does a child who only has worn-out clothes and not even being able to eat proper food has to wear an order-made uniform? No matter how much a child likes to study and want to go to school, schools not accepting the child just because he or she doesn’t have a uniform? Doesn’t make any sense at all. What’s necessary for the children are textbooks, notebooks and pencils, not uniforms. Am I wrong? A school principal of a village was saying that “our school accept children without uniforms too,” but if that’s not the case, probably all children in poor countryside villages won’t be able to go to school. I honestly hope from the bottom of my heart that such crappy rule of uniforms vanishes away, and the time comes when all schools are made available for all children so that even the children from poor families could attend and enjoy studying in the nearest future.
Education gives future to the children. Doesn’t have to be advanced where you force children to learn, the basics, the least necessary education would do. Possibilities expand just by the fact a child could speak English and four rules of arithmetic. I strongly feel that by providing proper education to all, a bright future will open up for Malawi. Malawi is a country where people are extremely kind and lovable. People are poor but helping each other to live. I would like to give a good time & thoughts once again on what I could do to maintain their smiles to eternity.
African JAG / Producer 　Noriko ASANO*For detailed report on our latest support activities in Malawi, hop over to Local Reports

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