Don't throw the frog out with the bath water

The streets of Lilongwe were earily quiet. We drove down the main streets at 6.30 pm and there was no one about. No restaurants were open. We had run out of a lot of our food.

Three days later, I went back to the streets of Lilongwe. And they were as busy, hot, dustly, invasive and normal as they had been before the "riots".

I have put riots in inverted commas becasue they were definitely not as the media portrayed them to be. The looting, many locals believe, were just a few opportunists looking at getting some free things. The burnt out, flame gutted buildings? Well both Game and Shoprite, two of the reported burnt buildings were still clean and filled with good when I went to buy a tent, three days after the demonstations. Either something (renovations) works suprisingly swiftly in Malawi. More likely, no such burning happened.

The fires raging on the side of the road? True, there were probably fires. But outsiders don't understand. One local said, "it's the dry season. We burn our dry sh**". Meaning that dry leaves and other garden material is quite openly burnt on the side of the road. In fact, this morning, almost a week later, I saw fires on the side of the road... of piles of leaves gardeners had just raked up.

That these demonstations are akin to Libya and the Middle East up-risings? Please excuse me, and all the locals and neighbouring country peoples I have spoken to, for laughing out loud. Like the Middle East??? Media people, it really isn't. Malawi doesn't have the money to mobilise it's forces so much. There is no gold, or oil or other valuable resources that greedy outside forces want to get their hands on (and therefore interfere).

The president knows he is in trouble. Malawians aren't happy. Maybe, before these demonstations are likened to the Middle East uprisings, let us wait until the deadline given to the government (sometime in August) to sort their issues. Maybe then it might be worthy of being likened to Libya. But I hightly doubt it.

So the media, don't throw the baby out with the bath water - this isn't the end of normal life in Malawi.


The frog you say? Well, there was a frog in the tub of water in the kitchen at Nature's Gift Permaculture - gave us all a fight at 6am in the morning!