Tuesday 3 May 2016

Two easy flights, and I’m looking out of the window and down at Lilongwe spread out like a child’s roadway play mat beneath us.  It looks disappointingly normal, just like a UK airport – I don’t know what I thought the landscape would look like, mind you – vast herds of stampeding wildebeest, perhaps? Or a family of charging rhinoceros? Nothing so exotic appeared to distract my attention from imminent collision with the ground at a considerable speed.  I did notice that the runway appeared to be dirt, but this magically switched to concrete just as the plane came in to contact with the ground, and a tension I hadn’t previously realised was there was suddenly released with a robust outburst of clapping and cheering.  Its decades since I’ve heard passengers burst into spontaneous applause when the pilot successfully lands the plane. It tickled me pink.

The landscape around the airport was dull and scrubby initially, but once we had passed through the (very small) central terminal and stepped out the other side, everything magically changed.  The landscape greened and bloomed all around us. Palm trees, extraordinarily brightly coloured flowers and plants of every kind, and of course lots of Malawian citizens in their brightly coloured clothing. Plus the chirping of the cicadas, always a wonderful sound.

Andrew, a taxi driver, was there to meet me.  The drive in to the Animal Sanctuary took about 30 minutes.  It was a very pretty drive in many ways, but some of the broken down shacks we passed marred the landscape.  These were interspersed with little clusters of men, women and children sitting on the ground and apparently hoping to sell some of the pumpkin like things they had in the middle. I assumed these were shacks were to provide shelter against the worst of the midday sun.

Then we came to a stretch of road where a curious structure began – a long neat brick wall, running roughly parallel to the road, and it went on for miles and miles. Sometimes a second wall appeared meeting it at 90 degrees; sometimes an enormous square was marked out in the brick.  Andrew the driver explained these were built with money given to the Malawi government in order to build homes for the people.  These walls were about 6’ high, and they ran for many kilometres on and off.  All around the walls weeds grew, some of them so high they were almost as high as the walls themselves.  There was no sign of any houses getting any further along.  No roofs, no building materials lying around, no workers.  Andrew explained the money was stolen by corrupt government officials, and none of these promised houses got any closer to being finished than that.  Meanwhile, shabbily dressed women grey with dust walked along the dry hot roadside with impossibly large bundles balanced on their heads.  I could not see where they had come from, nor could I make out where they were going.  Here and there were clusters of men, women and children sitting in the grey dust beside the road for no obvious reason  Now and then appeared a pile of what appeared to bundles of firewood neatly bound with twine; small dishevelled children were just sitting or playing along the roadside. 

I asked Andrew if there were many homeless people in Malawi.  He was scornful.  No! - Well, very few - no one is homeless if they want to have a home.  It’s easy to build a home! There is plenty of mud and wood everywhere, and corrugated iron can be found lying around in all sorts of places. You can use mud and grass anyway!  No, no-one is homeless if they want to have a home.  I had the feeling he was despising his idea of ‘homeless’ as just plain lazy.  A little further on we passed what appeared to be some old derelict bunkers or homes, and I asked about these. Andrew was astonished.  Obviously, ordinary people didn’t live in a place like that, he told me.  You had to be very rich indeed to have such a home.  Many of these has running water, quite a few had electricity.  His voice became hushed, apparently awed at the thought of such senseless luxury.

Later I learned that Malawi is the poorest country on earth.   The majority of people do live in the little broken down bits of shacks I has seen along the road.  Only 7% have access to electricity.  The vast majority used firewood as their main fuel for cooking and heating purposes.  I didn’t ask what they used for lighting, in case I shocked poor Andrew again with my reckless ideas.  I just accepted that they very probably don’t have any.

When we arrived at Lilongwe, it took me a while to clock it.  No enormous fancy signboards, no advertising and fanfare.  A dirt road led towards a dusty gateway, behind which were a cluster of grey looking shack/buildings.  I’ll write more about Lilongwe tomorrow.

One of the first pieces of news I received was that there were over 200 animals living at the sanctuary.  A new orphaned monkey was reported to the centre 3 days ago, and he has been being bottle fed and cared for overnight since.  Today he was placed with a very motherly monkey who has taken on many orphans.  Little Cesar seems very disturbed, not surprisingly, but the staff talk about him with great hope and enthusiasm.  Lots of crossed fingers and toes, we will see what he is up to in the morning.