"...the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men..."

I've been premature in previous blogs about the rains arriving.  We had a  ferocious storm in November and some heavy rain in December but nothing lasting.  In Mzuzu, which is in the hills and has an abundance of trees, the rain has been sufficient to ensure the greening of the landscape. Other parts of Malawi are getting greener too.  I went to Lilongwe with Liz who flying to Dar es Salaam and it certainly looked a  lot greener on the road from Lilongwe to Kamuzu airport than it had when I arrived at the beginning of October.

The rains have arrived now.   In Mzuzu, it's still quite warm but there has been hardly any break from cloudy skies and, as I write this blog, sheets of rain continue to fall outside my window.  In a break in the rain yesterday, whilst walking into central Mzuzu through the maize fields that stretch out at the bottom of our valley, I started talking to Brian, who with his mother and sisters was working the family maize plot in the valley.  I asked him if the delay in rains had impacted on the harvest and he said 'no', pointing to the green fields stretching in front of us. 

But late rain is having a major impact in the much drier south and in areas of the north nearer the lake shore where there are fewer trees and less rain fall. Jo, the Temwa managing director and co-founder, has recently arrived in Malawi and says she has never experienced such conditions in the twenty odd years she has been living in or coming to Malawi. It's strange for me because what I see is lots of green.  Jo says crops have been ruined as a result of people planting in the expectation of rains that never came. There is increasing hunger (stores of food that people build up for the non-growing season have been used up) and reduced income, with farmers not having produce to sell at market.  

This has significant implications for Temwa's work.  Temwa's focus is on building sustainable communities in Nkhata Bay North by encouraging diversification of crops, working with communities to reduce deforestation, promoting education through bursaries and other means, helping address the scourge of AIDS, and providing micro-finance loans to strengthen local economies. But changed weather conditions, with significantly delayed rains, affects all of this.  Hunger prevents people having the strength to plant the tree seedlings that the communities have been cultivating;  farmers can't generate income to pay off their microfinance loans; and the general lack of income in the communities means that others who have taken out microfinance loans to set up shops and other trading activity have no buyers.  And there are other factors that add to the problems.   There has been an outbreak of cholera in the Nkhata Bay area, with a number of cases in Usisya.  More generally, the economic conditions in the country are getting worse (there were under 700 Malawian kwacha to £1 a year ago; there are now over 1,000 kwacha to £1) and, together with endemic maladministration, this is affecting the ability of the government to take action on any of the many problems the country faces, including helping deal with the food crisis.  So it's not going to be business as usual for Temwa in Nkhata Bay North.  You can read more about Jo's view on what she has found on this visit in her blog at http://temwa.org/an-update-from-jo-hook-on-the-food-crisis-in-malawi/.

I haven't been down to the lake shore recently so I haven't really witnessed what has been going on and I'm not sure it would be obvious in a casual visit by me.  As I have said before, Malawians that I have met are very positive about life and the hardships they face. You will be told about them and the impact they are having but there is an acceptance that this is the way things are and, as far as possible, people just get on with life.  So we have been getting on with the things we do...

... which takes me back to "the best-laid schemes 'o mice an' men".  We had our Burns celebration on 14th January (wrong date for the cognoscenti but we had to fit it in before Liz's flight to Tanzania).  It was meticulously planned.   Johnny at Macondo Camp had contacted a  piper friend in Canada who piped the home-made vegetarian haggis in via skype.  John Fox, who is from Dumbarton and runs the Eva Demaya centre with his wife,   Jacqueline Kouwehhoven (MP for Rumphi West), addressed the haggis and gave a wonderful (abridged) rendering of the tale of Tam O' Shanter.   We had a beautifully spoken recorded version of Burns's ode To a Mouse.  Liz sang a number of favourites from the Burns' playlist - Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes, Ye Jacobites by Name, and My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose - as well as a few other traditional Scottish songs.  We missed out on My Heart is in the Highlands and, I'm not sure, but I think we overlooked Auld Lang Syne. The whisky wasn't flowing but Tom and I fitted in one before the evening was out.  So the  "the best-laid schemes 'o mice an' men" didn't "gang ... agley"...

John Fox addressing the haggis

Liz singing some Burns' hits

...but that can't be said for Liz's planned trip to Tanzania.  We took the coach from Mzuzu to Lilongwe (6am start - we're getting used to it!) a couple of days after the Burns supper with a view to having two nights in Lilongwe before Liz's Monday morning flight to Dar es Salaam.  After we got to Lilongwe, Fastjet, the company that was meant to be flying Liz to Dar, contacted us to say the flight for Monday had been cancelled but it was OK because they would put her on the Friday flight!  As far as Liz was concerned, that was going to "lea'e (her) nought but grief an' pain for promis'd joy!". She managed in the end to get on a Malawian Airlines flight which left on the Sunday morning.

Elson, the taxi driver who dropped Liz off at the airport, drove me round Lilongwe Capital City on the way back.  What a strange contrast to Lilongwe Old Town which is like any other town centre I've been to in Malawi except bigger, busier, dirtier and less safe.   Capital City was built in the 1970s with South African money to be a new independent capital (replacing the old colonial capital of Zomba). It's got a new Parliament Building, Capitol Hill (where all the government departments are located in identikit  '70s office buildings), a new Bingu Mutharika conference centre and hotel (Bingu was President who died in office in 2012 and brother of the current President, Arthur Peter Mutharika), large modern Reserve and National Bank buildings, a few empty shopping malls, a mausoleum for Hastings Kamuzu Banda (founding President of independent Malawi and an advocate of close relations with South Africa), well kept tarmacked roads...and no people (well it was a Sunday!).

Seat of government

A deserted Capital City

I'm due to fly to Dar es Salaam with Fastjet on Friday.  To Burns, "foresight may be vain" and "the best-laid schemes ... gang  aft agley".   There's an acceptance there that foresight has a role.    Malawian Air fly to Dar on Thursday - maybe I should just cut my losses....