Into Africa, Out of Academia by Kwan Kew Lai

Author:Kwan Kew Lai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2020-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Sterilizing instruments using firewood to heat water in a pan at Sorgin health center.

The ART Clinic was crowded, with the registration clerk and the nurse attending to the patients in the same room. The clerk spread the charts all over the table making it difficult for the clinician to function. He did not take kindly to our suggestion that he registered the patients outside the room to enable the medical officer or the nurse to have more space to see the patients.

Erin and I headed towards Zomba Plateau one weekend. Parts of the road to Zomba were under construction, and our driver, Hassan, took a number of detours over rocky and bumpy dirt roads, passing the notorious Zomba Central Prison, the largest prison in Malawi. It was meant to be for about 800 prisoners, but it was so overcrowded that it was housing three times the number of inmates with prisoners packed like sardines in their sleeping arrangement. The prevalence of HIV and TB was believed to be high.

We did not stop at Zomba but instead drove up to the plateau. The day was hot and hazy. Just before we went up the plateau, we saw a sign painted on a huge boulder that said, “Welcome to Casa Blanca.” Many women, girls, and some boys were carrying heavy bundles of firewood from the plateau to the town to sell. Because of the distance they had to travel, a piece of wood could fetch 50 to 100 kwacha (15 to 30 cents). Again, we rarely saw any man doing this kind of heavy work. Hassan said it was cultural. Most of the heavy work was designated for women including tilling the land, and if a man was seen doing the chores, he was not considered manly enough. If a man earned any kwacha, most of it went to drinks not to the family. Unlike the men, the women had their families foremost in their minds, while the boys sold wood for their own spending. As we drove higher along the roadside, we stopped to buy colorful wild berries: strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, gooseberries, raspberries, and passion fruits. Being azungus, we were charged mzungu prices.

We asked Hassan if a woman went to the market to sell wood, who would take care of her children? Hassan said the older children or the grandmother. But I had seen women carrying a baby on their back with a bundle of goods to sell atop their heads. Erin thought the women here needed “women’s lib.” Again we asked why they even bothered to get married, whereupon Hassan answered with a hearty laugh, “They want what the men can work at night.” And after a pause he chuckled, “They don’t know that they can have it any time of the day.”

I said, “They work too hard during the day.”

Ku Chawe Hotel, a posh hotel, sat at the very top of the plateau. The plateau was several kilometers across, windy and cool. Queen Elizabeth and Emperor Haile Selassie came

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