Your Man in Malawi

Up North

Just returned from an Easter weekend road trip with some friends to Malawi's Northern Region. Fourteen hours of driving, forty litres of black market petrol, and innumerable bottles of Kuche Kuche got us to Mushroom Farm - a hippy eco-lodge perched on the side of a hillside; Manchewe Falls; the old Livingstonia Mission; and back down the Lakeshore road, stopping at Chitimba, Nkhata Bay, Makuzi Beach, and Kandi Beach.

Here are some snaps:

The route

Dave A looking relaxed on the Kandewe Basket Bridge

Haggling over the price off black market petrol after a logistical failure

The view from Mushroom Farm

Taken from the caves behind Manchewe Waterfall - Malawi's highest

Edwardian buildings at the Livingstonia Mission

Makuzi Beach

Ten Stiff-Legged Souls

It's been a while. For which I excuse myself on the grounds that I have been busy playing father figure and role model to ten small piglets. Yes, in a surprise turn of events, on 26 February, Strawberry gave birth.

Just a few days after purchasing the three piglets from Paddy's village - bought to make up for Strawberry's apparent lack of fertility - Strawberry began showing the first signs (swollen teats; swollen vulva) that she might have some buns in the oven after all. Assuming that the pregnancy was the fruit of Roy's labours, we penciled in the due date for early April (three months, three weeks, three days after fertilisation). How wrong we were.

I got the call from Nepear at 11.30 on a Thursday morning, and ran out of the office shouting that my pig was giving birth. I got home in time to see the last four pop out. I've heard the suidae birth process compared to 'shelling peas', which is a fair description. Preceded by a grunt from the mother, each piglet slides out the rear end, staggers to its feet, and spends a few seconds getting its bearings before stumbling around to the nearest teat, which it happily suckles for several hours.

There were twelve in all, though one - a big pink female and the last to come out - was still-born and another was too weak to feed and didn't survive the night. Both were buried in the garden. The ten that remain - five boars, and five sows - are feisty and inquisitive. And terribly cute. Eight are almost entirely black, and two are pink (mzungu pigs, as Nepear calls them). Those that I can distinguish have names - Hamlet (the small pink one); Maisie (the big pink one); Jackson (the one with the funny nose).

When they're a month old, we'll castrate four of the boars, leaving the strongest intact to use as breeding stock. Castration helps reduce the risk of the dreaded 'boar taint', and castrated boars fatten faster than their intact brothers. At eight weeks old, all the piglets will be weaned and separated from Strawberry, for at least as long as it takes for her milk to dry up. She'll then be ready for mating again.

Once they've been weaned, we might sell a few of the piglets due to space limitations. By six months, those that we've kept will be ready for slaughter. We'll probably keep one or two of the nicest looking sows for breeding stock. The rest will be sold or eaten. Such is the cold, heartless logic of the universe.

Of course, the identity of the father remains a mystery. Judging by the dates - and pigs are very punctual - Strawberry must have been pregnant when we bought her. The cheeky swine.

Week one - sleeping

'Hamlet' on my knee

Happy face

Patience and the pigs

Strawberry I to Strawberry IV

An update on the suidae soap opera that my life has become.

Recap of Previous Episodes

We purchased a pig, which we christened Strawberry, late last year, with a view to breeding her and supporting the nascent Malawian sausage market. Once she'd settled in to her new home in my back garden, we hired a boar called Roy to do the dirty.

Strawberry's initial response to this long-snouted lothario was to run away, frustrating Roy's attempts to get his leg over. We responded to this by locking them in the pig house for a number of weeks, which led to nothing more than a series of friction burns on Strawberry's back, which we then had to apply special cream to.

In an effort to prove my tough Malawian credentials, I immediately declared that Strawberry had to go to the abattoir to be turned into the finest back bacon, and that I wasn't entertaining the idea of feeding something that had no useful purpose. But then Nepear said he would be very sad if we did that, and Paddy said that everyone would miss her, and thus I was out-voted.

Having failed in his duty, Roy left in January with his tail between his legs.

While initially relieved to have been left in peace, in recent weeks Strawberry has become increasingly introverted: isolating herself in her house for hours at a time; grunting less; and digging ennui-shaped holes. Pigs are intelligent and social animals, so we decided Strawberry needed some new, less forceful friends.

Strawberry in default pose - taken this morning

Paddy's Pigs

I'd promised Paddy a while ago that I'd visit his village to meet his mum. When Paddy told me that his mum also had some pigs that she wanted to sell I decided that I could delay no longer. So early(ish) yesterday, Paddy, Nepear and I set off for Paddy's village in Ntcheu - a two-hour drive from Lilongwe.

The village was like every single other Malawian village I've been to. Single-room houses made out of rough, hand-made bricks. Straw roofs lined with plastic sheeting (metal sheets if you're rich) to keep the rain out. Delinquent goats and chickens roaming around. The constant smell of wood-smoke. Small children staring.

We met Paddy's mum, who Paddy tells me is now seventy. With Paddy being twenty, this means she must have been fifty when she had him. Though Paddy only has one (older) sister, he tells me that his mum had many children before him - perhaps five or six - each of whom died in infancy or early childhood. Paddy puts some of this down to the evil magic of jealous neighbours.

Paddy's mum, who is looking pretty good for seventy

Paddy's uncle, who Paddy says he doesn't like because he keeps eating his chickens. His wife and daughter are both dead, and so Paddy's mum looks after him. He's seventy-six.

Paddy with his family. Mum, right. Sister, second from left. Nephew, front.

Turns out Paddy's dad (who died when Paddy was a small boy) had two wives - polygamy being common (although less so in recent times) in Malawi. Paddy has an older half-brother and half-sister from his father's other marriage. Like many Malawian's, Paddy's half-brother normally works in South Africa, trying to save some money, but was back home for two months to see his wife and children.

Having met everyone, admired the greenness of the maize and the plumpness of the goats, and drunk something that tasted like cardboard with the consistency of road grit, it was time to select our pigs and return to Lilongwe. Turned out that the pigs were only six weeks-old. Nepear wanted to buy one, and being Malawian and full of pragmatic common sense, he chose the largest, healthiest looking female. I, being English and weak-hearted and prone to wanton acts of senseless charity, chose the smallest, weakest, most nervous looking female. And then we bought a male, so that in time we will have a piglet farm. Hopefully.

They are very small, and very nervous. I doubt either of these things will last.

Three little pigs

Burns' Night

The great and the good of Lilongwe came together on Saturday night to celebrate the life of that great womanising troubadour and Scotland's favourite son, Rabbie Burns, with a ceilidh at the Sunbird Capital, Lilongwe's favourite hotel. I opted to improvise a kilt from the most Scottish looking chitenje I could find. The original plan was to get it properly tailored, but I didn't manage to find the time to take it to the tailor, so I just relied on copious safety pins to preserve my modesty. The whole experience was formative. I'd always had the Scots down as simpletons who'd just never figured out how to make trousers, but I see now their tortured genius. The air flow inherent in wearing a kilt is vital in maintaining an acceptable core temperature when ceilidh dancing. Moreover, the sporran makes up for an alarming lack of pockets and the sgian-dubh is vital for fending off those friends and enemies who would wish to remove one's kilt mid-dance.

In other news, the garden is a mess because we've had the tree-surgeons in. They don't bother with ropes and harnesses here. Just shimmy up the tree with their chainsaws slung around their waists and get chopping. Proper job.

Rain

I've been back in Malawi for a few weeks now, with intermittent internet. Unfortunately Malawi's been hitting the international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The rains which should have begun in late November, didn't start until late December, and since then, they haven't stopped.

Floods across the country have left nearly two-hundred people dead or missing and two-hundred-thousand homeless. The Government of Malawi has declared half the country a disaster zone and has requested international assistance to support the rescue and recovery efforts. Organisations, including the UN agencies, donors (including DFID) and various NGOs, are providing assistance - in the form of temporary shelters; food aid; and rescue helicopters - to help in the short-term.

Clearly, dealing with the immediate consequences of the flooding is a priority, but the longer-term worry is the effect the erratic rains may have on the harvest. Malawians plant their crops at the start of the rainy season around November/December and harvest once the rains dry up in March/April. They then live off the food they have harvested (mostly maize) until the next harvest - a full year later. Due to the floods, many farmers have had their newly planted crops washed away, and, conversely, if the rains stop early (i.e. before March/April), then many crops will be ruined. Bearing in mind that around 80% of Malawians are subsistence farmers, who are entirely reliant on a good harvest to see them through the year, the consequences of a poor crop would be significant.

Where the countryside isn't hidden by swollen rivers and waterlogged fields, the dusty brown that I left behind when I flew back to England for Christmas has been replaced by a beautiful lush green. In fact, it looks a bit like Hobbiton. Lilongwe - where I live - has been unaffected by the floods, which are concentrated in the south of the country.

I recently returned from a non-flood related field trip to the South, where I was looking at some of the projects DFID funds to support local communities to work together with local authorities to improve the provision of services, like schools, wells, and roads.

On the road in Southern Region

Mango service station

The last project I visited was at a school, where I met Brenda Banda. Brenda is 17, and is the youngest of five sisters. She is the first of her siblings to go to secondary school (secondary education is neither free nor compulsory in Malawi) and has been able to pay her school fees thanks to a scholarship from a small, British charity. She is in her final year at school, and when she is finished she hopes to go to university, and eventually become an international journalist.

Unfortunately, while Brenda's scholarship pays for her school fees (around £6 per term), it does not stretch to pay for the costs of boarding at the school (£45 per term). The school is several kilometres from Brenda's village and so she chooses to 'self-board' - a common occurrence in Malawi, whereby students find private lodgings close to their school, which they rent at low cost.

Sadly, often the lodgings are of very poor quality and insecure. In 2014, three girls were raped in the lodgings where Brenda stays. The project which I was visiting had helped bring together students, parents, teachers, landlords, and local councillors to resolve some of the issues which were putting Brenda and her fellow students at risk. Together, they have helped ensure Brenda has a lock on her door, wooden shutters over her window, and a brick wall around her outside toilet; teachers are now clear that they have a duty of care for the self-boarding students, and make regular visits to the lodgings; and the school are working with the local community to build a new boarding block within the school grounds which will expand their capacity to take in boarders. The situation as it stands is by no means ideal, and it was pretty depressing to look at the single 6ft by 6ft room that constitutes Brenda's living quarters, but at least things have improved.

Brenda, outside her lodgings

In a final piece of good(?) news, we have acquired another puppy. Tiger (named by Robert after several days of consideration) was being taken to market when her owner made the fateful decision to walk past my front gate. The rest is history. Harry likes to sniff her; Ginny is scared of her; and Tiger bounces happily around the garden. She's about eight weeks old now.

Robert and Tiger

To scale

Suddenly, everybody's Charlie

This post isn't about Malawi. Through the magic of the internet, I've been following the unfolding events in Paris - and the subsequent media comment - with mounting anger. My anger, perhaps surprisingly, isn't directed at the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo killings - there will always be those willing to kill in the name of some misheld belief, and there's not much more that can be said about that. My anger, is at the hypocrisy of the British establishment - the mass media, the MPs, the commentariat, and possibly you - which, after a decade or more mired in moral cowardice and ambiguity, has belatedly turned a volte-face and is now proclaiming that it too is Charlie.

I should preface this note by saying that I don't normally write like this anymore; that is to say, about issues that matter. In fact the last time I wrote anything of length about real issues was nearly five years ago, on a long forgotten blog which I hope nobody ever finds - mainly on account of the quality of the prose. In short, in the age of the internet, there's too much noise. Everyone has an opinion and, frankly, I prefer not to add to the racket. But I'll make an exception today because I'm angry, so please excuse me.

Today, everybody seems to be Charlie. My Facebook feed is full of people proclaiming their Charlie-ness; politicians are tripping over each other in their efforts to be the biggest Charlie; and hacks and columnists are penning lengthy screeds in an attempt to out-Charlie one another. Everyone - or almost everyone - is lining up to declare their unyielding support for the principle of being able to say or write - or draw - whatever the hell they want, regardless of how offensive that might be to some. And that's all well and good, but what really fucks me off is that no one wanted to be Charlie a week ago, or a year ago, or ten years ago. And that was when it mattered: when individuals and small, independent publications were risking - and losing - their lives and their liberty in defence of the freedom to say what they wanted without fear or favour.

It's not brave to be Charlie now. It was brave when those who published irreverent cartoons in the face of death threats - often realised - were criticised by the mainstream media and politicians for lacking judgement and damaging the fragile fabric of inter-faith relations. So it's irksome now to see so many people proclaim 'je suis Charlie' when they have been nothing of the sort. Not only have they not been Charlies, but they've actively discouraged those who would be and isolated those who are, and in doing so have contributed towards the climate of intolerance and appeasement that - I would argue - led to Wednesday's atrocity.

The best way to normalise a taboo is to repeat it, and repeat it again, until it becomes barely noticeable. If a word triggers a violent reaction, that word should be repeated ad infinitum until those it antagonises have got bored, and gone home, and realised that oppression is fruitless. For every journalist or filmmaker that is threatened with violence in response to their work, ten more should step forward to reprint and republish and redistribute. As well as being a moral imperative, there is a practical application to such proliferation; as the activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said, we need to 'spread the risk'.

It might be an uncomfortable truth, but it is a truth none the less, that it is not a small minority of Muslims who have an issue with freedom of expression. When it first published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in 2006, Charlie Hebdo was sued (unsuccessfully) by the Grand Mosque of Paris, the Muslim World League, and the Union of French Islamic Organisations - hardly fringe groups. And despite Wednesday's events, mainstream Muslim commentators - like Tariq Ramadan and Nesrine Malik, both writing in the Guardian this week - continue to warn media outlets against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet, on the grounds that they are offensive.

The painful irony is that the virulently left-wing, anti-racist Charlie Hebdo didn't print pictures of Muhammed because it had a free-floating urge to offend Muslims, but because it had a problem with exactly the sort of oppressive sentiments expressed by Ramadan and Malik, who would wish to impose the requirements of their own sensitivities onto those around them. Charlie Hebdo printed those pictures on a point of principle - the principle that nothing should be sacred, nothing should be beyond the pale; that the freedom to say what one wants without fear of violence is one of the most important freedoms we have. And that's a principle which should brook no challenge.

Maybe now we've got so many new Charlies, things will change. It's just a shame that more good people had to die to bring that about. Vive le crayon. Vive la liberté. Vive Charlie.

"It's hard being loved by jerks"

Christmas in England

I've been at home in England for the past two weeks, enjoying Christmas and the New Year with family and friends after a busy few months in Malawi. I split my time between London - seeing friends and enjoying the city in full Christmas swing - and Whitchurch, the small village in Buckinghamshire where my parents live - relaxing mostly!

I fly back to Malawi this evening, and while sad to be leaving family and friends here in England, I'm looking forward to seeing the dogs and Nepear and his family, counting the new chicks that will have hatched while I was away, and speculating on whether Strawberry is pregnant or remains stubbornly chaste.

A large portion of my Christmas list was given over to books pertaining to smallholder-related activities (see picture below) so I'm looking forward to spending 2015 knee-deep in home-brew and chutney. All being well, this year we should have a litter of piglets to fatten up and sell, a large flock of egg-machines and a booming cider-making operation.

I have also invested in a new tent, which will be winging its way to Malawi shortly, breaking all-records for 'largest item in the diplomatic bag' in the process. So I hope to spend some time in the New Year exploring the more remote campsites of Malawi.

Happy New Year all!