Malawi Quotes

Poor is the man whose pleasure depends on the permission of another.

I went to sleep dreaming of Malawi, and all the things made possible when your dreams are powered by your heart.

When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the finest biscuit. But we should be wary of restricting the idea of meaningful work too tightly, of focusing only on the doctors, the nuns of Kolkata or the Old Masters. There can be less exalted ways to contribute to the furtherance of the collective good.... ....An endeavor endowed with meaning may appear meaningful only when it proceeds briskly in the hands of a restricted number of actors and therefore where particular workers can make an imaginative connection between what they have done with their working days and their impact upon others.

Although Geoffrey, Gilbert and I grew up in this small place in Africa, we did many of the same things children do all over the world, only with slightly different materials. And talking with friends I've met from America and Europe, I now know this is true. Children everywhere have similar ways of entertaining themselves. If you look at it this way, the world isn't so big.

Young girls frequently report that their early sexual experiences were coerced. In a study in South Africa, 30 percent of girls report that their first sexual intercourse was forced. In rural Malawi, 55 percent of adolescent girls surveyed report that they were often forced to have sex.

Alice goes into the kitchen and returns with a cup of coffee for me, which she announces is free-range and fair-trade and shade-farmed in Malawi, and I nod along as if my coffee needs go beyond hot and caffeinated.

What characterizes an addiction?” asks the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. “Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the power to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.” Addiction cuts large swaths across our culture. Many of us are burdened with compulsive behaviours that harm us and others, behaviours whose toxicity we fail to acknowledge or feel powerless to stop. Many people are addicted to accumulating wealth; for others the compulsive pull is power. Men and women become addicted to consumerism, status, shopping or fetishized relationships, not to mention the obvious and widespread addictions such as gambling, sex, junk food and the cult of the “young” body image. The following report from the Guardian Weekly speaks for itself: Americans now [2006] spend an alarming $15 billion a year on cosmetic surgery in a beautification frenzy that would be frowned upon if there was anyone left in the U.S. who could actually frown with their Botox-frozen faces. The sum is double Malawi’s gross domestic product and more than twice what America has contributed to AIDS programs in the past decade. Demand has exploded to produce a new generation of obsessives, or “beauty junkies.

My grandmother Rose was a tough woman, so tough she'd built the family home with her own hands while my grandpa worked as a tailor in the market. She'd even built the furnace and molded the bricks herself, which is not an easy job, and even today, not the job of a woman.

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

A man in the trading center was caught trying to sell his two young daughters. The buyer had informed the police. People were becoming desperate.

Maize is just another word for white corn, and by the end of this story, you won't believe how much you know about corn.

When you go to see the lake, you also see the hippos.

If it weren’t for the great Scottish missionary David Livingstone, the Yao and Chewa might still be at odds today. Livingstone helped end slavery, opened Malawi to trade, and built good schools and missions. Young men became educated and earned money, and once these economic opportunities were available to all, our two tribes had little reason to fight. Today we consider the Yao our brothers and sisters. My

This experience in Malawi changed my whole outlook on how much all of God’s servants are interwoven and interlinked. The most humble ministries or missionaries, evangelists, teachers, and shepherds, even those who are perhaps considered failures, are part of the “big picture” and will rejoice with all of us in harvest-joy. This sums up this great book of Roberts Liardon. Let’s join their ranks. The harvest goes on. Jesus is coming soon!

Touring the city, I began to wonder how Americans could build a skyscraper in a year, but in four decades of independence, Malawi couldn't even bring clean water to a village. We could send witch planes into the skies and ghost trucks along the roads, but we couldn't even keep electricity in our homes. We always seemed to be struggling to catch up. Even with so many smart and hardworking people, we were sill living and dying like our ancestors.

Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. "So why won't the radio play?" "I don't know," he said. "Try connecting them here." He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled "AC," and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance. "Keep pedaling," he said. "That's it, just keep pedaling." "Hey, I want to dance, too." "You'll have to wait your turn." Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later. After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, "What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance?

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country [Malawi]: to welcome strangers, to let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy - a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit - a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn't work - and few of them did work - whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place?

Not much because all aid is political. When this country (Malawi) became independent it had very few institutions. It still doesn't have many. The donors aren't contributing to development. They maintain the status quo. Politicians love that, because they hate change. The tyrants love aid. Aid helps them stay in power and contributes to underdevelopment. It's not social or cultural and it certainly isn't economic. Aid is one of the main reasons for underdevelopment in Africa.

With the money my mother earned from selling cakes, my father cut a deal with Mangochi and bought one pail of maize. My mother took it to the mill, saved half the flour for us, and used the rest for more cakes. We did this every day, taking enough to eat and selling the rest. It was enough to provide our one blob of nsima each night, along with some pumpkin leaves. It was practically nothing, yet knowing it would be there somehow made the hunger less painful. "As long as we can stay in business," my father said, "we'll make it through. Our profit is that we live.

If we were going to determine what was broken in the radios, we needed a power source. With no electricity, this meant batteries. [...] we'd walk to the trading center and look for used cells that had been tossed in the waste bins. [...] First we'd test the battery to see if any juice was left in it. We'd attach two wires to the positive and negative ends and connect them to a torch bulb. The brighter the bulb, the stronger the battery. Next we'd flatten the Shake Shake carton and roll it into a tube, then stack the batteries inside, making sure the positives and negatives faced in the same direction. Then we'd run wires from each end of the stack to the positive and negative heads inside the radio, where the batteries normally go. Together, this stack of dead batteries usually contained enough juice to power a radio.

Papa, why are you selling our goats? I like these goats." "A week ago the price was five hundred, now it's four hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't wait for it go any lower." Mankhalala and the others were tied by their front legs with a long rope. When my father started down the trail, they stumbled and began to cry. They knew their future. Mankhalala looked back, as if telling me to help him. Even Khamba whined and barked a few times, pleading their case. But I had to let them down. What could I do? My family had to eat.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE LEMBA       One of the most outstanding cases of  Black diaspora Jewry is the case of the Lemba of southern Africa. The Lemba have long claimed that they are Jews or Israelites who migrated to Yemen and from there to Africa as traders. Amazingly, DNA evidence has backed the Lemba claim of Jewish ancestry.   Today, the Lemba can be found in southern Africa countries like Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Many of their customs are similar to Jews such as the wearing of  yarmulke-like skull cups and observing kosher laws such as the requirement not to eat pork. Interestingly they also avoid eating rabbits, scaleless fish, hares and carrion. In short, the Lemba follow the requirements in the Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament.     The Lemba claim that about 2500 years ago, their ancestors left Judea for Yemen. Only males are said to have sailed to Africa by boat. The migrants took local wives for themselves. They built a city in Yemen called Sena. From Sena they traveled to Africa where they dispersed. Some remained in East Africa and others traveled to southern Africa. Lemba women do not have 'Semitic' admixture, and this is in line with their oral history.     Professor Tudor Vernon Parfitt, a professor of Jewish Studies then at the University of London, spent several months among the Lemba. He later travelled to Yemen and to his

Don't worry about the water," said a man with a nervous grin. "This is hardwood, it won't ruin. You'll have this chair into your old years. How much do you have? I'll take anything. My children need to eat." A few of the businessmen like Mister Mangochi bought things they later gave back. But most people had no money. They simply shrugged and shook their heads.

Chief Wimbe also loved his cat, which was black and white but had no name. In Malawi, only dogs are given names, I don't know why.

Faith waved her hand. “Malawi Lesotho.

Your Excellency," [Chief Wimbe] said, turning to face the president. "I'd like to congratulate you not only for what you've done in Malawi, but all across the great continent of Africa. We're having about all the things you're doing in Congo and how you'd had success. We're very proud of our president. But please understand, we're also at war here in Malawi, and that war is against hunger." He then asked the president to stop funding wells and toilets and use the money to buy grain. (Because really, how can you use the toilet if you never eat?) [...] Shortly after, when the president got up to talk, several well-dressed officials approached Gilbert's father and asked to speak with him. Knowing the president's habit of giving handouts, the chief became excited. They're giving us money. My speech must've worked. About six men led the chief behind a building near the stage, and once there, they confronted him. "In what capacity were you speaking such nonsense?" one asked, looking very angry. Before Chief Wimbe could answer, they knocked him to the ground and began beating him with clubs and batons.

It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, "I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you." My parents had never completed primary school. They couldn't speak English or even read that well. My parents only knew the language of numbers, buying and selling, but they wanted more for their kids. That's why my father had scraped the money together and kept Annie in school, despite the famine and other troubles.

In better times, we're celebrate Christmas Eve by attending the nativity play at the Catholic church down the road, watching Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus try to escape from Herod's soldiers and their wooden swords and AK-47s (it wasn't the most accurate version, but it was funny.)

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away, they themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor.

News came of Beni Beni, the madman of Wimbe, who'd always made us laugh in better times. He'd run up to merchants in the trading center with his raving eyes and snatch cakes and Fantas from their stalls. No one ever took them away because his hands were always so filthy. The mad people had always depended on others to care for them, but now there were none. Beni Beni died at the church.

The Expatriate Town Clerk. How does a young man with a debilitating stammer, a harsh background of broken relationships and no qualifications make his way in this world? The inspiring and often humorous course of Ron's life provides surprising answers, moving through numerous twists and turns to the improbable international development role as Town Clerk of Lilongwe, Malawi's capital city in the heart of Africa. Running away to join the army as a teenager and subsequent deployment in Aden is followed by determined, systematic pursuit of education. All this time signs of the loss of innocence and sexual awakening appear as character is forged. After posts in the UK, adjustment to African ways proves a challenge, not least the chaotic lack of administrative structure and the snootiness of the British expatriate set. Yet new friendships and a sense of professional purpose combine to add fulfilment to the unfolding African adventure.

We encourage you to follow the changes occurring within your microbiota by participating in the American Gut Project. Although we are not involved in this crowd-funded science project, it is run by a team of well-respected scientists and has provided thousands of people with information about their microbiota. You can have your gut microbiota sequenced before and during your process of microbiota improvement to witness the changes to the new aspects of your diet and lifestyle. You will be provided with a report specifying the types of microbes that make up your microbiota and how it compares with others who have participated as well as to people living in developing regions of the world (Malawi and Venezuela). This information will not only allow a better view of your microbiota and how it compares with others, but will also contribute to the scientific understanding of these communities. To guide you in your journey of microbiota revitalization, we recommend submitting multiple samples—an initial sample to document where your microbiota started out, then one or more after you have made dietary and lifestyle adjustments in order to see how these changes are impacting your gut community over time. This will not only be informative but may also motivate you to keep improving the health of your microbiota.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of child mortality in the world, and half of the deaths are due to malnourishment. But malnourishment comes in different forms. There’s marasmus, where kids end up emaciated and skeletal. There’s also kwashiorkor, where fluids leak from blood vessels, leading to puffy swollen limbs, distended stomachs, and damaged skin. The latter has long been shrouded in mystery. It is said to be caused by protein-poor diets, but how can that be when children with kwashiorkor often don’t eat any less protein than those with marasmus? For that matter, why do these children often fail to get better despite eating protein-rich food delivered by aid organisations? And why is it that one child might get kwashiorkor while their identical twin – who shares all the same genes, lives in the same village, and eats the same food – gets marasmus instead?

There was a time not so long ago when you couldn’t get into Malawi unless you could slide a Coke bottle between your leg and your jeans. You had to stick the bottle in at the waistband and under the watchful gaze of the Malawi police, move it between the denim and your pelvis and down your inside leg until it popped out through the leghole near your foot. The government claimed that it was to protect the country from the moral decline caused by tight jeans.

Born in 1987 in Malawi, William grew up in a village with no electricity or running water, and in a family that barely survived on the food it grew with a little left over to pay for school. After a terrible drought in 2001, William had to drop out of school because his family could no longer afford his school fees. He kept educating himself by going to the library and reading everything he could. One day, he found a book on windmills and determined he'd build one. So he did. Starting with scrap parts he found in light bulbs and radios. William built the first windmill he or his village had ever seen. And it worked, generating electricity for his family and his neighbors. Williamkamkwamba.com

According to the IPCC, just stabilizing human influences on the climate would require global annual per capita emissions of CO2 to fall to less than one ton by 2075, a level comparable to today’s emissions from such countries as Haiti, Yemen, and Malawi. For comparison, 2015 annual per capita emissions from the United States, Europe, and China were, respectively, about 17, 7, and 6 tons. •​Energy demand increases strongly and universally with rising economic activity and quality of life; global demand is expected to grow by about 50 percent through midcentury as most of the world’s people improve their lot. •​Fossil fuels supply 80 percent of the world’s energy today and remain the most reliable and convenient means of meeting growing energy demand. •​The energy-supply infrastructure of electric generating plants, transmission lines, refineries, and pipelines changes slowly for unavoidable structural reasons. •​Developed countries would certainly have to reduce their emissions, but even if those were to halve, and per capita emissions of the developing world grew only to those of today’s lower-emitting developed countries, annual global emissions would still increase by midcentury. •​The tension between emissions reductions and economic development is complicated by uncertainties in how the climate will change under human and natural influences and how those changes will affect natural and human systems.

While at the school in Malawi, the children had kept asking us to take photos of them on our phones so that they could see what they looked like. Suffice it to say, we were all surprised that many people there did not own mirrors and so the children literally didn’t know what they looked like. As soon as we returned to the United States, she wanted us to send full-length mirrors to the school. “We need to send the school mirrors. Children need to know what they look like and see that they are very strong or very beautiful.” She was insistent that the children should be able to look at themselves and know their self-worth.

இது ஒரு மனிதனின் சொல்லுக்கு மதிப்பளித்து இன்னொரு மனிதன் நடந்துகொள்ளும் முறை. இதற்கும், ‘உறவின் வலிமை’, ‘கலாச்சார சிறப்பு’ என்று வெவ்வேறு பெயர்களில் ஒருவரை ஒருவர் சுரண்டி வாழ்வதற்கும் எந்தவித சம்பந்தமும் இல்லை என்றே கொள்கிறேன்.

And then there’s AIDS. The virus continues to wreak havoc, especially in southern Africa, where the highest HIV prevalence rate worldwide can be found (in Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa the prevalence rate always exceeds 10 percent of the adult population and in the first three reaches 25 percent). But the epidemic is also high in Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, which is an excuse sometimes, but not always, for some governments to implement antigay policies.