Lovely sweet things from the island in the sky

The case of Malawi can best be described by the verse in the passage of the lyrics of the song by Bob Marley titled Rat Race. It goes “in the abundance of water the fool is thirsty”.

Malawi has for many a thousand times been cited as a bizarre case of a story where its people starve from draught when they are literary standing in one of the best fresh water bodies in the world, Lake Malawi.

Matter of fact, growing up along the lake, I have seen people literary go thirsty because they could not safely harvest the water when they live right on the lake shores. Today, the water thirst while standing literary on the beach has taken a new elevated and articulated dynamic with the proliferation of bottled water to the extent that when people run out of bottled water they die of thirst. Bizarre!

So, that is the case of Malawi, our beloved land that is abundantly gifted in endowment of nature but so lacking and deficient in the virtues of creativity, innovation and intellectually inspired industry that it sits at the foot of the dungeon of the poverty pile.

The deficiency of characteristics stated afore must be a large proportion of the explanation as to why abundantly gifted in endowment notwithstanding, Malawi is forever grappling with abject poverty since time immemorial.

That Malawi is poor puzzles a lot of people that visit the country, and last week I had a meeting encounter with such visitor in the name of an American veteran civil servant, banker, social and development worker and now development consultant; Joel Amtal from Global Communities, which is an Opic (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) and United States Department of Agriculture)  supported programme for economic empowerment in Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania through an innovative agriculture financing scheme.

I was meeting Joel for the second time within the last six months and we had extensive talks about the financing programme to micro and medium farmers in the areas of pulses, grains and edible horticulture. The passion of his convictions on the positive transformation that the programme can bring to bear made me feel ashamed with the lack of imagination and creativity by myself and my fellow citizens.

Joel rubbed it in, kind of adding salt to an open bleeding wound, when, just like many visitors of American and European extraction I have interacted with in the last year or so, he went on to voice his abundant admiration of Malawi as a great nation with massive God given gifts.

It felt like someone praising you of being a genius when deep down your heart you know that you just flanked the last exam where everyone in class passed with distinction. I felt thoroughly embarrassed and totally stupid.

He went on to substantiate his claim that Malawi is a hugely gifted nation that is failing to exploit its natural gifts to its economic benefit. Malawi has a fantastic climate, an English-speaking population, a beautiful country, its people are honest and non-conniving (this came as a pleasantly surprising relief after the shame of Cashgate), Malawi is a peaceful country and Malawi has better roads than most of its neighbours.

The point about beautiful and better roads also pleasantly surprised me, though not strange because I have ever heard it since the time I was in university during Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s time. Malawi roads have always been the best in this region and amongst our neighbours and beyond. I was greatly proud to know that we are better than the biggest economy in central and east Africa. Kudos to us, Malawians.

My euphoria was short-lived because it was replaced by trepidation to realise that notwithstanding all the above positives, we are the least developed economy in the region and attract the smallest traffic of tourism even though our road infrastructure is the best. This was the final shred of evidence to prove that there is something innovatively and creatively missing about Malawi. I have vowed to dedicate my academic and social thesis to unearth that Archilles heel.

On Sunday, I went up the island in the sky overlooking Zomba: the land of berries: goose berries, mulberries, raspberries, strawberries, Mulunguzi berries, blue berries you name it, even black berries. I love mulberries just like anyone who was ever a kid does.  Most glorious this weekend was the strawberries from Kuchawe. So sweet one could mistake them for honey. But then that is the greatness about everything Malawian; from the climate, right through the people to its produce. Sweetness is written all over. All Malawi needs is to find a way to exploit and leverage on its sweet things.

I pray for the day when Malawi will export airplane loads of berries from Kuchawe to Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi not just labourers.