The Travelling Teacher: July 2022

Hello everyone!

This is part four - the final edition - of my Malawi A-Z: things I’ll remember and think of when remembering my six years in the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’. Here are the previous entries:

Please remember that these are personal views and that it is a light-hearted list: you are only allowed to be offended by the quality of the writing!

Being swamped in Lizulu's street market

Sitting on this amazing branch at the cottage in Satemwa's tea estate

T is for…traffic lights (or lack of them)

Alternatives: triathlon, tea, tennis, Tipp-Ex election

Some areas of Lilongwe did have traffic lights. They removed them. Partly because of power issues meaning they wouldn’t always work (see P). Partly because most drivers ignored them even when they did (see X). I think you could now count the number of working traffic light intersections on one hand.

Never made it to Baghdad. Not sure I'm missing much...

Some places have alternative methods of traffic control...

The best way of stopping traffic seems to be when all the police officers are drafted in so the President can glide effortlessly through town, as you'll see from the video below. Once we had to stop for 45 minutes on the side of the road for his motorcade to speed through.

Stopped at the Salima turn off, about 10 minutes from home

Traffic is becoming a major issue for the city. Certain areas, such as the Crossroads area, are almost permanently clogged. It’s a lack of historical city planning - moving your capital city to a place and then building single-lane roads was never going to work. They are trying to resolve the issue…by chopping down lots of trees to build wider roads with more lanes.

This is one of the few multi-laned roads in the city.
Strangely, Blantyre (an older city) seems to have more...

Doesn't seem too bad...until you realise
that it's one lane in each direction...

Some public works have been completed and made a massive difference. The country’s first flyover was built whilst we were here. There weren’t the expected number of accidents from people not knowing how to navigate a flyover.

This took a couple of years to construct. Before,
it was just a roundabout, and a place
to avoid on a Friday afternoon.

It resolved some traffic issues - the current problem is that,
going south, it all feeds into one lane. #bottleneck

Others have been less effective. At least three times, speed bumps were constructed which were too high for regular cars to get over. One of these, by school, was shaved down. Another, near our house, had been made in rainy season and didn't survive. The third, seen below, was a complete U-turn...

Will traffic lights be used more in the future in Lilongwe? It probably doesn’t matter, I doubt people will follow their rules anyway…

Good exercise!

U is for…unrest

Alternatives: umbrellas, UV rays

Look, every country has its issues and concerns. I’ve previously lived in countries where, whilst I was there, dealt with issues ranging from having their territory shelled to the brutal repression of protests. Thing is, any unrest has seemed to be on the periphery…until here…

Roads being blocked off by protestors...

...and by the army. Which would you prefer?

Even here we have been on the edge, in a bit of a bubble and relying on friends to fill us in as to why there’ll be demonstrations. However, the fact that school was occasionally closed due to the threat of protests paralysing the city and coming very close to our campus brought home realities about how many people live here, and how we were undoubtedly in the ‘high earner’ bracket for Malawi.

Initially the opposition thought they had won in 2019. The
fact that they 'didn't' led to many protests across the country.

Recent unrest has, like the rest of the world, been
connected to cost of living. Petrol prices have doubled
since we moved to Lilongwe in 2016.

I had malaria during the 2019 election unrest,
so I wasn't going to work anyway!

Many demonstrations were about the 2019 election, which was declared null and void over irregularities. This made world news, an example of democracy and justice in action in a continent whose countries historically have been at the whim of colonisers or dictators.

The headline from the slightly pro-government
newspaper after the 2019 result announcement

The annulment occurred in February 2020

V is for…virus

Alternatives: volleyball, visitors

Things changed a little bit in 2020. I’m sure you’re aware of that. I spent six months away from Malawi and in the UK during the first wave of Covid-19. It was a tough and complicated decision. It boils down to wanting to be able to get to my parents if there was a problem, and the threat of airports being shut (Lilongwe’s airport did less than a week after I left).

Not quite the level of lockdown seen
elsewhere, but still unprecedented

I was in quarantine for two weeks before this
announcement, having taken a school trip to The
Netherlands at the start of the month

How has it affected things in Malawi? Well they didn’t have a case until April 2020, though that’s likely to be due to a lack of testing. Testing isn’t a thing here. Rapid tests weren’t freely available like in other countries. Lockdowns didn’t happen because they actually would have killed more people through poverty. It turned life at school upside down but they were following different, far more rigid guidelines laid down by the US Embassy.

At the airport, you produced your PCR test in this tent.
This unventilated tent in which people would all squash together.
Brilliant.

Giving Einstein a new, Covid look in school

Aside from at school and in supermarkets, policies weren’t strictly enforced. Mask wearing was inconsistent. Curfews were intermittent and sporadic. I felt lucky to be here during European winters as I had many freedoms which had been restricted elsewhere. The irritation was Malawi’s insistence until April 2022 of getting a negative PCR test in order to leave the country. With only two places in the city which could administer the test. Oh, and you had to pay at one location, the main hospital, regardless of where the test was occurring.

Malawi was actually one of the last countries to declare
a case of Covid-19, with its first official case on
April 2nd. A lack of testing makes that questionable.

Social distancing was never really a thing here

Ironically, I think I contracted Covid-19 in Malawi…in my last week of living there. I know this because I did a test after arriving in the UK.

One positive was that teachers were classed as key workers here,
meaning that we were able to get the vaccine quickly

We got our first jab in March 2021 and second in June 2021.
The timing of the latter allowed me to go to Iceland
on holiday and thus skip hotel quarantine in the UK.

W is for…water (or lack of it)

Alternatives: Wales, Wine and Wings

Quick game of Would You Rather? No water or no power? You don’t realise how vital water is until access to it suddenly evaporates. It’s fairly devastating when you run home from work and find that you can’t have a shower.

Drinking water, which also became
an emergency washing supply

A golf club needs water. A golf club also shouldn't
water their grass during the hottest, sunniest part of the day...

I’m grateful we didn’t lose water as often as other places in the city. We also had an outside tap to use if desperate, which resulted in me occasionally having bucket showers in the garden. The quality of the water we did get was a bit inconsistent - it’s not supposed to be brown…

20% of Malawi's territory is water! This
is the lake at Mumbo Island.

Mmm...nutrients...

Of course there were other times when the city had a surplus of water. Floods, actually. The rainy season, lasting from December to March, would often dump too much water for the city to handle.

Dogs still need an early morning walk, even in the rain

The area near our house flooded quite badly in 2017

Driving in that weather was one of many reasons for the choice for the next letter…

This is a roundabout. Honest.

When the rain cleared, you would
sometimes get a beautiful rainbow

X is for…X-rated driving

Alternatives: Xmas

Overtaking on blind corners. Undertaking. Swerving through traffic whilst carrying lots of standing passengers in the back of their truck. Motorbikes turning blindly into the road.

This sign is on Likoma Island. There are
about 5 cars on the whole island.

Parking: poor

Dangerous driving is one of the biggest killers in Malawi. It’s hilarious seeing learner drivers, who drive dangerously slowly, quickly transform into wannabe Formula 1 racers. Hilarious only because we escaped unscathed.

Minibus drivers are simply insane, regularly using their
car as a weapon. Some would suggest that I adopted this trait...

Cyclists in particular seem to have no rights on the road

This is a lorry. On its side. Lorry drivers are
also a bit reckless with their vehicles.

The fact that many people drink and then drive is also a major problem. The police don’t help with this. It is only recently that Lilongwe police have actually been using a breathalyser, and even then there are suspicions about how truthful the figures are. They instead just accuse you of drinking, using stock phrases like, “I can smell alcohol”...when everyone has a mask on and our driver hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol…

Police doing one of their many annoying stops

We were parked! Though there have been times when
we've seen people atop moving vehicles.

Y is for…Youngsters

Alternatives: ‘You’ve committed an offence’

It would be remiss not to talk about the reason we were in Malawi. Teaching at Bishop Mackenzie International School could easily have its own A-Z.

We were here for six years, double the time
we spent at our last school in Prague

World Book Day. I'm Mr Tickle, using either golf
clubs or crutches (can't remember which) for
my 'extraordinarily long arms'.

Working at BMIS had its challenges and its quirks - I’ve certainly learnt how to teach without relying on the internet - but has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

The group of us on the left performed 'I Like To
Move It' for the kids. Dressed as lemurs, naturally.

The Y6 teaching crew - two of many people I'll miss

I’ve taught in three different year groups, including Year 1 (kindergarten!). I’ve learnt how to work with a different curriculum: the IB. I’ve taken groups of teenagers on trips to Rome, Dubai and The Hague. I’ve done my time with online teaching.