1999

In June 1994 on returning from ten months travelling in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka I had applied to Voluntary Services Overseas to see if I might be a suitable candidate for a placement. The purpose of VSO ‘enables men and women to work alongside people in poorer countries to share skills, build capacities and promote international understanding and action, in the pursuit of a more equitable world’. I believed I shared these ideals and applied hoping for the best. I liked VSO’s values. The idea that every individual has value and a right to realise their potential encouraged me. The idea that disadvantage could be countered through direct person to person links. VSO’s kind of development was a two-way partnership which openly shares costs and benefits.

A polite letter asked me what skills I had apart from a degree. I believe this letter pointed me on my chosen career as a sports teacher and eventually an acceptance from VSO to work overseas for them as a sports development officer in Northern Malawi. In January 1995 I managed to get on a sports studies degree course part time at Worcester College of Higher Education. They said if I successfully completed a year of modules I could enrol on the Physical Education PGCE the next year. I scored 99% in one theory exam and did well in the practical modules. Then in April that year I applied to The Chiltern Training Group in Luton and gained a place on the school centred initial teacher training course. I was based at Halyard Secondary School, a rough Luton comprehensive. After a tough year I qualified as a PE teacher in 1996 and went to work at Saltley School in inner city Birmingham. After a tough year teaching I reapplied to VSO this time with experience. I waited a long year before the letter came in October 1998. There was a job as a sports development officer in Northern Malawi working at the Ministry of Education Northern Divisional Office in a place called Mzuzu. I didn’t need time to think and I accepted it. I resigned from work and set about my pre-departure training with VSO as I was due to leave in January 1999.  

I had been friends with Jenny Lashley the Careers Adviser at Saltley School. She had seen an article in the Birmingham Evening News about me leaving school to work for VSO. I got a good luck card that said a bit too much. I couldn’t resist and we had a date. We spent the whole weekend together. Back in 1997 I had met Nooreen Alam on a flight back from the Dominican Republic. We had got very close on several occasions since then and I wanted to see her before I left. I traveled up to Manchester and we drank beer, talked and cuddled up for the weekend. I had two women in my head all for good reasons and I was trying to get ready to leave for Malawi.  

 It was a busy time as I spent a week at Harbourne Hall in Birmingham for ‘pre-departure’ training. There seemed to be a course for everything. It was called ‘preparing for change’ and I enjoyed it. We discussed our expectations, values and ways we could self-brief ourselves ready to leave. We discussed ourselves as volunteers and our role in development. Would my project as a sports development officer have the same values as VSO and myself? Would my project work towards being sustainable and supporting community development? What aspects of my project could I control or influence? We discussed work related issues such as corruption, resources, timescales, HIV/AIDS, local attitudes and conflict management. We talked about being able to adapt our work practices to achieve success. Did I have the ‘7 habits of effective people’? Being proactive, set realistic goals, prioritising, having a positive attitude, understand then be understood, using teamwork and being able to relax. I thought I had at least some of these qualities but only time would tell. There seemed to be a scenario for everything. We used a lot of role play, visualisation and set up situations that we would probably encounter. I closed my eyes and listened as Dana said ‘imagine you are drinking your favourite drink’. I opened my eyes to get a sneaky look at Dana. That evening we sat up late and talked. On New Year’s Eve I had my two front teeth removed and a pair of false ones fitted on a plate. That night Dana rang to see how I was and asked if she could come around. I just about sipped red wine but any kissing was out of the question. Dana gave me a scrapbook to put my memories in and we agreed to meet up on my return.     

In Worcester I got my story in the local paper. ‘Andrew’s in with a sporting chance’ was the headline. It was an accurate representation of what I had told them and as a result a sports company donated some equipment for me to take. Another article in a Birmingham paper had annoyed me with the headline ‘Teacher takes walk on the wild side’ and talked about raising the health and fitness of the native Malawians. It was a poor story but it did get me together we Jenny. I took away from my pre-departure training some wise words about visualisation, positive thinking, inspiration and humility. I remember a quote ‘start with the end in mind’. At the time it seemed a strange idea but setting simple short and long term goals really helped me succeed. 

Over the last few days before I flew I spent a lot of time with Jenny in Birmingham. We hoped she would visit me in Malawi sometime and we left it at that. I also promised I would take her to San Rafael in the Dominican Republic sometime. I had a last visit to Harbourne Hall and met a returned Sports Development Officer. My body was full of Rabies, Yellow Fever, Polio, Tetanus, Cholera and Typhoid jabs. My head was full of Jenny and my adventure ahead. I spent my last night with Jenny and she dropped me at Digbeth bus station. I sat around at Gatwick for several hours wondering who else with a big bag might be a VSO volunteer.  At 8pm that night we left aboard an Air Zimbabwe flight. I was relaxed and excited about what lay ahead.

We are met early in the morning at the Kamuzu International Airport six kilometres west of the capital Lilongwe by the VSO Programme Officers. It is a quiet minibus as we drive the short distance to the National Resources Centre where we will stay for two weeks for our ‘in country training’. I get my room and settle in. We meet up, say hello and get some food. The rest of the day is ours so I take a walk. I end up doing a football coaching session at a nearby school with about forty children. It was just the start of the great adventure. That night as I lay in bed I thought about what I actually knew about Malawi? Not much was the answer. 

I started to read a bit of recent pre-independence history. Missionary and explorer David Livingstone had reached Lake Malawi (then Lake Nyasa) in 1859 and identified the Shire Highlands south of the lake as an area suitable for European settlement. As the result of Livingstone's visit, several Anglican and Presbyterian missions were established in the area in the 1860s and 1870s and the African Lakes Company Limited was established in 1878 to set up a trade and transport concern working closely with the missions. A small mission and trading settlement was established at Blantyre in 1876 and a British Consul took up residence there in 1883. In 1889, a British protectorate was proclaimed over the Shire Highlands, which was extended in 1891 to include the whole of present-day Malawi as the British Central Africa Protectorate. In 1907, the protectorate was renamed Nyasaland, a name it retained for the remainder of its time under British rule. In 1944, the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) was formed by the Africans of Nyasaland to promote local interests to the British government. In 1953, Britain linked Nyasaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia in what was called the Central African Federation (CAF), for mainly political reasons. Even though the Federation was semi-independent, the linking provoked opposition from African nationalists, and the NAC gained popular support.

 An influential opponent of the CAF was Dr. Hastings Banda, a European-trained doctor working in Ghana who was persuaded to return to Nyasaland in 1958 to assist the nationalist cause. Banda was elected president of the NAC and worked to mobilise nationalist sentiment before being jailed by colonial authorities in 1959. He was released in 1960 and asked to help draft a new constitution for Nyasaland, with a clause granting Africans the majority in the colony's Legislative Council. In 1961, Banda's Malawi Congress Party (MCP) gained a majority in the Legislative Council elections and Banda became Prime Minister in 1963.

The Federation was dissolved in 1963, and on 6 July 1964, Nyasaland became independent from British rule and renamed itself Malawi. Under a new constitution, Malawi became a republic with Banda as its first president. The new document also formally made Malawi a one-party state with the MCP as the only legal party. In 1971, Banda was declared president for life. For almost 30 years, Banda presided over a rigidly authoritarian regime. He snuffed out any opposition, putting thousands of Malawians in detention centres and sending out his secret police known as Young Pioneers to keep control. In 1983 three prominent MP’s and cabinet ministers attempting internal reforms were killed by police with sledge hammers but the official story was a car crash. Using his government control Banda created a huge business empire called Press Holdings. It eventually accounted for one third of Malawi’s GDP and employed 10% of the wage earning work force. In 1988 Banda was ninety years old and more and more under the influence of Cecilia Kadzamira his former nurse and her Uncle John Tembo, the chairman of Press Holdings. He was Banda’s hatchet man and ruthless in eliminating rivals.  

Not until 1992 was there serious organised opposition. It came from the Catholic Church. A very critical letter written by the eight bishops was read out across the whole of Malawi.  Other churches supported and students began to flood the country with pro-democracy literature. Foreign pressure on Banda mounted and donor governments suspended aid for six months. Under pressure for increased political freedom, Banda agreed to a referendum in 1993, where the populace voted by 63% for a multi-party democracy. In late 1993 a presidential council was formed, the life presidency was abolished and a new constitution was put into place, effectively ending the MCP's rule. In 1994 the first multi-party elections were held in Malawi, and Banda now ninety five years old was defeated by Bakili Muluzi (a former Secretary General of the MCP and former Banda Cabinet Minister). Muluzi was the president of Malawi when I arrived in early 1999 but the most interesting person was Hastings Kamuzu Banda. In one of Banda’s final interviews he said ‘this is the trouble with Africa today – too many ignorant people are in positions of power and responsibility. That is why Africa is a mess. That is the tragedy of Africa.’ He died at the age of ninety nine in a South African hospital. I thought to myself if Malawi was still a mess. I guess I was in a good position to find out as I embarked on my two year adventure. I was soon to find out that my new football team Apatseni Socials FC had a connection to John Tembo in our goalkeeper Sheppard who was his nephew. He proved to be a much nicer and mild mannered man than his uncle.