I wanted to dedicate the trip to Northern Malawi this year to Francesco Frigero, my Italian mate from Kampala. Tragically he had died in a car crash in January while being driven up to Kitgum by a driver. It was dark and they hit a truck carrying sand. Cath has seen Sara and their kids while she was in Uganda in March. It was all so very sad. Franceso and his family had lived and worked in Kitgum in Northern Uganda for many years. He really approved when Dickson Kidega and I travelled north in November 2015 to deliver a football coaching course to forty primary school sports teachers. He knew of my Malawi connection and would have been proud of me. I know Chitipa has never had the kind of problems that Kitgum has had over the past thirty years but there is a similarity between the two places. They are both in the forgotten north of their countries, away from the seat of power, lack resources, mostly neglected by government but with a real fighting spirit, honesty and warmth. For a moment I thought that why not make Kitgum the focus of my next coaching trip. I already had a great ‘side-kick’ in Dickson Kidega and real connections and potential partnership with AVSI in Kampala.

I was patiently waiting for two bits of news. One weekend they came together. Rowland had managed to clear, collect and transport the kit to Chitipa. He had not been given enough money to get a vehicle so he had to use public transport. He missed the last Mzuzu bound bus from Lilongwe so had to sleep in the bus depot with the kit. He finally got back to Chitipa and sent me a picture. He said the trip had been tedious and tiring. That is real dedication.

I was getting reports from Rowland that all was not well with ‘Charles the Metal Worker’ who had took up the challenge of making our cricket cage and posts. He was saying that his initial quote of 500,000 would not be enough. They didn’t have any wheels so I asked Vivek if he could help. Would they be ready in time? Only time would tell.

I started reading some poetry by Jack Mapanje, a Malawian poet and writer. He was born in 1944. He was the Head of English at Chancellor College, the main campus of the University of Malawi before he was imprisoned by Hastings Kamuzu Banda in 1987 for his collection of poetry ‘Of Chameleons and Gods’ which indirectly criticised the Banda administration. The book received no official ban but was removed from the shelves. Amnesty International declared him a ‘prisoner of conscience’ and fought for his release. He was released in 1991 and was told he would have to reapply for his professorship at the university. Banda delayed and Mapanje eventually left Malawi for the UK for a life in exile. In England he was awarded a fellowship at the University of York, where he still lives. I ordered ‘Of Chameleons and Gods’ and his latest book ‘Greetings from Grandpa’. It got me in the Malawi mood.

In his poem ‘Our Anthology of Martyrs Thickens’ he writes how his ‘dear country of birth is mad’. In one verse, ‘for letting foreign companies demand forex from the Reserve Bank instead if bringing it in, for letting men die at the uranium company up north without asking why, for letting Chinese builders come with their own shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows, labour to build our nation instead of using local implements and people’. In another verse ‘how my dear country is murdering people again without apology, 19 martyrs already rested in Mzuzu’. I will get more details about these words on my visit.

In another poem ‘Considering Our Golden Jubilees’ he asks ‘what verse shall I chant to celebrate my country at fifty’. What song shall I sing when a weird deadly virus is debilitating the lawyers who refuse to preside over the ‘Cash Gate’ affair against one of their own as they drank from the same goblet once’. The Cash Gate scandal just rumbles on.

In his poem ‘The White Elephants at Home’ he mocks the people who sold Chikangawa Forest to our ‘new buddies in Asia’. He mocks ‘Herod’ or Bingu Mutharika for the ‘puzzling sacks upon sacks of US dollars found in his home after his death’. About the ‘white elephants these tyrants bequeath with their names embossed on our highways’. The Bingu Highway built by the Chinese between Karonga and Chitipa finished in 2014 a great example of how Malawians in power got very rich with the deal. I wanted to know what he had written about in ‘Of Chameleons and Gods’ that got him imprisoned for three and a half years.

I was ready for Chitipa 2018.