No Crisis Here!
on Me Talk Pretty One Day (Malawi), 20/Apr/2009 08:38, 34 days ago
The BBC World Service would later describe it as an‘energy crisis’.The first time I went to bed hungry after a dinner consisting only of a few biscuits and a bowl of cornflakes, I did so with a look of sheer misery on my face. Not even the leftover milk, sitting in that warm fridge for hours on end, would be able to match my sourness. As the blackouts became ever more frequent and ever more prolonged, a strange thing happened: instead of becoming more furious with the situation, I became more relaxed. It is surprising how quickly the unusual becomes the ordinary; how the outrageous melts into the mundane; how, after living in the Third World for half a year, you come to accept as routine that which would make front page news back home.The lengthy power cuts would become a daily occurrence and wouldn’t drop in frequency until the rains did. The explanation given was that the hydro-electric turbines were protected by grates that kept getting clogged with all the litter that had been washed into the country’s river system during the heavy rains. The amount of rubbish on the streets when I arrived was just one of those peculiarities to which I gradually grew accustomed. There were many foreign sights that, initially, would have had me scrambling for my camera. Yet today, I see these things as normal and I don’t give them so much as a second glance. Not even when that guy at the end ofthe road waves his pigeon in my face as I pass. Not even when I see the guy, carton of beer in his hand, wandering around town wearing nothing but a plastic bag.I remember the very first time I saw a man cycling with a flock of chickens tied to his handlebars.“There’s a man cycling with a flock of chickens tied to his handlebars!” I nearly shouted aloud. I’m glad I didn’t; this is a common sight and one I have seen every week since. That first time, I remember seeing how their bodies swayed along with the rhythm of the pedals being forced roundand round, but how their heads bobbed this way and that, independently, as if the chickens were still very much alive. “Those chickens are still very much alive!” I thought of announcing to the world. Again, this kind of overexcited observation would have only made me look stupid. When a Malawian wants chicken for dinner they will buy a live bird, kill it and butcher it themselves, and then, in frustration at the lack of electricity, cook it on the barbeque. It is the way things are done here. It is not a crisis, it is just Malawi.