Fare thee well, Aleke

When I was 21, while reading accountancy at the University of Malawi's The Polytechnic downtown Blantyre, I was alarmed to read in the newspapers that Malawi had ratified a campaign that banned smoking in public areas. Though I have never smoked in my life, I was enraged. The reason was tobacco was then as it is now Malawi's largest forex earner. I felt that somebody sitting high on the pedestal of influence was handing over to our country a rope to hang ourselves with. So concerned was I that I wrote to the Minister of Agriculture, protesting the decision. I reasoned that the best we should have done as a country was to remain non-commital. America and Israel had chosen this option on many decisions that might affect their countries. Israel, for instance, had refused to ratify such sort of campaigns that involved stopping to use cluster bombs, though the whole world had agreed to do so. Aleke Banda was minister then. Amazingly, he responded to me not once but three times, responding to each of my responses, thereby engaging me in a debate. Later, I was to write to other ministries to raise concerns on various issues that affected my country. No minister responded even once.

Now Aleke Banda is dead. I remember this brief interaction we had. I never met him in person even when, later, a few positions I held in society might have given me an opportunity to. I, however, like millions of other Malawians, always held Aleke in the highest regard.

Aleke was a minister that worked hard. Each ministry he went to began to perform wonders. He took Malawi's ministry of Finance in 1994, at the turn of the new political dispensation, when the national coffers were literally empty, looted, as it were, by the ousted Malawi Congress Party. Aleke spent a month visiting the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France and the European Union, among others, persuading them to unlock aid to Malawi. Back home, he worked tirelessly with a team of prominent economists, trying to reshape our country's economic policy.

Legend has it that one such economist has a story to tell. A few days after Aleke had been appointed Minister of Finance, he assembled the government economists and asked them to formulate sound economic policies that our country should adopt to improve the economy. The doctors and professors went home without taking the minister's plea seriously. What did Aleke, a man who went no further than high school, know about economics? They joked about it as they drank at Bwandilo and also in Capital Hotel's Kachere Bar, which is within earshot of the Capital Hill, the seat of Government.

The day came when each economist was to report to the minister what their proposals were. One economist went straight to parrot the Haris-Todaro model, without identifying it by name. Aleke cut him short. "Look," Aleke said, "I expected you to do a little more than that. The Haris-Todaro Model has severe limitations that cannot work for the country. One limitation of this model is that it assumes potential migrants are risk neutral, as in they are indifferent between a certain expected rural income and an uncertain expected urban income of the same magnitude. This assumption's reflection of economic realities is questionable; poor migrants will likely be risk averse and require a significantly greater expected urban income to migrate . . ."

The rest of the economists were baffled. Presentations were discontinued. Aleke chastised them to take his request seriously. If they returned to present outdated theories, he'd be inclined to release all of them and hire expatriates.

That was Aleke.

Later, he was to to be transfered to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health. Wherever he went, there were results. He was said to work late into the night. His teams always felt pushed to the limit.

Popular opinion has always been that if Malawi had five cabinet ministers of Aleke's calibre, the country might change for the better. Some of us feel sorry for the nation when cabinet ministers speak freely to the national media about employing each other's sons or brothers for personal assistants. Such ministers are known for little else. To them, an appointment into the cabinet is an opportunity to employ themselves and their families. Aleke had no time for that. He always wished the best for this country.

Now, Time has written its ruthless signature on his fate. He is gone. Malawi may have a lot of politicians on the field, but, certainly, it shall never have another Aleke Kadonaphani Banda. There are many who might not agree with this, but millions of us common folks out there are now nodding their heads sadly, wishing Time could reverse its hands and let Aleke live only a little more.

CELIBACY OR NO CELIBACY: CATHOLIC PRIESTS MUST CHOOSE

What one Malawian Catholic Priest said recently in defence of the debauchery and wantonness of some priests cannot go without comment. To recap, a bishop argued that all men sleep around, therefore it follows that it is pardonable for some Catholic Priests to sleep around, because they too are human and that therefore the media should not make much of the brouhaha.

This argument lacks logic.

Catholic Priests take a vow of celibacy. At the time they take this vow, they do so with full awareness of the fact that they too are human, complete with sexual needs and all that. To deliberately indulge with the hope of using their fallibility as an excuse does not make sense at all.

Why, if I may ask, does the Roman Catholic Church still stick to the vow of celibacy for their priests when we all know this does not work? Allowing, for instance, for the fallibility of the priests, why doesn’t the church change policy and permit the priests to marry? Or, better still, why not make celibacy a matter of an individual priest, so that there could be celibate priests and married priests?

And it is not in Malawi alone where sexual scandal after scandal rocks the Catholic Church. All over the world, Catholic priests have been known to sleep with little boys or with women, both married and single, for decades. The Vatican itself celebrated this year’s Easter amid a scandal of similar proportions.

The media cannot simply stand aside and pay a blind eye to the shenanigans of the catholic priests based on the fallacious argument that priests too are human. Priests are human, yes, but they have made a personal decision to be the vessels of the Christ, to represent the purity of Jesus Christ. They are not common men like some of us. They represent a holiness that cannot simply be ignored using such shallow excuses as fallibility. The Catholic Priests would be doing themselves a great favour if they stopped living a lie.

Several popes have been married in history. Pope Siricius, selected Pope on 17 December, 384 AD was married, so was St Felix, the 48th Pope. St Hormisdas, St Silverius, St Agatho were all married popes. Pope Hadrian II, also known as Adrian II, was married, had a daughter and the family lived with him at the Lateran Place . Pope Boniface the IX, selected on November 2, 1389, had a wife. It is said he dispensed himself from celibacy to marry. Clement IV too was married.

Clearly it is a choice for the Catholic Church to simply do away with the celibacy vows and allow the priests to marry. They will stop living a lie. The Anglican Priests marry which, I think, they decided to do after realising they were human.

Unless the Church wants another Martin Luther to come up and nail 95 theses against the mask of celibacy, the most logical thing is for the church to take an official stand and make celibacy optional. Otherwise, these masks aren’t working at all. Either you choose to be celibate and stick by it, or you disavow the celibacy and marry. But you cannot be both and shamelessly stand up to tell the world at large that you are human after all, as if you realised that fact all of a sudden.

Random House Struik Course is an eye opener

For those like me - I am talking about writers who have never done the theory of creative writing - a course like the Random House Struik Course run by the online training firm, Getsmarter, in which Ron Irwin, creative writing lecturer, agent and editor, former student of Prof. JM Coetzee delivers the lecturers, comes up with assignments and reviews them with keen interest - is a big eye-opener.

My stories had been successful up to this point, winning a competition here, getting published in an anthology there, - one of which is in an anthology for Kenyan Secondary Schools' English curriculum - and even being shortlisted for the Caine Prize, I realised upon embarking on the course of 10 modules that mere instinct carried me through. Nobody had hitherto told me about basic things like Point of View, Dialogue, characterisation and conflict - among others. It helps to know these, as I have just found out. There are some tricky moments when, for instance, POV might have shifted without the author realising it, thereby confusing the eventual reader.

Keep up the good work Ron and Getsmarter!

Malawian Vice-President's Harrassment Worries Me

Joyce Banda, Malawi's Vice President, is being harrassed by her boss. Reports indicate she has been made to vacate her official Mudi Residence. She has been stripped of her role as AU Goodwill Ambassador for Safe Motherhood. Her fleet of motor vehicles has not been given back to her.

Why is the President harrassing his Deputy?

Well, we all know why. Bingu wants his younger brother, Peter, to take over in 2014. He, therefore, wants to keep JB as obscure as possible. When choosing her, he must have thought she would be a lame duck VP whom he could control at will, the way we remote-control the TV. When JB refused to play by the rules, Bingu decided to sideline her.

Remember the former VP, Cassim Chilumpha? They came up with trumped-up charges that CC wanted to assassinate Bingu. To this day we have heard very little progress in the case.

But isn't it a monumental shame and a colossal disgrace that the only woman to hold the highest position in Malawi is being frustrated by the very man who claims to champion the advancement of women in leadership? It's a paradox, really.

Personally, I think this whole idea of moving mountains for Peter to take over is much ado about nothing. Let's wait and see.

The Word's Most Expensive Short Story

I have just read "Last Season's Man," a short story by New Zealand's CK Stead. It is a very beautiful short story. It combines the best in Anton Chekhov (The Lady With a Dog) and JM Coetzee (Disgrace) while still shaping out something unique that makes CK Stead CK Stead, a writer distinct from Chekhov and Coetzee, a master of the art, a creative genius who is great at both fiction and poetry.

I must confess I was, at first, a little confused by the Point of View in the story. I also thought the fact that Mario Ivanda actually marries Vesna in the end takes out a bit of the sting in the story, but further re-reading shows that this, in fact, completes the beauty. It is an admirable work of art, very, very admirable.

Comments from judges of major competitions worry me

The comments from the judges of the biggest literary competitions have left me worried of late. The Orange Prize judge said during the longlist announcement (I'm quoting from The Guardian) "There's not been much wit and not much joy, there's a lot of grimness out there," Daisy Goodwin, the author and TV producer, told the Guardian. "There are a lot of books about Asian sisters. There are a lot of books that start with a rape. Pleasure seems to have become a rather neglected element in publishing . . .I think the misery memoir has had its day, but there are an awful lot of books out there which had not a shred of redemption in them. I'm more of a light and shade person and there does need to be some joy, not just misery . . . I was surprised at how little I laughed … and the ones where there was humour were much appreciated I can tell you."

And then, on the night of mentioning the winner of the debut Sunday Times EFG Private Bank, the world's short biggest award for a single short story, one of the judges said: "I think perhaps my role as a judge was to look for witty or upbeat stories, which were hard to find . . . There were quite a lot of bereaved children."

I deeply respect the decisions of these highly respected judges. Some of them have done this sort of thing over many years. However, I am a little uncomfortable with highlighting humour as the most decisive factor for naming a winner in a competition.

Take Petina Gappah's stories for example. In many of them, something or someone dies. But there are plenty of moments in which one laughs, and laughs a lot, as a matter of fact. It is a monumental skill to weave a story that has some tragic moments in it with lots of humour. The Mupandawana Dancing Champion, for example, has a lot of such humour. Great, great and absolutely amazing humour. At the end, the dancer dies while in the act of dancing. Should the singular act of the dancer dying be the key determinant of whether Petina's story is successful or not?

I have used Petina here as a mere example, because her book, Elegy for Easterly, is an absolute marvel. But there are many other writers who pull off the trick of blending humour with tragedy. Should we say the days when such stories won big awards are gone? Just wondering.

NOW WRITING BEGINS AGAIN

I have had a turbulent six months. Left Botswana on the 25th of February - a cold, rainy morning when my friend, Lovemore Kamchira, came home to pick me to the airport. I had sold all that mattered, my sofa, my dining set, beds, fridge et cetera, so whatever remained unsold I gave to the good Batswana workmates I had. One got an iron for pressing clothes, another took a boiler for tea, somebody took a carpet and one friend asked me for the heap of clothes and blankets I was leaving behind to avoid excess charges at the airport (it turned out I still was 20 kg over).

We chatted rather sadly with Lovemore in the checking-in lounge of the small Francistown airport whose building is a little smaller than some of the mansions in Lilongwe's Area 10 (the South African ambassador's residence is actually four times as big, seen it?). After ten or so minutes, I went through the searching process (it is still manual) and proceeded to the departure lounge. I later walked to the small ATR 42 plane on the tarmac. In Gaborone, I connected quickly to Johannesburg where I had less than 50 minutes to get on board a Boeng 747 Addis Ababa bound.

I arrived in Addis at 9 o'clock in the evening, 8 o'clock Botswana and Malawi time. The letter from the African Union said somebody would wait for me at the airport. To my surprise, there was no-one. But then I knew Addis reasonably well, so that saved me. I caught a taxi to the Kings Hotel on Roosevelt Street in Sarbet. I knew this was the hotel closest to the AU headquarters (100m).

Thus began my 75-day stay in Addis Ababa. In general life was boring, though there are specific flashpoints that stand out, like the dinner I had at Sheraton for my 33rd birthday and the farewell party the wonderful Malawi community held for me a few days before I left. There were wonderful people I met, like Celestin from Burkina Faso, Aziz from The Gambia and Imelda from Namibia. I should also have mentioned Chiza, but with this wonderful guy, it was pretty much as though we were not meeting for the first time, like we had met in another life, at another time, if Pythagoras is to be believed. We just melted. Mrs Veronica Gondwe was also so motherly, friendly and always ready to help - few people I have met in life are as helpful. For the life in Addis, I mean those moments you have to lose it a little to gain a lot, I had the honorary Mayor of Addis, Justin, with whom I share an alma mater. Emmanuel, citizen of the world, for he is more in the sky than he is in Addis, was always great company those few moments he came home. There was Hope and Benjamin - two great friends who work for the nations that are supposed to be united, and their spouses. Charlotte, who is a perfect match with Emmanuel in the humour department was always great company whenever all Malawians gathered for special occasions). Mai Kasamale, Mwai's mother, was like a mother to us all. And just as fatherly were the ambassador and his family and the Deputy Head of Mission and his family. All the staff at the embassy, so friendly and always there when need arose, made life easy for me in Addis. The camaraderie of Mr Chisala and Colonel Nundwe was invaluable. Madame Vera Ngosi was also the mother-figure most of us looked up to at any time she was available. Though I met Mr Ngosi only a couple of times (he is the one who saw me off to the airport on my last day in Addis), his company was always a marvel. Nena, a new Malawian friend I made and Dr Paul Thangata together with his wonderful family took part - directlly or indirectly - in the process of making my life in Addis memorable, as did the venerable Mrs Mkwezalamba, the Commissioner himself and his charming personal assistant. Of course, my comrade Moses-Michael Phiri, 'homeboy,' was always a phone call away for any eventualities.

On the writing front, with such an entirely new environment, I was pretty much like fish out of water. I could not write. I only managed to read a lot. I remember reading a huge volume of the complete works of Martin Luther King. It was so rich and gave me a profound insight into the mind of the man who grabbed the American part of the globe by the throat and shook its conscience real hard.

I could not write and that bothered me a lot. The hotel furniture did not help matters. I also did not like the extreme attention I seemed to attract from the hotel staff. If I descended to the restaurant downstairs, not less than six people could come to greet me in between the mouthfuls, asking whether the food was nice. There came a time when I complained to the hotel manager. It was only then this habit stopped.

But now I am in Nairobi. Writing began again last night. For once I have to stop reading and try to build the art once more. Six months is a long time to lose in the world of art.