16.10.07

Look who's back




Please forgive my silence and lack of blog activity. I've been on work/holiday trip to Malawi for 11 days, and touched a computer once in that time, and also watched TV once. Bliss. You don't know how liberating it is to be freed from the shackles of technology and the way it binds our daily lives.
Talk about back to basics, Malawi was all about talking to people - whether fellow travellers or the friendliest people I've ever met in all my travels (Malawians), playing cards, and reading. Of course, I've broken my vow to avoid facebook 'pon my return and spent a good couple of hours on it yesterday! So much for escaping the clutches of technology. Technology is like women: you can't live with it, you can't live without it. How's that for insight??

Anyway. I'll be blogging on the usual - music, arts, culture, and of course Malawi. And posting random pix too, like this. Of a traditional Malawian dance. These guys have nothing and live a subsistence existence (ie hand to mouth and not knowing where their next meal is coming from). Their hats are made of magazines, their clothes and shoes are battered, yet rarely have I seen such pride and dignity in people.

These are Malipenga Dancers, with each row in descending age order. So the nervous youngers are at the back. One song asked 'Why are so many people dying?'. Now this is real soul and blues - spiritual, searching, real music with meaning. Can Western music, with our relatively comfortable lifestyles, touch the heart in the same way? I think not when the majority of music we hear is designed to do one thing - sell records. Yet this music is about expression. There's a major difference, and it's immediately obvious to the mind, body and soul.

Another song has the moral lesson that if a tree doesn't go straight when it's young, then how can it grow straight when it's matured. The analogy alludes to parents raising their sons correctly from a young age. By the time they're spoilt, indulged pisshead/alcoholic young men, it's too late. And bwoy there were enough stoner/pisshead men in Malawi who were off their faces at 10am, while the women carry seven litres of water on their head five miles to the village, and firewood.

Big thanks to 13 year old John Tembo, a bright, motivated young Malawian who wants to be a journalist. He's top of his class of 100 people, where the oldest pupil is 20. He has one more year left before university. Child prodigy or what? He was my personal translator for most of the festival.