'It's easy to feel welcome in Malawi with all the smiling faces, kind words, the sunshine and the great variety of scenery'

'It's easy to feel welcome in Malawi with all the smiling faces, kind words, the sunshine and the great variety of scenery'

Frank remembers returning to Malawi.

Frank Gaynor

Trinity College Dublin

1984

This item is protected by original copyright

This content may be downloaded and used (with attribution) for research, teaching or private study. It may not be used for commercial purposes without permission.

Frank Gaynor

Work and Employment

Life Story

Malawi, Africa

1980's

By September 1984 we had our bags packed and were on the road again. I had a number of promising interviews but offers of employment were slow in coming. At one stage the focus was on Western Samoa. When it was hammered by a storm a few months later we wrote it down as a lucky escape. Guyana was next up. The opportunity to work there never materialized, but I still buy Demarara sugar whenever I see it on the shelf. When ODA came up with the offer of a teaching post in Malawi we blinked and hesitated. We were conscious of some basic advice along the lines that you should never try to wind back the clock and recreate the past. These thoughts came sharply into focus when we were offered the possibility of going back to Providence school in Mulanje: would the school still be well run? Would the tea planters and Mulanje Club still be as friendly as we remembered them? Before we left Swaziland we decided that we would aim at having our children based in Ireland for secondary and, if necessary, university education. After our two years in London, with unpaid education related bills mounting up, I was feeling under great pressure to generate some income. This certainly was a factor in the decision to accept the ODA offer and return to Mulanje.It's easy to feel welcome in Malawi with all the smiling faces, kind words, the sunshine and the great variety of scenery. Former students left their desks to greet us at Lilongwe airport, and in banks and other places of work in Limbe and Blantyre. It was reassuring to know that girls from Providence were working their way into relatively good jobs. Returning after an absence of ten years we were anxiously looking out for signs of change, and we did not see many. The country was still rolling along 'under the wise leadership of His Excellency Ngwazi, Dr H Kamuzu Banda, President for Life, etc'. The only change I noticed in Lilongwe and Blantyre was that most middle management posts were now in the hands of Malawians. In Mulanje we found Providence school in the hands of the local Servants of Mary. A number of expatriates had left the tea estates and more were due to leave shortly after we arrived.We were very pleased when we were allocated the house that had been built for the Montfort Sisters. This 3 - bedroom house was situated on a hill overlooking Providence school, with a breathtaking view of Mulanje Mountain. Our first visitors, on the evening we arrived in Mulanje, were Dougie and Pat Figg. We had spent many enjoyable hours on the golf course together in the 1970s. Dougie proceeded to give me a shot by shot account of his impressive round of golf at Thyolo the previous Sunday. By the time he reached the 18th hole I knew that I was really back in Mulanje. They left Malawi the following day and headed back to Scotland. Providence school was being well managed by Sr. Mary Joy until she got romantically involved outside the school and was asked to leave. She was succeeded by Sr. Margaret who maintained a good balance of friendship and professionalism with both students and staff, but struggled with the office work. Our previous years at Providence with the Montfort Sisters were seldom mentioned. The Servants of Mary were disappointed that the Montfort Sisters did not hand over any cash along with the school. The least they had expected was an introduction to some of the donors who had helped to build and equip the school. There was no love lost between the two congregations. Relations were made worse a couple of years later when the Montfort Sisters appointed a Seventh Day Adventist as Headmistress of their school in Zomba, before handing it over to the Catholic Secretariat.I easily settled back into the routine of teaching up to 40 lessons per week, and got along well with both the students and staff. Sr. Margaret sought and respected my advice, but sometimes she just skipped the details. When she asked me for suggestions on the building of a new block of four classrooms, I made a rough sketch in pencil on an A4 sheet. I heard nothing more about this project until the building contractor got busy on the site. During a staff meeting, when one of the teachers asked about the building, I was very surprised to hear Sr. Margaret say that the contractor was following the plans drawn up by Mr Gaynor.I was given the task of looking after the duplicating room, mainly because reams of paper had been going missing. For end of term exams the duplicating machine was always very busy. Sr. Margaret liked to help the parish priest by duplicating church leaflets for him. I soon discovered that if I wanted to keep the machine in working order I needed to keep Margaret well away from it. She got around this by working on a Sunday when she was sure that I was away playing golf. One Monday morning I found the duplicating room looking like a bombed site. There were sheets of paper splattered with ink all over the place. The machine was wrecked. I tidied up the place and eventually got the machine up and running again. I was probably the best paid duplicating machine operator in Africa.We travelled with Sr. Margaret on a couple of interesting visits to her home village. Leaving the main road we went on to a very rough dirt road. As the village came into view we parked the vehicle and walked the last kilometre along an uneven path. In the village we were enthusiastically welcomed, mostly by old people and children. It was a cause of great pride for the village that one of their own was now Headmistress of Providence Secondary School. Despite the obvious poverty they insisted on giving us gifts of vegetables, fruit, and a chicken when we were leaving.During those years there was a vicious civil war raging in Mozambique between the Frelimo government and Renamo, who were funded first by Rhodesia and later by South Africa. It started in 1977 and ended in 1992. During that time nearly one million people died, five million civilians were displaced, and thousands were injured by landmines. For many of the war years Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, with an indigenous population of less than eight million, hosted up to one million refugees. One camp, with up to 60,000 refugees, was close to the Mozambique border, about 30km from where we lived. This camp was surprisingly peaceful considering that the fighting continued across the border nearby. In the camp professionals and labourers lined up together for their food rations. Refugees from the same village were positioned close to each other and encouraged to develop community activities. Children with a shared background attended school together. Only very occasionally did the war across the border impact on our lives. Monica worked in the Tea Research Foundation, close to the Mozambique border. One day she returned a bit late from work. That morning Ruo market was hit by aircraft gunfire. Monica got involved in transporting some of the injured to Mulanje hospital. One afternoon I saw hundreds of soldiers running through a tea estate and heading towards Mulanje Boma. They were Frelimo soldiers who were running away from the fighting. After a few days in Mulanje they were taken in trucks back to Mozambique. One rumour, which was later denied, had it that back in Mozambique they were forced to dig a trench, and then lined up, shot, and buried in the trench. There were well recognised paths where people frequently crossed Mulanje golf course. During competitions the paths were temporarily closed. One afternoon, as I was hitting a ball around the course, I noticed a man moving along the fairway ahead of me. He was pushing a bicycle as he hopped along on one leg. As soon as he saw me he moved quickly to the side of the fairway. When I caught up with him I saw that one leg was missing from the knee. On closer inspection I noticed that he had no thigh bone on the injured leg; there was empty flesh from where the knee should have been to the hip. As he moved along the empty flesh was on the carrier of the bicycle. It was not bleeding and did not look infected. He had been injured by a landmine and was on his way to Mulanje hospital. He smiled and apologised. His priority was to move away so that I could hit my next golf shot.A visit to Mulanje hospital was always a sobering experience. On the large open patch of sloping ground in front of the hospital relatives cooked food for the patients. It was a lively scene, with up to 50 small fires burning at any one time. The cooks were mostly women who managed somehow to organise firewood, meal and water, as well as looking after two or three small children. The food was mainly nsima (porridge) and vegetables. Inside the hospital the wards and corridors were always overflowing with patients; some on beds, the rest lying on the floor. The nurses worked hard trying to cope with the huge demand for their assistance. Medical assistants worked as though they were qualified doctors. The hospital was managed by a qualified doctor; during most of our time in Mulanje the head doctor was on ODA contract. The doctor and medical assistants frequently undertook operations that they would not be let near in our specialised western European systems. One Dutch doctor talked about keeping one woman alive by somehow re - cycling her own blood, aided by an improvised piece of tubing. That same doctor later worked in Zomba hospital. He talked about a typical day at the clinic there: When he arrived in the morning there was already a long queue of people outside his door. When he stopped for lunch the queue was usually longer than when he arrived. Throughout the afternoon and evening he worked non - stop without making any noticeable impression on the length of the queue. The following morning the long queue was there again when he arrived. A huge gap existed between the scale of the health challenge and the available resources to meet that challenge. In subsequent years as the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic deepened that gap increased considerably.As communication systems improved the tea estate managers found themselves being increasingly micro - managed from their head offices in the UK. The ever increasing flow of advice and demands did not make them happier or their work easier. It did make them a bit keener to engage in conversations with people like ourselves, who inhabited a world away from the tea industry. With no small children around the house we were available for parties and Sunday lunches in the large tea estate houses. We also entertained in our house on the hill. Thursday evening was Club evening in Mulanje, when estate managers and their families came together around 4pm for tennis and golf. By 6pm it was dark and time to go inside for drinks, food and maybe snooker. The bar remained open as long as there were four or more members present; this frequently brought it up to 2 or 3am. No matter how late the bar ran, or how wobbly they looked leaving the Club, all managers were in their offices by 6.30am. When they were satisfied that the day's work was under way they returned home for breakfast. The Sunday lunches that first come to mind are those that were hosted by Merle and Peter Bartlett. The house was fairly typical for a tea estate manager _�_ spacious, open - plan, with a large veranda, or konde, as it was called locally, on three sides. Nearby was a tennis court and small swimming pool. The spacious lawn was well manicured, and decorated with an impressive variety of shrubs and flowers. The vegetable garden was rich with many different vegetables. All this was achieved with the assistance of five gardeners. In addition to her gardening skills, Merle was a successful artist, a good tennis player and golfer, and an outstanding cook. On those Sunday occasions the centre piece was Merle's Indian curry, which she classified as mild, medium and hot. I can only confirm that the mild version was delicious, and that some version of sunburn lotion was required to even walk close to the hot version. Peter was a charming host, moving around with amusing comments and a hearty laugh as he topped up the wine glasses and beer mugs. One advantage of this was that I was never left holding an empty glass; the disadvantage was that I never knew how much I was drinking.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)