Subject: Malawi situation Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 16:12:12 PDT From: "denis mzembe" dmzembe@hotmail.com To: kubik@kubik.orgDear Mr Kubik,
My name is Denis Mzembe and I work for one of the two daily papers in Malawi called The Nation. I am an Investigative Reporter. I came to the US in June this year under the sponsorship of the World Press Institute which is based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was at Macalester for one month and then started travelling through out the country for three months on July 21. I have been to 17 cities in the US.I return to Malawi in about two weeks from now.
While in St. Paul I was overwhelmed to learn of Patty-Hahn-Carlson's support of a clinic in my home village of Nchenachena in Northern Malawi. This was unexpected.
While here I also learned of Mr Kubik's work with a clinic in Malawi's Capital City, Lilongwe. Their work is already saving many lives that would not be with us today. The health situation has deteriorated over the past few years. There are no drugs in the hospitals and many people are dying of treatable diseases.
In Malawi's major hospital there is untold misery because of congestion and overcrowding. Some patients have to sleep under another patient's bed for lack of space.The problem is compounded because most doctors have opened private clinics in the towns and most of the drugs in public hospitals, meant for the underpriviledged end up in privately owned clinics. Some of the clinics actually belong to cabinet ministers.But people in rural areas can not afford these private clinics. They are meant for the rich. This is where clinics like Kasambala and Malakia are so important because they serve the rural poor who can no longer get proper medication in government run public hospitals. The two clinics are run by people who have grown up in those villages and understand the problems of the rural poor better.
I must also point out that Malawi is basicaly a rural population with 80% of the people living in rural areas and depending on peasant farming for their livelihood.
But although the rural population depends on farming to earn a living, very few people can aford basic farm in-puts like corn seed and fertilizer. This year the government of Malawi has disclosed that it has no corn reserves in its silos because the harvest was poor. This means people will have no food to feed their families in the villages. This also means that child mortality rate will rise because of malnutrition related diseases. Two factors contributed to poor food harvests this year. Too much rain and farmers can no longer afford farm inputs. In such a situation it is not people in the cities that suffer, they have jobs but 80% of the people that live in rural Malawi and have no jobs.
It is also worth noting that while Malawi's population is 11 million there are thousands of refugees from Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, (former) Zaire and even Sudan. They come to Malawi because borders have been closed to them in other countries. So they come to share with us the little that we have. A few years back there were over a million refugees from Mozambique in the country who used up a lot of Malawi's natural resources especially trees for firewood.
I hope, Mr Kubik, that you will let me know which areas you are interested in and I will gladly provide the information. You can contact
me at 612/623-3999 extension 216.
Yours faithfully,
Denis Mzembe.
SOME OF THE ITEMS PEOPLE MAY NEED
1. Corn/maize (prefarbly white but yellow corn has helped in the past)
2. Beans or chick peas
3. Salt
4. Cooking oil
5. Drugs (Mostly for malaria, colds, sores, stomach pains, diarrhoea,
oral rehydration salts and others)
6. Blankets
7. School uniform or second hand clothes
8. Corn seed
9. Fertilizer