install a pole and wires—all of which you must pay for. When this power is finally on, you’re happy staying up until ten o’clock dancing to your radio, but only until the government issues power cuts, and those happen every week, usually at night, just after dark. All that money and trouble—it was almost easier just going to bed at seven.
Another thing that contributes to our energy problem is deforestation. As my grandpa told me, the country was once covered in forests, with so many trees the trail grew dark at noon. But over the years, the big tobacco estates had taken much of the wood, using it to flue-cure the leaves before bringing them to auction. Local tobacco farmers used more wood to build shelters for drying the leaves, but these structures never lasted more than a season because of the termites. The rest of the wood got used by everyone else for cooking since we had no electricity. The problem got so bad near Wimbe that it’s not uncommon for someone to travel fifteen kilometers by bike just to find a handful of wood. And how long does a handful of wood last?
Few people realize this, but cutting down the trees is one of the things that keeps us Malawians poor. Without the trees, the rains turn to floods and wash away the soil and its minerals. The soil—along with loads of garbage—runs into the Shire River, clogging up the dams with silt and trash and shutting down the turbine. Then the power plant has to stop all operations and dredge the river, which in turn causes power cuts. And because this process is so expensive, the power company has to charge extra for electricity, making it even more difficult to afford. So with no crops to sell because of drought and floods, and with no electricity because of clogged rivers and high prices, many people feed their families by cutting down trees for firewood or selling it as charcoal. It’s like that.
One of these government power lines that serviced the nearby tobacco estates also connected to Gilbert’s house. Since his father was Chief Wimbe, they could afford the poles and wires. When I was young and first visited Gilbert, I watched him walk inside his house and touch the wall, and when he did, the bulb came on. Just by touching the wall! Of course, now I know he just simply flipped a light switch. But after that day, each time I visited Gilbert and watched him touch the wall, I thought, Why can’t I touch the wall and get lights? Why am I always the one stuck in the dark, searching for a match?
But bringing electricity to my home would take more than a simple bicycle dynamo, and my family couldn’t even afford one of those. After awhile I kind of stopped thinking about it altogether and focused on more important things. One of them, for instance, was graduating from primary school.
I N MID- S EPTEMBER, OUR TEACHERS at Wimbe Primary finally passed out our final exams and wished us luck. For the past several months, I’d studied very hard. I stayed up late with the kerosene lamp reviewing exercise books dating back several years because the Standard Eight exam covered everything. I pored over my lessons in agriculture, remembering the proper land preparation techniques for groundnuts, the various types of farm records, and how to tell if your chickens had been stricken with Newcastle disease or fowl pox. In social and environmental science, I reviewed the roles of civil servants, politicians, and traditional authorities in the district administrative structure. Chichewa lessons were simple, so I spent much of that energy studying English, writing sentences and going over stories from my readers. One of my favorite stories was “Journey to Malwkwete,” about a boy named Yembe Dodo, who’s out hunting birds one morning when he’s abducted by space aliens. The creatures are taller than the highest trees and wider than an elephant. Each has three eyes. Anyway, they take him aboard their spaceship and then eat his birds. I couldn’t imagine such
Another thing that contributes to our energy problem is deforestation. As my grandpa told me, the country was once covered in forests, with so many trees the trail grew dark at noon. But over the years, the big tobacco estates had taken much of the wood, using it to flue-cure the leaves before bringing them to auction. Local tobacco farmers used more wood to build shelters for drying the leaves, but these structures never lasted more than a season because of the termites. The rest of the wood got used by everyone else for cooking since we had no electricity. The problem got so bad near Wimbe that it’s not uncommon for someone to travel fifteen kilometers by bike just to find a handful of wood. And how long does a handful of wood last?
Few people realize this, but cutting down the trees is one of the things that keeps us Malawians poor. Without the trees, the rains turn to floods and wash away the soil and its minerals. The soil—along with loads of garbage—runs into the Shire River, clogging up the dams with silt and trash and shutting down the turbine. Then the power plant has to stop all operations and dredge the river, which in turn causes power cuts. And because this process is so expensive, the power company has to charge extra for electricity, making it even more difficult to afford. So with no crops to sell because of drought and floods, and with no electricity because of clogged rivers and high prices, many people feed their families by cutting down trees for firewood or selling it as charcoal. It’s like that.
One of these government power lines that serviced the nearby tobacco estates also connected to Gilbert’s house. Since his father was Chief Wimbe, they could afford the poles and wires. When I was young and first visited Gilbert, I watched him walk inside his house and touch the wall, and when he did, the bulb came on. Just by touching the wall! Of course, now I know he just simply flipped a light switch. But after that day, each time I visited Gilbert and watched him touch the wall, I thought, Why can’t I touch the wall and get lights? Why am I always the one stuck in the dark, searching for a match?
But bringing electricity to my home would take more than a simple bicycle dynamo, and my family couldn’t even afford one of those. After awhile I kind of stopped thinking about it altogether and focused on more important things. One of them, for instance, was graduating from primary school.
I N MID- S EPTEMBER, OUR TEACHERS at Wimbe Primary finally passed out our final exams and wished us luck. For the past several months, I’d studied very hard. I stayed up late with the kerosene lamp reviewing exercise books dating back several years because the Standard Eight exam covered everything. I pored over my lessons in agriculture, remembering the proper land preparation techniques for groundnuts, the various types of farm records, and how to tell if your chickens had been stricken with Newcastle disease or fowl pox. In social and environmental science, I reviewed the roles of civil servants, politicians, and traditional authorities in the district administrative structure. Chichewa lessons were simple, so I spent much of that energy studying English, writing sentences and going over stories from my readers. One of my favorite stories was “Journey to Malwkwete,” about a boy named Yembe Dodo, who’s out hunting birds one morning when he’s abducted by space aliens. The creatures are taller than the highest trees and wider than an elephant. Each has three eyes. Anyway, they take him aboard their spaceship and then eat his birds. I couldn’t imagine such
Similar Books
