Malawi at 50: Song & Dance, Tears & Laughter

These students had fun composing songs and dances improptu

In June this year I accompanied a team of educationists visiting a school in the eastern part of Dedza. I observed a Standard 4 Expressive Arts lesson in which students composed and enacted an impromptu song and dance. I would have thought this impossible, but not the students, nor their teacher.

It was clear from the expressions on the students’ faces that they enjoyed the lesson. The absence of a larger social meaning in the activity was more of a fault with the curriculum design than with the teacher’s purpose for the lesson. The lesson had achieved its purpose by giving students an opportunity to express their artistic skills in composing, singing ad dancing.

The children in this school came from a remote  part of Malawi. They were using a powerful medium of expression and knowledge-making. Although such performances of theatre, song and dance have become universal ways of disseminating what has come to be described as “civic education”, they also serve as a way through which communities engage and interact with social change. Communities use such performances to talk to authorities, subvert unequal power relations, and celebrate a vibrance and vitality that is easily missed in the top-down, one-way discourse of officialdom.

While Malawian artists have exploited these forms of expression in music, poetry, film, painting, and pottery, among others, aid workers and government departments have also used these art forms to disseminate civic information and development messages. The comedy duo of Chindime and Samalani  appear at public functions, on TV and in radio sketches to make Malawians laugh while conveying public service messages. Sadly, Samalani, real name Elias Chimbalu, passed away at the end of June. He was aged 40. Chindime ndi Samalani perfected the art of theatre for development in an arena whose other great performers include The Story Workshop, Timveni Arts,  and Theatre for a Change.

The current sensation on the Malawian music front this year has been Lawi. With Francis Phiri as his real name, Lawi adopted his nickname from ‘Malawi’ (Lawi singular, Malawi plural). The genius of Lawi’s music is expressed in the everyday persona whose mass collectivity accumulates into the many flames that shine the Malawian path.

His song Amaona kuchedwa burst onto the scene early this year, and has enjoyed playtime on practically every radio station, entertainment joint, engagement parties and weddings. But it is his other songs that capture the warm heart of Africa that is Malawi in a range of childhood memories, images of the capital city Lilongwe, and the beauty of rural livelihoods. Lawi’s golden voice has charmed the Malawian ear in a way no other musician of his Afro-soul genre has done in recent memory. His is a phenomenal  addition to a tradition trailblazed by Wambali Mkandawire three decades ago.

In poetry, there is a new generation of performers who have taken over the mantle from the generation that fought the one party dictatorship. That generation was represented by scholar poets such as David Rubadiri, Felix Mnthali, Jack Mapanje, Steve Chimombo, Frank Chipasula, among others. They mostly wrote in English and taught in universities. Today the poetry that is telling the Malawian story is in Chichewa, and is performed by young poets. Many of them follow Benedicto Wokomaatani Malunga in intonation and voice deflection, in deference to a poet who pioneered a genre.

As was with the earlier generation, there are still few women poets, but they pack an intellectual punch. Ovixlexla Bunya is a multi-talented artist who dabbles in TV, poetry and is also a student of philosophy. Days before the general elections on 20^th May she released a recorded Chichewa poem that subtly laid bare the shenanigans of the major political parties that were contesting. Titled after a campaign slogan, ‘Dzuka, Malawi, Dzuka’ (Wake up, Malawi, Wake up), it is a rapid-fire narrative crafted in a powerful, moving lexicon that brings sobriety to the inebriation of blind partisanship.

Ovixlexla Bunya, poet, artist, TV personality

Malawian artists tell all. They have seen governments come and go. They have given artistic interpretation to scandal, crime and vice. They will continue reflecting the kind of society Malawi is. They will keep imagining and re-imagining the future. They will tell more Malawian stories through song and dance, tears and laughter. That is why the arts and the humanities need to continue being an integral part of the school curriculum from primary through to university, including teacher education.

* A version of this post first appeared as an article under a different title in The Malawi News of Saturday 26th July, 2014.

Solving the study leave conondrum for Malawian teachers

The decision by the Ministry of Education to stop granting study leave to teachers in the middle of the school year, to avoid disrupting teaching and learning, reminds me of what happened when I got my posting fresh from teachers’ college. That was back in 1993. I had graduated as a primary school teacher from Lilongwe Teachers College, in September of that year. This was after a four-year teacher training programme known then as Malawi Special Teacher Education Programme (MASTEP), a fore-runner to the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) model now in place.

In December 1993 I was posted to a school in a remote part of Dedza district, on the western border close to Mozambique. To get there, I took an early morning bus from Dedza Boma, and dropped off after about two hours. As instructed, I walked to a nearby school and asked the headteacher for directions to the school I had been posted to, which I had been advised was much further away. As I had been told would happen, this headteacher found a Standard 8 boy and ordered him to escort me. The headteacher then gave me his bicycle. The Standard 8 boy got on the carrier, and we pedalled away.

The boy pointed to some hills in the distance, and said our destination was behind those hills. I despaired, but decided to continue. We pedalled for three hours, and finally reached our destination. The headteacher for this school was away, but I left word that I had been posted there, and would be coming back with my household items when the second term opened at the beginning of 1994.

School children in Dedza

We got back on the bicycle and cycled furiously. The bus that had brought me in the morning would be making its return leg in the afternoon, and I needed to catch it to return to Dedza. Miss that bus and I would have had to wait for the next afternoon when it would be making its next routine return leg. I went back to the DEO and told him I would be seeking a transfer to Zomba. I was burning with a desire for higher education, and it would be easier for me if I taught in Zomba. I was not granted a transfer to Zomba, but as a compromise I asked for Ntcheu. I was posted to Gunde Primary School, somewhere in between Khwisa Rail Station and Balaka Market. It was close to my father's ancestral home, so I accepted the posting.

Thus when I read the article about the end of study leave during the school calendar, in The Nation of Monday 4^th June, I knew what this meant for the thousands of teachers affected. The hunger for higher education amongst Malawians is legendary. We know the numbers of how many Malawians make it to university every year. Less than 3,000, out of over a hundred thousand who sit the MSCE exam every year. Many who don’t make it after Form Four spend the rest of their lives sweating to find an alternate route to a university education.

In June 2011 I met a Standard 4 teacher who was spending his entire salary on fees for his bachelors’ degree programme at a local private university in Lilongwe. He was studying at the Assemblies of God School of Theology. I mentioned this teacher’s plight, Amos Matchakaza on twitter, and Hastings Fukula Nyekanyeka, a friend of mine and former classmate, came to the teacher’s rescue. The teacher finished his degree this year, and is now seeking funding to proceed to a masters’ degree. Two factors enabled this teacher to finish his degree. First, someone stepped in to assist him financially. Second, the university he was going to has an evening and weekend programme.

Amos Matchakaza on his graduation day

That is the solution to the problem the Ministry of Education is facing. Unfortunately there are very few reputable Malawian institutions of higher learning that offer the flexibility for evening and weekend classes. This is a huge, untapped market, particularly in the big cities and towns. Lilongwe, one of the fastest growing cities in the world, is the only capital city I know of that does not have a full-fledged public university. The few private universities that attempt to offer evening and weekend classes are bursting at the seams, unable to cope with the demand.

This country is in great need of more universities that can cater to the unmet demand for higher education amongst teachers and other working professionals. It is a well-established fact that higher education is a necessity for national development. By facilitating the availability of flexible options for higher education, particularly for our teachers, the government and Malawian universities will be solving two of the most protracted problems plaguing education in Malawi today: teacher morale and empowerment.