Malawi Business

Though this blog has mentioned business training, we did not tell you about the business ideas the students put forward.
Some people have been given capital, started businesses and failed. Others had businesses that failed. Still others have started an operate successful businesses (defined as eating 2 or 3 times per day)
One pastor runs a nursery school for 58 kids (with hired help). His wife (pictured) does -- guess what -- hair salon (how does she do that?). This is recent and they are successful.
There were three ideas I worked through as a sample business plans:

1. Buy 100kg bags of maize (corn), repackaging in 1kg bags and selling at the local market for people who only have enough money to buy food for today.
2. Buy 2 cases of Fanta (Ingrid's favourite), 2 cases of water and ice. Take these to the side of the road during hot season and sell them.
3. Buy 300 tins of spices from Blantyre (where we are), take them to Mangochi (where we went for the weekend -- a 3 hour drive), and sell them one tin at a time at the market.

At first I thought these were all suggested just as an example. They all struck me as "lemonade stand" businesses, not something a breadwinner would even consider. Richard, you have so much to learn: these are real businesses which feed families.

Take the example of the water/Fanta. You can buy a bottle of water for 50 cents or 40 cents by the case. Fanta sells for 40 cents, you buy for 30 cents by the case (and they deliver!).
I can't remember how much ice is, but its on the order of 75 cents.
But you need some capital: a wheelbarrow (to carry your cases to your place of doing business), a cooler and a bottle opener. We suggest a chair ("No, of course not -- we sit on a rock"), and especially a sun umbrella ("No, when we get hot, we go sit under the tree"). Ingrid said "but its the hot season, and we will be tempted to drink our inventory", but they insisted "no umbrella".
It ends up that this business, though seasonal, produces about $18 profit per week on top of a salary of $10 per week. Aside from the fact that this was seasonal, the conclusion was that this was a pretty good business.
What do you say in response? I was shocked and humbled.
During the break, Simeon (a pastor who had championed the idea) came forward to talk to me. He said
"I was at home, tired of doing nothing and not providing for my family. So I said 'what can I do?'. I decided to buy one case of water and sell it by the road. After one day, I sold my case of water, so the next day, I bought 2 cases, then 3. Someone asked if I had Fanta, and I said 'No'. But then I expanded my business and sold Fanta also".
There's no doubt that this pastor's self-esteem and family's living condition improved by him selling water and Fanta. But its a huge culture shock.
It seems that there are few people employed and so there are a myriad of was ways people earn money in small businesses: selling water by the bag (smaller and lower cost than bottled water), cooking oil (maybe 1/4 cup in a bag), mangoes (5 cents each), apples, weaving mats, making rope, roadside tailors, selling grocery bags, making gravel by chiseling large rocks into small stones (that was hard to see), women gathering sand from the river and drying it for use in concrete (also hard to see), and gathering, making and transporting charcoal. Of course there are lots more.
We saw lots of people with bicycles loaded with charcoal. People come from the villages where they gather wood, cut it, make charcoal, package it, and bring it to town to sell. The walk looks very difficult. Some were barefoot. Some come from 2 days walk away. And the business is illegal, so they can be stopped at any time.

Two flat tires and a funeral

We have been here nearly two weeks. Monday will be time to leave. I have yet to experience a day in Malawi which goes according to plan. Nothing happens as you think it will happen. The plan is always evolving and shifting, hard to tell which.

This Sunday was a very special day. We spent the night at Lake Malawi so that we could worship with a church in the township of Mangochi. It was supposedly 2 hrs away, but it was really 4 hours away, in incredible heat, on incredibly bad roads.  No problem, we checkout by 7:45 am Sunday so that we are ready for our 8am pickup to the church.  By 8 am it is incredibly hot, definitely over 40. Sitting in the shade I feel the sweat running down my back. I know that the church will not have a fan, I am hoping that I can preach without passing out.

Richard’s phone rings, there will be a ½ hr delay because our ride just got a flat tire. I am thinking, there is no way a flat tire can get fixed here in ½ hr. I hope we can make it church at all, but there is nothing I can do about it, so I adjust my plan for the day and as is usual here, wait and see how things turn out.

The ride comes at 9am. It is really hot at this point, I am counting all the water bottles we have hoping to have enough to replenish what I sweat off. Richard starts driving and notices the gas light is on. There is no gas station between here and the church, but apparently the church is not too far.

About 20 minutes later we come to the road we need to take to the village. We are told that the church is 1 km down the side road and the gas station 1 km down the main road. After a short debate we decide to head for the church.

I have been in many places, but I have not been in a village like this. There are 800 people living here, the church was planted a year ago and has 200 members. Most of them cannot fit in the mud and grass roof building, so they stand outside in the heat which is now taking my breath away.

We are informed that there has been a death in the village yesterday. A sister of one of the training session participants died after a long and painful bout with a stomach tumour. So many people are not in church, they have to prepare the body for the burial later today. The village is quieter than usual.

We make to the church building, it is tiny, but there is amazing singing coming out as we approach. All the children are gathered under the only tree nearby also singing. This feels like a scene out of The Gods Must be Crazy. Music serves as the ushers, welcoming us into the building. The space is packed with people, it is really people wall to wall. After the singing they sit on the mud floor, some have straw mats.

The church building feels cool on the inside and the scene before my eyes is incredibly beautiful.
The choir director leads his group in singing an English worship song. I am trying hard to write this memory on my brain in indelible ink. I never want to forget the colourful people standing shoulder to shoulder singing, the dark mud walls with tiny gothic style windows, the children peering through the windows, the grass roof that lets in light. The whole picture is incredibly beautiful.

I preach on three stories from Mark 4 and 5. I want them to remember that Jesus is stronger that storms, stronger than demons and stronger than death. I address the fact that a sister in the village has died.

A few more songs, collection of tithes and offerings (they are collected separately here), some prayers and

words of gratitude and encouragement and the service is done.
But there is a change of plan. You see the church members have been making mud bricks and they now have enough to start building a new building, with a seating capacity for 500. Today is the day for the symbolic laying of the foundation stone. The pastor digs a hole in hard, dry soil – it is incredibly hot. A large stone is brought and set into the ground. I lay hands on the stone and pray for the future of this church. Another amazing moment. They think the new building will be up in 1 year, built by hand by the church members.

We are off to another part of the village to give our condolences to Modesta, whose sister had died. What can one say at a time like this even if one understands the culture? We talk with Modesta a bit, pray for her and her family, say goodbye.

It is lunch now, but we decide not to eat, hoping to get dinner around six pm when we arrive back in Blantyre. It is really hot now. I cannot put my hand out the window because the hot air burns.

At around 2pm (about ½ way home), in the high heat of the day we pass a traffic accident, there is much broken glass on the road. Within a minute Richard knows we have a flat tire. We pull over in the middle of nowhere and I am praying that somehow we will get going again.

The sun is incredibly hot, it burns the skin within minutes. We cannot open the back of the van (the lock sticks) for a very long time, it seems like an hour, it was likely more like 10 minutes. Fortunately we have a spare, but the wrench we have doesn’t fit any of the bolts on our wheels. Richard is trying to use a bottle cap to solve the problem – it is incredibly hot. A minibus filled with people pulls over and one man runs toward us with a wrench in hand. Amazingly it fits our bolts. We get the spare out and start to remove the busted tire. His bus is madly honking at him to hurry back since they are running late. He sells us his wrench for 2,000KW, about $5 and runs off to catch his bus.

Incredibly we are back on the road and make it home in time for a Skype call to our home church in Waterloo...another typical day in Malawi.

Two new friends

 

Marriage Counseling - Malawi Style

The Thursday am session was about the balance between family and ministry. This was a topic requested by the church leaders. I decided to tackle it by addressing the three priorities in life for a pastor or any Christian really. The priories are:
1. God
2. Spouse (and family)
3. Ministry and work (as all the pastors here have to earn their living. Not one of them is financially supported by their church).

The students are by now much quicker at locating texts in the bible than on Monday. The God piece goes really well. We discuss different ways of praying and the need for a personal devotional life for the pastor. This is apparently a revelation to all. Listening prayers and contemplative time with God is a completely foreign concept - it took a while to explain, but people's faces lit up (yet again) when they realized that a conversational relationship with God is actually possible in this life and that God does speak to them.

Point 2 was spouse/family. My plan was to tackle the household texts in Ephesians and 1 Peter which tell the husbands to love their wives and the wives to respect the husbands. I planned to exhort them to willingly submit to one another and to consider the other as more important.
Little did I know that I this was not only a hot-button topic but an absolute mine-field.

By this time in the week the class was freely asking questions (Richard brought bags and bags of lollipops and to encourage questions on Monday I rewarded each question with a lollipop). I was hardly through the first verse when a hand went up.
This was the question: "Can a woman participate in ministry on Sunday morning, for example, sing in the worship team, if she is having her period."
"Huh?" is what I am thinking. I am desperately trying to figure out whether I will upset some cultural taboo with my answer (as I apparently did with the tithing question earlier in the week), so I decided to answer with a question.
"Why would it not be ok?"
"Some people say that a woman in unclean when she has her period so she should not do ministry."
Ok, now I am getting it. Yet another ceremonial law issue. The church here is strangely encumbered with OT laws regarding the Sabbath, tithing, and apparently the purity laws from Leviticus.
So, I explain the purity laws and the reason why things were deemed clean and unclean and how thanks to Jesus (and refrigeration and hygene) we are no longer bound by that.

The truth is that many girls here miss 1 week of school each month precisely because of this issue. There is a whole ministry devoted to reusable/washable products for girls so that they can keep going to school even during that time of the month.

Thinking I have successfully navigated around the big land-mine I want to keep going.

Another hand goes up, this time it is Friday, a wonderful, gentle man, one of my favourite students: "You said earlier that the pastor should have a day of rest and maybe even spend it with his family. But my wife has too much work everyday. She has to go out to get water, then she has to get firewood, get the food from the field and cook it. How can I spend time with her when she has so much work to do."
This feels like another land-mine. I cannot believe the question and I just say what is on the tip of my tongue.
"Maybe you can walk with her to get the water and talk along the way. Then it will not even seem like work."

His wife is sitting right beside him. Both of their eyes widen in wonder, apparently this thought has not ever occurred to either of them. Friday would like to keep a day of rest and he would like to love his wife, but all that work she has just makes it impossible.  Some of the women start to laugh and clap and say Amen. Friday looks at his wife, he does not seem to be embarrassed by the suggestion, in fact, he is the only man sitting on the "women's" side of the room, with his wife. The idea of joining his wife in her chores seems to be a revelation to him.

Then I talk about what it means to love and how to put the other ahead of self. And how wonderfully this works out if both spouses do this. I am describing how this works in my marriage of 25 years.  At this point, as I am talking about my husband I realize that I am missing him terribly and I nearly start crying. I tell the class, "I cannot talk about my husband because I miss him and I will start crying."  Everyone seems to be deeply moved and bewildered that anyone can feel this way about their spouse. My male interpreter seems at a loss of how to help me, the class murmurs approvingly. I decide to move on.

Another hand goes up, "We have a problem here in Malawi. The women don't want to have sex often enough with their husbands." All the men shake their heads in agreement, with very serious faces.
"Yes, this is a real problem everywhere, " one adds.

Here we go again.
"There are only two reasons a woman does not want to make love." I confidently say, hoping they agree with the reasons that I am thinking of.

"What is the first reason?" Almost all the women put up their hands and the answer is, "They are too tired."
"Absolutely," say I, "So if you want your wife to want to make love, help her with her wok."
The class burst out in hilarious laughter. This concept is ridiculously funny to them. Women here seem to bear all the burden of raising children, keeping a home and making money, at least in the layer of society with which we are dealing with.
But the women are nodding in agreement to the suggestion, the men don't seem to be able to wrap the head around this.
"What is the second reason?" I ask.
"She had a fight with her husband" is the answer I get.
I am glad that the issues of marriage and sex are universal.

The session goes on and on as we discuss and role-play various marriage, divorce and family problems. My interpreter Lyson is a highly animated man and it is hilarious to watch him "play" the wife as he is translating for me. I try to keep the session balanced, pointing out the responsibilities of a wife as well.

After lunch I ask the men if they are still ok with me or if they are upset about the morning session. Amazingly to me they are all nodding in approval. They are inspired that Christ can even transform a marriage and we can be counter-cultural and redemptive even in the most difficult relationship of our life, the one we share with our spouse.

Just give me some tools

At some level, this place drives me absolutely crazy. Everything is broken -- and I'm getting high blood pressure.
This is my closet door -- the door latch is backwards, so it won't close (but opens easily!) This is a first for me.
My kitchen light has 4 shades, 5 sockets and 1 bulb. Still can't see anything at night.
My shower gives me water, or hot, but not both (though after 7 days I've managed a workaround).
Electricity is often off.
A whole street full of street lights and poles have been stolen (no kidding!)
We have yet to travel home without a traffic jam -- really a large truck broken down in the middle of the road (one lane in each direction), usually on the uphill section, and someone under truck with some makeshift tools. One dump truck with a large trailer was there for 2 full days.
The pastors home (apparently one of the nicer homes), has most the ceiling missing, eaves are down, several windows have only shards left.

The thing that mystifies me is that everyone expects things not to work. They really have low "environment" expectation -- there's no real expecation that things work. And Malawians are absolute experts at work-arounds and making do (that transmission repair of a few days ago is complete and the truck is running).. If you want to see how well people can adapt and adjust, come here.
Maybe having things work is a luxury.
Or maybe this is more about me than Malawi.

--- Addendum
Flat tires are common here (we've had 4 while we were here). Today (Sunday) we got a flat tire a million miles from anywhere. And we're just outside CAA territory. Changing the tire should not have been a problem except that the wheel nut wrench (you know, the one with the jack and spare tire) had 4-sizes -- all wrong. How is that even possible!!! How can you think that in an environment where you'll change a tire at least once or twice a week, its OK to carry the wrong wrench???
(we flagged down one of those mini-busses and bought his wrench ... He was happy for a little extra money. No idea if he'll regret it when he gets a flat).

Curse Money

We are staying at a lodge in "Indian Town". Generally, these are large homes in walled compounds. Its comparatively a nice area (though I could do without the recorded Imam calling to prayer at 4:00 AM). The Indians are part of the merchant and hence wealthy class here. The few stores I went into were operated by Indians. Apparently the joke here is "we own the land, they own the money". Even saw a young Indian driving an Aston Martin Vantage -- serious car for an area where most cars are rejects from Japan (even saw a Datsun!).
The area has a few beggars sitting at the side of the street, including these 2 blind men. I haven't seen them for a few days, but normally they are there -- on the east side in the shade in the morning and they move to the shade on the west side the afternoon. Shade, is a hot commodity in this country (including when we went hiking -- Ingrid was living under an illusion -- see picture, but it seemed to work for her. Honest, she hiked the whole trail with this silly branch!).
We asked why they were here -- seemed like they hadn't done their marketing. Why weren't they on a main street? Well, turns out they had done their marketing. Though the most coveted begging spot is outside the Indian cemetery.
Turns out the Indians have tradition of praying the sickness out of a loved one into some money. They wish the sickness out of their loved one and wish it to take root in the person who receives the money. Same for a broken car, or a burnt house, or a failed business.
They then have to get rid of this money. Kind of have to be careful you don't give it to your friend, or they will get cancer, their house will burn or their business fail. So you give it to the local beggars -- I mean who cares if they get curesed.
The beggars seem to be OK with this arrangement, but the repulsion of this whole tradition hasn't left me.

Electricity

Tuesday: Our training room is reasonably large, and Ingrid is raising her voice and making sure that all can hear her clearly. And, she's getting concerned about losing her voice. No problem - they have a sound system.

But, someone chopped off the power plug, so we just have 2 wires to plug into the wall. Given that this is British style 220V -- enough to kill a sweaty white guy, I'm a little reluctant to plug it directly into the wall. I find an extension cord, some tape, and get something that works. No problem.

I've seen lots of outlets just hanging out the the wall. Remember, this is 220V, and kids are everywhere.

Then speakers. All the connections are broken, but Joseph finds some wire, strips it with his teeth and kind of wraps it around the terminals. No problem.

Next, microphones. They're wireless. We find a matching set from the "junk box" and it sort of works. Find a channel on the sound system that works, set the wires in a place where they actually connect, and voila. we have sound. No problem.

Hand the microphone to Ingrid and its all good! After 2 minutes, the power drops out, and the fan stops turning. Ah well, these things happen here, put the microphone down and carry on. No problem.

After 30 minutes, the fan starts turning and we can hand the microphone back to Ingrid. No problem.

After 15 minutes, the battery dies. Lots of spare batteries in the junk box. None of them work. Problem. We concede defeat for the day.

Wednesday: We get a battery (about 2 days wages for a market vendor -- but hey, this is Ingrids voice we're trying to protect), and this is going to be good! We re-find the microphone, reconnect the speakers (they no longer work right), remove the keyboard someone connected and eventually find the position in which the wires work. Victory!!

Twenty minutes later the power goes out, and is spotty for the rest of the day. This is bizarre. At lunch we go out and see some very resourceful people doing some serious transmission repair. I see no tools, but hey, this is Africa. I see a small welder, with at least 100 feet of wire, spliced twice heading into the kitchen. In the kitchen, they've pulled the main fuse out the main box, and just wired in the welder. Remember this is 220. I watch him weld without glasses ... everytime he draws an arc, the power in the building drops out.

I'm curious and walk to where the power comes into the building -- the wire is hanging 4 feet from the ground. I wonder how many kids get hurt by power here.

Thursday: Its almost 1. Haven't seen power yet today. But I have a new theory. Yesterday, on the way here, we saw a truck with 10 guys and 1 utility pole. Was told they work for the electricity provider. My theory is they got the pole up, and have disconnected the wires so they can work. And its pretty hot today, so they are probably resting. Since people don't really expect the power to work, they figure this is probably fine.