Gordon's African Visit November 2010 Days 10-18

I arrived in Malawi on Monday 8th November and travelled on to Uganda on 22nd and returned home on 26th.

I've now posted my final content - Day 18 and my Final Reflections on the trip. I shall revisit it and add some pictures soon, but for now this is it.

Please don't copy or reproduce any of this blog without contacting me via Torch House first.

DAY 10 – 17th November - Of Houses and Schools

We depart Hope Lodge to travel south on the M1 with all its road works and diversions. Our destination is the village of Jesse in the same area as Konzere, where ‘The Overnight’ was held. Our purpose is to be guests at the hand-over of a newly-built house to a homeless blind lady and to prayer around it – and in it. The committee of the local Fellowship Group had built it for her. The Fellowship Group and the church had combined for this special occasion. We were warmly welcomed and greeted by the chief, who to my surprise was a woman. How progressive. Evidently the role passes down the family and if there are no suitable male candidates, a daughter routinely gets the job. Janet and I were both given the honour of speaking to the assembled crowd.

This is an amazing thing to do. The two-roomed mud-brick grass-roofed house may be a much simpler undertaking than building a small house in the UK but it is still shows massive commitment. The chief donated the land and the rest came from the Group. Pastor Kampira (a Baptist minister) spoke from John 3:16 about love being active. To me this counts as a truly exceptional act of love. Not only is the new home owner blind but she is from abroad – from neighbouring Mozambique – and had only relatively recently taken Malawian citizenship.

What an example this is. Nobody told the committee to do this, they made no appeals for external or Western help. They saw a need and responded to it. Once more the word ‘dignity’ springs to mind, and this gentle lady of few words positively oozed it as I thanked for allowing Janet and I to among the first guests in her new home. Janet gave her a hug. What a happy occasion. The little house was a beautiful example of its type and on the inner room wall hung a typical broom of the type we had seen made by a blind man on Monday. Lapson Mbewe pointed out to those gathered that if she were to sleep there that night she would need a mat to sleep on. A collection was taken up. There was enough for a bed! Praise the Lord!

Next to Makande Primary School to visit the blind children that are resident students there. We stopped at the boys dormitory that had been the subject of a make-over by a mixed team of English/Malawian volunteers a couple of years back. I instantly recognised the tactile wall mural from the pictures.

Things were not as they should be. Mattresses (some just grubby sheets of polyurethane foam – some smart new mattress with jazzy fabric covers (and with their polythene wrappers still on) were all over the place. The dormitory has four twin rooms linked by a corridor leading to an open committee dining space cum hallway. The snag was that they had no less than 22 boys resident so they had to sleep just anywhere. They had little option. The boys had no personal space and nothing in which they could keep personal belongings. We didn’t see the girls dormitory but with only six there’ll be no similar problem. The children sang to us and we chatted with them for a while. They had all been to the Overnight and Konsere and had a wonderful time. Somehow they had seemed stronger then. I was choked. How can it be right for kids to grow up like this.

On to Ngabu Secondary School where we were greeted by the head and her deputy school. The head was another cousin of Stanley Moyo’s (Torch Administrator). The charts on her office wall, the tidiness of the site, the evidence of students all at work all testified that this was a good show. There are around 350 students in the school. Secondary schooling in Malawi has four stages – forms 1 to 4. This school is getting the best results of the area and last year got seven into university. Blind students of which there were a dozen (only one girl) have a resource room and two specialist teachers. The intent is for integrated education but the limited resources require that some teaching and study is done where the accessible books and other resources books are shelved, and where the specialist teachers hand out. In a adjacent room was a speech-enabled computer provided by a Strathclyde University led project.

We were given the opportunity to address the blind students and engaged in a Q & A with them. At first they were shy at answering the visiting Englishman but gradually their confidence to use English grew and dialogue developed. Two of them came up with short greetings to be passed on to Welford School (where I’m a governor) – which I hope will be audible on the recording I made. The specialist teachers seemed very appreciative of our visit.

The resouce centres for blind students at both schools lacked basic resources like braille paper, working braillers, text books, magniying glasses and much else besides.

Then back on the dusty road, through the sugar plantation, round the diversions back to Hope Lodge in Chikwawa for some lunch before heading up the big hill and back to more elevated and slightly cooler Blantyre.

Three days touring the Lower Shire. Even within this impoverished area there are great variations. I guess it’ll about every 10 miles that there’s a village or town with some sort of road side market. Produce is often display on the mat or cloth on the dusty ground. Some of these ‘stalls’ offer nothing more than a pile of mangoes. Or half a dozen bags of charcoal for cooking fires. Or a couple of small piles of unmilled maize. Clothes too are laid out on the ground for sales. These markets differ enormously. Some have piles of brightly coloured fruit, veg, nuts and grain with people all over the road browsing, chatting or haggling with such intensity that it takes several blasts of the Land Rover horn to budge them. In other places the stock is meagre and the shoppers listless.

What dawns on me is that I have seen in a few days more of the ordinary Malawi of marginal survival than the vast majority of Western visitors ever see – in fact maybe rather more of than most Malawian city dwellers ever see. Popping into the Blantyre centre branch of the Peoples supermarket chain on the way back through the city to pick up milk, bread and a few more bottles of coca cola 20p a go, jolts me back into the twentieth century (I do mean 20^th not 21^st – there’s a way to go yet!).

DAY 11 - 18th November – Back at the Office

This is the one day of my entire trip when I didn’t go out. I stayed at Torch House all day apart from a little walk in the evening just along the track from Torch House to the home of Tim and Bertha Malaidza. Tim is now retired but was the administrator before the last. It was a very good meal, taken by candelight not by intent but as a consequence of an unscheduled power cut.

During the day I met with members the Torch staff team so I’ll now introduce them and what they do. Joseph you have met before. He’s our driver, and that means he’s worked every day since I arrived – and he’s working today as Janet goes to Blantyre city centre on various errands. This is quite abnormal and an unaffordable way to carry on. Diesel is only marginally cheaper here than back in Blighty.

When he is not driving Joseph does many other odd jobs. His favourite is repairing Perkins braillers (for those who missed out on braille education this is a a sort of braille typewriter), something which Michael Stafford has trained him to do. This is a highly prized skill here. Perkins are pretty essential to anyone making practical use of braille here and there really aren’t many who can fix their fiddly mechanism.

You have also met our new Administrator who you will know, if you have been following carefully, has recently moved up the big hill from Chikwawa to work at Torch House. His job is the day to day running of the work including correspondence (much is in braille, which he is gradually learning), paying of bills and keeping track of the money, supervising the team, visiting Fellowship Groups and, with the others, looking after visitors, many of them blind. Though he has only been with us since the summer he is already pretty well established. We spend much of the morning together with Tim Malaidza, who has volunteered his experience, reviewing the year’s budget.

Lazarus’ principal job is the production of braille Bibles and books. The large Heidelberg platen press, which was snorting away last time I came, is currently standing idle but there are two new Everest computer driven embossers now up and running to support a more flexible ‘on-demand’ approach to braille production. A third is on its way – as are the sound deadening cabinets that ‘house-train’ these noisy little beasts.

Blessings works mainly on giant print production but also produces small braille booklets. The Everest embosser he normally uses is in trouble. I have brought the main electronics card that has been checked in the UK without finding any fault. I’ve managed to track down the actual faulty part but there is no spare here so there’ll be further delay.

Blessings also processes literature requests and despatches the items from stock and he keeps the accounts books on computer and prepares financial reports. Both he and Lazarus have seen their work shift onto computer-based methods and the change to on-demand working places more pressure on the computer aspect with all the support issues that anyone working in a computer-based office will only too easily recognise.

In addition to these core staff Torch employs three night watchman who, when they are dressed up in their blue Torch Trust uniforms, I like to refer to as Torch’s private army. Security is a big issue here. Petty crime abounds. Sadly that means bars at the windows and high boundary walls. Many premises bear the G4S logo – what many us know better as Group 4. On the main roads and thoroughfares the police are more visibly present than in the UK. Yet the people are characteristically friendly and it feels really quite safe on the streets. We are a couple of miles out of town here. So while white faces are in evidence in Blantyre centre I am conscious of being a tall European in an African suburb. Janet and are on the only white faces around here

The day starts early here at Torch House, with staff prayers at 7:30am – and runs through to 5pm. Morning prayers in the room called ‘reception’ include a reflection on the verse for the day from the Torch Scripture Text Calendar (or website).

This is a group of thoroughly committed Christian people. The four of them are involved with four different churches. They enjoy singing a hymn or chorus – or maybe two – from the old Mission Praise books and the sound is good. Janet brings the lone soprano voice.

The four core staff live on-site. So I’ll describe the Torch campus in my next instalment.

DAY 12 – Friday 19th November – Getting Educated

Today we travel east through Blantyre and the neighbouring town of Limbe. Limbe is to Blantrye what Bradford is to Leeds, or Wolverhampton to Birmingham. One virtually runs into the other. Blantyre the one time capital in the country is grander with lots of banks and offices. Limbe centre is full of shops, many Asian run, and the place you can buy a wide range of hardware and technology. It’s the Tottenham Court Road of Malawi.

Emerging from the built up area we travel along a scenic valley and turn off at the sign for the Catholic University of Malawi. We pull up some way along the access road.

The Monfort Centre for the Education of the Blind is part of a complex that supports schooling for those with learning disabilities and hearing loss as well as those with sight loss. Prior to joining Torch, our former administrator Tim Malaidza was director of this Centre for 7 years. He is still known here and it was good to see that he was treated with great respect.

The new Director is keen to tell us of the work of the Centre and to enumerate its many – as he put it so politely - ‘challenges’. It was a litany of quite monstrous obstacles to doing the things that clearly needed doing. He remained amazingly positive and cheerful, all the same. It was sad to see that the economic problems of the banking crisis and recession in the northern hemisphere were impacting them through the cuts in support made by the European charities that have been good supporters over a long period due to economic. Some of the Centre’s initiatives have lost their support altogether.

He talked us through a map of the resource centres for blind and low vision students in both primary and secondary school across the country – 31 locations in all. The primary role of the Monfort Centre is to train the specialist teachers that work at these school-based resource centres. Pursing a philosophy of integrated education they are seeking to bring the specialist support closer to where the blind students reside, so the specialist teachers move around more but the students don’t have to board at schools a long way from their family homes.

Then there’s supporting the resource centres with equipment and other specialist items, like braille paper. Two staff repair Perkins Braillers but they have quite a backlog – which includes those that the Makande resource centre were waiting for. Part of the problem is getting spares – which probably really means a problem of getting expenditure in foreign currency. If nobody outside the country wants your currency in payment then foreign currency exchange. For Malawi the main source of ‘forex’ is tobacco sales and the market is slackening.

Victor (DAISY) players were mentioned. They have 40 that they about to send out to the resource centres. I ask if a DAISY Bible could be included with each. The idea is welcomed.

There’s a braille unit here, and a new Index embosser has appeared since by last visit – a result of the work done by Strathclyde University. This unit is there to provide educational texts in braille for the resource centres. Large print is down to the schools themselves who enlarge pages with the school photocopier. As we saw on or school visits this isn’t very effective, especially as there is a crucial shortage of low vision aids - and I don’t mean the high-tech stuff on offer in the UK. More magnifying lens would be good!

As resources allow, they play a role in sight testing of those with low vision. Janet knows the freelance person involved in this and has supplied glasses to her prescriptions before now. It’s quite evident that there are partially sighted students struggling with their schooling for the sake of some prescription glasses! There is agreement to try to get this arrangement going again.

The number of children with sight loss is rising. One factor, says the director, is that they’re better at picking up on students with sight loss. There’s currently around 1800 school students being supported by the resource centres.

We were given the brilliant opportunity of meeting the whole group of specialist teachers in training – numbering at least 30. In the Q & A that followed, probing questions were asked of us. One trainee asked how he could volunteer to help our work with older blind people! It’s agreed that Stanley will visit periodically to make sure all the students know about Torch and the resources we can offer. Appreciation is expressed for what we do. It’s clear that they are many Christians in the room. And what a bright and well motivated group of teachers they are – all have at least three years teaching experience to qualify for this training.

As we are about the leave the lecture room I ask if I can take a snap of the group. They react poorly to this request. Not in here, please, let’s have a group photo on the lawn outside. So out we go – virtually the whole Centre turns out for the photo op. They’re having fun. It’s sunny and the view is great.

Adjacent to the Centre, are similar centres for training specialist teachers for schools that have deaf students and those with learning disability and then there's a demonstration school where theory is turned into practice. We visited the resources centre for blind and partially sighted students at this school. We were treated to some singing and given an opportunity to talk to the students – including time to tell a Bible story. Within our party was Glyphens Machaka a braille proof reader form the Monfort training centre. Glyphens, now one of Torch’s Malawi trustees, was schooled in this very place. He brought a message of encouragement to the students. And the student gave me greetings for the children at Welford school.

What an excellent visit. The link with the Monfort Centre is a highly strategic one and building it will do a lot to advance Torch’s activities in Malawi - and not just with school students. Christian teachers could be a great help to the work of the Fellowship Groups.

In the afternoon we headed to the Namyangu Torch Fellowship Group. It’s just a few miles close into Limbe than Monfort. The Groups meets among some poor housing towards the top of a hillside. The distant view is good but up close this is a rough area and there’s just a hint of unsanitary smells.

There are some other disabilities in evidence alongside the blind and partially sighted folk. One lady arrived in an old fashioned sort of wheel chair that is propelled through a bicycle chain by operating something like cycle pedals with her hands. Others have locally-grown walking sticks. Though this place is close into one of the more prosperous towns in Malawi the people were evidently living in great poverty. Janet has seen some of them begging on the streets of Blantyre – something now banned by the president.

It’s perhaps all the more surprising to be welcomed to a group meeting that was well planned with both chair and vice-chair of the group working from braille leading confidently and in English with Stanley providing a translation to Chichewa. It was a good meeting with a happy buzz afterwards. Some of them meet regularly in a study group - and the vice-chair enquired about DAISY resources. They have the inside track on nearby Monfort.

Bonus Material – A Visit to Torch House, Malawi

Torch House in the district of greater Blantyre called Chirimba. It is approached by the worst piece of unmade road of all my travels. I am only marginally encouraged to know that it is better than it was. This track rises between the red-brick walls that enclose the property on both sides to the crest of a low ridge. A Torch logo sign greet the visitor on approach to the double blue gates. After dusk the watchman leap to open them.

A wide level lawn (a generous term in this semi-arid setting) lies ahead with three largish bungalow style building are lined up side by side. Vehicle areas are demarked by lines of tilted white-painted bricks. Views from and back are quite mesmerising, with Michuru mountain behind and a craggy dromedary of a mountain standing above the gates to the front.

Central is the production and office building. To either side are the Administrators house and a combined guest house and literature store where Michael and Janet Stafford live when here. This is where I am staying - in a spare room which I share with the braille library. My corner room has double aspect windows, the larger faces onto the front lawn and garden with some colourful shrubs and a few trees. This is light room but also a hot one as it catches the sun for a lot of the day. Ventilation is a compromise between encouraging air flow and discouraging bugs and mozzies – especially in the evening when I’m working with the light – typing this blog more often than not. The most significant accoutrement in the room is the desk fan which I have running all the time – right through the night.

Behind these buildings the grown drops away. There are some mango trees but most of the ground looks ploughed. Of course it isn’t. It has been laboriously hoed into ridges and furrow in readiness for planting. Each staff member has a plot on which to grow some foods – mainly maize. Rains are just starting so planting is imminent. Lower down the hill and with views across the wide valley to Michuru mountain are the staff houses.

These summertime days are shorter than ours in Britain. It gets reasonably light from about 4:30am and is virtually dark by 5:30pm. The Malawian days is still strongly linked to the sun. They’re up with the sun and do their farming before the working day. We all went into town for a meal one night. They got fidgety when the slow service took us beyond 8:30pm. Arriving back at Torch House after 9pm this was evidently indecently late.

This a beautiful place – though not always peaceful. The sounds of suburban life float in on the balmy evening air. African pop from second rate sound systems in the bars and clubs contribute. But more often than not the noise pollution is from Christian origins. A church choir having its week night practise or a church having a worship session. Few churches have glass in the windows so the sound is unconstrained.

A few hundred yards away a new church has acquired a plot, built a brick wall around it and erected a couple of marquees within it. They seem a pretty full-on bunch, boldly named Shikinnah Glory (sorry, I’m not sure of the spelling), and they have been having a series of evening outreaches so I speculate that they are the worse offenders. Actually if you have to live with the hubbub that densely-packed community necessarily brings then people singing God’s praises isn’t at all bad. Most Malawians still go to church and each church has several choirs and singing groups. And the standards are high. We could learn from this.

DAY 13 – Saturday 20th November – With the Malawi Trustees

Those of the trustees of Torch in Malawi assembled at Torch House this morning to receive a report of my visit and to discuss some of the items raised. It was a good and useful meeting, followed by lunch taken at the surprising western-style Shoprite shopping centre where there are a number of outdoor cafés.

It’s a time for me to reflect. This has been an amazing trip and God has been so evident in the practical aspects as well as the explicitly ‘Christian’ activities. I visited 10 Fellowship Group Meetings and as many of those drew people from neighbouring groups I have met blind and partially sighted people from at least 20 more. I have made 6 school and education-related visits and preached at 2 churches – both of whom got a full-on message about valuing and including blind and disabled people in church life and mission! I now wish I’d kept a record of mileage – or of hours in the very-upright front seat of the trusty Land Rover!

Rose, one of the trustees and by professional a teacher runs a group of private schools with Richard her husband. They were just starting out with a primary school when I was last here. In just nine years this has developed into an enormous complex of Primary School with 600 students, a Secondary School with 350 students and a Nursery.

We visited the complex which lies just a little further outside Blantyre than Torch House. What they have built in that short time is amazing. The grounds are beautiful and there are maps of Malawi, Africa and the World painted on one wall and the Periodic Table of Elements on another. The classroom furniture is very ‘hand crafted’ but at least there are desks in the classrooms.

For a Saturday afternoon there’s quite a bit of life. Some students are boarders and live in dormitories on site. Two groups of ‘standard 8’ primary children (final year) are there for extra classes – cramming for exams, I think. I get to address one of these groups and to take pictures. They looked very happy to be in the school.

Although this is a long way from being an English school in the sun, this is a different kettle of fish to most of what I have seen in my travels.

Rose drives us back to Torch House in Richard’s Toyota Land Cruiser. This is the car Malawian drivers dream of. It combines interior comfort and a good ride on tarmac with excellent off-road performance. Apparently one would glide over the miles of tracks and broken roads down to Nsanje district is no time at all. Dream on. Anyway it far too cumbesome to park in the supermarket car park

DAY 14 – Sunday 21st November

My last day in Malawi. Suddenly the visit is coming to a hasty conclusion. On the one hand it seems a positive age since the Rivi Rivi tour or the evening at Lapson’s with the orphans, on the other, that the days have slipped day with undue rapidity.

This morning I preached at Stanley Moyo’s church – an example of the Evangelical Church of Malawi. No Land Rover today. Joseph is having well deserved time off with his family back at his home village. He has driven us out and about for 12 days on the trot – or should I say, ‘on the roll’. I suppose I could get the keys and drive but what if a scratched or dented it. Joseph would surely cry. So its an opportunity to accompany Stanley on a minibus. 14-seater Toyota Hiaces driven by seeming teenagers are the principle public transport system. It’s cheap and effective. On the way back from church the minibus needs to refuel – urgently. It stalls while waiting for a clear pump and the driver has to move it forward using the starter. We are required to disembark for refuelling but it doesn’t take long. Apparently they buy ‘gas’ 2 or 3 litres at a time. I’m told it’s just in case the police stop and impound the vehicle – in which they ‘lose’ the fuel. This is a real ‘cash’ business. The conductor sitting by the side (sliding) door takes fare and then out of the wad in his hand he pays for the ‘fill up’.

Church follows a very similar pattern to the service at the Zambezi Evangelical Church of last Sunday. This building has the advantage of electric light which works by virtue of a lead trailing into a nearby house. They’ve been waiting for ever for the electricity company to connect them.

The service lasted around two and a half hours, and you’ll be relieved to know that my sermon accounted for only 35 minutes of that – and that’s with translation! Afterwards it became apparent that many spoke English so that they will have had it all twice.The congregation grew steadily over the first hour to just about 100. A large part of the service was given over to choirs, groups and soloists. Nellie Moyo, Stanley’s wife, sings in one of the groups and the ladies choir.

Next door to the church a bar has opened up and they played pop music throughout the service. There’s no glass in the windows so the sound intruded throughout. I have great admiration for the unaccompanied soloists who stay in key and on beat despite the unholy competition. To overcome at the back of the church I felt I had to virtually shout my sermon. Perhaps this added passion to the address. I was enthusiastically invited to come back to preach there again! I spoke of the challenge the Bible presents to or view of blind and disabled people. The best comment I received was ‘you’ve really changed the way we think’. God be praised!

Janet went to speak at another church – one in Lapson Mbewe’s network of Christian Apostolic Churches nearby. We regrouped at Torch House just in time for half a cup of coffee before setting off to the Weaving Factory at Bangwe on the far side of Limbe. This was among the Torch Fellowship Groups that I visited last time I came. The Weaving Factory is a workplace for disabled people and here the Group includes a good number of people with disabilities other than blindness. It was brilliant. The Groups chair and other committee members led confidently and effectively. All who took the lead were blind. Things were kept ‘light’ by a chirpy blind lady who had lots of quips and cracks – most of which we in local language and lost on me – though she was quite capable of having fun in English too. Lapson choose her to translate his English remarks into Chichewa – and everyone ended up laughing. A creative translation?

The Groups leaders had prepared a welcome speech which was delivered from braille with print copies (English) for us as visitors. This was the first Torch Fellowship Group in Malawi and has been running for 17 years. It has spawned 2 others. The welcome speech told the tale of the Group’s history and the key characters involved in its leadership over the years. There’s energy and maturity in healthy combination here – praise God!

Among the singing groups were a trio – one a wheelchair user lady, one blind man and one partially sighted lady with a some disfigurement. They stand a song with the refrain, ‘I am complete in Him’. If I can say this in a non-patronising way, it’s still a tear jerker to think back these days after. Janet picked up on it in her talk – it was her turn for passion!

We lots of chat after the meeting we finally headed off to café for a very belated lunch. I for one was getting wobbly by this stage – the last engagement of my visit. Back at Torch House, Janet, Lapson and talked late into the night.

DAY 15 – Monday 22nd November – leaving Malawi

A 4:30am start today. The flight from Blantyre’s Chileka airport was at 7am, the first of three departures for the whole day! The farewell party of Janet, Lapson, Stanley and Joseph accompanied me to the airport. I’m going to miss this place and this wonderful group of people with whom I have had the privilege of sharing so much these past two weeks.

Back to Lilongwe International Airport - for another long wait. Something has changed. Though the day is duller than the Monday of two weeks ago the terminal building seems brighter, cleaner and smarter. The coffee shop I found so dismal before now seems quite smart. This time the pot of tea, though similarly generous was not of Earl Grey. But there were freshly baked muffins (4 to be exact) on offer. Over tea and muffin I ponder.

Nothing has changed – except me. My expectations are apparently on a sliding scale. The airport is still shabby and not especially clean. In the coffee shop the seat fabrics are every bit as grubby and the furniture remains second-rate. But it’s quite OK really. And it’s in infinite contrast to the floor cum table of a mud-hut out in the bush.

OK, so I have had to pop a couple or more Imodium during my stay and I have a couple of rashes from the heat but nothing too awful. Actually I’ve felt pretty fit throughout. The challenges have been more emotional than physical.

There are things I haven’t seen for two weeks. Not a single operational hot water tap. No piano or keyboard of any type. No washing machines or dishwashers. The only oven I’ve seen was in the kitchen of the restaurant at Hope Lodge – and that was in a very basic domestic 4-ring stove. I’ve not seen a single aircraft fly overhead. Back home in Welford a glance skyward on a clear evening is always rewarded by the sight of at least three airliners. I’ve not seen a McDonalds restaurant.

Though I have seen outright herds of kids I’ve seen but one toy – a very creditable homemade model of a 4x4 pick-up fashioned in coat hanger wire and complete with working steering operated by twisting the bamboo cane by which the vehicle was pushed across the ground. This reminds me to share from Lapson’s early experience of getting to know blind people out in the bush. The blind man asked, ‘how many legs has a car?’ !!

I’ve seen tailors working on their teeny verandas with museum-piece sewing machines, joiners and upholsterers making furniture on the street, people moving bulky building materials with bicycles. I’ve seen women with just anything you can imagine on their heads. How do they do that trick with of walking around with a bucket of water balanced on their head without slopping it. I’ve seen women with supersized buckets of water which took two others staining to lift it to the head of the couching lady.

And I’ve seen a thousand ant hills that stand as tall as I do. Nobody ever seems to demolish an ant hill. Bush road sweep around them, the layout of houses in a village is set to accommodate them and the ridges and furrows of the fields are interrupted by them. They’ll never mechanise farming here until they sort this. What is it about ant hills?

Things have changed in 9 years. Not a lot, but a bit. Minibuses carry only the passengers that can sit inside them – before they hung on the outside too. There’s more traffic. Road improvements are in hand – though only the most major arteries – and not in time for my visit!

Telecommunications has advanced hugely. 3G – even 3.5G – is boldly promoted but sparsely delivered. Everyone seems to have a mobile phone and in town every street corner has somebody flogging airtime. Two mobile service brands new to me are heavily promoted. Zain’s swirling logo and bright mauve colour scheme is everywhere. They have even painted walls and houses in their striking colour with their logo, along with their slogan ‘a wonderful life’. Rival TNM is in a fetching green with the slogan ‘always with you’. These brands are building an influence with the younger generation akin to the brand power of McDonalds in the west. And note how general their slogans are.

There’s just the beginnings of irrigation beyond that already established for cash crops. There’s grain in the markets. Nine years ago there were food shortages. Now the problem (I read it’s a general problem in the poorer countries since global food prices soared in 2008/9) is that the poorest have nothing with which to buy the food that’s there. Two failed harvests means that many in the Lower Shire (and some other localities too) now have no cash and no seed. The government is issuing vouchers to help with seed and fertiliser but these have to be matched with cash – and the distribution of the vouchers has not always worked as intended.

I’ve met blind people who are among the very poorest in the world – and seen how in those ‘born again’ the image of God shines through. People can have nothing and still find dignity in their relationship with Jesus. God is touching lives here.

And something else has occurred to me. I seen so much - and doubtless well-intended - charity and church-led activity that’s ‘hit and miss’ and short-term. I’m heartened that Torch has plodded along steadily over these twenty years of involvement in Malawi. The benefit of this shows in the Fellowship Groups so clearly. There’s a wholesome maturity. It shows in the churches where blind people are welcomed and where, for one example, Lemi (blind) ministers to congregation that won’t let him go, though he’d like to go north to work with his own people. There’s relationships with schools where Torch is welcomed and respected. Sure, there are rough edges and cracks. This is Africa!

But what has been achieved through Stella’s Heath’s brave response to God’s call and the faithful work of the team in Malawi and Michael and Janet’s shuttling back and forth is overwhelmingly creditable and redounds to the glory of God.

There’s been a consistency – and a standing by blind and partially sighted people that sets Torch in a positive light with them. There’s so much more we can do across this land and beyond – but we’d better go steady so that we build strength on strength – and avoid growth that would be unsustainable.

Lilongwe to Nairobi, the world’s least favourite airport, then Nairobi to Entebbe. It’s refreshingly cool in Nairobi. It’s almost dark when I set foot in Uganda to be met by Jon and Charlotte, with Zachary (eldest son, daughter-in-law, and grandson, respectively). Jon now has a full beard.

Their house is near the top of a hill in central Kampala, within the Mengo Hospital compound. Mengo Hospital was founded by missionaries in 1897. Namirembe Cathedral (one of two Anglican cathedrals in the city) crowns the hill and adjacent to the hospital compound is a church run guest house. I have an en suite room – with a real shower and hot running water. What luxury. It’s clean and has the essential essentials – a fan and a mozzie net.

The little family’s home for the last three months is to a good African standard. If I’d seem it without the adjustment to my critical factors brought about by two weeks acclimatisation to all things African I would been shocked. But it’s really quite homely!

DAY 16 – Tuesday 23rd November – Hello Kampala

I’m treated to breakfast at the swankiest hotel in town. The Serena is ranked among the finest hotels in the world. It’s an odd thing. Everything in Africa is just not quite ‘there’ – not finished, not working, not classy, never tickerty-boo. Yet this place is a step up on just about any English hotel I have ever stayed in. Everything is gleaming, and ‘just so’.

Jon and Charlotte splash out £10 per head for the most comprehensive buffet breakfast in the most appealing alfresco dining environment. Wow! At my request the kitchen rustles up some hollandaise sauce for my Eggs Benedict. Jack fruit is scummy. Jon tells me if you cut your own the ultra-stickiness clings to your knife like araldite and won’t come off. (This may be life-saving knowledge if you need to stick something in a jungle sometime.)

Getting to the Serena was an experience. My first boda boda experience. Jon expertly negotiates the hire of a clutch of motorcycle taxis (isn’t that an apt collective noun!), settling at half their opening offer. He rides one with Zach packed between him and the driver, Charlotte and I each have a driver all to ourselves.

I’m not a motorcycle fan. They are dangerous and a menace on the road. I mount cautiously and Jon tells me to hold on to the metal bar behind the seat. Nobody else riding boda bothers. Everyone ride nonchalantly with their hands free. Modest women with skirts often ride side saddle! Full of apprehension I find my footing. This is insane. Four of us, including one of just 2 years age – and not a single helmet between us. How good are the head injury surgeons here, I wonder.

Weaving in and out of traffic, negotiating junctions (rules of the road are unclear – but something to do with survival of the fittest – or largest!), avoiding (mostly) the pot holes, driving the crown of the road to get past slower vehicles and head on into other traffic. Arrrrrrrhhh! I’m sure I have white knuckles but I’m not letting go of that ‘security bracket’ behind me to check.

So what’s my first impression of Uganda. In some ways it’s like Malawi. Not as hot but just as dusty. This still Africa after all and I’ve only travelled about a 1000 miles as the crow (or maybe stork) flies.

In some ways it very different. It’s Malawi on steroids. Shops are overflowing with goods and streets are overflowing with shops … and customers. Anything grows here. It’s lush and green. Huge birds soar among - the vultures and the malibu stork with their prehistoric pterodactyl appearance. Fruit on the stalls is oversize and vividly coloured. Meat is being butchered and displayed in little butcher shops and kiosks.

This a populous country and Kampala is a city of large but uncertain population. Our location at the centre of it must have something to do with the unbroken sense of frenzy.

No time to stop. I fouled up my diary planning. I have a date with UNAB (Uganda National Association of the Blind) which I had in mind for tomorrow. Esther Mondo calls to see if I’m coming. Esther was a volunteer at Torch House, Hallaton back in the nineties and had contacted Torch out of blue offering help in Uganda just a week or two before my trip. She set up the meeting UNAB’s Executive Director, Richard Roy Anguyo.

So plans are changed and with loads of calls to figure where we are going and how we take a special hire (or more regular sort of taxi with doors and a steering wheel) on a 10 mile trip through the suburbs.

UNAB has nice premises and we are made welcome. I apologise for lack of business attire and make no mention of having not shaved! Ways in which Torch could help with literature and knowhow for starting fellowship groups are discussed. There’s interest. They already have a relationship with the Uganda Bible Society. Richard is partially sighted (reads 22/23 point) and is immediately interested in this. Virtually nothing is done in the ‘low vision’ area. Esther has an interest in children’s work (she’s involved in leading children’s work at church) and in HIV/AIDS education. Jon linked her with Oasis’ work on this subject and there’s agreement that between us we should ensure Oasis includes those with sight loss. It marvellous that we can pray together at the end of the meeting.

On the tour of the offices I learn that the lady chair of UNAB is vice-president of the World Blind Union. Shame she wasn’t around.

We ride a Matatu (minibus) back towards town to take lunch together and then it’s boda boda again and off to see Oasis Uganda’s two centres in Kampala, where Jon has been working for 3 months putting in new IT systems, mainly to support their Net2Work initiative which trains disadvantaged young people with computer skills. Electricity is out so I have a tour in the gloom and meet all the folks around. We take a very dusty walk between their centres to visit the compact compound where their inspirational work with girls takes place and the new Net2Work classroom that Jon has set up ready for a consolidation into this one location. In the grounds there's a meeting space with a thatched roof over - but open to the sides. There's scattered benches and some African drums lying around. What a great atmosphere. We sit a while in peace before walking down the highway and engaging with the manic rush hour traffic.

Jon, Charlotte and I have some really deep chats about life the universe and … church … and Christian living. We are all wrestling with how our experiences in Africa have challenged the western lens through which we understand what being Christian and doing church means. Yes, the subject of living the Christian life is frequently addressed in Sunday sermons but it’s all through materialist/consumerist western spectacles. Suppose we take them off. How should we live? Scary stuff. What next?

DAY 17 – Wednesday 23rd November – Bibles and Stuff

With an appointment sent with the Bible Society for the afternoon we go for a family outing in the morning. Jon enters negotiations for a ‘special hire’ with the driver of what Jon reckons the smartest ‘special’ ever. The Toyota Ipsum in beautiful inside and out with an incredibly pristine pale beige upholstery. It has a TV that folds out of the dash! Handy on a slow day, I guess. He turns out he drives for visiting diplomats on occasions. For under £20 we have car and driver for the morning – and what a nice chap he is.

It’s off to the coast of Lake Victoria and out on a boat. Charlotte invites our amazing driver to join us on the outboard-driven boat. He’s never been on the lake before. The boat driver is just as amazing. Whenever he sees me raise my camera to take a shot of a bird he slows the boat and he seeks out good opportunities to get ornithological snaps. There’s a lot of birds to see. Kingfishers come in both colour and monochrome versions. We watch a pair of crested cranes (the national bird of Kenya) but the blighters were must too interested in coordinated preening to give a proper display for the camera.

Coffees and cakes with lakeside views completes the interlude. A feeling of well being has settled over the party as we return to town in the care of our chilled out driver. But its abruptly shattered when a stubbornly-driven truck crunches the rear nearside door and panel behind it. The car of perfection is now sadly marred. It hurts. Our driver is really quite unruffled.

I’d been able to track down an old Torch friend called Onesimus. He first encountered Torch at the Keswick Convention when he was studying for Anglican Ordination at Trinity College. He has since completed a public policy masters degree in Bristol and is now seeking to bring a Christian influence to the government of the south west of Uganda. Unusually for a Uganda he has a full beard. We had lunch together at the Namirembe guest house where I am lodging. It’s an interesting chat and he offers to drive me to the Bible Society where I’m to meet Simon Mukhama, the General Secretary. Save another boda boda ordeal.

Simon is delighted to see Onesimus. He explains that Onesimus was the one who led him to faith. It’s a good start to the meeting.

Two other managers from the BS team join us. One heads the Faith Comes By Hearing (audio Bible) activities and the other is the head of finance. I was handed a copy of a UBS project application the covers a plan of work to serve blind and partially sighted audiences in 2011. I had a good opportunity to explain ways in which Torch can help them and work with them.

In early October they ran a symposium for those who have an interest in work with blind and partially sighted people. 350 attended and four organisations (all local) exhibited. They brought in a blind man from Kenya (not a name I recognised) as a keynote speaker. They plan to make this an annual event. I suggested I could find a good speaker on the ‘theology of disability’ topic

Jon picked me up on the motorbike he has rented to get back and forth across Kampala between their residence and the Oasis offices. Still no helmet for me! The international volunteering coordinator for Oasis Uganda joins s at Jon’s house and its bodas all round to run into town for grub. The law of averages is stacking up against us – all these helmetless excursions on two wheels through the manic Kampala traffic. But we’re here and the Lord’s service and we’re cover by prayer: i.e. Lord, if we all survive this then I’ll …, promise’.

DAY 18 – Thursday 25th November – A Long Way Home

Packing is a chore.

Before leaving home for Malawi I had contacted CBM’s [Christian Blind Mission] UK Chief Executive to see what projects they were supporting in Malawi and Uganda. When I looked at their list I noticed ‘Mengo Eye Clinic’. I checked with Jon and Charlotte. Yes, it was just a 100 yards from where they were living. So this morning Charlotte and I went to meet Dr Rose and her team. Charlotte is a former nurse and now a high-flying NHS manager (until she quit to go to Uganda with Jon!) so she was able to save me from looking too much like an idiot.

I was most impressed with Dr Rose and the eye clinic. It was orderly and the atmosphere among the staff was excellent. And to quote her, ‘without CBM this just wouldn’t be here’. CBM continues to support the eye clinic through funding capital projects.

The Mengo clinic is one of just two ‘full service’ eye clinics in the city. As well as regular ophthalmology, they are covering paediatric ophthalmology, optometry and dispensing, and low vision. It was a quiet session because Thursday is a paying patients day. These patients subsidise the ‘£1 a go’ service offered to those who cannot afford eye treatment.

Because it was undergoing some repainting, to Charlotte’s delight we were able to tour the theatre (she was once a scrub nurse in a coronary unit). They do 15 operations a day. Charlotte’s impressed at the productivity. On a normal day the outpatients clinic will see 150 patient altogether. Generally they seem well equipped. The wards are clean and planned to give patients a good measure of privacy. There’s 4 private rooms too.

We met Bernard who runs the low vision unit. He has been at the symposium organised by the Bible Society. He has the challenge of finding solutions to help and rehabilitate people who cannot be ‘fixed’. He refers some to UNAB but observes they have limited resources. His job is so huge, I wonder how we can encourage him. Low vision gadgets are rare. Magnifying glasses are precious. Giant print is almost unheard of.

Between Jon and Charlotte’s rented house and the Eye Clinic is an Occupational Therapy unit. This is in effect a centre for children and adults with learning disabilities. Today they are having their Christmas party (it’s the end of term) and we are all invited to attend. There’s races and pass the parcel. Some small toys of the Christmas cracker sort are a source of great delight and are shown off to us. What a great bunch of happy people. And there’s an English face in the background. Patty has been here for many years but comes from Basingstoke. Amazingly she knows some people I’ll see at the weekend when I’m at a Basingstoke church for my parents diamond wedding anniversary bash. What!

It’s bizarre seeing the red and white fur-trimmed Christmas hats in the brightness of warm sunshine. But soon enough I’ll be into the premature Christmas run-up back home in the cold and dark.

With that it’s a matter of dragging the suitcases to the ‘special hire’ to make my way to Entebbe for the flight to Nairobi. Here there is an excruciating wait of almost 8 hours. I’ve no visa so I cannot escape the dismal terminal building. The Java House coffee and snack bar is infamous with other African travellers who suffer a similar fate. I sneak the plug of my PC power unit into a socket placed for use by cleaners. The overnight flights from Africa tend to leave very late at night so that they arrive in Blight only just before the start of the day.

Final Reflections

I’ve friends who have described their African safaris as the holiday of a lifetime. My safari was different. I saw none of the big five – the only animal I came close to was the goat of limited life expectancy with which I was presented at ‘The Overnight’ in the bush village of Konsere. The landscape of both Malawi and Uganda is beautiful and I have enjoyed travelling through it. But my trail has taken me to meet hundreds of beautiful African people, many of them living with sight loss. A trip of a lifetime? You bet.

I have been off piste – to places where white faces are rare. I have had the immense but agonising privilege of meeting the poorest people on the planet – and to meet them where they live and sometimes in their homes – to shake their hands, to exchange a greeting, sometimes to share a brief conversation. Perhaps I’ve had just a glimpse of what the world looks like from their perspective. And that can be troubling.

As I gaze on serene beauty of the earth on my flight across Uganda and Kenya I reflect on what I have seen - from the peace of a remote mud hut village in the Malawian bush to the manic frenzy of a Kampala street. Extreme poverty is not attractive and the disease that so often goes hand in hand with it is gruesome in its impact on individuals, families and communities. The progress I have witnessed in Malawi over the 9 year interval and the snapshot of a country that’s a step or two further leaves me uncomfortable. Capitalism is bringing progress but it’s very messy on the way – and a lot of people get crushed in the process.

What I have noticed is that however poor, however seeming hopeless the circumstances, a living relationship with Jesus Christ brings dignity and joy to people. We learn from the Bible’s creation narrative that we, all of us, are made in the image of God. We evangelicals are fond of the expression ‘born again’. To be born again into the image of God – to have that imprint restored and revived – makes a difference that shows. It shows all the more without the trappings and masks of our complicated western society. All the difference in the world. Humanity as intended.

The Africans love ‘call and response’ in church. Say ‘Hallelujah’ to the congregation and ‘Amen’ comes straight back in chorus. The other favourite is ‘God is good’ – with the response ‘All the time’ followed by ‘All the time’ – response ‘God is good’.

Hallelujah! Amen.