Skip to main content

The Royal Wedding- from an African development point of view Part 1 1/4

Disclaimer: this is a subjective opinion and not a political statement

...I was sidetracked at 16, when news of Diana, by then LADY Diana hit Malawi. I was in a Catholic boarding school for girls at the time. We heard all the conspiracy stories as we counted the number of mangos in in the tree or was it during Prep time?...I believed some of them…even heard that some of her jewels had been donated to our school through a charity organisation. I pictured seeing my first royal jewels, I imagined huge orbs draped in gold...

I got boils around this stage (don’t be disgusted, it’s part of the story) and went home to my mother to recover. My mother lived in a small town, Kasungu but wouldn’t you know it. A family in my neighbourhood had the VHS of Lady Diana’s funeral. I watched the tape with that family’s kids (they were watching it for the umpteenth time) and wept as Elton John sang the ‘Billy Jean’ song re-written for Lady Diana. In my teen Christian mind I was puzzled and afraid as I read about the circumstances of her and her boyfriend’s deaths. I was happy I wasn’t Anglican, otherwise I would have been doubly confused, but then again, I should have been out in the trees swinging from limb to limb eating mangoes.

I try now to search my mind for other information I have gathered over the years that has something to do with the royals of the UK…a picture of Princess Euginee learning to swim with mittens on her hands ‘to prevent her from scratching herself’ was it? I’m not sure anymore…a picture of a balding Prince Edward… something about Princess Fergie starting a cartoon show (was it?)…some divorces…the death of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret…..

…..and suddenly, Friday 29 April 2011, me, housebound and the telly ontuned to SABC 3... I think that was interesting in itself, for had I been in Malawi at that precise moment, chances are I would not have been tuned to a live broadcast, not because it’s not accessible there, but it would not have been accessible to ME…now that I’m grown, I AM expected to swing from limb to limb don’t you know….the limbs of a non-student-full-time-employed-junior-can’t-get-a-day-off-randomly-to-ruminate-before-a-tv kind of existence.

Comments

Thandi Soko said…
'mangoes' for 'mangos', 'conspiracy theories' for 'conspiracy stories'...tsk tsk..note to self: re-read the entire dictionary....

Popular posts from this blog

Sweet, sweet Fanta Diallo

The story is told that Alpha Blondy (born Seydou Kone in 1953, Cote d'Ivoire) composed the song "sweet Fanta Diallo" to thank the mysterious nurse who had attended faithfully to his mental health needs as a psychiatric patient in an Ivorian hospital. Well after he was well again, he returned to the hospital to thank Fanta Diallo. No one knew of her or even remembered a nurse named Fanta Diallo as ever having worked there. He left and believing she might have been an angel set about composing the song to thank her anyway. I have had my own Fanta Diallos, many I can't remember; and for those whose composition is not etherial; in case you ever come across this blog, thank you one and all! Here are some my brain can recall: 1. I was a crawling baby when I had wandered on all fours outside of our yard. All my mother remembers from the incident is a very irate man bringing me home. He had found me teetering on a bridge unknowingly facing, as it were, death, a short d

Is it true that only 2 percent of Malawians have Electricity

Is the bee in my bonnet there because the boy who harnessed the wind had his own story written by someone from the country where people know everything? Or is it my my need to verify facts that bothers me? Either way, I hereby vow that if any story needs to be written about my own life, I have enough ink to write it on my own, with my own life experiences and be judged on my own condescending habits towards reality if there shall be any. 'A society which is unable to portray itself according to its own self understanding will inevitably suffer misinterpretation by others (Mugambi). I wonder why a blog and a book for my brother so bright, has to be written/taken over by someone else. Really, is it about the funding? then Nyasa times is right in the title of one of it's news stories, 'Africa politically independent, Economically Colonised'. From this vantage point, indeed, many of us suppose it's wonderful when foreign influences do things on our behalf but it'

Obstacle or Opportunity: the case of the online writings of missionaries and aid workers in Lilongwe

The Back Story There is a "why AID/charity?" question that is attached more frequently than ever to aid and charity directed at Africa and Africans nowadays.  1 Trillion US Dollars have been spent in direct, bilateral and multilateral aid (grants, donations, soft loans etc.) over the years and more is in the works (see link under the second bullet point in the section below).  Yet poverty and life-threatening challenges persist.  Writers like Easterly critique the prevalent aid models in use today...and so do others including Zambian-born Havard graduate Dambisa Moyo in her book Dead Aid. The "why AID/charity?" question resonates with me and has done so since I went to a College in Lilongwe that promoted charity-based approaches to anything from tuition fee support, college trips, village interventions etc. Perhaps I am among the priviledged in Malawi because it was the first time for me to see a structure so comprehensively interwoven with donations.  I wa