Mara Gordon's Blog

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Almost as daunting as the violence and looting is the fact that the police and army in Malawi seem to be specifically targeting, arresting, and attacking journalists. As of now, three radio stations have been shut down, and taking any video footage of the protests is cause for arrest. Twitter accounts of what’s actually happening seem to be one of the more reliable sources of information.

Some updated information about what’s going on, from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Police arrested a contributor to Nyasa Times, a U.K.-based online news site critical of the government, journalist Collins Mtika, today as he covered protests in the northern city of Mzuzu, according to local journalists. Mtika remains held without charge on anti-government accusations. Vitima Ndovi, a freelance journalist in the capital, Lilongwe, was also arrested today and remains in custody. Police assaulted and briefly detained reporter Kingsely Jassi of private media group Blantyre Newspaper Limited after he took photos of officers beating a man, according to Independent Nation reporter Kondwani Munthali.

In response to the unrest, today the state-run Malawi Communications Regulations Authority (MACRA) switched off the signals private broadcasters Joy Radio, Capital Radio, and MIJ FM, for about four hours, Joy lawyer Ralph Kasambara told CPJ.

I left Malawi over two weeks ago and am back in the United States, but I’ve been following the news of unrest there since it erupted across the country yesterday.

From the BBC:

The army has been deployed in three Malawian cities on a second day of anti-government protests in which at least 10 people have been killed.

President Bingu wa Mutharika has vowed to “use any measure I can think of” to quell the demonstrations. Protesters accuse him of plunging Malawi into its worst economic crisis since independence …

At least eight people were killed on Wednesday in Mzuzu, some 300km (185 miles) north of Lilongwe, hospital officials said.

A health ministry official has told Reuters news agency that 18 people have died over the two days. Lorry-loads of soldiers were patrolling central Lilongwe, clearing barricades set up by protesters.

I won’t comment yet, since it’s so hard to get a sense of what things are like on the ground, but most friends I talk to say they feel safe staying in their homes. I hope this ends well.

I’m getting ready to leave Malawi in a few short weeks. My fellowship is ending, and I’ll be starting medical school in August. Preparing to leave, of course, is always bittersweet — I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, saying goodbyes, wrapping up odds and ends, and in the course of things, diving into macroeconomic issues that had never even crossed my mind in America.

The reason I’m getting this econ crash course is that two big logistical pieces of my move back to the US — my money, and my stuff — are dependent on foreign currency. And foreign currency is something Malawi doesn’t have a whole lot of.

My stipend is paid into a local bank account, in the local currency, kwacha. I have no debit card, very limited international banking capabilities, and no access to other currencies. That means all of my transactions take place in cash, in kwacha, and in Malawi. While my extravagant lifestyle means that I’ve saved very little of my wait-I-have-a-college-degree-why-am-I-earning-below-the-poverty-level stipend, I will have a bit left over at the end that I’d like to be able to access in my debt-ridden, graduate student future.

The problem is, Malawi has no dollars. I can’t just withdraw the cash (in kwacha) and transfer it to dollars. It’s beyond a bad exchange rate — there literally is no other currency available!

Kwacha kwacha bills yo

The forex shortages have been a chronic problem in my short year in Malawi. Despite conversations with several economists, nobody I’ve talked to seems to truly understand the source of the problem. They blame bad global prices for Malawi’s primary export, tobacco, and an essentially manufacturing-free economy that relies too heavily on imported goods. They blame an overvalued kwacha and a fixed exchange rate. They blame the president’s prolific foreign travel and foreign spending. They blame recent or forthcoming cuts in foreign aid, due to problems ranging from the expulsion of England’s ambassador to ongoing thefts of donated malaria drugs.

Since I’m repatriating to my country of origin, I’m allowed to transfer my kwacha to dollars and get it sent to my American account. But the process is not without its hurdles. I need letters from my employer, letters from the Malawi Revenue Authority, letters from the police saying I haven’t been involved in any criminal activities, copies of my immigration forms and work permit, itemized lists of what I’ve purchased in Malawi and am taking to the United States, and a signed letter that I’m not a married woman moving abroad while my husband remains in Malawi. They’re basically making it as hard as possible to turn my kwacha into dollars.

We’re also in the middle of another countrywide fuel shortage, which both people I know and the newspapers largely blame on the forex shortages. The ongoing shortages haven’t really been more than a nuisance for me, up to this point, and I’m lucky. But suddenly, as I get ready to flee the country, the absence of fuel is more about missing flights and being unable to finish important errands, and less about being bummed I can’t drive across town to get my Ethiopian food fix.

It’s been humbling to realize how lucky I am to have access to a more global economy. On several occasions, I’ve used my credit card to pay for transactions — including the completion of an online accounting degree — for friends here who can’t get one. I bought my car from a German citizen using Paypal; I’m selling it to an Italian via international bank transfer. I am about to finance my education with student loans from the US government. And while assembling proof that I am indeed not a married woman moving abroad while my husband remains in Malawi is a little silly, my current financial challenges pale in comparison to what billions of people worldwide have to go through. I am extremely fortunate that I have the safety net of access to credit, insured bank accounts that hold money in a stable currency, and my family waiting for me back in the United States.

In a conversation over some home-made lemon poppyseed ice cream (thank goodness for friends in Lilongwe with ice cream makers!) about yesterday’s blog post, I did a little rethinking of my initial snark-filled response to Blue Marble Dreams and their ice cream shop in Rwanda.

I’m not a fan of the grandiose rhetoric. (“The ice cream will have the power to reconcile people with life by providing privileged moments when life reminds them that it is also sweet.”) But I do get excited about exploring non-profit or “won’t-see-profit-for-a-long-time” investment in for-profit models: cutting losses and taking financial risks to establish companies that will, one day, make money on their own.

Not being much of a finance expert, I call it “non-profit venture capital.” Rather than setting up NGOs that tell people how to live their lives or give them stuff that they’re not sure they actually need, the non-profit venture capital model is just like investors looking to fund start-ups — only they shouldn’t expect to see returns as quickly or as smoothly as you might in a more developed economy.

There are some interesting examples of this kind of “aid” that are gaining traction in Africa. D.Light is one, a company that sells affordable solar-powered lamps. They got most of their start-up capital from the Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund with a socially conscious mission. That mission means D.Light (and their funders) are willing to bear the costs associated with selling a product to people in rural India or Uganda — but ultimately the company expects that product to turn a profit.  

Another interesting example is Edesia, a non-profit in Tanzania that is setting up a factory to manufacture Plumpy’nut, the miracle peanut butter paste that rapidly treats kids for severe acute malnutrition. I don’t know if Edesia’s plans include eventual aid independence — it is currently funded by several private and public donors, as opposed to investors — but it is exciting to see a “sustainable” project that looks more like a functional business and less like charity.

So is Blue Marble Dreams just a slightly more delicious version of of this kind of “non-profit venture capital?” Am I guilty of an international development sin I often complain about, Westerners who wax poetic about “what Africa really needs” without pausing to consider all the frivolous, pleasurable things I take for granted?

Or is it really just one step removed from my fictional 501(c)3 that addresses the plight of poor expatriate Americans who can’t find the array of frozen goodies in Africa that they’re used to? (My next NGO idea is a non-profit that distributes sparkling wine. Millenium Development Goal #16: universal access to Andre!)

As all my readers out there ponder these deep questions, just imagine you’re eating this:

Frozen desserts are the best.

If you know me, you know I love me some ice cream — be it Pinkberry, $7-a-cup gelato, grocery store quarts or fancy pants flavors like salted caramel. In Malawi, one of my favorite topics for lame expat whining is, of course, the lack of quality ice cream. The soft-serve at Debonairs, a medicore South African pizza chain, just doesn’t cut it.

In my more cynical moments, I’ve joked that I have the perfect idea for an NGO: one that fights for equitable access to artisanal frozen desserts all around the world. Ice cream brings people joy, happiness, and a little extra junk in the trunk. And sometimes it seems like anyone with $100 and the stamina to create a 501(c)3 has their own unique NGO idea. So shouldn’t we band together, come up with a good acronym, and fight for the most precious of human rights: sour froyo with mango and kiwi?

Well, apparently the folks over at Blue Marble Ice Cream think so. In my internet procrastinations, I came across Blue Marble Dreams, a non-profit initiative run by the Brooklyn ice cream shop.

“Blue Marble Dreams, the non-profit venture of Blue Marble Ice Cream, explores ice cream’s potential to inspire joy and spur economic growth. Through out pilot initiative, Sweet Dreams, we will work in partnership with a group of dynamic women in Butare, Rwanda, to create their country’s first-ever local ice cream shop.”

The whole thing strikes me as a tad patronizing, but then again, I would kill for some good mint chocolate chip in Lilongwe. What do you think? Americans indulging their egos (and sweet tooths — sweet teeth)? Or a project with the potential to spur sustainable development, and maybe some amazing Rocky Road?

The other day, I was listening to my favorite tedious-work-pick-me-up podcast, Savage Love. Dan Savage is a hilarious relationship advice columnist, known for the “It Gets Better” campaign and his no-holds-barred relationship wisdom. So as I wrestled with a spreadsheet of information about pregnant women infected with HIV, I was interested to hear Dan, in episode 240, weigh in on the latest HIV news, results from a groundbreaking study in the HIV Prevention Trials Network.

The study, HPTN 052, shows that HIV treatment works as an extremely effective tool for HIV prevention. Kamuzu Central Hospital, the tertiary hospital in Lilongwe, was one of 13 study sites in Africa, and the results have pretty stunning implications: putting HIV positive people on treatment immediately after they are infected reduces the risk that they’ll transmit the virus by 96%. This means that the millions donors spend on HIV medication for people in Africa isn’t simply to make life better for those infected, although that of course is a worthy goal in and of itself — those drugs actually help prevent new infections.

Dan Savage’s discussion about the news was especially interesting to me because I know so little about how HIV is managed — and perceived — in the United States. While the discussion in Malawi is largely about mobilizing donor resources and the logistics of changing national guidelines, Dan talked more about the ethics of universal HIV testing in the US — in Malawi, all pregnant women are tested unless they specifically opt-out — and whether or not the results might encourage less safe sex. In the US, the discussion seems to be about how this might change individual rights and responsibilities. In Malawi, it’s, “How can we actually pay for it?”

The podcast did alert me to one sobering fact about the way HIV is managed in the United States compared to Malawi. According to Dan’s guest, Seattle physician Vy Chu, current guidelines recommend that American HIV patients start treatment when their CD4 cell count reaches as low as 500 per cubic millimeter of blood — a measure of how much the virus has destroyed a patient’s immune cells. For people with normal immune systems, CD4 cell count usually ranges between 500 and 1500 per cubic millimeter.

In Malawi, the national guideline mandates that the point at which patients start HIV medication is a CD4 cell count of 200 per cubic milimeter or below. That’s if they’re lucky enough to show up to a health center that can send their blood samples to a lab for testing. Not only are Malawian patients exponentially sicker than Americans by the time they qualify for free ARVs, the HPTN 052 results show that they’re also more infectious. What a striking inequality, how much more HIV-positive Malawians have to suffer before they are treated.

Quick update: Check out this article in the New York Times about some of the ethical issues raised in the United States by the “treatment as prevention” model.

An excerpt: “This is good news for the infected and their lovers. But it is a moral dilemma for doctors whose infected patients do not want to start taking drugs immediately, usually because they do not yet feel sick and have heard exaggerated rumors about side effects.” Thanks to global health superstar Katie for the suggestion!

From the New York Times:

“The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people …

Over the past decade, foreign aid to pay for contraceptives — $238 million in 2009 — has barely budged, according to United Nations estimates. The United States has long been the biggest donor, but the budget compromise in Congress last month cut international family planning programs by 5 percent.

“The need has grown, but the availability of family planning services has not,” said Rachel Nugent, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington, a research group.”

This is an issue that goes beyond individual women and their families, although they of course are at its core. This is an issue that affects the whole world.