Kamuzu's health care policy was among the 4 Major Development Goals(MDGs)Malawi had. Good health, Good shelter, Good food, and Good clothing. His slogan was "riches are in the soil" to encourage farming. He built corporations to do most commercial farming for exporting. He built corporations to build commercial buildings that still make our cities pride. These can't be built by individuals and still be an attraction to the city. He built a corporation to build good houses for employees and individual had options to purchase some. The houses are still around many and still standing strong and beautiful over the recent built. Most of the corporations have been sold off to people who have torn them apart.
Probably the foreigners when they came used to say these Africans why should they have a better life than us? Filled with jealous at our way of life they broke so much. I hate to say even the health sector.
Should we not have free medication if we can afford it? Of course, Americans pay so much for their health which kills them in the end. It's not wise to make money on somebody's life. You are going to watch Bill Gates die before you just because he has lost documentation to indicate he is the monies. How he ends up in a situation like that? No computer can predict. For chance happens to all whether rich or poor, the Preacher says. So I guess when the rich who could afford to leave America for what they thought an honorable looked at us thought we need to pay for medication so we can be rich like them. We should keep money in banks to feel rich. Mmmh, riches are still in the soil the bank is the krawl and the granary. How good it feels to sit on your verandah sipping a four o'clock chombe tea which your wife brews just right, milk and everything including stork margarine and blue ribbon bread on a white tray.
So your child comes and says, dad I need a new shoe. And Mtheto and Willie are around at the time. I say with pride, why don't you and Willie get one of the kids in the krawl for sell. Buy yourself your volleyball kit and studio gear you asked for the other day. Yes, the one with black and white sparkles. The little clever one. Yea, that one. Buy her some new Bata shoes as well.
Isn't that a life!
When I see the health disease the Americans have, how fast it spreads to our lands, I really need to say a word.
Obama having set foot on this continent and learned from his relatives the values and priorities we have. The American way looks ugly. Not in the bling, but in the quality of life.
My quality is filled with happiness with family joys and no lack. The American life sounds so much loneliness and alot of worries about bills. Medical bills, telephone bills, health bills, cable bills, gas bills, life insurance, this insurance, that insurance, credit bills, so on and so forth which have just accumulated with too much marketing telemarketing frauds unsettling peoples comforts and joys to buy that which they don't need into their homes and enough fear to ensure they pay monthly insurance premium for fear it might break when it just rots in a dusty corner. Why? The price was high so it should last as long as possible. Mmmh.
If Kamuzu said we don't need television, he said just right! We don't need American TV. We don't even live in Iraq to know what worries Americans in Iraq. We can best use it to relearn our cultural values. Yea, by American standards most of our cultures are evil. I have seen a vast vacuum of the goodies only our culture can give. I have seen in so many different ways God filling the vacuums of our culture. I have seen many stumble into something our culture gives and help build their lives. The problem is its not formalized. We have men of God who have known our culture and known the word of God. They can screen through our cultural activities, with the word of God. They have done this for many years, I would love they also touched on the issues of marriage.
Though we have learned different values of sexual purity there is still a gap to bridge us into marriage. We get to the point of readiness but don't know what to do. The result is again temptation unwanted pregnancies abortions and with a lot of temptation even become unfaithful. Why? We don't know how to get married. It seems parents expect us to already know because they have always known but we don't. Maybe they expect us to just stumble into it. Yeah, we will but still with fear whether we have done the right thing. Of this fear, it is easier for those who have not been taught the Christian purity values though many still have been taught faithfulness and abstainance.
We need to be bridged into marriage. It is the safest place for grown up youth to be in. We end up having problems in modern marriages, due to the neglect of a simple value. Respect for the husband. A little disrespect really comes in hard for the husband. With all the gender equality stuff, its like a weapon wedged against the husbands. You girls you should know we love you and protect you delicately. We see how vulnurable you are naturally that's what makes us want us to shield you from anything harmful (don't feel over-protected for whatever we see drives us to do so).
When you look at gender violence and think empowering women is the solution, sometimes you make them really disrespect us and that pain and provocation is too much. It takes great patience not to react violently. This is what breaks many marriages.
The same disrespect in the homes, now drives the old men to seek for even younger girls who should really be their children's wives. They become a very welcome prey having been starved by their wives (female power they call it) and their wives gone to bridal showers advising the same young brides who might have served their husbands when they were at anothers bridal shower or kitchen party or something, when they should have been spending this time with their husbands.
Sunday afternoons are too long to be spent alone at home. This time is to spent with family after a hard working week and restful Saturday.
Why bridal showers which involve only women? Why not something that can involve the husbands and the young men? Don't young men need to get advice also? Bachelors party? If done together, it might be a way the husbands to spend time together with their wives get to know each other better as they express themselves in an environment that allows to talk about marriage issues.
Then marriages would be better arguments less with the wife and the husband freely expressing themselves, issues of disrespect forgotten for there is mutual love coming from really understanding each other.
Their young boys and girls would then feel at peace to live in their homes instead of friends homes which have similar problems and end up in places where girls meet starving husbands and the boys are too pure for girls and the thought too delightful, and the result is abortions.
In the meanwhile women are just out feeding on female power and advising their husbands muses. What about the boys? Really struggling with temptation to resist these cute young virgins when they should be in marriage with the fiancee, they should have spent quality time with this Sunday afternoon but is out with this cash machine who also gives her more goodies than her pure boy. The boys end up yielding to this same temptation when the marriage which should have been a home, ends up a thorny nest with disrespect from their wives and the afternoon is too long.
What should we do with this tragedy?
Men, call you boys mobile. Take them to the place of temptation let them know why their girls are disrespectful and absent. It will equip your boys to wade the environment better and keep the girls home and maybe turn the wives heart back to their marriages and save the day.