Dear Mr President

Your Excellency Sir,

First, a thousand apologies for the silence last Sunday.Your loyal child was not on holiday. Neither had I run out of things to report though in this country that would qualify as a public-health emergency.

No, Sir.

I was in Lilongwe, specifically in Kamphuno constituency, doing what every responsible citizen does when an Honourable Member of Parliament announces that Parliament she will lobby for the Malawi Scorchers to receive a monthly salary.

I went to ask the people who elected her.The women at the market laughed so hard one almost dropped her tomatoes.

Your Excellency, the people looked at me the way a man looks at a person who has just announced that the sky is made of nsima.

Nobody knew anything.  

Not one person had heard the good news.

A woman selling groundnuts simply shook her head and advised me to ask Sylvester Ayuba.

So I called Ayuba.  

His response was long, complicated, and eventually collapsed into three words that have refused to leave my head: “Ouma mitu aja.”

I am still trying to establish whether that was a blessing, a curse, political commentary, or simply the official language of a man who has watched too many promises parade.

I returned home ready to write my sacred Sunday report to you.

Then the electricity went off.

Of course it did.

I had just reached for the charger.

The cable had barely kissed the socket when the electricity looked me straight in the face and asked:

“What do you want to do?”

Did you ask us before doing what you want to do?

I looked at it and it looked at me.

Then poof!  it disappeared.Just like that.

Darkness with an attitude and a sense of timing that would make a comedian jealous.

Mr President, electricity in Malawi no longer knocks before entering.

It simply arrives, sits in your house longer than an unwanted relative at a funeral, and leaves whenever it pleases, usually at the precise moment you need it most. 

Generators cough in the distance like old men who have seen too much and no longer bother to hide their contempt.

Children do homework by phone torch.The fridge becomes a cupboard with delusions of grandeur.

And citizens have become experts at calculating how many hours of power remain before the next betrayal.It is no longer a power problem, Sir.  

It is national culture.  

Did Jean tell you about the NOCMA money?

Yes, Jean Mathanga. 

That K700 million or US$403,605, depending on which document one is reading and how the numbers are feeling that particular morning which somehow travelled to a Bank of America account that had nothing to do with Mozhandling.

There was an email.  There was a Patricia Maria.  There were bank details.  There was a payment.  And then, apparently, there was an awakening.

NOCMA initially described the matter as fraud. Then they came again to say they paid. Then police action against two senior officials. The U-turn was so sharp, Sir, that it nearly needed its own traffic-police escort and a public-address system announcing “Change of direction ahead.”

Now, Mr President, Patricia Maria sounds like a sophisticated international businesswoman.

But in the true spirit of Malawian storytelling, allow me to re-introduce her.

She is simply a lady from Mtandire who runs a mobile money shop by the depot, yet somehow managed to convince the entire NOCMA machinery that she was the legitimate face of a Mozambican fuel-handling company.

One email.One forged letter. And poof the money was gone, faster than free maize at a campaign rally.

Sir, if a lady from Mtandire can empty our fuel coffers with a few keystrokes, then perhaps we should stop calling it “cyber fraud” and start calling it “home-grown innovation.”

At this rate, Your Excellency, perhaps the next thing we will need to outsource is common sense.

Oh that reminds me Sir, Did you miss a call from Enoch Chihana this yesterday?

If the number looked familiar and the voice carried the weight of family business, it may have been about Yeremiah Chihana.

They are related, of course.  You know Malawian relations, Your Excellency. We are a country where everybody is related to somebody, and some people are only one WhatsApp message away from discovering that they are cousins, uncles, or strategic political assets.

This Chihana has been suspended again.  

Yes, again.

Blantyre Water Board has sent him home pending an inquiry.

The official memorandum, as usual, knows how to say something without actually saying anything, a rare talent usually reserved for press statements and budget speeches.

Meanwhile, water remains a sensitive subject in Blantyre, almost as sensitive as fuel in Lilongwe, and almost as reliable as electricity everywhere else.

In this country, the basic necessities have developed personality disorders.

Your Excellency Just visit Chichiri, Bangwe, Manase, Chemusa or Nancholi and ask the residents about water.

The taps are dry. Completely dry. So dry that if you turned one on, even a mosquito would probably laugh.

Meanwhile, the people with the big bellies and their fat tails wagging are busy fighting at Blantyre Water Board.

Perhaps they have drunk too much.

Water, of course.

Your Excellency, we hope the Big Kahuna from Area 30 has already briefed you about the police officer captured on video allegedly collecting MK20,000 from a minibus driver.

The officer was reportedly enforcing the law on insurance.  At least something is working: the roadside economy.

Malawians have now been given a practical lesson in insurance compliance:  Carry your insurance documents or the mukhito police will demand a MK20,000.00.

Some citizens are probably downloading the video as a training manual. We may finally have discovered a new form of civic education.Forget community policing. Welcome to community collections efficient, cash-based, and entirely free of bureaucratic delays.

Your Excellency, has Justin Saidi brought you a letter from a ruler, Sir?

If not, kindly ask him to check his desk.

The letter comes from Vincent Wandale, the undisputed ruler of the Imperial Office of the African Traditionalist Government of the Worldwide Holy Mbamiran Empire Including Self-Governing Dominions.

Now that is a title.  By the time you finish saying it, the next financial year has already begun and the budget speech is being drafted.

And Wandale was not exactly asking for funding.  He was ordering it.Please consider funding him, Your Excellency.

After all, the man is building an empire. While ordinary Malawians are busy fighting over constituency development projects that arrive late, incomplete, or not at all, Wandale is thinking much bigger.

Why build in a constituency when you can build in an empire?One must admire the ambition. And, above all, the paperwork.

Empires, Sir, apparently require stationery letterheads, seals, and the quiet confidence that somewhere, someone will take them seriously.

Now, Your Excellency, Salima Sugar has won the Best Agroprocessing Exhibitor award at the International Agriculture Fair.

Congratulations.  

Your Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Roza Mbilizi, presented the award with a smile bright enough to light a blackout ironically useful in the circumstances.

But, Sir, there is a small problem.

Those of us in Ntopwa and Ngwenya have a question: Which sugar were they exhibiting?

We walk into shops. We inspect shelves. We check supermarkets. We look behind the bread, under the cooking oil, and even in the spaces where hope used to sit.

Nothing.

Illovo sugar is sitting there comfortably, enjoying the sunlight and the occasional customer. But Salima Sugar?Perhaps it is a very exclusive sugar.

Maybe you need a government vehicle, an official invitation, or a photographic memory of an agricultural fair to locate it.

Perhaps the sugar exists only at exhibitions, where it is presented with certificates, photographed by important people, and then quietly returned to wherever award-winning sugar goes when the cameras leave.

Sir, perhaps we have just found a national product that performs better in speeches than on shelves.

Mr President, perhaps nobody at the Ministry of Health has told you what oncologists in public hospitals are saying.

There are concerns about medicines whose quality and dosage are putting patients at risk.Some batches are reportedly carrying far more active ingredients than they should.

Others are reaching patients after their expiry dates are already dangerously close or, worse, have passed.

Sir, this is not the sort of thing we should be discussing with jokes.  

People are dying.

And when a person goes to hospital hoping to be saved by medicine, the medicine should not become another threat.

While we are discussing machines that keep people alive, perhaps somebody at the Ministry of health can also tell you something else.

How much would it cost to put dialysis machines in every district hospital in Malawi?

Give us the figure.  

Malawians are already experts at comparing numbers.  

One foreign trip.

One official vehicle. 

One conference.  

One delegation.

Lets save innocent lives your Excellency. 

And then, Sir, came another piece of history.

News reached me that your predecessor, Wakumalembo, scored six points at MSCE and still proceeded to Chancellor College to study theology.

I immediately felt sorry for the selection panel.  

How can they be so cruel? 

Imagine sitting around a table with the results in front of you. Six points. Then somebody says, with the calm of a man who has already decided the outcome

“Gentlemen, I think we have found our theologian.”

Unfairness, Your Excellency, sometimes wears an academic gown, carries a Bible, and walks confidently into the lecture theatre as if the universe itself had arranged the seating plan.

I know, Sir.

You are tired.

I can almost hear you scrolling down, or perhaps just staring at the ceiling, hoping the electricity will return before you reach the next paragraph.

Although, I hear things are different on your side, Sir. You don’t have blackouts there.

Lucky you.

So let me make this the last item.

Did you see the green sleeping gown that a Malawian wore at an international event?

If not, please ask the First Lady. She was rather busy this week, but perhaps she has an idea.

I myself did not see it either.

But Malawians are talking about it.

The Scorchers failed to bring the trophy home, but they brought us pride. And this green sleeping gown?It is also coming home, Your Excellency whether we like it or not. 

I wish I could have written more, Your Excellency, but the way the electricity is looking at me, I fear it may decide to go off again before I can finish the next sentence.

So, that’s all, Your Excellency.

Until next Sunday assuming there will be electricity by then

Byee