“What is the cause for this lack
of development in Malawi Vanessa?”
A few days ago someone asked me
this question and it has been lingering in my head since. Why is Malawi underdeveloped
after all this time?
Many people will tell you that it
is because of corruption. Or selfish leaders focused on feeding their bellies
and fattening their pockets. This is all true. Yes, corruption is high in
Malawi, that is an undisputable fine. Selfish leaders have indeed graced this country
for so long.
So all the answers I get still
leave me with a single question. Why?
Here is what I think. Lack of Patriotism. Malawi is filled with Malawians who do not
love their country. Some people would ask, what’s there to love? I believe the
fact that one can look you in the eye and ask what is there to love in their
own country shows you how much they value their country.
Most people I have talked to
would have picked a different country to be born in, had they been given a
chance to choose. Because we do not love this country, we do not care how
others treat it.
I remember when I was a child I had
a friend who had a younger sister. They used to fight a lot. However, if an
outsider even tried to lay a hand on my friend’s sister, she would get angry. She
was willing to break friendships just to ensure no one messed with her sister.
That is love. You protect what is yours when you love it.
Not Malawi. We let people give it
a bad name. we let people kill our brothers. We let people steal from our
government. People we have entrusted with our hard earned money. We let people
abuse each other just because one is stronger/richer/more powerful than the
other. We listen to the poor as they tell us about their ordeal, about how they
have been victimized. We stand there and sometimes nod when they say “I’m just
a poor person, my rights don’t count, what else can I do?” We show a little
sympathy for two minutes then we are back to our normal lives. And we claim to
love our country. We stand in corners of walls, or under trees and release our
smelly urea into the ground. And yet we say we love our country. We Malawians
have not yet learnt the intimacy one needs to share with his/her country.
I am an angry young person. I am
angry because so many times I have accepted to be oppressed because I do not
want to cause trouble. I am angry because I learned too soon that “some you win
some you lose,” so I have accepted the losses. So many losses it is now “few
you win most you lose.” I am angry because as a country we take it too much. The
pain, the abuse, the mistreatment. We have accepted it as a norm. so when
someone speaks out against it, we find fault in that. I am angry. Not because I
cannot do anything, but because I will not do anything.
I am angry because when writing
this I had to check my tone, my choice of words, my sentence construction. Not because
I was checking for grammatical errors, no., but because I needed to make sure I
am not saying things that others would rate as inciting violence or any of that
gibberish. Most of all I am angry because this is the world my son will grow up
in and its partly my fault. I am angry.
