Senga bay and the elections
So last weekend I was relaxing at the lake with Ellen and Marieke, my arms turned even more tanned..:D we had some nice swims and nice fish.
On the beach there where a lot of malawian/senga bay children, which find us very intresting and wanted to touch our skin, maybe to check if it would come off.. in the end they started begging for money..
We were staying at cool runnings, a nice place, when we entered cool runnings, we saw a blue car which was more than familiar to us. Jan & Trudi, Jack & Henriette and Nel where also staying there! Was nice to see them outside Nkhoma for a change. Besides them there was another group of 4 Dutch students staying. With 2 of them(the other 2 left earlier that day) we talked and enjoyed a improvisted fire on the beach. They are in Malawi for 2.5 weeks and are doing a project, but did not calculate how slow things move in a African country..So a lot of Dutch people, always make you conscious about what you are saying..and that there are people who can understand it.;)
On Tuesday May 19th the elections were taking place here in Malawi. On Wednesday they were counting the votes and with some delay, it was already quite obvious in the beginning that President Bingu W. Mutharika would be re-elected. To great joy of the people who I share my office with. On Thursday the real results were in and, yes the president and the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) is re-elected. There was no violence in Lilongwe, or Blantyre(the major cities) and also not in the rest of the country. It is the first election in Malawi without violence and trouble, or so I am told. I would like to say bad stuff as well, but unfortunatly that is not possible. When we were in Senga there was an accident on the road between Nkhoma and Kamphata(15 km further). There was an ambulance coming from Nathenje Health centre transporting a woman in labour. On the road after Kamphata there was a demonstration for the upcoming elections on the road! The ambulance hit the crowd. 4 people died instantly, and 7 more on the scene, and more are in critical condition in the hospital, or have died already and I haven’t heard. Another ambulance was send from the hospital, transporting nurse students which went in the ambulance without thinking and went to the scene and did all the could. The patient in labour made it out safely.
The crazy thing about this is that the day before, the Friday there also was an accident on the road. Jeltje (a nurse working with the nurse students) was driving and Maralise (our sweet, lovely and caring neighbour and retired nurse from South-Africa) was sitting beside her, they where on their way to Lilongwe. They took over a bicycle and for some reason the man on the bicycle speeded up during that and lost control of his bicycle and went in front of the car.
The man made it out OK and Jeltje’s car not so much. Jeltje and Maralise are both still shocked.
But after Saturday everything could have been so much worse.
OK so that is the bad stuff..but no shooting and other violence intended to disrupt the election or the result. And ofcourse some of the opposistion people are saying the results are false and denying that the president is re-elected. The former president and other opposistion party wishes Bingu all the best and respects the choice of the people of Malawi.
So that is it for now..
This afternoon we are going to try and conquer Nkhoma Mountain, or at least go to the hut and sleep there and go up tomorrow morning to see the sunrise;)
Lots of love, Willeke
