May 30
Every now and then you meet travellers making their way through Africa who have been inexplicably advised not to take antimalarial medications by their all knowing Western doctors. Their response to your amazement at this decision is usually something along the lines of ‘I’ll just treat it if I get it.’
Okay, so at Queen’s we see the little local kids who die in their dozens every day without access to good medications or medical care, mosquito nets or repellents, right? And as a tourist you’re going to have ready access to medical care, and if not you’ll have some treatment on hand that you can take in the interim, true? Plus, how many travellers do you really hear of who actually get malaria, it’s mostly expats, isn’t it?
All reasonable points, but given the similar lack of immunity between the average African child and an adult tourist, the often remote nature of travellers and swiftness of malaria, along with the low proportion of travellers compared to people living here, none of these arguments really stack up. And once you’ve seen the clinical effectiveness and swiftness with which this little parasite can do its thing, you quickly realise that this reasoning is nothing short of madness… something that one of our good Australian friends here recently found out.
Despite being in the centre of the biggest city in the country, where all medical personnel are acutely aware of malaria and have ready access to very good treatments, he was hospitalised within hours of his first few fevers. Two days later, even with all the appropriate medicines in his system, they were talking about airlifts down to South Africa for more aggressive supportive care. Luckily for him, he remained in Malawi, and within a few days was even able to get home, but promptly flew back to Australia for follow up treatment of complications that had arisen. Not exactly what he bargained for only being here for a short stay and in a city the whole time, thus thinking that antimalarials would be a redundant idea. Think again, I guess.
30/5/08
3/5/08
May 3 - Mulanje Misguided
May 3
As much as we have formed somewhat of a love affair with the majestic Mount Mulanje, our favorite weekend getaway, it is not a place without its own problems.
This enormous massif was once home to vast numbers of an endemic tree called, rather unsurprisingly, Mulanje cedar. Unique in its ability of being not only a firm and consistent grain of wood, but also impervious to the destructive nature of termites, water and other little nasties, making it just about the best building material going around. Houses, furniture, boats, souvenirs, you name it, Mulanje cedar is perfect for it. So as you can imagine, the logging industry that is generated by such a sturdy timber is nothing short of diabolical for these trees. They are their own downfall, so to speak. It is completely commonplace to see barefoot Africans, muscles rippling, as they lug up to 70 kilogram planks of the stuff down the precipitous mountainside (it’s sold per kilogram at the bottom – a log this big fetching a rather appealing 700 kwacha for the transporter). Interestingly, it’s the Department of Forestry that polices the illegal logging, yet these guys are so inept and corrupt that not only do they completely ignore all illegal activity, but they’re actually the ones buying the bloody stuff to sell on to manufacturers to make a quick buck!
Last year the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Forestries made a deal to build 40 new large fishing boats from Mulanje cedar in order to bolster the resource use of Lake Malawi. Not only did this deal employ dozens of new loggers who simply disregarded their quotas and took down approximately ten times the amount licensed by the government, but the amount of legally cut wood that actually got to the dockyards allowed only 4 boats to be built in the 12 month period! And if that’s not enough of an insult to the environmentalists trying to preserve the cedar forests, the government is currently in the process of developing another extended contract between the two departments so they can get the full number of boats built. Fantastic, isn’t it?
Added to this, back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when the Brits were plundering their way through Africa and ‘benevolently’ converting everyone to Christianity, they decided that Mulanje would benefit from planting vast pine plantations. This was seen as fast growing wood that is reasonable for building, thereby alleviating the local reliance on cedar. What they forgot to factor in is that pine has a rather cancerous ability to take over everything, blocking out so much sunlight with its canopied spread, that it renders the soil infertile for other plants and trees to grow. So since the Brits took themselves back to their northern isle in the 60’s, everyone has been trying desperately to clear these pine forests before they completely destroy the rest of the ecology on the massif.
Just wait until the big businesses finally sink their rapacious claws in and the government finally acquiesces to mining the bauxite that sits under one third of the entire plateau… goodbye mountain!
As much as we have formed somewhat of a love affair with the majestic Mount Mulanje, our favorite weekend getaway, it is not a place without its own problems.
This enormous massif was once home to vast numbers of an endemic tree called, rather unsurprisingly, Mulanje cedar. Unique in its ability of being not only a firm and consistent grain of wood, but also impervious to the destructive nature of termites, water and other little nasties, making it just about the best building material going around. Houses, furniture, boats, souvenirs, you name it, Mulanje cedar is perfect for it. So as you can imagine, the logging industry that is generated by such a sturdy timber is nothing short of diabolical for these trees. They are their own downfall, so to speak. It is completely commonplace to see barefoot Africans, muscles rippling, as they lug up to 70 kilogram planks of the stuff down the precipitous mountainside (it’s sold per kilogram at the bottom – a log this big fetching a rather appealing 700 kwacha for the transporter). Interestingly, it’s the Department of Forestry that polices the illegal logging, yet these guys are so inept and corrupt that not only do they completely ignore all illegal activity, but they’re actually the ones buying the bloody stuff to sell on to manufacturers to make a quick buck!
Last year the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Forestries made a deal to build 40 new large fishing boats from Mulanje cedar in order to bolster the resource use of Lake Malawi. Not only did this deal employ dozens of new loggers who simply disregarded their quotas and took down approximately ten times the amount licensed by the government, but the amount of legally cut wood that actually got to the dockyards allowed only 4 boats to be built in the 12 month period! And if that’s not enough of an insult to the environmentalists trying to preserve the cedar forests, the government is currently in the process of developing another extended contract between the two departments so they can get the full number of boats built. Fantastic, isn’t it?
Added to this, back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when the Brits were plundering their way through Africa and ‘benevolently’ converting everyone to Christianity, they decided that Mulanje would benefit from planting vast pine plantations. This was seen as fast growing wood that is reasonable for building, thereby alleviating the local reliance on cedar. What they forgot to factor in is that pine has a rather cancerous ability to take over everything, blocking out so much sunlight with its canopied spread, that it renders the soil infertile for other plants and trees to grow. So since the Brits took themselves back to their northern isle in the 60’s, everyone has been trying desperately to clear these pine forests before they completely destroy the rest of the ecology on the massif.
Just wait until the big businesses finally sink their rapacious claws in and the government finally acquiesces to mining the bauxite that sits under one third of the entire plateau… goodbye mountain!
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