Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [82]
Mum drives the long way around to Malawi, through Zambia, in the Land Rover, with the dogs, the cats, and all our worldly goods. Oscar falls out of the Land Rover somewhere near the Kafue River and is never seen again even though Mum spends two days walking along the river calling for him. At last she gives a schoolteacher in a nearby village some money and says, “If you find my dog, will you look after him for me?”
“He probably bought beer with the money,” says Dad afterward.
“You never know.”
“You should know by now.”
Malawi was formerly the Nyasaland Protectorate. When we arrive in the country in 1982, it is being run by a lilliputian dictator, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. He is shrunken and very old, although no one is supposed to know exactly how old. His birthday is an official state secret but it is generally agreed that he may have been born as early as 1898 or as late as 1906. Some careless people joke, behind their hands, in quick nervous whispers, that Kamuzu Banda is actually dead. That his body is battery-run by remote control. After all, they point out, he does little in the way of official state business anymore, except wave a zebra-tail fly whisk from the steps leading up to his private jet or personal helicopter.
But most people are careful to keep their mouths shut. Mum says, “Never say anything derogatory about the government or the President.”
“What if we’re alone?”
Mum sighs, as if the dense population of Malawi is pressing air out of her lungs. “We’re never alone here.”
People who disagree with His Excellency, the President for Life and “Chief of Chiefs,” are frequently found to be the victims of car crashes (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or dead in their beds of heart attacks (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets); or the recipients of some not-quite-fresh seafood (their bodies mysteriously riddled with bullets).
Revolts by H.B.M. Chipembere and Yatuta Chisiza are crushed in 1965 and 1967. Chipembere dies in exile in the United States.
Dick Matenje (Banda’s likely successor) dies under mysterious circumstances in 1983.
Orton and Vera Chirwa are imprisoned for life for protesting against some of Banda’s policies. Orton is released, but later kidnapped in Zambia.
Dr. Attati Mpakati, leader of the Socialist League of Malawi, is killed by a letter bomb in 1983 in Zimbabwe.
Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda is not only Life President. He is also the Minister of External Affairs, the Minister of Work and Supplies, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Agriculture. The airport, most major roads and public buildings, and many schools and hospitals are named after the President. Lining almost all the main roads there are scores of billboards containing a photograph of the President for Life. Many women wear bright cloth chitenges around their waists—as skirts—which contain a photograph of Banda, a younger Banda, whose face shines over round bottoms and swelling bellies. Babies hang from chitenge slings decorated with the President’s face, their little faces peeping over the placid, mild gaze of the image of their Great Chief.
When we move to Malawi, the people of this sliver of a country have among the lowest per capita incomes of anyone in the world. Their numbers are swelling as refugees flood over the borders from Mozambique to escape that country’s seemingly endless civil war.
We move to a tobacco farm on the edge of Lake Chilwa, not far—on roads that toss the pickup from one side to the other as if it were a small boat—from Lake Malawi, the Shire River, and Mozambique. The farm, Mgodi (meaning the Hole), is one of many owned by His Excellency the Life President. It is supposed to be a shining example of what can happen when the President sets his mind to help his people. When we arrive, the estate is a shambles, overrun