God is Good

Lunch hour and meals in Blantyre

The other day I was around Ginnery Corner area in Blantyre, close to the National Bank/Pharmanova area during lunch hour and I beheld a touching spectacle. There were about 200 men gathered around stalls offering various kinds of food being sold by some women. There was cassava, sweet potatoes and even pieces of sugar-cane...take note: there was no rice, or the local Malawian dish nsima...just those three cited foodstuffs. I felt sad looking at some men chewing at a piece of sugarcane, and yet others huddled over a few chunks of cassava hoping it would sustain them for the rest of the afternoon. Less than a kilometre away at Chichiri shopping mall, some better endowed persons were having more filling and sumptious food and maybe throwing away large parts of their lunch! What a contrast.
The hordes eating sugarcane and potatoes/cassava personified to me, the hardship currently prevailing in Malawi as high fuel and food prices continue to cause havoc on savings or disposable income of people in the country. With oil prices showing no signs of going down on the international market and the cost of food also soaring, more misery seems to be in the offing for Malawians especially in the low-income bracket and those in rural areas. Mercy Lord.

posted by Joe Mlenga @ 1:44 pm