[afro-nets] You don't bite the hand that feeds

[Sanjoy K. Nayak <sanjoy_k_nayak@yahoo.co.uk>]

"You don't bite the hand that feeds"
------------------------------------

By Matthew Chapman
BBC News, Malawi

Roving around the world as a correspondent, one of the most use-
ful qualities you can develop is an iron stomach. Sometimes you
cannot be too picky about what you eat. However, as Matthew
Chapman discovered on a recent trip to Malawi, what you are go-
ing to eat for dinner and the story you are working on can some-
times be inextricably linked.

I could not quite make out what the children by the side of the
road were doing, as our car shot past them on the way to the Ma-
lawian capital, Lilongwe.
At first it looked like they were waving toasting forks at us.
"What are they doing?" I asked our driver, hoping partly that he
might slow the car to a less hair-raising speed so he could re-
ply.

"Maize," he seemed to shout above the racket of the jolting car.
"Ah," I said, "maize like corn on the cob?" He brought the car
to a halt and a child ran up and waggled something under my nose
which definitely did not look like any corn on the cob I had
ever seen.

Malawi's dependence on aid means many locals have a love-hate
relationship with the donors

"They're mice," said my driver, "roast mice". And there indeed
on each prong of the fork was a little roast mouse with singed
tail and whiskers. It was a local delicacy, I was told. I de-
clined the offer of a crunchy mouse and we drove on. I tell this
story partly because I am a vegetarian and travelling the world
as a vegetarian reporter allows me to amass a library of stories
to regale horrified veggies back in Britain. In fact I assumed I
might be eating those mice sooner rather than later, after fail-
ing to find any vegetarian food in this meat-loving nation.

On the edge

But I also tell this story because food - the lack of it and the
price of it - was to become a recurring theme during my week in
Malawi.

This landlocked country, shaped rather like a chilli, wedged
into south-east Africa, has been referred to by some, rather un-
kindly, as an economic basket case. Every year it teeters on the
edge of famine. This year humanitarian groups fear that a third
of the population will face a shortage of food. It is for this
reason that, during a drive around the capital Lilongwe, I saw
an alphabet soup of acronyms printed on offices staffed by non-
governmental organisations and donor governments from all over
the world. Britain, in the form of the Department For Interna-
tional Development, is one of the larger funders here, pumping
in more than £60m ($110m) of aid money.

'Phantom aid'

The reason I was there was to investigate whether DfID, as it is
known, has been wasting large amounts of money on paying admini-
stration costs and fees to American consultants. This is what
one British charity has called "phantom aid". What this means in
practice is that, while it may be called aid in DfID's budget,
the reality is that significant amounts of this money are redi-
rected to the Western countries who supply the consultants.

That night I sat down to dinner in my hotel to eat the only
vegetarian item on the menu. Here I was in Africa enjoying beau-
tifully cooked linguine (pasta) and roast vegetables, which cost
me the equivalent of a week's salary for an ordinary Malawian.
As I sat there, I leafed through a sheaf of documents I had been
handed that day by a Malawian man who was disgusted by the free
spending that had gone on in a DfID funded project that he had
worked for.

Staff salaries

The documents listed in minute detail how an American organisa-
tion hired by DfID had spent the £3m ($5.4m) it had been given
to run a project which was helping to support the committee sys-
tem in the Malawian parliament.

Firstly £1m ($1.8m) had been spent on the salaries of the en-
tirely American, ex-pat staff. On top of that, they had spent
nearly £700,000 ($1.25m) on hotel and food bills for their staff
and for Malawian MPs. In fact a great deal of the wining and
dining that went on had happened not only in the hotel I was in
but in the very hotel restaurant I was sitting in.

DfID told me later they were happy that the expenses were all in
line with the needs of the project. As he came to clear my plate
away, the waiter asked me a question he had obviously been dying
to ask: why did I not eat meat? As I ran through some of the
health benefits including the fact that it is a diet low in fat,
I realised I had entirely lost him.

Having the luxury to pick and choose what to eat was, I suppose,
as alien a concept to him as were the habits of the hundreds of
ex-pats who drive around this town in their four-wheelers.

Curry

Malawi's dependence on aid means many locals have a love-hate
relationship with the donors. "We don't like to bite the hand
that feeds us," said the head of one Malawian NGO, who has re-
ceived money from DfID. "We feel we can't complain, even when we
see you foreigners coming in here and eating up that aid money
with your wages," he said. But to show he had no hard feelings
he kindly invited me to dinner. That night his wife cooked for
me one of the best vegetarian curries I had eaten for years.
Roast mouse was a distant memory.

 From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 27 August,
2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme
schedules for World Service transmission times.

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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4188382.stm

Published: 2005/08/27 10:47:17 GMT
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