Reading Time: 3 minutesAt the peak of the cold war, there were two Germanys – East and West. One had a market based economy, the other a communist/socialist economy. Berlin was a city shared by both Germanys. It too was portioned, by means of a brick war, into East Berlin and West Berlin. Having been trained and/or practiced […]

Reading Time: 3 minutesLiving at Kongwe Mission, in Dowa District, many years ago, my brother and I, both toddlers then, used to play a lot around the mission. One day my brother, who was two years younger than me, went out without me but in the company of a friend.  He came back claiming to have picked up

Reading Time: 3 minutesI was privileged to attend the memorial service of Susan Sanson, wife to Dr. Billy Sanson, the Chancellor College chaplain, which the Baptist church conducted in the Great Hall in Zomba in 2015. Many moving tributes to the departed “mother” were poured out by various speakers on that solemn afternoon. It was clear that Susan

Reading Time: 3 minutesOn this column we search within ourselves:  within our people, our culture, our history, and indeed our lands to find possible solutions to the problems that we grapple with all the time. Many times solutions are not far away but tucked away somewhere within ourselves, hence the need to do a diligent search within, to

Reading Time: 3 minutesIn 2015 I had the opportunity to visit the Government Press premises of an African country. That time I was the Government Printer of Malawi. Weeks before the trip materialized I was required to send my personal details, including an image of the first page of my passport, to them in order to obtain the

Reading Time: 3 minutesI travelled to Lilongwe last weekend, leaving Blantyre on Friday afternoon and returning on Sunday morning, on the 2nd and 4th February, 2024, respectively. I used Kwezy coaches on both trips. The outbound trip was without issues. I wish I could say the same thing about the return trip which, I am afraid, turned out to be

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen an extraordinary son of a carpenter from Nazareth called his followers two thousand years ago, he did not promise them the Moon. His message was very simple: “I will make you fishers of men”. In one case he even issued the warning that “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of

Reading Time: 3 minutes“Poverty is a crime….. some of the poor black brothers suffer all the time…..” – Andrew Tosh, 1988. While the sentiments expressed by the son of reggae legend, Peter Tosh, give some insights into the universal problem of poverty, this columnist would describe it as more than a crime. It is a curse. It is

Reading Time: 3 minutesVisiting the genocide memorial centre in Kigali, Rwanda, is as sobering as it is harrowing and debilitating. The centre graphically chronicles the genesis, the execution and the aftermath of what is perhaps the bloodiest holocaust in modern times, with such succinctness that the patrons are left wondering how human beings can act so hideously against