Ekari Writes

There are times in life when one has the opportunity to be a part of something greater than oneself, and it just feels awesome . I was invited to perform at British Council's Go Green Malawi awareness event,  a gathering of artists from all mediums, adding their voices, paintbrushes and movements to one cause... climate change. It is a phenomenon which many of us may be aware of, but there are many more that are not fully awakened to the effects of it.  I was lucky enough to be given the freedom to come up with whatever I wanted to, as long as it was no more than 3 minutes long. I decided to write and perform a piece of poetry entitled "environMEnt". It expresses the reason why I choose to study the environment in the first place.  Here is the video - somewhat fuzzy unfortunately, but at least the audio is alright. Note: the first line was not filmed in time so it seems like it starts in the middle. The poem begins - " I woke up one day and realised, you can't...

Happy UN Day! I had the great fortune of attending my first UN Townhall meeting which was to commemorate UN Day on the 24th of October. The first thing I learnt about Townhall is that it doesn't take place in a town hall. After some speculation I came to the conclusion that Townhall was not a description of the physical structure, but rather a meeting of the minds of staff from all UN derivative groups such as UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, etc, to discuss current agendas.  This year, the main agenda was (suitably) climate change. Speaking on the issue was Professor S. Chiota, who teaches at Chancellor College (Chanco), and is the regional programme director of the Leadership for Environment and Development Southern and Eastern Africa - LEAD SEA ( http://www.leadsea.mw/ ) . What I had expected was a presentation of the facts and figures of the effects of climate change in Malawi, with graphs and pie charts showing how things have been getting progressively...

Hey, take a look at this: I am a woman in one of the poorest countries in the world, and yet, here I am in front of a computer, blogging, Facebooking, Tweeting, instant messaging, Googling and much more. The odds say I shouldn’t know how to. I am one of the 48.6% literate women in Malawi. To put this in perspective, 72% of Malawian men are literate. I am one of the 31.4% of girls who finish primary school. I am also one of the 11.1% girls who finish secondary school. As for tertiary education - less than 10%. So, I have had about a 50/50 chance of knowing how to read at all, and the odds of increasing my education get slimmer and slimmer with every level. But here I am with 2 tertiary degrees, in the dawn of my career. Why? Why me? Because of my mother. And because of her mother. They recognised the importance of education, especially for girls, and two generations later, the girls in my family are smart, savvy, and paving our destinies with the choices that we have been give...