Ahem,
The simple scoreline did not truly reflect the embroiled imbroglio of the football match. It was a game of two halves: the post and bar were each rattled; there were fouls, handballs, swallow dives, hospital passes, and theatrical agony all over the pitch; six players were booked; two were sent off; two goals disallowed, the second of which prompted Mpoto FC to stop playing while their supporters invaded the pitch and danced around in a mob melee until the decision was reversed. With the full-time score level, the first 12 penalties in the shoot out were all converted, largely because the goalkeepers chose not to dive onto the harder ground of the goalmouth. When Mpoto FC’s unwilling and terrified 8th-listed penalty taker had been dragged to the spot like a noble lord to the guillotine, the inevitably scuffed fifteenth spot kick went straight to the keeper. Toleza FC therefore won by 1-1 and 8-7 on penalties, but basically, Brian, it could have gone either way.
During an expanded half time, the Senior Chief of Sawali exhorted the nervy 2,500–strong crowd not to cut down the local trees for their heating nor to start any fires to catch mice for their eating. Other local dignitaries offered their sage advice to the players between bursts of deafening afro-disco-twerk on the boombox. On behalf of the sponsors, I gave a rousing two-minute speech along the lines of “play fair and play well, gentlemen”. After the match, during a crowd knees-up on the pitch, Julia and I doled out medals to all the players, substitutes, organisers, and match officials. Julia then presented the prestigious Toleza Cup, founded 17 years ago by her late husband/my brother Clive, to the worthy victors. Their captain wiped his hands on his shirt before his handshake with her, as Bobby Moore did with the Queen in 1966, when, as any fule kno, West Ham won the World Cup.
Before coming to Malawi, I had a chatty dinner one evening with Jessie and Gwen in Brighton, and some days later, Ella invited Alli and me for a light lunch with Gwen in Burgess Hill at Petek’s. What a blessing to be invited out by our daughters! (It was possibly to do with our prolonged after-looking of our grand-dogs, Maisie and Jaxon). As it happens, I chanced on a Google reference to the doings of a New Zealand couple coincidentally named Maisie and Jaxon Stanbrook. Gwen moved to London, as the cost of getting to Battersea every day from Brighton is prohibitive. She found a reasonable flat from where she can get to the Dogs’ Home every day. Ella celebrated her birthday on the 20th and Alli and the girls took Nanny out a few days later for a walk in Sheffield Park in commemoration of Grandpa Laurie.
Fionnuala and Andrew came over to stay the night with us and we had an excellent picnic with a view and a selection of good wines at the Beacon Down vineyard on the High Weald near Heathfield. We also had a morning walk in Hempstead Woods, and visited the new Piltdown Man restaurant-gastro-pub the evening before.
I flew to Malawi with my sister in law in the second week of the month on a trouble-free flight via Addis but landed late at Blantyre where we were met by the ever-patient farm driver, Mr Chaputera. The next day featured the Toleza Farm Football Cup Final, covered by our football reporter as above. Since then, Julia and I have blasted our way through a lot of administrative challenges. We took a short break in Zomba, staying in the excellent Kefi hotel, and driving onto the high plateau, where there are several paths for healthy hiking around the mountain peaks. I also explored the town’s well-kept botanic gardens, which crowds of young people use for after-hours socialising. Back in Toleza farm, we held a dinner party for friends Andrea and Tamara, Mike and Sue.
We drove to Lilongwe to meet a farm manager with his wife and sons for an error-strewn hotel dinner, before seeing Julia’s old friend Cecilia Katzamira, with her nephew, and friend Fiona the next day for an even longer lunch than usual, suddenly finding ourselves discussing a long-neglected problem over dessert, an abrupt challenge from which we emerged unscathed, Julia having brought the problem neatly to the point of resolution. We came back via Selima, where we bought roadside garden furniture, and stopped on the road south at the Mua Mission to look around the famous Kungoni Centre of Culture and Art and the Chamare Museum and Gallery, and where Julia had a chat with its legendary owner Pere Boucher, a French Canadian RC priest and artist, now in a wheelchair after a stroke, but who for over 50 years has researched and documented the gule wamkulu, the “great dance” of the Chewa people of Malawi. We noticed and were concerned by a distinct lack of visitors to this important historical and cultural centre.
We arrived in Toleza at the end of the winter season and will leave in a week just as the dry season starts to build a wall of heat. There has been no rain in the district since February. The evenings materialise in a haze of heat and red dust, creating magnificent sunsets. But farming in this part of the world in particular is a tremendous and often heart-breaking challenge. I am lost in admiration at the skill and courage of the managers and workers of this farm and others in Malawi.
Yours in awe,
Lionel