Michelle Dobrovolny • www.jhr.ca/blog • Field Notes

by Michelle Dobrovolny March 5, 2011

Following a famine in 2002, in which thousands died and three million people were relying on food aid, Malawi has turned itself around and recorded a surplus of maize, the country’s staple crop, for the past five years. There is enough food for everybody. So why, according to a recent report from the Malawi Vulnerability [...]

Tagged as: fertilizer, food security, malawi

The Politics of Malawi’s Alphabet

by Michelle Dobrovolny November 26, 2010

The Latin alphabet is so familiar that few of us pause to question its use. But its application to a number of non-European languages is in fact quite controversial. Letters can carry meaning as much as words. For Malawian scholar Nolen Mwangwego, the Latin letters used to transcribe most African languages—including Malawi’s vernacular, Chichewa—are politically-loaded [...]

Tagged as: Alphabet, language

Breaking Taboos Through Music

In Malawi, Media Internships,

by Michelle Dobrovolny September 28, 2010

When Malawian musician Agorosso had no money for a guitar, he made one and taught himself how to play. “I just used a small metallic pot with nylon strings,” he says. “I didn’t know how to play, I just tuned it to my wish.” This kind of resourcefulness reflects the importance of music in Malawian [...]

Tagged as: culture

Suicide Criminals

by Michelle Dobrovolny September 20, 2010

The self-immolation of the Manda family in an impoverished Blantyre slum has been grabbing headlines in Malawi for weeks. Many commentators here have been mulling over why the siblings made their fatal pact. But far more concerning to me is the way 19-year-old Maria Manda, the sole survivor of the blaze, was treated after being [...]

Tagged as: HIV/AIDS, suicide

Tour de Malawi

by Michelle Dobrovolny September 6, 2010

As he cycled along the road from Blantyre from Zomba, Ryan Sanderson- Smith looked up and was faced with the sheer rock face of the Zomba plateau, rising steeply to an elevation of 1,200 metres. His first impulse: turn back. The 26-year-old South African was riding a bicycle loaded with panniers and camping gear. The [...]

Tagged as: cycle touring, malawi

The Benefits of Weaving

by Michelle Dobrovolny August 26, 2010

The shelves of the weaving centre in Bangwe are filled with spools of brightly-colored yarns, making a colourful backdrop to what would otherwise be a dreary scene: rows of weavers sit silently at their looms, staring blankly ahead as they mechanically work the spools into tightly-woven fabric. Their expressionless faces seem eerily robotic. Then I [...]

Tagged as: development, persons with disabilities

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Turning Over Top-Down

by Michelle Dobrovolny August 19, 2010

The paradox of development work is that in trying to empower people, we can conversely create dependency on outside help. Having witnessed this situation in Malawi, Rafiq Hajat, director of the Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI), is seeking to reverse top-down paradigms of social development. He has created a programme that offers a means for [...]

Wag the Flag

by Michelle Dobrovolny August 15, 2010

As a journalist, there is no need to chase news stories in Malawi: they confront you every day on the street. Poverty, AIDS, child labour, gender equality…the list goes on. The challenge you face is not finding news but prioritizing what cause to take the pen to first. Which is why the recent “debate” over [...]

Debating Silence

by Michelle Dobrovolny August 4, 2010

The caller on the other end of the line would only dance around the issue, never daring to explicitly state his purpose: “Are you the Canadian reporter?” “Um, possibly. Who are you?” “You want to know something?” “That depends. Are you Mwanajuma’s* friend?” “Maybe. What is it you want to know?” It felt like I [...]

Tagged as: homosexual rights

Land is Life

by Michelle Dobrovolny July 23, 2010

What I see is deceptively peaceful: the green rolling fields of the Chitakale tea estate, set to the majestic backdrop of Malawi’s highest peak, Mount Mulanje. The scene hardly looks like a site of conflict. It is hard for me to fathom that it is here that a bitter land dispute between Chitakale Plantations Company [...]