Day #28 – June 28, 2019
“Water everywhere and a lot for small businesses in an informal setting in the City of Mzuzu: Is this culture I see before me?”*
By A. Kusi-Appiah, 2019 Queen Elizabeth Scholar, Carleton University
- Introduction
It has been a wonderful week for visiting local businesses in 5 (Chivabi, Area 1 B, Lower Zolozolo, Mzilaguaingwe and Masasa) of my chosen 6 research areas in the city of Mzuzu. As noted in a previous blog, all 6 areas exhibit periurban characteristics, and are marked by many informal businesses mostly unregulated by formal government. In this blog, I seek to describe my visits with particular attention to how the businesses I visited access and use water and the possible impact of this access and use to the health and well-being of the local population. My
CEO of GINTE carwash centre in Chibavi, a vibrant peri-urban neighbourhood. This young man is self-employed. He uses a borehoke right in his business premises for his carwash business. He doesn’t use water from the official grid.
main target is local businesses that use a substantial amount of water for their operations, and these businesses include kachasu makers (local gin making), car wash operators, hair salons, vegetable gardening, food vendors and maize mills.
- Triumphant entry: *Captain Mwayi ‘Fortune’ in the driver’s seat:
During the week of June 23-28 2019 I made my way into 5 neighbourhoods representing 5 of my 6 study areas with my interpreter-in-chief, the one and only *Captain* ‘Fortune’, doing most of the heavy lifting and guiding me throughout the experience. *Captain* ‘Fortune’ has been with me since I arrived here and he is now very conversant with my research objectives, so he does a good job of engaging in conversations with the local people using their preferred local language – Tumbuka (Bantu based). I found *Captain* ‘Fortune’ by ‘accident’ when I boarded his ‘taxi’ during my first week here. His taxi is an unusually run-down Japanese model but it is proverbially the warmest heart of the warm people of Mzuzu, and he has ever since been my ‘eyes and ears’ in Mzuzu.
When I sat in Mwayi’s old rickety taxi on that fateful day on June 7 2019, and we got chatting, I noticed something interesting about ‘Fortune’ – he didn’t just know his way around town, he is also a walking encyclopaedia of Mzuzu. I realised there and then that this is the guy who will guide me in the reconnaissance exercise for my 6 research study areas. ‘Fortune’ has volunteered to literally follow me everywhere I go. He doesn’t only help with translation, he actually prepares me for site visits, serving as a *liaison* between researcher and researched (Dunn, 2005). ‘Fortune’s strength comes from his deep knowledge of Tumbuka culture and ‘ways’ of life. Indeed, ‘Fortune’ is well socialized (read *educated*) in the ways of Mzuzu and he carries himself with so much belief in ‘self’ and is a ‘man of the people’ (to borrow from Chinua Achebe who has written a book by the same title). ‘Fortune’ (Mwayi, in Tumbuka language) was born and *nsima-ed* in Mzuzu, and has been operating a taxi business for many years. ‘Fortune’ is married to a home maker with a young daughter who goes to school in Mzuzu. With the help of ‘Fortune’, I have been able to navigate my way successfully into 5 neighbourhoods, interacting with the people and business owners here.
- Embedded ‘socilaization’: there are no *illitrates* anywhere:
Without *Captain* ‘Fortune’, my progress in my mission here would have been an uphill task, but ‘Fortune’ has made a huge difference even though he speaks limited English, but his Tumbuka skills are impeccable and he understands everything I communicate in English! And that is the first thing I noticed about the people I have met here so far. Even though people speak and understand English, Tumbuka is their go-to language of choice in all transactions. They use Tumbuka for the performance of all mundane activities. When I go to the market, I try to get along by starting conversations in broken English but I am always rebuffed by traders who insist on speaking to me first in the local language – Tumbuka. More often than not I am either with ‘Fortune’ or Chims and Wales, and they almost always come to my rescue. But I am fascinated by the pride people here have for their language, their mother tongue. I am happy that unlike in certain parts of the South where the so-called elite are trying so hard to replace mother tongue with a colonial language, Malawians are holding fast onto their mother tongues while at the same time trying to navigate the ‘elephant’ in the room (i.e., globalization), shaped by neoliberal thinking and neoliberal policies.
So then I ask myself: *”…in light of the fact that people here proudly speak their mother tongue (even *”in the marketplace”* where the neoliberal adherents expect all transactions to take place in the pursuit of surplus value and in their chosen language) *does it mean that people here are illiterates*? Furthermore, I ask, *should the people start speaking English*, the so-called universal lingua franca, *in order for them to be part and parcel of this wonderful thing called ‘globalization’ being driven by neoliberal ideas and policies*?
I have been wondering, and then I remembered my first year sociology at the only university *of* Ghana – University of Ghana at Legon, Accra. In the many years of my daily existence since my dear departed mother (may her soul rest in perfect peace) delivered me at the Tema General Hospital in Ghana many moons ago, I have been hearing phrases to the effect that if one has not sat in a classroom imbibing the curriculum of the colonizer, one cannot be deemed to be educated or literate. In this hideous enlightenment thinking, one must be able to “read and write” in order to be deemed *educated*.
Of course this way of thinking disqualifies all those people who do not/did not get schooled in a formal institution called a school or a college or a university. This way of thinking disqualifies my grandma, the greatest philosopher I have ever known. But in my sociology 101 class Professor Abokyi taught me that *Education* is the same as *Socialization* and that every society has its own way of socializing or educating its population and most of it is informally derived and most importantly that education or the socialization process *is based on culture*, where culture is defined by the famous anthropologist EB Tylor in his 1871 book titled *”Primitive cultures”* as:
*”…..that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other* *capabilities and habits acquired by [a human] as a member of society.”* (EB Tylor, 1871).
All the ‘other capabilities’ mentioned by EB Tylor refer to/includes all the institutions *created by humans in their own communities* to steer their lives within their own societies. These institutions ‘evolve’, they cannot be supplanted or imported into communities and be expected to work, they must be nurtured by the people within their own space and through time. These institutions include:
- The Educational /Socialization institution,
- The Justice/Legal institution,
- The Marriage institution,
- The Economic institution, and
- The Religious/Spiritual institution.
Education/socialization is obviously one of the institutions found in every culture and it is based on the knowledge and norms and mores and beliefs found in that culture. And of course any culture can ‘borrow’ from other cultures, but that ‘borrowing’ must always be done with the parent culture in mind.