The coming in of Chinese government (after kicking the Taiwanese off in 2008) in Malawi is a controversial one. Some said they’re good – because they’re showering the Malawi government with lots of gifts – and the latest one being the construction of a five-star hotel, an international conference and Karonga-Chitipa motorway. Some said the gift benefits only the government as the goodness doesn’t flow down to the grassroots. Others said Chinese = no quality, as there’re plenty of low quality Chinese made products flooding the market. You can’t believe how bad the goods are – I can guarantee you any made-in-China batteries you buy in Malawi run out of batteries in less than five minutes. No joke. I didn’t believe it myself and tried 6 batteries – so I can testify it was not mere bad luck to get empty batteries! And a bag I bought had its handle broken just after one day. My landlady bought an extension cord that spoilt a few of her electrical devices. The Malawians complain a lot about the slippers, which could just give away in less than a month. Well the list goes on.. what I want to say is it’s ok if the price is low then you deserve low quality goods. Just like in the UK or Malaysia or anywhere else, we get Chinese goods everywhere and in a wide range of prices. If you pay more, you get better goods. That’s fair. But things aren’t the same here in Malawi. unscrupulous traders bring in low quality goods and sell at high prices. As this is the first wave of Chinese goods hitting local market, and they ‘look’ perfectly fine, many are selling good. And sometimes the local people have no choice. Many things aren’t manufactured locally so they have to buy imported goods. So for those who can’t afford expensive imports, they just have to turn to such low quality goods. To me, it is just another way to bully poor people.
I never said I’m a Chinese here. Because I can’t agree with many things the Chinese do here. First, it is about the bad quality goods they bring into such a poor country. You know you actually make people poorer by selling these goods although they’re much cheaper than other goods. Secondly, the Chinese don’t mingle with the local, or the expatriates, or just anybody else. Even I find it hard to communicate with them. I have a few Chinese neighbours who never seem to be interested to start a conversation with anybody else. I only had one chance to talk to them. And they thought it was ‘unbelievable’ (derogatively) for me to take minibuses.
There was during one of the interviews I went to a suburban area to talk to somebody who plays an important role in the society of traditional medicine in Malawi. His vision was to make Malawian traditional medicine as marketable as the Chinese traditional medicine. I do not disagree with his ambition because I do think how TCM is practised, regulated and marketable does worth learning from. However I do disagree very strongly with his approach as to how this should be done. He wants to ‘talk to the President’ (I sometimes think the President of Malawi is somehow equivalent to the Emperor!) to bring in as many Chinese doctors as possible in order to open clinics at rural areas ‘to give service to the people at rural areas’. And these doctors too could teach our local traditional practitioners in Malawi. Oh gosh. He really thinks all Chinese are angels. I spent one hour trying to explain to him why language can be a problem and why not everybody is well intentioned. You know that’s the beauty of the Malawian hearts I saw here. Which really makes my heart melt. They are so genuine. Perhaps too naive to be true when the rest of the world has become so.. hmm vicious (well I could use the word vicious, if to think relatively to the naivety among Malawians). They are just so kind and so.. pure.. I don’t know how to describe.. like babies whom you feel it’s your responsibility to protect them. And it makes me extremely angry when others come in to bully these innocent people. And indeed it makes me even more furious to learn the local Malawians (especially politicians) try to bully their own people. You know those looks – those LOOKS, in the eyes of the children, the women, the men, everybody – it’s completely free of viciousness.. those grins, those smiles – so genuine, so kind, so pure.. I just have no words for these.. it makes me teary whenever I think of these kind gestures..
After a few days I visited one of the Chinese clinics in town. Just out of curiosity whether they’re indeed so ‘saint’-like as described by the traditional healer leader. The moment I pushed open the door of the clinic, what greeted me was just completely out of what I had expected. There was no Chinese doctor. There was only one Malawian ‘doctor’ – I said doctor because he had a stethoscope with him. And a bed, probably for acupuncture. Simple furniture. And a poster on the wall showing the entry points for acupuncture. I asked if he was the doctor. Shyly he replied yes. I said I actually was expecting a Chinese doctor because the signboard outside of the clinic was written in Chinese. He said ah no, the Chinese doctor was taking care of another clinic in town.
‘Do you see patients? And give them treatment?’ Yes.
‘How and where did you get your training?’.. ‘ahh.. Dr xxx trained me for two years..’
‘How.. and where were you trained..?’ ... ‘just here.. in Lilongwe.. Dr xxx wants a boy.. so he took me..’
So this Dr xxx wanted to train a male TCM doctor. That’s great.
And I asked what was his background qualification before embarking on ‘training’ (note: this training actually was apprenticeship, where he observed and learned what the Chinese doctor did for two years). He said ‘ahh.. no.. ‘ I asked ‘MSCE?’ (that’s equivalent to O level or MCE). Again he said ‘ahh.. no..’
So where did you work before Dr xxx took you for training?
‘ahh.. I was working in a bakery..’
Oh God. Oh great.
Dr xxx was too busy to take care of more than one clinic. So he wanted a ‘boy’ to do that for him. And that’s why the training.
‘Let me show you some medications’.
Then he took me to the shelf with some very simple OTC Chinese medications and some herbs.
‘If the patient has stomach problem, take this. pain in the knee, this; headache, this; cough, this;.....’
The list goes on. He has learned how to ‘diagnose’ (by taking information from patients, so basically patients are diagnosing themselves) and prescribe. Just matching list A to list B. As simple as that.
Not only that. He even showed me a plastic bag full of Viagra and ARVs imported from China. Oh god he’s so naive. He didn’t even know he was showing me something that was illegal. And it happened that the sale for Viagra is very good. So good that the money he can make from Viagra per day is even higher than his one month salary. Oh so how much is his monthly salary?
‘Six thousand kwacha..’ (I felt a pinch in my stomach - £24 a month?!?)
‘How much did you earn when you worked at the bakery?’
‘Fifteen thousand kwacha’ (that’s £60 a month)
‘That’s too low for your job now. Don’t you think so?’
‘Ahh.. nah.. it’s ok (grin, the grin that really makes me ache). Many of my friends now have no job. And Dr xxx will take me to China one day.. I will learn there..’
By this moment I couldn’t look into his eyes anymore. A live example of how Chinese cheats stand in front of my eyes. The Chinese doctor just wants somebody to man his shop, so that he could sell his goods – he doesn’t care about patient safety; he’s not bothered about paying his employee fairly; he’s not even ashamed of giving false hope to this poor young man about ‘taking him to China’.
What I want to say was just ‘I’m sorry’ but I couldn’t find my words.. and I couldn’t say this because he definitely didn’t understand.. in the end I asked him to go back to school to at least get a MSCE so that he could enrol into medical school to become a real doctor.
I made the conversation quick so that I could leave the clinic before my eyes got watery again. I can’t bear the thought how people come into this country to exploit the local people. I can’t bear it even more when this is done by somebody who shares the same culture with me. When a white man does it, I could somehow console myself ‘ahh those hypocrite donors..’ but when a Chinese does that it makes me extremely embarrassed..! I’m sorry – I want to say I am sorry, I am sorry we have caused you so much pain.. I’m so sorry a Chinese has done that..
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