It is not only Zambia that is worryingly boring. Its sister-country, Malawi, is also rather dull.
In fact, Malawi is so boring that the most exciting news to have come out of Lilongwe all year was the embarrassing spectacle of President Joyce Banda begging to hitch a ride in Botswana’s presidential jet, after selling her own to placate Western donors.
It appears Mrs Banda didn’t very much enjoy being turned down by Botswana’s President Ian Khama.
But shortly after returning from a trip to America, Mrs Banda was confronted with the rather unwelcome news that, pop star Madonna was once again visiting Malawi.
In recent years, Madonna has taken to visiting Malawi virtually every other day, adopting starving babies here, promising to build a school there, and so on. Last year, Mrs Banda aimed some painful verbal barbs at The Material Girl for promising to build a school and then not coming through with the goodies.
But that was nothing. In early April, the Queen of Pop committed the cardinal sin of vomiting on the shoes of her hostess. Arriving in Malawi unannounced, Madonna was unimpressed at the airport security checks and the general lack of worship she received from the people of Malawi. She then scrawled a note — in a terrible handwriting and with rubbish grammar — to the president, condescendingly addressing the fire-eating Mrs Banda as “Dear Joyce”.
Someone at the president’s office responded with withering criticism, accusing Madonna of “going to villages to make poor people dance for her”, and calling the singer “a lying bully”. The response savaged the singer so badly that she responded, plaintively denying the accusations in the president’s missive.
This is good. Madonna may have spent $11 million (Sh957 million) on projects in Malawi, but that doesn’t mean she owns the place. She needs to know people.
