Blantyre

They come to us and, and they ask sometimes for eye drops, and then we have to explain to them it's not a, a problem we can solve with eye drops, but we have to solve with a pair of eyeglasses.

This is the eye test with a very simple vision chart here in Malawi at a school in Blantyre in the south of Malawi.

And the very, yeah, the, the, the most important moment is always when people go out the first time with their new pair of eyeglasses, like this woman, and she saw the birds in the tree the first time in her life, and she was really, really amazed what she's seeing now.

Some people, they see the village they live in first time.

We all know I love projects that put good in the world, and this is one of them.

The project we're chatting about today is the Malawi Dental School project in Blantyre, Malawi.

But before we get started, don't forget to take a look at the project photos and drawings as you listen along.

You can click the link in our show notes or visit www.rcat.com/podcast.

Um, it's sort of regularly in the top or bottom, I should say, two or three sort of countries in the world.

So across that 22 million people, there's approximately 50 dentists for the whole country.

And those are mostly concentrated in the two main cities, Blantyre and Lilongwe.

And, you know, the vast, vast majority of people probably never see a dentist in their, in their whole lives.

On this day in working class history, the 5th of October.

On the 5th of October 2001, workers at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi launched a sit-down strike for better pay.

In particular, the workers were complaining about wages and additional allowances, which were considerably lower for health workers than they were for workers in the justice system.

The strike shut down almost all of the 1,500-bed facility, with only a few beds remaining open in the orthopaedics and burns departments.

We both got a really good haircut.

But a bunch of people went into Lilongwe or went into Blantyre and purchased some piece of equipment and brought it back and were doing something with it that they couldn't have previously done.

And so I guess that's the kind of thing we're looking for at scale and giving some signal that it's not just what's happening to households, but that the structure of the economy is changing.

I guess one of the reasons we have to be here at MIT and talking to like real actual macro economists is now we're not talking about things that happen outside the district that we're working in and like trade flows to the capital.

[gentle music] Welcome to the Gospel Call on All Things Reformed podcast.

The Gospel Call is a presentation of God's word by Pastor Confex Makhalira of Christ Presbyterian Church in Blantyre, Malawi.

Today's sermon is taken from the series In the Beginning, an exposition of the Book of Genesis.

Why did God create all things? In what state were all things when created? What response should we make to this reality? Here's Reverend Makhalera speaking from Genesis 1:2-25 under the title Let There Be.

Here's Dr. Zach.

They've built a church now in Blantyre

and Lilongwe.

You started in Lilongwe.

You started in

Blantyre and went to Lilongwe.

And in an economy in Malawi.

Like you say it, in Marawi.

Musician and ethnomusicologist Waliko Makala helped compile it.

And he joins us from the city of Blantyre.

Hi, Waliko.

Hi.

He appears on a new compilation, Sounds of Malawi, Volume 1.

It was put together in part by Waliko Makala, who's a Malawian artist and ethnomusicologist.

So, Waliko, this song, all the others on the album were recorded at the Jacaranda Studios in the outskirts of Blantyre, Malawi.

Can you talk about the scene at the studio outside Blantyre when this was happening? Because it sounds like it almost became like star search with Malawian artists seeing this as their possible big break.

Nusrat Osman was taken last week Friday in broad daylight by a gang who police say were armed with AK-47s.

The 47-year-old, who is a mother of two and an auditor based in Malawi, was rescued in an area outside Blantyre late yesterday, six days after she was abducted.

Officials say the suspects were shot during the rescue operation and taken to hospital where they later died.

A police officer was wounded and is said to be in a stable condition.