Lilongwe

And we're going to their feature story, which is called Home and Back Again, Malawians Turn the Bus Around.

So this is an article written by Buster Emil Kirchner and Marco Simoncelli in Lilongwe.

So yeah, let's see what's going on in Malawi.

The international bus station in Lilongwe is quiet in the late evening, even though there are dozens of passengers already at the terminus.

The only sound is the crackle of plastic film being wrapped around heavy suitcases.

Richard Bandar is one of them.

That number, she says, is unusually high.

In reality, it might be much lower.

Now from Rome, we turn to Malawi, where safeguarding was recently placed at the centre of an initiative dedicated to empowering women and strengthening community life.

Between the 17th and 19th of September, women from Benga Parish in Lilongwe participated in a three-day workshop combining safeguarding formation, practical skills development and human sexuality.

Commission member Sister Teresa Nyadombo, who also serves as regional moderator for Africa, contributed to the programme, helping participants explore their responsibilities in protecting children and vulnerable adults.

A central theme was the relationship between women's empowerment and the wellbeing of their wider communities.

We see baby hedgehogs.

This week, we just had a Janet cat baby, like a tiny one, where the mother died and then it was brought to the clinic and we just stabilized her and sent her to a rehab clinic in Lilongwe.

And sometimes snakes.

We had a two and a half meter long python recently that sadly had to be euthanized, but it was hacked with a machete when it went after the chicken.

The bike shed charges 400 kwacha per day, but as long as you store it there before five o'clock, you pay 200 kwacha less.

The first few buses at the station always go to the capital, Lilongwe.

Bakili must squad in a corner of the waiting hall, waiting nearly an hour for the first free shuttle bus to Liwonde.

That vehicle is always packed to the point of disaster.

Mangolchi isn't.

Blanty isn't.

Lilongwe isn't.

Malawi is the home of Malawians only, people who have lived here for generations.

Remember when he-

Yeah, when he spoke about the streets in, uh, in, in, in Blantyre and Lilongwe and so forth.

I remember, yeah

... [on phone] It's like, why are we regressing? And, and that's my biggest fear.

Malawi beat Zimbabwe 9-0 on aggregate.

Here in Harare on Tuesday, we saw the power of the Chawenga sisters, Tabitha and Tenwa, as they simply ripped Zimbabwe's mighty warriors apart, winning 7-0 after Zimbabwe had done fairly well to lose just 2-0 in the first leg in Lilongwe.

That's in the women's Olympic qualifiers and CAF Champions League in men's football.

The second preliminary round first legs are on this weekend.

Well, yesterday, this story landed.

It's in the Nyasa Times, a Malawian publication, and it says Prophet Shepard Bushiri and his wife, Mary, have won a major legal victory after the high court in Lilongwe delivered its final ruling, crushing efforts to extradite them to South Africa.

In a detailed 175-page judgment, the court laid out the reasons behind its earlier decision to throw out an extradition order issued against the couple, dealing a significant blow to South Africa's long-running bid to bring them back to face legal proceedings.

And what that means really is that Shepard Bashiri and his wife, Mary, will not be coming back to South Africa, at least for now.

Those people are living their lives.

They're living their best lives.

The first thing that I saw as we were driving from the airport into Lilongwe is a massive billboard of some crusade, I think, that they were going to have.

And I was thinking, you know, I joked and I said, oh, I found the Bushiris, but they are continuing with their lives and there's no intention for them to come back.

We should therefore focus on better understanding the terms of these partnerships, how transparent these terms are, and who takes the major risk and who is held to account when a project or an initiative underperforms or fails.

In the final analysis, I would put it to you that voice in New York or Geneva may not be worth very much if there's no accountability in Lilongwe or Hanoi.

As some of you may be aware, I've spent more than two decades doing fieldwork in Malawi.

During this time, I found that one of the main constraints on development outcomes is the fiscal contract.

A group of people have spent a good bit of money buying tickets and a good bit of time getting to a stadium to watch a concert or a sporting match or something, but with massive crowds and limited entry throughput, the event is starting, and they're still outside.

This exact competitive dynamic led to a 2023 crowd crush in San Salvador, El Salvador, a 2022 crush in Yaoundé, Cameroon, a 2019 one in Antananarivo, Madagascar, 2017 in Lilongwe, Malawi, 2017 in Uíge, Angola.

It is perhaps the most predictable crush scenario that still occurs.

But you don't need to look for examples in developing countries for this particular situation.

So in 2009, working in this, um, NGO from 2000 up to 2008, I thought it was time to move on.

Uh, so I moved on to another organization in Lilongwe where I worked as the regional program officer for the central region.

So while there, I had not forgotten my story, which my mom told me.

My mom told me that, uh, because of, uh, staying in a rural community, a village where, you know, access to healthcare was, was quite compromised, was an issue.

So it was a life of combined way of livelihoods, working, but also farming.

So that, that story, uh, was, was my driving factor to, uh, establish For Gad.

And by the time I was in Lilongwe- I just worked there, uh, for, for some 10 months and got another job with an international organization at that time.

And, uh, my job was big because I was doing capacity building for the Malawi Defense Force in HIV and AIDS programming all throughout Malawi.