Mankhokwe...

THE posters screamed the same message. The message traversed and settled rather peacefully in the minds of the literature enthusiasts that compose the body, Chanco writers’ Workshop. The message was not anything strange; it was announcing the coming of the poet, the essayist, the critic, the columnist, the literature giant and the Malawi PEN president, Mr. Alfred Msadala. As the time struck 18:30 the usual meeting place at the College campus, Room B since 1972, was not yet filled but the guest had already arrived. Somehow shameful but not really at the workshop where, meetings scheduled for 6:30 pm, always start minutes later. That really is the way people regard the few surviving meetings of writers – trivial. Slowly, people started oozing into the room. And in only a few minutes, the session began. Poetry recitals are what characterized the take-off. The new writers that the workshop has managed to produce sneezed and coughed their poetry to the delectation of many that filled the...

When most literary groups in Malawi are on the death bed if not dead altogether, some groups are still in existence and one such group is the Chancellor College Writers’ Workshop which is based at the Chancellor College campus of the University of Malawi, on 26th September 2009 the members visited one of the newspaper publishing houses in Malawi, The Blantyre Newspapers Limited (BNL) which is also the oldest news publishing house in Malawi. I traveled with them and now writes: “PLEASE be certain on the time, come at two exactly because weekends are usually tricky,” the voice of Arnold boomed into Innocent Chipofya’s ears after he had informed him that we had changed from the scheduled 13:30 to 14:00 hours after we had discovered that we were not to leave Zingwangwa Secondary School the time we had expected and then settle for our lunch at the Polytechnic. Fine, we agreed, we were going to make it at two and there would be no change of mind. And, as we were disembarking for the lunc...