GTUG Lilongwe Inspirational Movie Night

Google Technology User Group Lilongwe held their second event of the year, an Inspirational Movie Night. The evening started with a documentary on the History of Search which covered the birth of Yahoo! and Excite and how Google came in later as the game changer. The role venture capitalists and angel investors played in all these startups was also looked into at depth. The second documentary was about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, with an in depth look into his company and it’s controversial origins. There was also a screening of a more technical nature, Android UI Design Patterns, that looked into the development tools of software for mobile devices. At the very end there was a short five minute TED talk by William Kamkwamba, the Malawian who developed a wind mill from rudimentary bicycle parts in Kasungu.

There were lively debates during the snack breaks from why startups sell in their early stages to the lack of investors in our local setup. The suggestions that came out were interesting but the underlying emphasis was that in Malawi we should strive to grow even though the environment has been know to be harsh on businesses with little working capital.

Blantyre GTUGers, we hope you see what you are missing out on! Joshua Ngalande, inventor of the automatic nsima cooker, was present with us and asked when the Blantyre community would get together to start planning local events there. The ball is in your court.

The event was kindly sponsored by Datacom, a locally owned data carrier and management firm.

“Did you just say yaaaah?”

Back in the very early 90’s I happened to spend a school year at Phwezi Secondary School in Rumphi. It is not really a place I miss, come to think of it. Water was a constant problem that forced us to wake up very early each morning if we wanted even a cup of water to brush our teeth with. Most weekends we just used to bath in the nearby river, that’s until a student drowned then we were banned! The boarding facilities and food was not up to scratch either considering I had just come from Blantyre Secondary School, a government school with better structures and a better diet. Then there were the few thieving students who would nick your slippers each time you climbed up your bunk bed. Neither did I like some of my class mates who kept referring to me and two other new guys as government spies. At the time Phwezi was owned and run by Chipimpha Mughogho, Dennis Simphawaka Nkwazi and other Aford pressure group members. As such current students were always suspicious that new students could be government plants trying to feed the MCP with information on the owners. As you can see plenty of reasons to kind of dislike my school.

One thing I did however like was my English class. The teacher, Mr Shumba, was an excellent teacher. He was very good with literature and better still with grammar. But if you happened to respond to any of his questions with a ‘yeah’ you were in deep trouble. “Did you just say yaaaah? Come here!” he would shout. The punishment meted out was normally a huge smack. After witnessing this rather cruel punishment a couple of times he took the time to explain his action one day. He emphasized the importance of using the word ‘yes’ and not ‘yeah’. As time went by, responding with a ‘yes’ became the norm especially in his presence.

This afternoon I was talking a customer service agent at Airtel to enquire why my internet has been down for two days. He responded with ‘yeah’ a bit too many times in our short conversation. Each time he used the word I visualised Mr Shuba rattling someone’s left cheek with full sound effects. He for sure didn’t pass through Mr Shumba’s class!