Coasting in Neutral

The fuel crisis in Malawi has once again reared its head. This time aggravated by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Summit being held at Crossroads in Lilongwe. Massive queues for fuel formed around the city when news of incoming fuel tankers spread. These were queues like I had never seen before. My friend Max and I picked up my gardener Christopher and rushed to the queue at Bisnowaty with jerry cans. By this time, there was no point in putting my car in the queue – it was just too long, but we had a good chance with the jerry cans. We left him in the queue and went to do some other running around. Some of our friends had been in the queue there since 8:30am. We arrived around 10:00am. By 2:00pm we learned that the fuel tankers had been halted outside the city and diverted by the president. Due to the COMESA Summit, the president wanted to clear the fuel queues in an attempt to conceal the extent of the fuel crisis. You know, conceal the crisis to the likes of great leaders such as Robert Mugabe, King Mswati of Swaziland, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir (who has an international arrest warrant against him, which Malawi failed to enforce: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15384163). DPP vehicles drove around past the fuel queues telling people to leave, and that they were embarrassing Malawi by queuing.

So without petrol, we left the queue when it became clear the tanker was no longer coming. Off to the black market, about 10-15mins out of town. We drove around to 4 or 5 different spots where petrol is sold illegally out of drums in the village. Nothing. We watched them siphon the last of their petrol into a mans 5L container. That was it.

I know I talk a lot about the fuel crisis and complain about the queues. Just to get a sense, my friend and I took a video of some of the fuel queues in Lilongwe on that day (Oct 14). I finally managed to upload one on YouTube. Here is the link. Please excuse the language in the video – we had had a long frustrating day. This was the queue we were waiting in.

To see the video of the fuel queue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B88nT-cB1to