I just learned of some sad news from Malawi. A fellow blogger and acquaintence, Mangaliso Jere, died on January 18th. He was 27. I first met Mangaliso in Lilongwe at a Braai (Barbeque) at Mike Mckay’s house (as well as Austin Madinga and Soyapi Mumba). It was a gathering for bloggers in Malawi and there were ex-pats and Malawians there to eat food and chat. He seemed to always be laughing and quick to smile. The last time I saw him was in an office behind Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe. He worked for Malawi Sustainable Development Network Programme (SDNP) which was the Internet Service Provider used by Lighthouse (the HIV/AIDS clinic Jennifer worked for). I was talking to him about getting a database set up for the Lighthouse web page and, as usual, he was smiling and helping us out. There were computers, routers, cables and switches everywhere and loud modem sounds filling the room. It was where he wanted to be, surrounded by technology. I was also recently in touch with Mangaliso via email about the Lighthouse web site. When I first met him I was in a cast with the broken ankle and although I hadn’t seem him in over 6 months he still remembered. He wrote:

Nice to hear from you. How is your leg? Let me follow it up with my guys and I will get back to you soon.

It’s just frustrating to me because he went in to the hospital for a “routine” surgery and never woke up. However, a commenter on Mangaliso’s blog put that in perspective. He asked: “Where on earth can opening ones nostrils be categorised as minor surgery?” This could happen anywhere but the chances are greater that a surgery gone wrong is more likely to happen in a place like Malawi. I won’t go on about that now. Although I didn’t know Mangaliso that well I still feel a sense of loss. A member of the community is gone, however tenuous the connection may have been. I found out about it because Plaiche had saved a link for me on del.icio.us to the Global Voices blog that highlights bloggers from around the globe. I had recently seen a post on the same site by Soyapi. He is also in the photo above and is coming to San Francisco this month. The thing is, if I was back in Malawi I could have looked up Mangaliso and if he were here he could do the same. That’s the connection. I will end with one of the comments on his blog by a family member after his death…I liked it because it expressed their loss but also kept the conversation going…and I dig the butter joke. You will be missed Mangaliso.

will tell your story, your dreams to Dominic and Malcom and all the rest of your nieces and nephews.
Jo Jo will always be in to fill me with the Gaps.
Our promise to you is to live your dream of making GOGO happy and making the world a better place.
God is Good all the time.
As for we your nephews, we promise to Love school and BUILD ONE BIG COMPUTER IN YOUR NAME
This will be named MANGA COMPUTER and our SOLICITOR will be JOJO, uncle Chawezi will be the Managing Director

2. Do you know the joke about butter, I won’t tell you because you will spread it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Life in Africa, Web + Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.