Greetings to All Friends of Malawi
Notes from FOM President Andrew Guest: With this, our second quarterly newsletter for 2026 approaching the Northern hemisphere summer, I find myself thinking about cooking and cook-outs. I’ve mostly been inspired by a recent post to the Peace Corps Malawi “Stories from the Warm Heart” Substack by Dave Minnick, who served in Malawi between 2023-2025 after having been a career chef. His short Malawi memoir in six recipes (for Takulandirani, Futali, Chipisi Cha Chiwayo, Nthawi Yokolola, Nsima Ndiwo, and Chikondamoyo) is highly recommended and offered a great trip down memory lane.
It inspired me to do a bit of searching for other Malawi recipes: despite being a regular NYTimes reader, for example, I’d missed a November 2025 Times Cooking recipe for Mbatata cookies that I admit to not really looking familiar from my Malawi days in the late 90s. I do, however, fondly remember the Peace Corps Malawi cookbook that was given to all volunteers in those days as a spiral bound collection that proved indisipensible for making good enough food with what was available in local markets. I loved that cookbook, and took it back to sub-Saharan Africa with me in 2003 when I went to Angola to do dissertation research. To my great sadness, it then disappeared – I suspect it just proved too tempting to my Angolan roommates! It turns out there is an older edition (dated as “1973-1989”) archived by The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, and a few Reddit and Tumblr pages where people have informally archived other Peace Corps cookbooks. It’s a whole thing!
So as we at Friends of Malawi continue our mission of sustaining connections and cultural exchange between the US and Malawi, do let me know if anyone has a copy of the 90’s era Malawi version that can be digitized. I still miss that cookbook! And read on for some updates of our ongoing work and membership that doesn’t really have to do with cooking, but does have the intention of sparking the kinds of connections we often get from fond memories…
Grants Update: Supporting Grassroots Impact
In the most recent quarter of the year, Friends of Malawi was able to aggregate the many generous donations you members have provided to grant $5000 for re-stocking the “Friends of Malawi” micro-grant fund through our partnership with Peace Corps Malawi. This fund has taken on different names over the years, including the Associate Director Fund, but is a great way for us to provide some discretionary funds that the Peace Corps office can use to support volunteer efforts that need relatively small amounts of money for immediate endeavors. The Friends of Malawi funds are more responsive and agile than larger grant programs, so provide a nice option to volunteers.
As one example from recent months, the Peace Corps office shared that they were able to use our Friends of Malawi funding to support a Response Volunteer for a Capacity Building Training with the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi (WESM) in Blantyre. As a summary, they reported that “the project strengthened WESM’s long-term sustainability by training staff in core grant procedures. Since WESM relies almost entirely on grant funding, the training was an opportunity for WESM staff to learn to independently identify opportunities, interpret calls for proposals, and draft competitive applications. This training equipped WESM staff with the skills and knowledge required to pursue future grants without Peace Corps Volunteer support.”
As we move forward through 2026 we plan to continue to work with our Malawi-based partners to provide small grants, and we are also refining our process for identifying partners who align with our mission (particularly in having some connection to Peace Corps in Malawi). So stay tuned…
Stories of Malawi: Then and Now
Our latest RPCV update comes from Jack Allison, who served in Malawi from 1967-1969, and shares a piece titled “Former Peace Corps volunteer advocates use music in diplomacy:”
Historically, music has always been associated with harmonizing cross-cultural relations. The concept of diplomacy conjures up international peaceful relations and negotiations. Kings and rulers, in reaching out to neighbors and other countries, first used music, along with dancing, sports and food — utilizing a soft touch — to make peace. From a lifetime of practicing music diplomacy, I urge that music be highlighted as a powerful means of promulgating peace and goodwill.
Music has long been recognized as The Universal Language. Even for those who don’t understand the words, the perception of feeling, emotion, and meaning are undeniable. An example is the playing of national anthems at international sporting events. The positive karma comes shining through.
Diplomacy is necessary to promote goodwill at communal and personal levels, including friendship, marriage, and neighborliness, calling for an ongoing genuine give-and-take. Music can be utilized to foster such goodwill through a combination of education, entertainment and camaraderie.
During my three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, Africa, 1967-69, I personally discovered the impact of teaching a myriad of basic health education issues throughout the country. It all began when I observed that flies were wont to collect on the eyes of babies who were being carried on their mothers’ backs after having had their diaper changed and fed mama’s milk. The mothers weren’t aware of the danger of the flies.
Another volunteer who lived seven miles away drew a large fly on poster boards, and I printed in Chichewa, the national language, “Brush the Flies Out of Your Babies’ Eyes to Prevent Pink Eye.” These posters were hung in our respective under-fives baby clinic. Soon thereafter I put those words into music and recorded, with the most popular band in the country, the first song I’d ever written.
Once the song was released on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, the only radio station in Malawi at that time, it became a national hit. Health care professionals, Peace Corps Volunteers, and parents then started to spread the word, resulting in fewer babies and other village members reporting a decrease in the incidence of conjunctivitis nationally.
Something more profound occurred next: My second song, UFA wa MTEDZA, asked mothers to put pounded up peanut flour in their babies’ maize porridge and feed it to them three times a day if they wanted their babies to be healthy (to weigh a lot on the scale). This song became the number one song in Malawi for three years running and was credited for saving countless Malawian babies from dying of malnutrition.
Additionally, the money from the sale of my music was put into a special Peace Corps fund that allowed me to bring a young Malawian home with me and send him to Warren Wilson College, one of seven work study colleges in the USA, which I had attended when it was a junior college.
The above are indeed examples of cross-cultural diplomacy of incorporating public health messages in the form of local songs and jingles. Of the 17 recordings I did in Malawi, two others had measurable impact. The song I wrote and recorded for rabies control was played incessantly on MBC and was credited with getting that dreaded disease contained throughout Malawi. The other was a 20-second jingle exhorting the value of fertilizer to increase crop yield and therefore profit. It, too, was played continuously. Sales of fertilizer boomed.
Since returning home at the end of 1969, I wrote four jingles under the aegis of family planning while I was a medical student at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 1994 I was invited to return to Malawi to help combat the AIDS epidemic there. My album, “Songs About AIDS” (Nyimbo za EDZI), raised over $30,000, which was used to feed Malawian children who had been orphaned because their parents had died of AIDS. Last year, Developing Radio Partners, where I have the good fortune to serve on its Board of Directors, distributed nine 60-second original jingles throughout Malawi. These were cited in helping to quash the national epidemic of cholera.
Music diplomacy is essential at a time like this to be utilized whenever possible to foster peace and cross cultural sharing for the common good.
Jack Allison has been a music diplomat since June 1966 when he appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with the UNC Men’s Glee Club, followed by a six-week tour of Europe, including then East Germany. Visit doctorjackallison.com.
Thank You for Being Part of This Community
Founded in 1987 by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, FOM remains a nonprofit rooted in friendship, solidarity, and grassroots partnership. We’re proud to be affiliated with the National Peace Corps Association and grateful to each of you for your continued support.
Do you have a memorable story about your time or work in Malawi? We’d love to post it and share it with our members! Please send your stories to us at [email protected].
Please look forward to ongoing updates—and we invite you to stay engaged as we continue supporting projects and volunteers in Malawi.
As always, we are unable to support projects or continue our work without the generous donations of our members. If you would like to give, you can do so through friendsofmalawi.org.
Tiyeni patsogolo—let’s keep moving forward.
Zikomo,
The Friends of Malawi Board