Situations vacant

I was interested to read in the Metro picked up in the course of the expedition noticed at reference 1 of a vacancy in Holborn for a project manager for the renovation of the official residence of the High Commissioner for Malawi.

Quite possibly this house in Winnington Road in Hampstead, backing onto the Golf Club and maybe a kilometre to the north of the famous 'Spaniards Inn', a once famous watering hole, but one which I have not visited myself for many years. The western side of this road appears to be full of houses quite like this one, while the eastern size appears to go in for a larger model. Perhaps suited to Zambia rather than Malawi.

I was struck by the way this large display advertisement was placed in among the small display advertisements for carpenters and such like. I associated to the day in the late 1960's when the large format 'Evening News' used to carry a couple of pages of display and classified advertisements for building jobs. Essential reading for any out of work building worker. While the 'Evening Standard', as I recall, concentrated on office and print jobs. Long merged.

I then turned up the High Commission at reference 2, where I learned that the President of Malawi is one Dr. Lazerus McCarthy Chakwera, educated in South Africa and the US, taking his doctorate from the Trinity International University, a little to the north west of Chicago, not to be confused with Northwestern University actually in Chicago, an institution once attended by my father for a short while. But an institution which qualified him to go onto to be President of the Malawi diocese of the Assemblies of God, a large Pentecostal operation invented in Arkansas and now headquartered in Missouri, although I may have got in a muddle here. It seems that there are a number of Pentecostal operations with names of this general form.

From there he jumped into mainstream politics.

It took a bit of poking to get the name of the High Commissioner, but I have run that down to Kena Mphonda, mostly educated in the US. His wife is very keen on wildlife.

While I am reminded by reference 4 that Malawi is a middle sized country of around 20m people, long ruled over by Hastings Banda, one of the generation of African leaders who took over from us in the 1960's. A man who must have had huge energy and talent to get himself educated in the US and qualified to practise as a doctor in the UK. Where he was also an elder of the Church of Scotland. Only returning to his native Nyasaland, now Malawi, in 1958.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-kinds-of-cheese.html.

Reference 2: https://malawihighcommission.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.tiu.edu/. 'Trinity International University is one university with four schools and a beautiful Christian camp. Though each of these institutions serves a distinct purpose and provides a unique experience, one mission unites them all: “to educate men and women to engage in God’s redemptive work in the world.” We want to enable our students—at all entities and in every discipline—to be prepared to lead others, as they are entrusted with the Gospel to think and live as Christ-followers in the twenty-first century'.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malawi.

Reference 5: https://www.stcolumbas.org.uk/. The London HQ of the Church of Scotland. A place we have visited at least once, in large part because we used to know a lady who was an elder there. See reference 6.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/08/different-class-of-cheese.html.