The Lion of Kasoba part 2

The poor old Lion had lost most of its teeth, but 2 excellent mechanics and an auto-electrician gave it back its roar and made its arthritic joints mobile again. It turns out that they are, in fact, the very people we are trying to speak for in this project in order to explain the problems caused by exile and the oppression of the dictator's regime.
Joseph Mwabulunju is about 62 years old and was in exile in Tanzania because his home area, Karonga, was always viewed as politically hostile by the Banda clique. One only had to be related to an exile activist and you and all your family were under suspicion. So many of the Karonga folks suffered from the regime's paranoia that large numbers were living in exile in Dar es Salaam. Their brothers and sisters struggled to keep body and soul together inside the country all the while being watched with a microscopic attention by the Special Branch political police. But in the case of Karonga, the proximity to the border and the shared cultural heritage with the Nyakyusa of the Tanzania side just added an extra level of daily tension to the life of anyone who carried the names beginning with 'Mwa'. Mwakasungura, Mwambetania, Mwaungulu and many others had family in exile and active opponents of the regime.
Joseph is an excellent mechanic. Through his family connection he is a first cousin to the the rebel Kapote Mwakasungura and an induna (elder) of his small village. In the meantime, he can take your transmission apart and identify its ailment in no time at all. He picked up his trade in exile where he settled and began his first family. He only returned to Malawi full time in 2001 leaving his Tanzanian wife and several children behind. His fellow mechanic George Gondwe was a child of exile. His uncle Mordecai Gondwe is a participant in our study and suffered several prolonged periods of detention and torture. George was born while his parents were in exile in Dar and trained as an auto-electrician there.

It was amazing after 3 days of recruiting young men to push the beast to life, that within a couple of hours he had the alternator charging the battery, the starter turning the motor over and the electric windows rolling up and down. Despite its geriatric state it was still a powerful beast. Exile had had a profound impact on their life outcomes. The repression suffered at the time carries consequences decades later.