US embassy cable - 05LILONGWE744

UNCLAS LILONGWE 000744 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR AF/PD, AF/S, AF/RA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KMDR, KOCI, KPAO, MI, Media, Aid 
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION - INTERNATIONAL AID, 
LILONGWE 
 
1. "Bush Touches Desperate Souls" 
 
2.  The independent daily, "The Daily Times" of 
August 24, 2005, carried a full page 
story/opinion piece by Malawian journalist, 
Isaac Masingati.   Masingati hails the newly 
launched Ambassador's Girls Scholarship Program 
as a key to easing underprivileged girls' 
educational predicaments.  Excerpts follow. 
 
3.  "Is there a relationship between the 
American President George Bush and two little 
girls, one in Rumphi and the other in Mulanje? 
None, skeptics would say, but Isaac Masingati 
found out one. 
 
4.  If you were to ask among the young of 
Limbuli bordering Mozambique in Mulanje, you 
would be amazed how the name George Bush easily 
slips through their lips. 
 
5.  He is reaching out to desperate and needy 
girls who would have dropped from school due to 
poverty by providing them with requirements that 
will keep  them in class and away from early 
marriages.  While their understanding of the 
American President varies from the film maestro 
Harrison Ford of Air Force One to the anti- 
terrorist buster . the children of Limbuli in 
Mulanje and Bolero in Rumphi do agree on one 
thing: whoever this man Bush is, he is a good 
man. 
 
6.  This is a national tragedy. Because of 
poverty, children of promise cannot stay in 
school and often end up commercial sex workers 
where they die of HIV/AIDS.  Some become 
premature mothers who cannot provide for their 
children while the rest sneak into the tobacco 
and tea estates where they are harassed and 
abused by employers and fellow workers.  Thanks 
to the Ambassador's Girls Scholarship Program 
(AGSP), such underprivileged girls are assisted 
with essential provisions to ease their 
educational predicaments. 
 
Eastham