Battson is a soft-spoken and determined writer, born and raised in southern England, and educated in film production. After college she settled in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where she now pursues electronic media, film and literary careers. She organized readings in her "Poet's Refuge" series which gathered Canadian writers across generational lines before new, young audiences in Toronto. Her new book, Hard Candy, was published in spring 1997 by Insomniac Press. Her poetry video series, "Word Up!", appeared on Canada's MuchMusic video channel (akin to MTV in the United States and Europe), featured many spoken word luminaries such as Meryn Cadell and John Giorno, and spawned a CD anthology of performance poetry under the same title. Battson is accustomed to taking a situation and changing it for the better -- her personality could best be described as "can do".

The Republic of Malawi, were it a single person, might be said to have the polar opposite personality of Battson's. Malawi is a challenged nation by almost every measure of Western progress. It is a small republic in southeast Africa nestled along the Great Rift Valley, and is bordered almost entirely on its eastern side by one of Africa's largest freshwater lakes. It's a hot, tropical land year-round with hilly terrain. This is the region where the nineteenth century English explorer David Livingstone was lost.

At the end of the twentieth century, Malawi's disconnectedness persisted. In 1996, there was no regular broadcast television in Malawi, and only a handful of FM radio stations served the country. Telephones were a premium. Electricity wasn't reliable, if it extended to one's place of work at all. Internet access for Battson was arranged through the United Nations Development Program, but it handled only e-mail and then only in batches sent three times a day through a relay site in South Africa. At the time Battson was in Malawi, only the United States mission had direct access to the Internet, and that was via a secure link to a geosynchonous satellite.

After Malawi won independence from England in the 1960s, the country was run by a "president for life" until only a few years before Battson saw the country. In that time, Malawi's economy stagnated and freedom of expression, as generally understood in the West, was curtailed. Malawi did not keep pace with its neighbors' economic development, modest as that was through the 1980s, and thus became a poor nation even among other poor nations.

Health care for Malawi citizens, where it existed, sometimes worked on a triage plan, almost as though the nation were in a war-time austerity. Malawi's equatorial climate frustrates health care by being an ideal environment for malaria, encephalitis, and other tropical diseases. Epidemiologists have suspected Malawi's region as a likely genesis point for the AIDS virus.

Jill Battson was invited to Malawi by a good friend, Adeena Karasick. Battson understood that the country was undeveloped before she arrived. For the few years prior to Battson's journey there, the United Nations were working a kind of therapy upon Malawi, to help it institutionalize a democratic form of government, to offer relief where it was desperately needed, and help its economy recover enough to sustain its own population. Despite Malawi's national trauma, Battson still tried to tour the country with a stoic sightseer's attitude wherever she could, to discover for herself the land and its lush environments, and to discover the character, tenacity, and future hopes of Malawi's people.

When I published this feature in 1997, I saw a story emerge from the interaction of Battson, a grandchild of the British Empire, and Malawi, a former British colony. Both the land and the writer show expectations of the other. Both have habits of their own which are tell-tale of the long historical shadow of the British Empire. But other themes persist, too, in Africa's divides between wealth and poverty, health and disease.

Battson's role in this dialog was part tourist, part care-giver. Her reaction to life in Africa is candid and outspoken. She asks us to look deep in ourselves to see the social and personal consequences of our deeds in other lands. Her situation in Malawi is like that of many relief workers'. She wanders between care -- empathy for the stricken people -- and custody -- saving others versus saving herself. The privileges of salvation between the Malawians and foreigners often diverge. Such a class difference challenges Battson and Karasick much more than it does other Europeans given to the old colonial ways.

We in the First World may believe we are charitable, but at whose cost? We may believe religious and cultural traditions should be preserved, but at the expense of how many lives? Where does care blur into custody, and custody in turn bloom into empire? For Battson and for us, Malawi remains a nexus for all these questions. The land is a literal and conceptual wilderness.

- Kurt Heintz, e-poets.net

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