2 Months in!

2 months in!

How times seems to be flying. I have been in Malawi for over 2 months now and actually spent a whole month living in a hotel!! Thankfully have completed my In County Training – I was going mad by the end of the 3 weeks. We all went out to celebrate and ended up in a Malawi night club!! Quite entertaining to watch all the Malawians dance – they have good rhythm compared to us in the West!!

At the end of the training I spent another nice weekend at the lake for an education meeting and managed to get up to see the sunrise at half 5! Made it back to Rumphi, this time by a car, so didn’t have to suffer the dehydration treatment saved for the buses!

After managing to pass my motorbike test with flying colours, I decided to try out my new (well quite old actually) bike that I will use in Rumphi. Hill, another volunteer who also has a bike, came with me and suggested a nice path around the back of his house. Well it had been a nice path in the dry season but now, at the end of the rainy season it was pretty overrun with grass and the like! So weaving in and out of the grass trying to follow the path and up and down some steep hills. I stalled in the middle of a steep part so gave up! Hill had to try and get the bike up – he ended up in the bushes!! So at this point we gave up and returned back. So much for building up my confidence on the bike!! Personally I blame the bike as it is hasn’t been used for a few months and maybe still needs to be warmed up. Hopefully!!!

Back in Rumphi meant back to work. We still had to visit 2 of the TDCs that we hadn’t managed to see during the firs attempt a few weeks back so we set of on Monday. Against all the odds we successfully managed to complete our task and even got provided with lunch!!

Next week we were meant to be holding an exchange visit for another set of advisors in another district. The planning for this is to be done by our PEAs. Of course nothing had been done while we were away so we had some organising to do! We had to go down to Mzuzu to get some t-shirts printed (prizes and gifts are a big thing in Malawi). On the way we were pulled over by the traffic police at a road block – not an unusual event, there are more road blocks than cars it seems! Normally they just ask where you are going, sometimes check your licence and tax discs. But today they had a request. Another police officer and his suspect needed a lift to Mzuzu to go to the court and we had been selected to give them one!! Police officer in the back and the suspect in the front!! Only in Malawi! The urgency of the trip didn’t matter as the exchange visit has just been cancelled. The Ministry of Education has called all our PEAs in for training starting on Sunday – yes Easter Sunday!

On a serious note, here is my though for the week – Malawi is a very poor country with some very poor people. One theory is that if you live on less that a US dollar a day then you are living below the poverty line (hope that is correct, apologies if its not!!) In Malawi a well paid, unskilled worker such as a night watch man or a house boy gets paid about 4500 kwatcha a month. The exchange rate is about 273 kwacha to the pound. Do the maths and that’s about £16.50 a month. He probably had about 6-10 children in his family to provide for as well! And just to emphasis that he is being well paid for his job!! The basic primary school teacher earns 9000 kwacha a month. £30 a month. Really, not a lot of money!

Anyway, it’s Easter weekend so I’m off for a long weekend on a boat trip along the lake– although none of the Malawians seem to ever take holidays!! Enjoy Easter!!

** I have received 2 letters from home, thanks Jan and Pamela! It was great to hear the news and the photos were most welcome! Remember DEMs office, PO Box 230, Rumphi, Malawi!!!!!