Hi my friends, quick post before leaving for
http://www.advancedsummerschool.org.za/
I am so excited!!! After teaching so much in the last year, I think that things are gonna change a bit. We have recruited a new lecturer for the department to share the teaching load and I think I’ll be able to spend more time coordinating the course and doing research.. And this summer school just arrives in the best moment…
I don’t think I’ll read emails in the next days so I wish you all happy New Year!!!!!
I know I am not blogging much these days, but there is not much going on here apart from Xmas parties and dinners. The college is quiet without students and we only have to prepare supplementary exams for those that failed.. The problem is that the letters asking for the exam papers were sent too late and many people is on holiday already.. The secretary of the examinations office is going mad trying to catch the professors.
I think that by the way I could talk about communication problems at the college, which we have many. For example, last week I was supposed to interview new lecturers but nobody told me. Well, they told me but the same day at 8am, exactly when the interviews were supposed to start. I almost had a fit and I refused to do it.. and in half an hour I got in my desk the letters from the whole week!
Talking about other more interesting matters, the plan to visit
Have you noticed? I have added a tiny map at the bottom of my page so I can see where you are… Have a nice holiday!!
Today I handed all the final results and I’m in hols!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am going to the lake for the week end and I’m doing a party at home on Tuesday to celebrate the end of exams and that I have been in
It’s been crazy, I must say, because we had end of term and end of year exams and we even did a practical exam! The students had to measure the acidity of vinegar and you had to see me cycling to the store in the middle of the exam because we run out..
Now is time to relax and think about the Xmas holidays. I told you we were planning to go to
This week end I am organising a peer support meeting at the lake,
strictly work, I don't think we'll have any chance to swim ;-)
She's teaching me Chichewa (the local language) and I also want her to
teach me to carry things on my head, but she refuses so far... we get on
really well and I hope she'll introduce me to her children soon!
But the rains also bring more mosquitoes and is the worst season for
Malaria. The disease is specially virulent on children and the hospitals
will get more and more crowded in the next months.
The raining season is also the time to plant maize, the staple food in
Malawi, and the farmers rush to the fields. Every single patch of land
even in the city is being ploughed!
Everybody hopes that the rains will be abundant this year, which means
that the maize crop will be good. If rains are scarce the prices of
maize will be too high and there could be food shortages like in 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1985765.stm
I am a bit worried about transport, Not easy to cycle around with this
storms and a laptop on my backpack! but well, we will see what happens.
Apart from weather and transport issues life is great here, I went
yesterday to a jazz concert at the French cultural centre, and tomorrow
we are heading to Mulanje, the mountains one hour away from here. I have
joined the Malawi Mt Club and is so well organised, with loads of huts
where to stay, guides, porters... That mountain is not a joke, 3000 mt
high! people gets lost and they never find them again, so wish us good
luck :-))
I cycle everyday to work and is quite fun and exhausting (and dangerous!). The traffic is terrible, fumes, minibuses, people, etc. But still I am lucky, many Malawians cannot afford a bike or the minibus (is 20 cents of a euro for a ride in
So many people ask me what will I do with my bike when I go home, so I wondered what could I do to help people to get cheap bikes. Obviously, I was not the first one in having this idea, and I’ve found some organizations that collect second hand bicycles, fix them and send them to
Bikes can help people to get to work (or school!), are cheap to maintain, environmentally friendly and can generate small business that sells or repairs them. If you are interested you can have a look to the links below, and may be you can help giving an old bike!!
http://re-cycle.org/index.html
http://www.vcd-bw.de/aktionen/bikes4africa/index_en.html
http://www.springwise.com/nonprofit_social_cause/i_want_to_ride_my_bicycle/
Don’t think that all the volunteers have an easy life like me when they come to
She is an occupational therapist and she came to work at Zomba mental hospital, all the way from
Most of the people speak English here, but mental patients are different, so that was one of the first problems that Rachel had to face.. But well, we all receive quite a lot of training and eventually she would be able to work with patients. The main problem is that her colleagues at the hospital refused to talk in English when she was around or in the meetings, so she found herself totally stuck. She has tried to make it work but finally she gave up. Fortunately there is another place in Mzuzu where she could do some work and they wanted her to go there, so finally she managed to get a transfer and she moved there..
Mzuzu is far up the north of
Talking about traveling, many of us are thinking of staying here over Christmas and cross the border to
Two week ends ago, my house was empty for the first time in many weeks.. Guys, that was very weird. But well, it only lasted one day, because soon I was invited to a party, next day I when for dinner, and since then the visits came back to normal again.
Last week end was fantastic, I thought it was going to be a quiet one, but out of the blue I was invited to a party in Mulanje, a town only 1 hour away at the feet of a 3000m mountain… sounds good, doesn’t it?? We danced until dawn, first in the house of these colleagues, and then in the local pub… Coming out of the bar the sun was lighting the mountain in the background... Amazing.
As someone said the next day, dancing here is like having sex fully dressed… Well, most of the girls that you find in the pubs are prostitutes, sex is really explicit and when you visit one of these places you understand how HIV and other STD spread around. This is one of the sad consequences of poverty.
It was nice to have such a hectic week end because work is very boring now marking and marking exams and lab reports. The Malawian English of my students doesn’t make things easier... but well, what can I say? I’m not Shakespeare either!
Mvuu means hippo in the local language, probably they gave it that name because hippos visit the camp (I have seen the pictures) although they didn't come that night. In the first evening we did the boat safari. It was absolutely magic, we spotted 3 baby hippos, a group of elephants and a few crocodiles.. the sunset covered us in orange light.. I couldn't stop shooting with my camera.
The next day we went into the rhino sanctuary This is the only part of the park with rhinos, they were totally extinted in Malawi and now they try to breed them in a separated area. We couldn't see the rhinos.. Shame, we'll have to come back ;-)
Believe it or not, that was the title of the conference about HIV/AIDS organised here at the college last Wednesday. I thought it was quite amusing, In the first seminar we had someone talking about the use of condoms to avoid HIV infection, and in the second we had a priest talking about how ONLY faith and abstinence were the solutions to the HIV pandemic. I was very surprised to see this two different opinions exposed in the same room. You can imagine that some people reacted against the speech of the parson.. But I think is great that this kind of meeting is organised and people speaks about sex, condoms and HIV without fear in Malawi!!
Almost every week somebody from the office has gone to a funeral. And usually is not the funeral of a grandparent, but the funeral of a brother, wife, son, etc. Life expectancy in Malawi is less than 40 years, mainly due to HIV/AIDS related diseases or malaria. There are many cases of children with malnutrition problems too. Is difficult to understand since treatment at the hospital is free, even antiretrovirals (anti HIV drugs). Generally, education seems to be the main reason.
Many people, specially in the rural areas, is scared of going to hospital. They beleive in traditional medicine, where bad spirits are responsible of diseases. In some cases people will go to hospital but it will be too late to do anything, and in some cases their relatives would think they have actually died because they went to hospital. My colleagues working at the hospital are horrified of the lack of emotions of the local nurses or doctors. I suppose that one gets used to it, but it is sad to think that it can happen.
There are many places where they sell coffins around the city, sometimes in the same shop where they sell furniture, because death is part of life in Malawi.
The famous (in Malawi) college of medicine (COM) is placed in Blantyre. Walking inside is like going into another dimension, nice buildings, well-dessed students, wireless internet conection (in the library)... All this to try to build an institution that will form health proffesionals for Malawi.
The facilities are quite good, but the lack of staff is enormous. I have talked about this before, not many people is happy to come and work in the warm heart of Africa...
For example, in the premed course we have 70 students in the class (only one swift), there is not an appropiated chemistry lab, and we have lots of glassware, but we haven't got a technician and nobody has found the time to do an inventory, I will try to do it myself.
For an ordinary European, getting used to the Malawian way of working can be a bit of a nighmare, we have the impression that nothing can be planned in advance. Many times we seem to be fighting against the system, or against the MMT (Malawy May be Time) but people is truely great and after a while you can forget it all.
I am hosting several volunteers in my house these days. Ali, Clare and Kim, they are all going to work as nurse trainers in different parts of the country, but first they have to do some training themselves in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital here in Blantyre, 5 min from the COM. I won't speak here about their experiences in the hospital, they are also writing about it somewhere..
It is so much fun having them in the house, specially in the evenings without electricity... we pass the time with candles, beer and corn flakes, (we cannot cook) talking about our placements.
We profit of the transport service of the College of Medicine to get to work in the morning and we just laugh imagining what the neighbours may think of me living with 3 women in the house.. The other day, the housemaid of the neighbour asked pointing to Kim: Who is this one?? she's my friend! I said. Not very sure what she understood.. I already said that I'm a catholic (I can't be bother explaining that I'm not a religious person) so I cannot use the excuse of being muslim...
The house is a bit far from the college, its only a 5 min drive, but it will take me almost an hour to get there by foot. There is a public transport system, its formed by minivans that stop at certain places and where people squeezes at high pressure. You may think that the van is full, but in the next stop more people will certainly jump in.. I am very lucky, my neighbour Mike is a professor also at the college of medicine and he gives me a lift in the morning.
Walking around the city is quite amusing, but it can also be exhausting. People stops to talk to you, shake hands, and want to know about you. A conversation here starts with: Muli Bwanji? Ndili bwino, kaya inu? which is something like, hello, how are you? I'm well and you? I am well thank you, thank you.
In general, people is so kind and polite, hey! it is not a lie when they say this is the warm hearth of Africa! The disadvantage is that if you want to ask something to someone you'll have to pass all this process before you can actually go to the point.
Another experience is buying something. You can bargain even at the shops. sometimes, they will try to charge you a bit more because since you are a white guy you are suppose to be rich!
I am supposed to be so rich that people stops me in the street and ask me for a job. You can hire someone to clean the house, do the washing / ironing or guard it during the night for about 5000 kawcha, more or less 28 Euros (a month!). This is pretty amazing, our allowance as volunteers is almost 10 times that and I don't really see how can I live on that.
The ICT includes formation about culture, language, work, security etc. We had quite a lot of fun, specially in the evenings when we used to have a gin&tonic in the hotel next door :-) . In the first days we were always shepherd everywhere by the VSO staff or by other volunteers. They don’t recommend to walk alone in some parts of the city, even during the day!
The end of the ICT was a workshop with our employers. They were supposed to come and participate, but mine did not come... umm this doesn’t start well.. Finally a driver came on Friday afternoon and he took me to my house in Blantyre. Pangono pangono, you hear that a lot. it means, of course, slowly
