Liwonde N park..

I am so excited because tomorrow I am going to Liwonde NP with Ali, Clare and Kim, the VSO nurses that stayed with me until last week. Ali and Clare went back to their place in Malamulo, somewhere in the south of Blantyre and came back home yesterday, so all the family was together again. You may not understand this, but we really felt like a family (me and my three wives) during the couple of weeks they stayed in my house.

The park we are going tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, with loads of elehants crocodiles and hippos. We are going to stay overnight in the camp, and is gonna be great with a boat safari and a walk. The trip is part of the events organised for my birthday... hey! I've never got older in Africa before, I had to do something special!!

We are all having a relaxing time in our placements during this first weeks, the nurses have done their orientations and I was just preparing lectures. Next week we come back to Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) for the second part of in country training... two more weeks of language, security and culture talks, and after this I think we'll start to work seriously :-)

Sorry, I won't post things for a while and you'll have to wait for the pics of the elephants.

Condoms, Faith and circumcision...

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!!

Life is cheap...

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.

Hugh Masekela

I miss the summer concerts in Brussels. The couleur cafe festival, the free concerts in Flagey... But yesterday here in Blantyre I had the chance to listen to Hugh Masekela. http://www.headsup.com/bios/masekela.html

He's a living legend of the south-african jazz, so there were many references to the apartheid and Mandela in the concert. He made us wait for more than 3 hours !! but it was worth it. Try to listen some of his tracks, but I suppose that it won't be the same that listening to it live... and here!

Driving around..

Last week end we rented a car and planned to visit a couple of natural parks. We had a really posh 4wd, and we felt like the richest guys in the world. We drove past loads of people that squeeze in mini buses or travels in the back of pick-ups, or just walk milles to get to work or to a market.

On sunday, coming back from the park (click on the photos link!!!!) Ali couldn't take it any more and she decided to stop in the road and ask people that was walking if they wanted a lift, just like in 'Cry the beloved country' :-) . Some people couldn't believe it, or they even run away from us (!) . We got 3 kids and a couple with two smalls kids in the back of the pick-up and we received the most rewarding smiles ever.