Mulanje trip...

The trip to Mulanje went well! we were lucky with the rains but we just
trekked to Chambe Hut and back the next day, with a good swim at the
waterfall. You can see some pictures of the week end and other things on
my flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/acodina

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 ;-)

more news!!

More news, I have a housemaid now, and my house is cleaner than ever.
Her name is Mary and she's great. She has 5 children and her husband
passed away this year.. But she smiles like a sunshine.

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!

rainning season

The rains have arrived like a cup tea for the thirsty soil. It rains
almost every day in the afternoon, and they say this is just the
beginning. The smell after the storms is incredible and the lightning so
amazing. Everything starts to be green and there are more and more
flowers everywhere..

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 :-))

Bikes for Africa

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 Blantyre) so they walk one hour or more to get to work.

 

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 Africa.

 

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://www.africycle.org/

 

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/