Humanity

It’s been quite a week, a good friend from another life died, she was found in her house having been dead for two days, I met a truly inspirational person from a refugee camp who has brought a new meaning to the term resilience, two friends both of whom I deeply respect fell out with each, one of whom is going through an impossibly difficult time in his life, upsetting and energy draining but they worked it out, heart warming, another good friend has been and always is a rock to me, he grounds me and makes sense although I know he will not know the difference he makes, today, a fellow volunteer who, again I believe without knowing, gave me a hug and changed my day.

Life is an incredible thing, so much to learn, it’s so big, so much happening, no boundaries, open to all of it. People touch you in so many ways, all the time, so many interactions, so many influences, so much positivity, so much to learn and not enough words.

That’s what I want to say tonight

Love to everyone

What do you call this?

I felt lonely and isolated today. I woke up feeling good about having an office day. I’d been out for a few days and was looking forward to being somewhere I feel comfortable and chatting with people I feel relaxed around.

It didn’t turn out that way. I got frustrated with not being able to chat because I don’t speak the language, not being able to laugh because I don’t understand the joke and having to go and spend 3x as much as my colleagues if I want to get some lunch because I’m white.

I didn’t manage to make the opportunities to have the work conversations I wanted to have and I ended up opting for an early lift home.

Overthinking everything comes next. What could I have done differently? Why do I let this get to me? It’s my own fault. I don’t make enough effort. Why haven’t I got any beer in the house!?  

Move on! Forget it!

So I start to read a book.

‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge

It begins with a blog post that was written in 2014 by the same author and title, which apparently caused a storm at the time. Being in PNG at the time I missed it altogether.

It has completely changed my day.

The blog itself is so powerful it blew my day away. I’m now still only 20% into the book (yes kindle!) but I already have to say read it!

It reminds me why I do what I do, why I am who I am, why it’s so important to be able to read and answers why you really can’t get down about a crap day!

Well that’s what I wanted to say today

Love to everyone xx

A month in Malawi

I am SO crap at blogging! Can't believe it's August already and my last blog was April!
I'm ignoring the fact that we've had May and June and going straight into a photo diary of July, it's been such a hectic month I've kind of forgotten anything that went before.

July started with an open day at one of the schools in my district, Biwi primary school. The idea is to raise awareness of the project and gives a chance for the learners to show off their achievements. Lots of singing and dancing, drama and demonstration sessions in the learning centre.

Standard 7 learners performance - I don't know what they were singing but it looked good!

Yesani (our project manager) doing a great job of thanking everyone and generally selling the project

Standard 2 learners demonstrating a oneclass session with cardboard ipads and headsets

Sithembile, the fantastic learning centre coordinator, demonstrating a real oneclass session for the parents 

A great way to start the month followed by a few days of routine school monitoring, office stuff and a little bit of chitenje shopping in the market with the engineers.

Mama Africa! Modelling my new chitenje

Posing with Sophie and Danielle (project engineers) in my back garden

Then on the road to the south to train lecturers at Blantyre Teacher training College and hold an awareness meeting in Liwonde. We are training lecturers at 5 TTCs so that they can train their student teachers before they go on teaching practice. Blantyre was my first lecturer training.

Going through Ncheu on the way to Blantyre. This road forms the border to Mozambique, on the left Malawi, on the right Mozambique! This is cool for someone who comes from a country of no land borders.

I think this is the school where we did the training, I'm not totally sure but if it wasn't it would have been very much like this! You can see the learning centre on the left under the tree.

Group photo of all the lecturers and Yesani in the learning centre

It was a five hour drive to Blantyre and then we went straight into training so I was very happy when we got to the place we were staying and this was my room. What an awesome bed!!

We have had a few problems with security so the next morning we went round all the Unlocking Talent schools in Blantyre to deliver alarm locks for the cabinets. This is Yesani demonstrating how they work, they sound a bit like a rape alarm, quite loud.

After completing the training in the afternoon we left Blantyre the next day for Liwonde. 17 iPads were stolen from one of the schools in Liwonde which was a blow to the project because previously theft had only been solar panels or batteries. If stolen iPads could be unlocked and sold on we would have a big security problem so we wanted to do everything we could to recover them. Someone must have known something about the theft so we were holding an awareness meeting with all the important members of the community to encourage them to support us. I say 'we', awareness meetings are held in Chichewa so basically Yesani does all the work and I just sit there and smile like a numpty - I'm good at that!

The reception committee at Liwonde school - I got told off for attracting too much attention - that's what you get for traveling with a mzungu!

Liwonde town, this photo got taken because Regina and I spent a long time sat outside the bank looking at this view waiting to be rescued because the car wouldn't start! That's another story!

Back home for a few days, long enough to see a football match (I did take photos but they weren't good), drink a few Kuche Kuches with Sean (nobody wants to see photos of that) and then off again. This time north with Chisomo (very clever technical person of the project) to Karonga for more lecturer training for me and technical training of learning centre coordinators and government people for him.

Karonga TTC lecturers observing a oneclass session in action

Happy to be finished, time for a little photo shoot on the beach

Such a poser!

Even bigger poser!

The journey from Karonga to Lilongwe is a long one, about 8 hours drive (car - bus much longer) but if you set out on a shopping tour of Malawi it can be even longer. It took us 12 hours to get back on the scenic route, arriving with rice, charcoal, fish, tomatoes all from the best places to buy them, so I'm told. Needless to say I didn't buy anything but it was a lot of fun with my very own personal tour guide!

The view driving up from Karonga on the coast through the mountains

Chisomo buying charcoal by the side of the road. Mats of maize drying in the sun, I asked Chisomo what the gravel was for and he looked at me like I'd lost the plot and said that's maize!

Further along the road I think this is where we stopped to give someone some shoes - like you do!

Near Salima, getting dark by now but we have to get some fish. This photo is a bit crap because I was trying to be inconspicuous! You can't get a good price for fish if you have a mzungu in the car - my bad again ;)

Back in Lilongwe Saturday night in time for Sophie's pie day on Sunday. I really should have taken pie photos but I didn't. It was a special treat for all those from the UK who are quite partial to pie and don't have an oven, very much appreciated.
Back to work on Monday and time to pay some attention to my own district. First with a district steering committee and then lecturer training at Lilongwe teacher training college.
The district steering committee is made up of learning centre coordinators, Head teachers, PEAs (Primary Education Advisors), someone from the district council and the DEM (District Education Manager). The purpose is to encourage ownership of the project by the schools, district education office and ultimately the Ministry of Education.

One of the head teachers presenting the outcome of a group discussion on challenges and solutions in Lilongwe Urban. 

A rare photo of me doing some work! Training the Lilongwe TTC lecturers, Miriam is the other volunteer in the centre and the other Mzungu on the left is a German spy!!!!

Ha ha obviously she is not really a spy but she was a bit odd, she's a volunteer from GIZ who is based in the TTC and wanted to see what the training was all about.
To finish up the month of July we have a little bit of Lilongwe nightlife, out with the young people (and Mike!) not acting my age at all - well there's a surprise ;)

Group selfie of course, from left, Mike, Sophie and Matt

Great live music

And we started the month with some dancing so why not finish with some!

Well that was a mammoth mission! Hope that covers me for a while!

Thanks for reading and lots of love to everyone xxx

I’ve got a bike you can ride it if you like

Ironically I do not have a bike of any sort and more importantly I still do not have a motorbike. Last week was supposed to be the week I started motorbike training. Previously I had been waiting for other volunteers to arrive and then when they did I became spectacularly sick and couldn’t participate but this week was finally going to be it. I did indeed start. On Monday I had an eye test and sat in the road traffic office waiting for other people to do various parts of their licences and that was that, the total action for the week.

Maybe next week…

But that wasn’t really the reason for the title. I wanted to just give a few examples of how bicycles are put to use as a means of transport to carry anything and everything from people to chickens to eggs to maize to charcoal, literally anything. I have seen some incredible loads and as always the best examples have been when I was unable to photograph but still here are a few I did capture.

 

One of my neighbours off to sell charcoal

Scrambled eggs 

Maize

Staying with the transport theme for a while, not having independent transport yet led me to making the poor decision to try and use public transport to get to some of the places I need to go to do my job.

Many countries around the world operate a minibus system to move people around; in Peru they are called combis, in PNG they are called PMVs and in Malawi just minibuses.

As well as monitoring 7 schools I also work in two offices, the VSO Malawi country office and the Lilongwe district education office. The two offices are both about 45/50 minutes walk from where I live in opposite directions hence I generally don’t go to both in a day however one adventurous day last week I somehow thought it would be a good idea to try doing it by minibus.

Well I had seen buses passing on the main road at the end of my street with the conductors hanging out the doors shouting ‘town, town, town!’ so I knew I could hail one of those and get into town. What I hadn’t predicted was the amount of time it might take, we went off road down every track and alley we came across looking for possible passengers and in the end I think it would have been quicker to walk and possibly even less sweaty!

Finally arriving in ‘town’ I was dead sure I knew how to walk to the education office, straight on to the bank, left, first right, easy. But it wasn’t there! They must have moved it! After being sent on several wild goose chases and walking round and round in circles I gave up and sat down with an ice cream to contemplate my next move.

Re-energised I decide it can’t be that hard to get a minibus to the VSO office from town. It wasn’t hard to find the mass of minibuses accumulating close to where I had arrived so knowing I wanted to get to area 10 and knowing the area 12 and the area 25 buses both went within 1km I tried my luck.

A helpful man in a high visibility jacket asked me where I wanted to go so I told him and he urged me to follow him but at that moment I spotted a number 25 bus so I said it’s ok thanks this is the one I need.

Then there was a melee of shouting. Two men who’d jumped off the bus were shouting at me to get on, the high visibility jacket man was shouting at me not to get on and a couple of well meaning passers by were trying to ‘help’ by repeating what the others were saying at an even higher volume. Not seeing any other option I then shouted at everyone else to stop shouting and got on the bus. This made Mr High Viz very irate announcing, ‘what you are doing is illegal! We have laws in this country you know!’

The bus driver was gleeful, either because I was now sat next to him in the front of the bus like his prize possession or because he had got one over on Mr High Viz, I couldn’t work out which. More importantly I discovered he did know the supermarket close to the VSO office in area 10 and could tell me where to get off the bus and in which direction to walk once I had done so.

So to get to the end of this rambling, long-winded account, I arrived at the VSO office at 1.00 p.m. having left my house at 9.00 a.m. and therefore proving it was a very poor decision to try and use public transport!

More next week

Zikomo

Papa Kate