PART I Having enjoyed Kande Beach so much the first time, Mike and Lesley and I decided to take a trip back there on Friday, for a three-day weekend, this time with our friends Sebastien, John Paul, and Tayllor (who came Saturday). We had two holidays to celebrate: American independence on July 4, and Malawian independence on July 6! The five of us piled into my little car and we headed out of Lilongwe around 6pm, making it to Kande at the reasonable hour of 10pm. We had a celebratory springbok shot and then sat on the beach for a while, [View Full Entry]

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Since arriving in Malawi I had been very eager to begin taking Swahili lessons, and at the Congolese wedding I attended my host told me the groom was a teacher in Lilongwe and could probably do the lessons. So we agreed to have a one-hour lesson twice a week, and during the week of June 26 I had the first lessons with two colleagues from a partner NGO. One of the first things we learned I actually picked up in Tanzania last year: Habari! (What's the news?) Now you say: Mzuri! (Good) On June 17 there was a much-publicized Zimbabwean play, [View Full Entry]

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During the weeks of June 9-20 I had my first round of real interviews, in which I was conducting refugee status determination with refugees on my own. It was a really difficult period, partially because the interviews are depressing and partially because it’s just very exhausting work. We leave for the camp around 8, arrive sometime after 9, and then sit in a room with all the members of a family of applicants and take verbatim notes on everything they say. We usually interview only those members of the family who are old enough to recall events, but sometimes there can [View Full Entry]

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Dear all, I could not be more sorry for the horrendous delay in blog postings. My beloved Sony Vaio crashed about 5 weeks ago, so I have had no access to any of my journals or photos! Luckily, most or all of my data has finally been recovered (yes, even laptop repair here progresses at a pace akin to that of the Malawi government), so I can finally start putting blogs up again. So where were we? Back in June. Sometime around the first week of the month I went out with my Finnish colleague Anne and some of her friends [View Full Entry]

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After an exhausting week of interviews, I was ready to set off for the lake Friday afternoon with my new Canadian colleagues Mike and Lesley, a couple of lefties like me . Mind you, I hadn’t had my car for that long, and granted, it is older than I was when I took my SATs, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for it to die on me at 2pm as I was just about to leave work to pick them up! Why do things like that always happen at the worst possible moment? Anyway, this happened at the RSD Unit, which is [View Full Entry]

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After settling in at UNHCR and at home I finally started getting to the real focus of my work here, refugee status determination, which meant spending a lot more time at the camp and at the RSD Unit around the corner from my house. For the first few days I sat in with my colleague Nelson during his interviews so I could get a sense of how it goes. I was free to ask questions of my own but in general I just listened; he has been doing this for a couple of years and has a pretty good hang of [View Full Entry]

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You may be asking yourself, what exactly is Martina doing in Malawi?! This is my attempt to explain my job. It may be a little technical, but I hope it’s at least understandable for those of you who are interested. I am in Malawi working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). That is the UN’s refugee agency, whose responsibility is to ensure protection to the world’s estimated twelve million refugees and to assist in finding them durable solutions (meaning either safe return to their home country, integration into their country of asylum, [View Full Entry]

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After a grueling 36 hours or so en-route across the continent, I finally made it to Lilongwe. Thanks to a lot of effort on Mommy’s part, I had an apartment to move into the very afternoon I landed and didn't have to hole up in some grimy backpackers! I found the place through an acquaintance I’d made last summer, who it turns out is now my next-door neighbor. My apartment is HUGE—after living in Manhattan for eight years, even Ann Arbor, this place is a palace. It has very high ceilings and lots of windows, which I love. It was pretty [View Full Entry]

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We had originally planned to return to Dakar on Wednesday, but it was so relaxing in Saly Niakhniakhal we ended up staying until Friday. I was scheduled to fly to Malawi on Sunday morning, so by Friday we had no choice but to head back. I spent most of the last day swimming in the fabulous Petit Jura pool, then around 4pm we caught a sept-place from Mbour to Dakar. The city was ringed by its usual traffic jams so we didn’t get into town until around 8pm. We headed to a French-run restaurant in a neighborhood I’d never been to [View Full Entry]

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My last week in Senegal! I was still sans camera so the photos here are random ones taken in Dakar. After dealing with all the formalities resulting from the theft of my purse etc. I decided to get out of Dakar for a while and headed south down the coast along what is called the Petite Côte or, in the case of a couple of spots, Senegal's Côte d'Azur, with my friend Baye Fall. Our mode of transport? The sept-place—an incredibly beat-up old Peugeot station wagon configured to barely fit seven passengers in addition to the driver that most Senegalese use [View Full Entry]

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