Into East Africa

Lots has happened in the past week. I have had good times (that have been extremely good) and bad times (that have been extremely bad). I first had my birthday. My 29th in Malawi. I had a wonderful day. It started with a soda on the Chancy Maples floating bar, watching baboons that were fighting on the rocks. I had a great Malawian lunch at a local pub next to the hospital, I swam and snorkeled in the lake & I even had homemade chocolate birthday cake. On Friday afternoon we went to an MTO attackers football game. They lost 5-3 (which was debated as much as usual) but we had a great time anyway. We taught the local kids how to do the Mexican wave. Saturday we headed to Cape Maclear with 5 new volunteers, ... read more

It's been a while!! Computers and transport have both been failing me lately. We have 3 vehicles (a minibus and 2 landrovers) and we seem to be lucky if we have even one that is working. I'll be quick this time because last week I typed my entry but the network crashed just before I was able to publish it. As always, all is well. I am here in Lilongwe for a day. A few of us came here to see my roommate Katherine off at the airport and also to buy some medical supplies for the hospital. We have so far bought 5 delivery kits for the maternity ward. All of the money that I have fundraised has now been allocated and I think it's been put to very good use. We have bought many ... read more

The Inconvenient Centipede On the way home from Mangochi (email town) last week, we suddenly heard our driver, Watipa, utter ‘sh*t’, before not-very-slowly pulling our Toyota minibus to a stop. There was a centipede (of the poisonous variety) on the dashboard. The word ‘centipede’ does not do this thing justice. It had 100 legs but they were by no means close together, causing the thing to be pretty large (a foot or so long). Our coordinator Francis managed to get it out of the vehicle but all the commotion caused an unsuspecting cyclist to fall off his bike, dropping his load of tomatoes at the same time. Three cars then joined forces to try to run over the insect so that one of the many people who walk barefoot along the roads in the pitch black ... read more

‘If the shoe fits’ (or even if it doesn’t) - Friday 21st Dec. The ‘MTO attackers’ first big match was on African time, starting an hour late, with a first half of 30 minutes and a second half of 1 hour 10 minutes. The game ended with the other team walking off as they disagreed with a decision made by the ref (who was from their team). African logic?! Final score was 2-2 which wasn’t bad considering that the second, longer half of the game, we had somewhat of a disadvantage, being that we were shooting towards the goal that happened to be behind a path that is frequented by women carrying loads on their heads, children on bicycles, and any other obstacle you can imagine. We brought our trainers with us to lend to some ... read more

Here in Malawi, I have already given up on asking people what their real names are. I met Cruiser, Mr B, Coffee & Phonics this weekend in Cape Maclear. Our cook is called Computer. Our driver is called Gift. A colleague of mine is called Massage. It’s true what they say - Malawians ARE the friendliest people. I have been made to feel so welcome my first week here. I have already had several invites to join people for Kuche Kuche (beer) and Shake Shake (a local beer that looks like porridge and comes in large milk cartons). My first impressions? My work, my location, and the people I am with are all making me think this is going to be great. My journey from Lilongwe airport to Monkey Bay took 4 hours. It was in ... read more