Blogs from Southern, Malawi, Africa - page 6

I realised that while I’ve written about the weather, the food, and the house I’m staying in I haven’t really talked about the wider area of Blantyre except in passing on other subjects. Seeing as this is where I’ve been based while I’m in Malawi, and where I’m spending the majority of my time I should give a better picture of the city of Blantyre. Settled in the shire highlands area of southern Malawi, 1,000 meters above sea level and surrounded by a number of mountains. It is the oldest established city in Malawi, first chartered in 1896 and named after David Livingstone’s birthplace in Scotland. What struck me when I first entered Blantyre was the distinct lack of city, few high rises, groups of built up areas, lots of parks, open spaces and fields right ... read more

I’ve haven’t so far touched upon the other projects that St John Malawi works on that I’m not part of. The two main projects running at the moment that I’ll talk about are the Primary Health Care (PHC) and Home Based Care (HBC) projects, though there have been others in the past. I’ll apologize now if I’m being brief or incomplete, I don’t work directly with the project so I can’t talk with as much confidence as I could for the Schools project for example. Started in 1986 when St John first came to Malawi, now run by Alekeni Banda and Mrs Wega (though she’s off at the minute), there are 55 ‘dedicated and highly skilled volunteers’ (taken from The Link, the St John newsletter) working in the Ndirande and Mbayani townships on the outskirts of ... read more

The next leg of my rather meandering Malawian travel is dominated by a ferry down the length of Lake Malawi, from the northern town/gaggle of huts, Chilumba all the way to Monkey Bay close to the southern tip of the lake. The Ilala Ferry is about sixty years old and like all nautical colonial relics it was actually built back in Britain first (in this case Glasgow in 1949) before being taken apart, shipped to Africa, carried a few hundred kilometres overland piece by piece and finally reassembled. Since then the boat has barely changed at all - the state of the toilets certainly suggests so - but it’s in fairly good nick compared to some other elements of Africa's colonial heritage that I've encountered (i.e. it still floats). Cost being of greater importance than comfort ... read more

As I mentioned a few weeks ago I’ve started to spend my weekends visiting some the parts of Malawi I haven’t yet seen. This is for several reasons, because I realized that I’m now most of the way through my time here and I’ve spent most of the time in Blantyre, because I’ve got myself into the habit of not doing as much with my time as I could and not least because I get so very, very bored sat around the house. After looking through guide books and getting advice from everyone, I eventually decided on Zomba for my first trip, I’ve been there twice before but only to the town and never to the plateau 6,000 ft above. Zomba is about an hours bus ride from Blantyre on the way to Mangochi and Monkey ... read more

While at dinner in Cardiff I received a phone call from my mum calling, during that garbled, somewhat confusing and rushed conversation (as I was out with friends and we were grabbing a bite to eat before heading off to the cinema) she let me know about the letters I’d received, the parents of a friend that had called to offer help with my trip and something about my granddad getting uniforms from church for me. When I got home I got the full story as to what had happened; while at an event at his church, my granddad got talking to his Pastor Bill Bygroves, the conversation at some point turned to the year out I was planning. Bill, who has previously done charitable work in Africa (though not Malawi), was impressed by what I ... read more