Back to Chitipa, back to work and back on the bike!

Hey everyone! Again I guess it’s been a while since my last posting, but this time there’s quite a lot to report, so prepare yourselves!

Firstly, once I got back from my holiday (and it was a very relaxing and refreshing holiday), I decided to come straight back to Chitipa since I had a lot of goodies from home in my heavy suitcase, plus I felt I’d taken enough time off from work (and had spent enough money travelling). However, despite my plan of staying put, with two long weekends in a row in April, I found myself agreeing to take some trips with Imogen. Over Easter we went to the beach, a bit south of Karonga, which was nice enough but the water was pretty dirty and rough from the rains so we didn’t swim. The second weekend we went to Livingstonia, which was where the missionaries eventually settled in 1894. It’s a very quiet and peaceful town and the way it’s laid out you could almost be in an English village. We were camping at a place halfway up to Livingstonia with two other volunteers, Marianne and Ling, both of whom I’ve mentioned before, both doctors based in Rumphi. It was really nice to catch up with them and see off Marianne, who had come to the end of her time in Malawi. Imogen and I did the hike up to Livingstonia and it was nice to do some walking again, although I realised the next day how unfit I’ve become when my knees were so painful I could barely walk! 

Marianne and Ling

The amazing view over Lake Malawi

The hike up to Livingstonia

We got pretty addicted to Monopoly Deal :)

Imogen and Ling

We’ve also had a few visitors to Chitipa, which was quite unexpected as not that many people fancy the journey up here. First a volunteer called Carolyn visited for a few days – she’s based a bit south of Karonga so it wasn’t too far for her to come, although she unfortunately had a nightmare journey from Karonga, taking about 7 hours to travel less than 100km! Then a friend of Denis, a Kenyan volunteer called Pauline came to visit soon after, and I managed to persuade her to extend her stay, so she was here for about a week. Denis had his birthday which was really fun, I think everyone was ready to have an excuse to party! There are some new volunteers in Chitipa as well, two Austrian girls called Iris and Martina, who are second year university students, here just for 3 months. They’re staying at St Michael’s church and they’re working with the church’s home-based care team, travelling to communities and treating the chronically ill, many of whom are HIV positive. They’re lovely girls and I’m really happy they’re here;  like me they like going out, so I finally have some female company at Cassanova (the bar/club). The only thing is they do attract a lot of attention when we’re out, and rather than being rude like me and saying they don’t want to talk to these drunk, annoying guys, they seem quite happy to chat to them, so I often leave them to it since I don’t have patience for that!

Iris, Martina, Pauline, me, Sparks & Imogen

Having dinner at my house

The crazy party at Denis' house :)

There’s been quite a bit of football going on, as there have been some tournaments, including one called the President’s Cup, so different teams from across the district have been competing. Some of them are really well kitted out with boots etc, but a lot of them coming from the villages have to play barefooted.  I watched the final of the President’s Cup which was quite fun, as I was actually supporting a team, the team of my landlord and some of my friends. And of course they won :) I managed to get a seat in the VIP section, for which I was thankful when it came to the awards ceremony, which I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise, because the crowd got a bit too rough. 

Impala FC, the winning team

The District Commissioner arriving with the cup

The officer in charge of the Police at the award ceremony

The drumming hasn’t been going so well, I’ve been going on and off, but I’ve realised I’m probably not going to learn the type of drumming I wanted. So I’ve just been playing along with the drummer when the choir rehearses, beating the exact same beat for about an hour! I quite enjoy the singing so I don’t mind, but since they rehearse during the afternoons, I can’t always take the time off work. 

Hanging out with the kids at the church while their parents are rehearsing

I mentioned in previous posts that the construction of the Karonga-Chitipa road has been progressing, and the workers have now made it to the Boma, so the main road through the town has been changing every day. In fact, just before I left for home they’d dug huge trenches in the middle of the road which made it very difficult to go to get my groceries! But now it’s looking much better, so we’re just waiting for the tarmac but I don’t know if that will happen before I leave.  Now that the rains are over the winds have picked up and it’s getting dustier every day, which can be quite uncomfortable when a lorry is speeding past you! 

Work has been going better since I returned, as I finally got a grant from VSO to cover the fuel and other costs involved with travelling to the communities. I’ve teamed up with one of the NGOs here, called TDI, who very kindly offered to provide me with a driver/interpreter, a lovely guy called Alfred. I’ve selected about 10 CBOs to work with, all within a reasonable distance of the Boma, and so far Alfred and I have done capacity assessments to see what their needs are. The next stage is to conduct some trainings, in things like project planning and management, monitoring and evaluation and proposal development. I think I’ll ask Sparks to help me with the trainings initially, as he’s much more experienced than me. The only issue is that funds are pretty limited and I’ve been told I won’t get any more money from VSO so the idea I had of extending seems pretty pointless. Which means I’ve already started looking for jobs. I’m keen to stay in Malawi so fingers crossed I can find something before October….

And I’ve finally gotten back on the motorbike!!! After six months of being too scared to even try, I finally worked up the guts. My friend Haswell is helping me with it and he’s great, as he’s patient but strict when he needs to be. I was really panicking the first time I tried to start the bike and just couldn’t do it so he jumped on behind me and started it for me, and up til now, I don’t feel confident enough to ride it by myself, so he’s been sitting behind and instructing me when he needs to. I’m doing ok I think (I’ve only been 3 times so far) considering the condition of the roads here, with potholes, rocks,  sand etc, and then trying to negotiate chickens, goats and children running into the road. I doubt I’ll ever get very good as this, as it’s just not my thing, but at least I’m trying:)

Another exciting thing that happened in Chitipa recently was the wedding of Caroline, a Dutch volunteer who was here until October last year, and Ulemu, a Malawian guy she worked with at the hospital laboratory. Caroline flew over from Holland with her family for the wedding, which was the first of two weddings as they’ll have another one in Holland once Ulemu passes the exam which will allow him to live in Holland. It was an interesting day, and since they really wanted a Malawian wedding, I guess that’s what they got! The church ceremony was loooong – well the sermon was the particularly long part, and it was quite painful to listen to, so much so that I actually left in the middle to go eat something and then came back just as it was ending! I wasn’t worried about being rude as people were moving around quite a lot during the whole ceremony, taking photos etc.  What bothered me most was not that the priest was preaching all about the wife being subservient to the husband, which is not all that surprising in the context I guess, but that he was so repetitive and managed to say each one of his messages ten times over in just slightly different ways! 

The reception was not like any reception we would recognise. The committee that organised the wedding (which included Sparks and Denis) had come up with a programme which the MC completely ignored. He basically just did what they do here, which is ask people to donate money for the entirety of the 3 hours, with just a few short speeches thrown in. And the reason it takes so long is that rather than just handing over the money you want to donate, you have to throw small notes on the floor and dance around while you’re doing it. It’s quite fun for the first half an hour but after that… anyway, I left before the end and missed the cutting of the cake unfortunately. But I think Caroline and Ulemu and their families had a great day. 

Dare I say they were cuter than the real couple?!

Denis, Me, Monica & Sparks

So I think that brings you all up to date! I have another month here in Chitipa before I have my first visitors (Bella & Sara) who will be here for about 8 days. I’m looking forward to doing some travelling in the south with them. In the meantime I’ll continue my work with the CBOs as well as trying to see what some of the NGOs are doing here. There’s a new one in town and they’ve agreed to take me along when they conduct their trainings and other activities, so I’ll hopefully learn something from the experience.

I'll leave you with a picture of the babies next door trying to play catch :)