Flooding

I have never really experienced what a rainy season means. When it rains in Sweden it can rain for days but it is rare that you get floods. But here the rain is pour down heavely and just after a few minutes you have small floods everywhere. So after few hours of heavy rain it will cause a lot of flooding.

In the past two weeks almost 180 people have died because of the floods and around 175 000 people have been displaced from their homes. It is especially the southern part of Malawi that is heavily affected. A problem is that Malawi doesn’t have enough rescue boars and helicopters to evacuate people. The government has appealed for help and have declared one third of the country to be a disaster zone.

The country's infrastructure is heavily affected with some roads and bridges washed away. This is also affecting the access to power and water. Almost the whole country is without power and water. The power is coming mainly from the rivers but with the floods a lot of branches and stuff is getting stuck in the machineries. 

Hopefully the heady rains will stop soon but unfortunately it doesn't look very promising at the moment...

Mangochi

At the tailor

There is this amazing thing that you can go to the tailor and have a dress specially made for your or a skirt or anything that you would like to have. Only your imagination sets the limit.

The Tailor

You buy preferable a chitenje which is a traditional cloth. Then you show a picture of what you would like to have and if you want any modifications. 

Women in chitenje

In a few days or a week the tailor is done. You can then try on what he has made and tell him on the spot if you want any adjustments. Hopefully you get what you asked for.

Dress

I ordered a dress and a skirt but the tailor mixed up the two different cloth I had given him. In the end I am happy with the result anyway.

Skirt

Condomize

The rate of people living with HIV/AIDS is around 10-15% in Malawi. There are approximately 68 000 people dying every year from HIV/AIDS. Each day around 250 people are infected. This is causing pressure on the health care though around 70% of the hospital beds are occupied by HIV/AIDS patients.

Female and male condomes in the office

In the office we have a HIV/AIDS policy and in the toilets you find both female and male condoms. When having bigger meetings it is also announced where you can find the condoms. Each vehicle have a first aid kit with condoms. The UNFPA has a campaign called Condomize where they are promoting the usage of condoms and trying to end the stigmatization by distributing condoms. It was promoted on the music festival I was attending some weeks ago.

Condomes in the office

Changing people’s life

Tonight was a special night. I was invited for a welcoming party for interns from Norway. They will work for a music organization called Music crossroads. The Norwegians were playing traditional Norwegian folk music and some other songs and then the Malawians were playing typical Malawian music. The welcoming of the Norwegians were really nice and you could feel the warmth of the people.

One touching moment was when the cleaning lady was brought up to the stage. It was a celebration for her though she has got a scholarship to study nursery. To take the step from being a cleaning lady to start studying is a huge thing to do. It is something very rare to see here. Everyone was very touched by this moment. 

Sand music festival

Africa is music for me. Everyone likes music and dancing. So imagine spending a whole weekend on a beach only listening to music from Malawi and other countries in the region. It can’t get much better. I haven’t danced so much in a long time. I can’t complain of the choice of the location of the festival. It was right on the beach looking out over the lake.

The stage

Soon coming up is the famous Lake of Stars. In the end of this month musicians from all over the world is coming to perform at another beautiful beach. I’ll be there dancing!

The beach

Learning Chichewa

Chichewa is a Bantu language. It is the national language of Malawi as well as English. Chichewa means actually the language (chi-) of Chewa. It is also spoken in Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In Malawi more than half of the population speaks Chichewa. Other local languages are Yao, Ngoni, and Lomwe. Only people with some education speaks English so when going to the field most of the farmers don't speak English. One of my biggest motivations to learn Chichewa, is to be able to speak with the people I meet in the field. Next time I go there I want to be able to say some simple phrases.

Tomorrow is my fourth lesson. So far I have learnt some greetings, introducing myself and talk about food. Here are some useful words:

Muli bwanji?                            How are you?

Ndili bwino, kaya inu?              I’m fine, and you?

Zikomo                                    Thank you

Tionana                                    See you

And my favourite word so far; Ndasangala, which means I am happy.

This is how my dining room looks like

Some words doesn’t exist in Chichewa so then you use the English word. But sometimes they also turn an English word into a Chichewa like word. For example “juice” is called “juwisi”. They also have numbers in Chichewa but you only use the words for one to five. But mostly you only here people counting in English. Sometimes you also have words that are similar to Spanish. For example “mbatata” which in Spanish is “batatat”, means “potatoes.

The grammar is very different from English but somehow similar to Spanish. You have different subject prefixes for different persons. What can be a sentence in English become only one word in Chichewa. For example “I was eating” would be “Ndimadya”. 

This is what I am struggling with at the moment. But it is very fun because every time I try to say something in Chichewa, people looks so happy. Sometimes they get carried away though they think I know much more than I actually do. 

My neighbourhood

There are two kind of people in my neighbourhood. The ones living here and the ones working here. I have hardly no idea who is living here because you mainly see them driving in or out of their houses.  

The best time of the day is when coming back home around 5 pm and then you have an hour before it gets dark. The colours during this time of the day is just beautiful. Just before the sunset, the light is dark yellow and everything gets very colourful.

Today when walking to the supermarket I had to pinch myself in the arm. I can’t believe that I am living in Africa. In this beautiful country with nice weather the whole year around, with exotic plants that we only keep inside at home, and very friendly people.

Even though I don’t know anyone in my neighbourhood it is impossible to walk through it without greeting people and even have a small chat. When passing someone, they say “hello”, or “how are you”, or “good day”, etc. When walking back home today, there were two young guys walking in front of me. When I was just behind them, one of them turned around and started to talk with me about football, work, where I come from, etc. Five minutes later we went in different directions.

My neighbourhood

By the way, do you know that you can go sledding here? Outside my house is a slope which is very dry because it doesn’t rain now. With some cardboards the boys are sledding down the slope. They have a lot of fun.

The other day when I was out running, a girl saw me in the street. When I was passing her she started to run with me. She talked and ran with me a long way. Then she stopped and said she was tired. I continued but then I also stopped. I looked back at her and when she saw I stopped she started to run up to me again.

Another day when walking back from the supermarket I heard someone singing behind me. It was a young boy who was listening to music in his headphones. When passing me he continued to sing and just stopped to say hi and then he continued running down the hill. 

Nightlife in Lilongwe

Last night I visited three of Lilongwe’s bars and clubs. The night started at Alexander’s sports bar. There you warm up…. Then we went to The Living room. The Living room has different events every night like poetry, live music, movies, and DJ’s. A lot of expats were there. Next door is a club that reopened last night. It used to be called Zanzi but now it is called Amazon. The club has two dance floors and soon one more. The music was really good, especially the Malawian music.We danced all night long.

I got another nice compliment last night. “You are the first Muzungu I know that knows how to dance!” Can 

it be better?

A long night, that ended early in the morning at the best food place. 

Meet at a food place

First day of Ramadan

Makes me think about how naturally it is here with different religions. What is common for everyone is that they believe in God and belongs to a church. It doesn’t seem to be any tensions between different religious groups. The biggest religion is Christianity with about 82% of the population. Here you found mostly Catholics and Presbyterians. There are also smaller groups of Anglicans, Baptist and Evangelicals.  The second biggest religion is Islam, mainly Sunnis. 5 % of the population is either Atheists or practices traditional African religions.

This of course affects the life here. In my house there are two guards working during the weekend. One is Catholic and the other Presbyterian so one goes to church on Sunday and the other one on Saturday. And the women who helps me in the house is a Muslim so she goes to the mosque on Fridays.

Religion is an important part of life. People are asking me if I believe in God. When I tell them I don’t go to church and I’m not part of any religion they look at me as something must be wrong with her. Maybe it is.

The mosque in Old Town, Lilongwe

Field visit to Salima

Apart from visiting the two offices in Salima, we visited the Telecentre and the Agroforestry training centre. The Telecentre is a training centre where young people learn how to use a computer. They are trained on how to surf the internet and use the Office package. It is the only one in Salima. The centre have 6 computers and the students are sitting on boxes two or three in front of each computer.

In the Agroforestry training centre, farmers are trained on different ways of cultivation. It is like a showroom and each plot shows a different method of cultivation. One plot can show the difference between using chemical fertilizers and organic fertilizers. Or one can show how to increase the crop by the way of setting the plants and putting on the fertilizers.

The centre also have a kitchen garden which should be used for the personal usage of the farmer.

Kitchen garden

In the middle of the kitchen garden they put composted waste which works as a fertilizer for the garden.

Behind the kitchen garden is the house for energy saving stoves

Behind the kitchen garden is a house for the energy saving stove. The stove is made of 6 bricks and sand and water. Very little fire wood is needed to keep the stove hot which saves trees. The small house also makes the smoke to go out so that the farmer doesn’t breathe it in.   

Energy saving stove

Field visit to Mangochi

The way to Mangochsi is just beautiful, going through what is the end of Rift Valley and the boarder to Mozambique and then down to the lake. On the way you see people walking on the road, bikes everywhere, dogs, goats, cows, etc. 

Road to Mangochi

Early next morning when waking up the door was knocking. Someone said; “Give me my bucket”, in a harsh tone. I thought, how could they knock on my door at this hour? I didn’t understand what she wanted but I opened anyway and she went in, took a bucket and left. Five minutes later it knocked again. Now I felt a bit irritated. “Why are they leaving things in the room that they need?”, I thought. Another girl was now going in again with the bucket and then she left. Then I realized they had brought me hot water so I could shower.

When ordering breakfast I asked what they had. Cornflakes (no milk), sausage, bread, egg, omelette, chips (pommes frites). I asked for omelette and chips, no cornflakes, no bread, no sausage. I got everything anyway. I obviously have a communication problem when not speaking the local language Chichewa or Yao as they speak in this part of the country.

The whole day I spent in our district offices with the finance and admin staff and also the rest of the staff. The issues raised were reporting, budgeting, activity planning, challenges with laptops not working properly, too low “airtime” (telefon card), petty cash, not functioning accounting system and many other issues.

For lunch we went to the best local food place in town. It was hidden behind a house so you had to know it existed to go there. We had chicken, beans, vegetables and nsima. Nisma is the staple food here and is made of ground maize flour and water. The food was just excellent and until now my stomach hasn’t complained.

Aunt Marys restaurant

After work we went to see the lake. It was a beautiful place and the sun was just setting.

Nkopola

The best compliment

Today was the first day in the office. Comments like "it's nice to be back", "good to see you again", etc were said. But then it came…“Ohh Anna, it is so good to see you. I see you have put on some weight! Now you are ready to get started!”

So maybe I should reconsider my plan to get started with some serious training…?