First rains in Lilongwe

OK – so this is out of sequence but it’s big news! And, in true English fashion it is about the weather!

We had our first rains on Wednesday 24^th October! It started in the afternoon and lasted maybe quarter of an hour. The roar of the thunder, sure was a roar! Once the rain had stopped, the smell of the dampness was so familiar and I realised I’d missed that smell for the last few weeks. It rained again in the evening and as there are few street lights the lightning was amazing. It seemed to last for ages.  Really loud and really bright.

The upside to having the rain is that it cooled the atmosphere. The downside was that on the Thursday, it was overcast all day and made me feel quite miserable as I have so enjoyed seeing the blue sky and sun every day, without fail, since I arrived.  Get me – after a week  I  gave up carrying a cardigan with me. It’s short sleeves and bare legs every day! I know you’re jealous. As yet, no tan as I spend most of the day indoors. Sadly, lots of rather unsightly mosquito bites on my legs which thankfully seem to heal quickly. I have lots of repellent and I put it on when I’m outside . What I forget is that the mossies can come in through the window when I’m in the office!

Anyway, back to the rain! The sunshine reappeared on the Friday and has been back on blistering top form. What I find amazing is that my Malawian colleagues in the offer seem to suffer with the heat as much as I do. I, wrongly, imagined they would be used to it but, they aren’t.  I suppose it’s the same as me feeling the cold every English winter!

The rain is going to become more of a feature every day now. Today (31^st Oct) it was so heavy on the office roof at lunch time that I couldn’t hear what someone was saying. The clouds seemed to clear quickly today which was great. Lucky that the tortoise carried an umbrella and a rain jacket in one of her many bags from Heathrow. What I may miss is my wellies!

Be Brave!

Thanks for all your emails and message telling me you’re enjoying the blog. It's good to know you are keeping tabs on me. In fact, there have been over 300 views of the pages so far! Clever how the site keeps all those details. Don't worry it doesn't tell me who you are,  what you're wearing or what you had for breakfast!

Are you all too shy to write a little comment for others to share, or to ask a few questions. Sarah P sent me lots and I hope, slowly but surely, I managing to answer them.

Go on – be brave write something here for me to see. Upload a photo of what you’re doing at the moment and what I’m missing!  

Anyway, I have a cunning plan to drag you in kicking and screaming. A kind of “Challenge Anneka” although I don’t have the jumpsuit or legs like Ms Rice! More details to follow 

Myth number 1 – everything is cheap in Africa

If you think Africa is cheap think again! I should be more precise and talk about Malawi. 

The currency in Malawi is called the kwatcha and is written MWK. There are 100 tambala to a kwatcha. When I tell you there are currently MWK 500 to £1 you can see that one tambala is not going to go very far!

The kwatcha was devalued in May and this has significantly impacted on inflation. Here's the BBC news on it for the economists amongst you.

The money comes in notes and coins. The smallest note I’ve seen is for MWK 20 and the largest  I’ve seen is MWK 1,000 which is equivalent to £2 so you need a big purse/wallet!

At first I was converting everything back into sterling and was surprised how cheap some things were eg a small bunch of locally grown bananas for MWK 200 = 50p when in Marks and Spencer it would cost me 50p for one banana. Then at the other extreme, I was horrified to realise I had bought a pack of seven plums for almost £7. As you can imagine I made sure I enjoyed each and every one them.  As time has gone on I’ve come to know roughly how much things cost and try to compare prices on that basis, after all I’m now in Lilongwe not London so I have to go with these prices!

Lots of the food is imported, particularly from South Africa which is why the costs are so high. I do my best to but local produce but it’s not proving to be that easy.  I’ve been surprised at how many vegetables that come pre-packed and this is typically because they are not from Malawi. The  Chomba tea is good as are the local macadamia nuts. Last week the potatoes were from … you’ve guessed it … Ireland!

Lots of other goods are imported from China and India eg household goods like crockery. There’s no escaping their influence.

The cost of eating out varies in price but is so far has always been cheaper. A bottle of lemonade is MWK 200 not the £2 minimum in London. Then again, eating out in London is exorbitant! 

Where is Malawi? What about Lilongwe?

If, like me, geography  wasn’t your favourite subject at school, you may be wondering where precisely Malawi is.

Malawi can be quite hard to spot on the map as it’s a long thin country which is land locked on three sides with  Lake Malawi on the fourth.

This is an good map read but beware … some of the other information is out of date  Mrs Joyce Banda has been the President since April 2012

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/mw.htm

Lilongwe, the capital, is right in the middle of the country. It’s a quiet place compared even compared to somewhere like Bromley. There’s no one city  centre as such. The Parliament Building is new and shiny. There are lots of embassies here, lots of overseas aid agencies, a variety of  shopping centres (don’t imagine Bluewater, more the Nugent Centre, for those of you who  know Orpington!), just one dual carriageway.  

The city is divided up into areas. I live and work in Area 3 but if you think that’s between areas 2 and 4 you are very much mistaken! It’s near areas 9, 10 and 14. Just don’t ask!  Within each area, the residences are known as plots and again don’t expect 1 to be next to 2 ……Have a look on google maps and see if you can spot me!

I’ve found it hard to orientate myself (don’t be cheeky and say “there’s a surprise!). I have finally realised that the roads sort of join up into a sort of circle. Some of the roads don’t have street signs so although they do have names you are not quite sure if you’re are the right  place. If you ask for directions, people will use landmarks or say at the third roundabout ……As I like to know road names I am having to adapt and have even found myself asking “is that near …..?” So far so good and even when I’ve found myself lost, I’ve managed to find my way home! Lilongwe really isn’t a big place so I’m never too far from home. Also, thankfully the roads are not too busy so I can usually dither a bit at the roundabouts if I’m still trying to work out where to go. I’m feeling happy with driving now but more of that later!

Why Malawi?

This is a tough question to answer.  I’m not sure I chose Malawi, rather that it chose me! When a VSO assignment was looking unlikely, I started to job hunt and this was the first job I spotted. 

As a first time, nervous, single traveller an opportunity to live and work in Malawi seemed ideal. Lot of boxes were ticked

1.  I’d been to Malawi before even if only for a week
   
2.  English is the business language – wonderful as my French and Spanish are so rusty I should give back my A level certificates!
   
3. 85% of the population are Christian which is great for me personally and also means I don’t need to worry about keeping my head and arms covered
   
4. Malawi is considered to be the friendly face of Africa and a safe country to live and work in.

Then the more I told people I was Malawi bound, the more I heard stories along the lines of “how funny, my mum/dad/sister/……. has been there/lives there/knows someone /…….” . 

You know me, I love coincidences so here are just a few

Ann M has a friend who works with Build a School – Look at their work

Ann M has another friend who runs Starfish Malawi

Alison’s Mum volunteered at the Olympics with … you’ve guessed it, the team from Malawi (two women, one man - great for the girls!) Malawi at London 2012. Sadly there was no paralympic team

Audrey has a friend who’d lived in Malawi for 17 years and gave me lots of good advice on what to expect when I arrived 

Next few posts

My plan of attack to bring you up to date with all my news is to try and keep the chronology of events albeit six weeks in arrears. Hopefully, if I spoil you with a few posts each week, it won't take too long until I am up to date.  

After that I’ll probably post once a week. Let’s see how it goes and what exciting news there is to tell you! 

The email saga

Along with the house saga there is a mini saga with email addresses! 

I was told by O2 I could keep my email address even  though I no longer paid for UK broadband. Great news as I’d not told everyone that I was expecting change to gmail. What O2 didn’t tell me is that the box size is reduced and so emails from 13^th September until 19^th September, when I first logged back in, were bounced back. 

I’ve now managed to clear the inbox so “normal service has been resumed”. Apologies to those of  you who may have emailed me in my first week and received a bounce. If you need my gmail address, do let me know.

Anyway, I promised not to moan and complain on here so on to the next post!

The saga of the house

Ok  - so why has it taken me so long (almost six weeks!) to write these first few posts?

The simple answer – I’ve only just moved into “my” house and finally have internet access at home. “Why?” I hear you ask. It’s a game of musical houses (and chairs!)

The players are  

1.       Joseph, the previous accountant, who left at the end of July.

2.       James, the Roving Accountant, arrived mid-July to take over from Joseph and keep the accountant’s chair warm until I arrived. A job he did very well, I’m pleased to say. 

3.       Amanda, a programme manager, leaves at the end of August and the lease on her house runs until the end of October.

4.       Melanie, new  accountant arrives mid-September.

Status of the game on 12^th September

•  James had stayed in a hotel until Joseph left. He then moved into the accountant’s house. Silly to leave a perfectly good house empty and pay hotel bills.
•  Amanda’s house is empty. Melanie moves in.

Winners and losers

·         Winner - James as he doesn’t have to move location again. Seems sensible to me
·         Winner – James as he has internet connection at home 
·         Winner – Melanie as Amanda’s house has a beautiful sunny garden
·         Loser – James as he didn’t know how great the garden at Amanda's was
·         Loser – Melanie as there’s no internet connection at Amanda’s

Overall I have been happy to trade the lack of internet for the garden. Apologies this means that in the short term I’ve not been able to keep in contact with many of you as I don’t like to send too many emails from work.

I have now moved to Joseph’s so watch out for lots of skype, email and blog!

It would have been lovely to stay at Amanda’s but it is a bigger house than I need (Amanda had her family  with her) and is on its own plot (known here as “standalone”) which means it is not ideal for me on my own.

Joseph’s house has almost no garden, is a darker house but is on a compound which is better. The big bonus as we head into summer is that there is also airconditioning which means I shouldn't melt in the heat. 

Watch this space for the next step in the house saga as I’m keeping my fingers crossed I may be able to move again in the near future. 

Thanks to Lesley S for the tip on how to upload photos from my new camera to the laptop! Think you'll see why I liked Amanda's garden. Lazy Sunday afternoon's on the veranda were my favourite time of the week.

There was also a vegetable plot to the right hand side of the house although I have to confess as I knew I wasn't staying I didn't water anything. How cruel! 

Rules of the blog!

I’m hoping that this blog will be an opportunity for me to share my observations, my  experiences and  the joys of living in Malawi with you. I plan to keep this an upbeat, fun and interactive blog. If I’m having a bad day, I’ll write to you privately. I will avoid talking about work as much as I can and if I do I’ll give people pseudonyms, if necessary. 

The plan is to give you plenty to think about and enjoy. I can’t promise to answer all your questions and will also throw questions out to you. I’ll give you links to websites to avoid misquoting, mis-representing or being accused of plagiarism plus it saves me typing! 

Please add your comments however long or short!

I’m also hoping this will be opportunity for you to get to know each other better. So many of you have heard about each other but have never had the pleasure of meeting face to face.

Final reminder – this is my blog and if I don’t like what you write I can edit it! If you don’t like what I write, please  let me know

Goodbye GB! Hello Malawi!

12^th September 2012

How many bags does a gal need? Seven if this picture of me looking like a tortoise is to be believed!

Well, the day to head off finally arrived. In the morning I began to wonder if I would ever make it to Heathrow as there seemed to be so much left to do. It was all hands to the pump. Mum went   in her over drive mode with  washing up, cleaning, boxing up, the list goes on. Dad was calmly mowing the lawn while Katrina helped me squeeze as much as I could into the suitcases. There were many “how many of these (for “these” read shoes, shampoo, bras, books…..) do you really need?!” questions. We ended the day with a big carrier bag of assorted essentials which did not make  the journey to Malawi. I wonder how many of those essentials I’ll miss?

Amazingly we left Farnborough on the dot of 3 o’clock and arrived with lots and lots of time which was handy as checking in excess baggage in not a two minute job! Ok I confess I had a total of 90kgs (more than my own body weight!) against an allowance of 46kgs.

A quick bite to eat and it was time to say farewell. As I queued up at Departures, I heard a loud “cheerio” from Janine in her best Granny Rosie voice. What a great send off.

 It goes without saying that at a time when I wanted everything to run smoothly, it was my bag that was checked by security. Hardly surprising with all the gadgets I was carrying and after all I do have a very sinister look about me. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, I’d arrived at Lilongwe airport, had collected my suitcase mountain and was being welcomed into Malawi by the Customs Official. Half an hour later and I was in the office.

The adventure has begun!