MuREA, Chinzama Hut, and gallons of wine!

A millipede we saw on the way up



Jungle boogie...look at the speed of those walkers!



Welcome to the jungle...



A notice to would-be "tree poachers", not sure if it is from the rather 'cowboy' outfit of Mulli Brothers who have a license for logging in the valley, or if it was outwith the license area and was a notice from the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust.



Pretty flowers were everywhere for most of the walk



Looking back down the valley we had walked up



Alpine meadows on the edge of the plateau



Me on the plateau



Our Sunday destination of Chagaru peak is the highest point on the left hand ridge, the large peak in the background is Namasile, which is just above the Sombani hut, which is also meant to be very nice.



Near the end of Saturday, a view through to the Sombani peaks of Namasile and Matambale



The final stretch to Chinzama hut, with Chinzama peak in the background



Rach at the stream just next to the hut, at the end of Saturday's walk, with Dzole, Nandalander and Khuto in the background.



Mountains of the western part of the Mulanje Massif, from left to right: Nankhodzwe, Dzole (i think, i may have mixed it up with Khuto), Sapitwa, Nandalander, West Peak (i think), Khuto, unknown hill with notch, Chambe.



One of our group emerging from the final part of the cave maneuver



Rach in the tighest spot of the cave maneuver...she enjoyed it more than her face is letting on, in fact she was even heard to utter the words "that was quite fun!"...odd individual...



Rachie on top of Chagaru



Rach and I on summit of Chagaru, looking down to the Fort Lister Gap (which we have cycled through) and to Mulanje's sister massif, which I can't currently remember the name of.


The group on summit of Chagaru with Namasile and Matambale peaks in the background. (it was very bright, hence a lot of funny expressions!)


Rachel descending the cave


Hello all! An update on the last 2 weeks:

Work:

Meetings with the boss have been hard for me to get, so work has been a bit slow in that respect. However this did mean that I got around to looking into creating an environmental policy for AYISE, which in turn led me to researching deforestation in Malawi. Malawi is one of the most rapidly deforesting countries in Southern Africa, with it’s afforested area shrinking from 47% to 28% in the past 25 years alone! The web-based research I was doing on this threw up a link to an organisation called Mulanje Renewable Energy Agency, whom I duly contacted. I met with MuREA on Thursday last week and had a discussion about what they do, what I have done, what AYISE do, etc. Very interesting meeting and hopefully there will be some interesting opportunities arising for both me and AYISE’s membership. The bloke who runs MuREA also had a strong interest in my dissertation, so I fished that out (luckily I had sent it to my hotmail 5 years ago otherwise I’m not sure where I would look for a copy!) and sent it. What a cringe-worthy trip down memory lane that was! My presentation skills were somewhat lacking, however it got me through to the esteemed career I have now…MuREA are, as the name suggests, installing renewable energy in the Mulanje area (ie. the district around Mulanje Mountain) – focussing on micro hydro power and solar electricity. However, in terms of eradicating deforestation on Mulanje this is not a panacea, as the amount of electricity that is produced from these sources does not provide enough for the whole population of Mulanje district to convert to electric cooking appliances. And so wood-fuelled cooking continues, with associated health and obvious environmental detriment. MuREA’s approach is to provide small amounts of electricity to enable the population to make a living from something other than sale of wood/charcoal. It is believed that a lot of the deforestation on Mulanje is not for local use, but rather is a kind of ‘cash crop’ for the locals (despite it being illegal). So by providing electricity it is hoped that some people may give up charcoal sales in favour of, for example a barbers shop, welding services, entertainment provision, battery/phone charging centres, etc…The remaining deforestation should, if all goes well, supply fuel for local cooking only, and to address this MuREA are trying to promote (not give away, as freebies are not a successful method of generating respect for and a sense of ownership of an item) fuel efficient wood-fuel stoves, which are locally produced but have not been well marketed for their money saving potential…Which brings me to my final point on this topic, which is that in a huge proportion of poor Malawian homes, 75% of household income goes on fuel costs. Consequently, if the supply of charcoal from Mulanje is reduced, yet the demand remains the same the costs will escalate dramatically for these families and create a crisis situation. Consequently, I think it is imperative that MuREA work with organisations like AYISE (and they are) in order to reduce demand in these urban poor areas, so that demand falls with supply through the uptake of fuel efficient stoves.

Rachel’s work has been going quite well in general, with the occasional frustration at the horrifically inadequate communication within AYISE. She has been debriefing, evaluating and learning lots from the feedback relating to the completed work camps. Overall, the feedback has been quite positive, but there have been a few unexpected issues, which she has responded to in a very level-headed manner, despite their infuriating nature!

Weekend of 17th-18th:

We had a lovely weekend, just the two of us, as the Glaswegian students had headed off to the lake. We borrowed a wee portable DVD player one of them had, and treated ourselves to a night in with red wine, home made banoffee pie, and even cheese to top-off our Bolognese! It was indeed a weekend of indulgence, and we loved it! The cheese and wine are still expensive, especially in comparison to their quality, however once in a while it is worth it. We also ventured up Bangwe Hill on Sunday afternoon for a lovely stroll through the agricultural land before being thwarted by dense rain-forest like vegetation and a lack of daylight. Apparently there is a route to the summit, as SVA have climbed it last year (and last weekend I think) but we did not find it. A truly relaxing weekend – just perfect! All that was missing was the company of family and friends, but you can’t have it all!

Weekend of 24th-25th:

This weekend just past we joined the Mountain Club of Malawi for a trip to a hut on the Mulanje massif. Friday night we tried to instigate a night out with the Glaswegian students, but they were pretty lame and so we were in bed by midnight. This helped when the 7.30 alarm went off (pushed back from 6.30 due to a recalculation of how long we needed for Saturday’s walk – which turned out to be perfectly timed). After some very well meaning concerned comments from locals who talked to us as we were waiting for our lift we headed off to Mulanje. At the village of Tuchila we hired porters (one between two, except for M&B who chose not to take one). The price of 1300MK per day (around £6 is very reasonable (although still generous enough for the Malawian porters), and after my previous trip up Sapitwa with no porters I thought I’d see what it was like to walk in luxury…very nice indeed! We took the ‘Jungle Path’ from Tinyande village up to Chinzama hut. The path is remarkably varied in its surroundings, starting in agricultural land, rising through Brachistegia forest, into long grass, into more ‘jungle’ type forest, before emerging into the short grass and alpine flowers of the plateau. Mostly it was quite easy angled and the constantly changing scenery made it very enjoyable. We arrived at the hut with about an hour of daylight left, so just perfect timing to sort everything out, stoke the fire and pile on the layers for the cold night. Gallons of wine and tonnes of chilli con carne were produced, which we complemented with another home made banoffee pie…what a feast! This is the benefit of hiring porters, no need to scrimp on food at all!
The next day we headed across the valley from the hut to climb Chagaru peak, which was a bit of a bush-whack to get to, but some great scrambling and even a bit of rather tight caving made the ascent quite fun for all involved. The views on the way up were great, despite the overcast weather, but as we got to the top most of the peaks had hidden beneath a layer of cloud unfortunately.
Due to a bit of a communication breakdown a few group members (including the least experienced) did this peak with no breakfast in them at all…of course, Rach and I had not left the hut without fully lining our stomachs! So the day was pretty tough for a couple of people who started walking at around 7am and didn’t get any proper food to eat until around 2pm. The MCM is a great organisation to have here, and has been fantastic for Rach and I to be able to get out and about around the beautiful areas of the country without major hassle or expense, but there isn’t so much care taken of members as there probably would be in the UK – but T.I.A. (this is Africa)…
The trip finished just as the last light was fading, so perfect timing – but a long day! (probably approaching 13 hours walking). Of course, no trip to Mulanje is complete without the obligatory trip to the best pizzeria in Malawi…YUM!
Rach did really well and actually enjoyed most of the trip, so I hope we’ll be back up there again soon. Chinzama hut was a beautiful base, and from it I think you could comfortably do at least 3 or 4 day trips to peaks, let alone flatter walks around the plateau.

Mount Mulanje Porters’ Race 2010

Outside the pizzeria after the race, with my child-like sign writing!

(Can someone pass this on to Graham Bee and Fin Wild?, I’m not sure they are following the blog but might be interested)

(I thought I should write this up before rose-tinted retrospect encourages me to give a less gruesome depiction of the day.)

(photos to come later)

The reasoning:

Before we had even arrived in Malawi I had heard of the fabled Mulanje Porters’ Race. Naturally my reaction was, ‘that sounds painful, must remember not to do that’… Upon arrival in Malawi my thoughts were unchanged, except perhaps to add in that it would be very sweaty. When Rach and I joined the Hash House Harriers running group we shared our first day with a dutch guy, B, who stated his intention to run the race. At this point I was still set against it, and assumed he must be crazy or very fit, or both.

However, as time passed, and I visited the mountain, and saw some of the route, heard tales of others who had successfully survived it; and lured in by the likelihood that this would be my only chance to do it I began to think more favourably on the option. Having hiked some of it on the Sapitwa Sleepover with a heavy bag full of food and camping gear I realised it was not beyond the realms of my humble abilities to complete the route in a matter of hours (I calculated around 4 hours). I then thought about whether or not I was willing to be out of breath, sweaty and in pain for 4 hours and incomprehensibly came to the conclusion that yes, that would be a good use of my time.

So I said to B, “OK, I’m in.”. He was very pleased about this and offered to give me a lift there for the early morning start, which I gratefully accepted. The arrangements were all in place.

The week before the race Rach and I were at the Lake on the workcamp which I have already described. I put my running trainers in and went for a few runs while I was there, up the medium sized hill behind the village (where the photos were from before). The lake, however is at a far lower altitude than the mountain, so it wasn’t an ideal training camp – but was rather nice and relaxing.

While we were at the lake the Netherlands progressed to the finals of the world cup and I got an apologetic text from B stating that he was bailing out on the porters race and would be heading to the world cup instead. This was quite an issue, I started to ask around people I thought might know of other entrants (i.e. the people who organise the Hash) but I now think they were probably on ‘summer’ holiday in the UK and won’t have got my texts. So on Friday night I was left with 2 options, hitch-hike or don’t do it. Now hitching in Africa may seem like a foolish idea, but I was being quite specific about who I wanted a lift from. I was pretty sure there would be plenty of people who I had met at various ‘asunugu’ events who would be likely to be heading out for the event, but I did not have their number. Luckily the main road from Blantyre to Mulanje goes past our township so it was not too much hassle to head out to the road.

On Saturday morning I woke at 4.30, ate a wee bit of food and took my malarial before gathering my stuff and heading out. I got to the compound gate and found it locked, so spoke to one of the guards who was understandably perplexed as to why I would want to leave at this time in the morning. Luckily, this was shift-change time so I walked along the road in the dark (not normally recommended) with one of the guards who had just finished, who would be able to diffuse any troubles. He even stayed with me while I was trying to get a lift, and explained to some confused Malawian lorry drivers why I didn’t want a lift from them. I had given myself until 5.30 to get a lift, and 5.30 came…and just as I was about to give up a car pulled over for me so I ran up the road. It turned out to be some people I had regularly met at the Hash, so that was really great. I waved goodbye to the guard, thanked him and was on my way.

The race:

In talking to experienced runners and hikers before the race I adjusted my aspirational time to 4 hours 30 as it seemed I had underestimated a section of it. I also heard that there was a guy I had cycled around Mulanje with who normally took 4 hours 30 so I decided to stick with him for a pace-marker. The field was mostly Malawians, but there were also a fair number of non-Malawians – perhaps 50? Many of the Malawians were in bare feet, girls in dresses, but they were fit from working on the mountain every day either as guides, porters or gathering wood. Most of the non-Malwians would not describe themselves as hardcore, focussed runners, but were taking part for the experience in a similar way to me. A few of them were even only planning to walk the route, and not run at all.

As the race eventually started (Malawi time was in full swing) I jogged off gently, fully aware of the 3000ft climb which the first section held. I hoped to get this done in just over 1 hour mainly by walking fast. I kept with my pace-marker for about 10 minutes then decided I could go faster and then be caught later by my pace-marker at a later time. It’s pretty important to run at your own speed, running either faster or slower than you naturally feel like doing will make the route harder. So off I went into the unknown, with no way of knowing what sort of pace I should be doing. I was surrounded by Malawians as we puffed our way up the hill, walking fast now as it was too steep to run. I got the first climb done in just under an hour and set off across the ‘plateau’. As I have mentioned before, Mulanje ‘plateau’ is not very flat or ‘plateau’-like, so I struggled to run much across to the next marker, Chambe hut (a beautiful route, by the way, running along side the massive face of Chambe peak). I was still ahead of my estimated time, and ploughed on jogging when I could and walking fast in between. The next section was the one I had underestimated, and it was long and hard. Lots of steep ups and downs meant very little in the way of proper jogging, my legs by this point were cramping up quite a lot so I started trying to consume the salted nuts I’d made the night before, but this didn’t solve the problem entirely (possibly not salty enough). It was at this point, about 90 minutes in that it became really rather painful and not fun anymore. However, I would say that the route would be a lovely walk! As we continued across the ‘plateau’ I had a vague idea of where we were heading, for the last marker before beginning the descent, and so I could keep myself going knowing the decent was approaching.

However, the decent proved to be the worst part. Across the plateau I had slipped slightly and somehow winded myself in the process of staying upright. This proved critical to my enjoyment of the decent, as I had to take small delicate steps rather than romping on down hill, as the jarring from each footstep would make me nauseous. The cramps were a bit of a problem by this point and I tried to stretch them off a few times, but stretching one muscle group would cramp another group! The decent was long, far longer than the ascent, and mentally really really tough. The ground was incredibly slippery as it was covered by a thin film of greasy mud, and was very uneven. I was delighted to be overtaken by teenage girls in dresses and bare feet – incredible! So basically, the decent was not enjoyable at all for me, knackered, stumbling and making all sorts of involuntary noises...pretty grim. However, as with all things, it did end and I crossed the final river and was advised by helpful tourists that I only had 1km to go.

Crossing the line in a time of 3 hours 41 minutes, I was 5th non-Malawian. The fastest non-Malawian did it in 3 hours 10 minutes, and the fastest person took only 2 hours 8 minutes! Unbelieveable!

It took my nausea a long time to leave me, even with tea and lots of water. It was only fizzy drinks that eventually brought me back to human standards of conversation and energy.

I was lucky, some other equally fit competitors had a hard time with vomiting, cramps, sprained ankles, etc etc…

Would I do it again? Absolutely not! Am I glad I did it…yeah, I think so – although more for the bonding experience with the other competitors than the actual experience of the run. I think I found this a particularly hard task as normally my exercise is accompanied by adrenaline, whereas there was little of that natural drug to boost me during the run. Or maybe it’s just because it’s damn hard!

Lake Malawi workcamp

Baobab trees on the way up (near Mangochi)


Everyone rushed to the beach on arrival - for many it was their first time at a beach


baboons raiding a bin


rachel having breakfast with baboons


the graves of early missionaries (died of malaria mostly)


looking down from the hill to Chembe village and the lake - the scars on the landscape from the villagers activities are all too obvious from the hill


the group receiving a park induction and background info from the Park Manager - a nice bloke (this time...see earlier blog about our other trip to Cape Maclear!)


Rachel running an introduction to workcamps session on the beach...because she can!


a chicken for the pot


one of the park staff telling the group about cichlids at Otter Point


some of the group at Otter Point


drink it in...


an impromptu singing session (in chichewa). The group had made up a song about how important the environment is. (Chilengedwe something something chokoma...i was just on 'oooh's for the bass line you will be pleased (not to) hear!).


on the cold road to Mangochi...if I was cold, the locals in just t-shirts must've been really freezing! maybe that's why they pile so many people in, for body heat...

Last Saturday, 3rd July (happy birthday Sal!), Rach and I began one of the most significant and enjoyable aspects of our work here – we were organising an international youth ‘workcamp’ at the World Heritage site of Lake Malawi National Park. Around 25 World Heritage sites globally hosted workcamps this year, and Rachel was in charge of ensuring the Lake Malawi one ran smoothly, whereas I was along to provide some environmental information and training. The camp’s purpose was to gather together young people from different countries (we had Malawians and South Koreans – we would have had Zambians too but their passports were out of date so they could not leave the country!), and to use this international band of yooofs to speak to the people living and working within the park about the importance of World Heritage sites, and this site in particular.

Lake Malawi National Park (LMNP) is a World Heritage site because a group of fish called Cichlids (pronounced sick-lids) have evolved there in isolation into over 350 different species (in a similar way to the Galapagos finches) which are unique and endemic to the lake. The status was also awarded because of it’s outstanding natural beauty (which I think is a bit of a weaker point, although it is very beautiful). The cichlids require the clean freshwater of the lake for their survival and so many activities undertaken by villagers on the land can adversely affect them. The protection of the fish from hunting is enshrined in law, (we saw some offenders being brought in by the park staff for offenses such as tree felling and fishing within 100m of the shore) but it is far better to have the residents taking responsible actions because they understand the importance and want to, rather than just because they don’t want to be caught and fined.

So our group of intrepid young people are, as we speak, out there engaging with various groups from the 5 villages in the park’s area and hopefully inspiring them to positive actions for the ecosystem. They will encounter many cultural difficulties;
• Why should the villagers care if the ecosystem is destroyed and the park loses its World Heritage status? Most tourists don’t necessarily visit the lake because of the World Heritage status, or even the fish, but because it is beautiful.
• What benefit does the LMNP hold for them? All it does is tell them what not to do, they do not gain anything from it.
• What benefit do World Heritage sites in general have to a population which in some cases is verging on subsistence and will never leave the country to see any other W.H. sites?
I hope we have provided the group with at least some responses they can use in some of these situations. The LMNP staff themselves have an ‘outreach’ team, but like all things Malawian it is underfunded, understaffed, and inefficient (and possibly ineffective). The work of the ‘workcampers’ is to try to nurture a better understanding of why the park staff are always telling the villagers what to do, and what they do actually (imperceptibly) gain from the presence of the park and it’s status as a W.H. site.

I, and some representatives from the park, did a couple of days training on the environmental facts and figures, before Rachel and I provided a day’s training on communication skills. Now many of you may be sniggering about me giving communication skills training, but I kid you not – just by being educated in the UK you will have had more formal and informal training on public speaking, critical thought, appropriate debating techniques, and a raft of other ‘soft skills’ than most Malawians will ever receive – it never fails to surprise us the inadequacies of Malawian education in producing intelligent individuals, rather than just individuals who know facts.

And Rachel…well Rachel made it all happen!

So that’s the facts, and here are the opinions:
• Traveling up on Saturday was faff-tastic, but we got there eventually, having given a lift to the grandmother of one of the AYISE staff…and also to her chicken which we were unaware of until a bag fell onto her pile of stuff and it squawked!
• Malawi time is ingrained in Malawians, they cannot do anything even vaguely on time (unless there is something in it for them, such as finishing on time so they can go shopping/play football etc)
• Gender inequality is also ingrained in Malawians, domestic tasks are predominantly done by the females – even when blokes are involved in, say preparing a meal, the females do most of the work
• Malawians love to sing and act – they chose to do a drama in order to portray some of their messages to the villagers and, despite sometimes doing a good impression of a brick wall when we tried to engage them in lively debate in the classroom, they were definitely not holding back in their acting!
• We ate loads. Ridiculous amounts each night, largely carbs (nsima, rice or potatoes) because they are so used to eating loads of dirt-cheap nsima which is highly filling, and walking away totally stuffed, that when they eat other foods they also require huge amounts. But only a tiny wee bit of some (largely tomato based) sauce
• We ate chicken which was bought live and cooked from scratch
• We ate cat fish – delicious, although some Malawians didn’t like it
• Rach and I managed to escape for a couple of hours most evenings to head into town for a beer to calm our frustrations at trying to get this group (of lovely, well meaning individuals) to do anything at all vaguely to schedule
• In town we played bongo-type drums on the beach at a reggae bar, hanging out with the barman and his 10 year old (and very cheeky) son
• We saw lovely sunsets almost every night
• The accommodation, within the national park, is surrounded by very tame baboons and monkeys who are disappointingly eating mainly from the unsecured bins, or even straight from your plate if you are not careful. Rach and I lost a bunch of bananas to a very happy looking monkey who ran into our room while I was in there with my back turned
• We had a couple of nice walks, along to Otter Point (no otters anymore, nothing left for them to eat), and up the hill behind the site

Leaving the camp was a bit of a story…we had been told there would be a minibus around 5 in the morning, however while we were in town at the bar Rachel heard that the minibus was broken down and so we arranged to get picked up by a matola. Matolas are basically any vehicle which you can cram people into, largely pickup trucks or small lorries. The guys at the bar arranged for the matola man to pick us up at 5.30. Last time we were leaving the lake our lift arrived early, so we set our alarm for 4.55. At 4.40 we heard the matola (unmistakable with its music blaring) and luckily this woke Rachel who ran out and spoke to him. He said he’d be back in 20 mins. Perfect. So we hurriedly packed up and were ready in under 20 mins…1 hour later we were picked up! The matola (a small flat-bed lorry) then drove around the rest of the village getting more and more ridiculously full before heading off when I think we literally could not have had anyone else in there. I had an ok position, standing up front behind the cab, with a decent hand hold. Rachel had a very safe position on the floor in the middle. Once our bones had been rattled for around 25km we arrived at the main tarmac road at Monkey Bay. Here we hoped to get a minibus, but unfortunately there were none, so we jumped in another matola (which Rachel expertly haggled down to local price!) for the 56km to Mangochi. The ride was uncomfortable and cold (as mentioned MANY times before, Malawians do not do customer service – quality is not an option) and ran out of fuel repeatedly as they were too tight to actually properly fill it up at any one time. On the plus side, we met a lovely bloke called Moses who had worked with AYISE before and helped us to get a good minibus at a good price from Mangochi straight to Limbe, and we were back in AYISE shortly after lunchtime (having been on the go for over 9 hours).

The whole week was really rewarding as, for once, we could actually appreciate the benefits of our actions (an example being that one of the camp leaders suffered a close family bereavement on the Sunday, but chose to stay up at the camp rather than head home as the camp and all the skills she could get from it meant so much to her). There were frustrations, there always will be, but we were autonomous enough to be able to address most of them reasonably swiftly, unlike our office work where we often have our hands tied and enforced delays. The sunsets helped a lot too!

Next blog: Mulanje Porters Race!

a not-so-quick and not-so-timely blog update

(Sorry for the delay, I started to write this on Tuesday)
(Sorry also for lack of photos – no excuse)
(warning, this is quite a long entry!)

Hmm…what has happened over the last week... For the first time in about a month I did not do any form of exercise over the weekend as I had to attend website creation training. This was meant to take all of Saturday and Sunday, but in reality I managed to push the trainer to provide me with just the information I need to update the AYISE website, and so managed to miss the Sunday session. These sessions were happening at a particularly slow pace anyway, even for Malawi, so I’m glad that as I was chilling out and reading the paper on Sunday morning, I wasn’t actually missing anything as the “9am” start ended up being after 11am. Rachel and I headed into town instead to a purveyor of fine baking (obviously not up to the standards of Fisher and Donaldson, but not bad for Malawi…in fact, quite possibly the best in Malawi!). They normally do real coffee too, which is my main incentive, but on this occasion they had a selective power cut which allowed the use of a kettle and all the lights, but not the coffee machine…very odd! So this spurred Rach and I to splash out on posh coffee (800MK for 250g of Mzuzu Malawian coffee. Interestingly this coffee is not standardised, and is produced by a co-op of different farmers, so each bag can be different…hit and miss would describe it well…) and a cafetiere (1500MK) so we would never again have to face the unthinkable human rights abuse of having to go a week without real coffee!

For all those who have not yet heard about Friday’s party, I will update now on the rollercoaster ride that it was:

Firstly, the party has been held each time SVA (the students from Glasgow) come, to welcome them into the community. Great idea…The problem, as with all problems, comes down to money.

There is a very strong aspect of pride which goes along with throwing a party in Malawi, which dictates that the host should provide more than enough food and booze for all attendees (the attendee list included around 50 people – all the Brits, plus AYISE staff and friends, AYISE members, local “opinion leaders”, police, immigration staff…etc). This extravagance is fairly morally reprehensible when the majority of the country, especially in the rural areas, are struggling to get enough money for a bit of nsima and veg for their 1 meal per day. It is even more offensive when the host is a charity which is meant to be helping the poor. So there was a bit of a running battle going on with the AYISE staff allocated to organise the party, and the brits (Me, Rach and the SVA lot). Additional issues were that SVA were being asked to contribute a fairly substantial amount of money to this lavish party, having already contributed a significant amount for just such a party to AYISE in their pre-paid fees. So there was the joint perception of AYISE fleecing the newly arrived whiteys to pay for a party for them and their friends, and that the money they were spending could be better spent on charitable projects.
However, there is method in the madness. In the early years of international volunteers, AYISE would pay vast sums of money to security guards in order to ensure the volunteers had a peaceful stay. This was not always successful, despite the great expense, so they have changed tactics to one where the community are invited to meet and greet the new whiteys, and by doing so to realise that they are just normal(ish) people and hopefully to engender some form of mutual respect, which will lead to community protection for the volunteers – far more effective than (potentially corrupt – not like our current guards) security guards. The food and beer is basically a sweetener to create positive feeling towards the whiteys – and is still considerably cheaper than the security alternative. AYISE did back down when SVA (with considerable influence from Rach and I) bartered with them on the expenditure, and the location was changed from a posh place in town to just AYISE’s compound (which is probably more useful), and the booze quota was agreed at a lower cost, although I think in practice a higher amount of booze was bought with the saving from not having to transport people to and from town. (sorry for that really badly constructed sentence – I’ve been speaking pidgin English for too long!)

So that’s the saga of the party ( I think that covers it all).

Since then Rach and I have been very busy at work – which is good, although we sometimes question the benefit of all our slog when AYISE still seem as reliable as any other Malawian, despite being fully aware of how unacceptable this is internationally. Will they ever change…? Who knows…

I’ve been working on 3 funding proposals, one for voter education and electoral monitoring at the upcoming local government elections in November (often marred by violence and apathy at the same time!). Oh, before I forget, there is a rumour that Malawi is changing it’s flag – does anyone know if this is true?
Another funding proposal is to assess the effectiveness of the National Youth Council, which I don’t think we’ll get as we are members of the NYC and so surely we would have a conflict of interest?
And the third one is for a nationwide democracy and human rights project which will visit selected secondary schools in all districts of the country and do a wee play and talk about human rights and democracy, with the hope that the information will trickle down to the families and communities of the pupils, and also with the aim of setting up HR&D clubs within schools, run by specially trained teachers.

Rach has been managing to juggle all the various camps and volunteers coming and going at the moment. On Saturday Rach and I will have to go up to Cape Maclear again until the following Friday (so basically a week) to do the inductions for the international, national and local volunteers who will be taking part in the World Heritage work camp at the National Park there. The place is beautiful but as mentioned in the blog in early May, the atmosphere is a lot less relaxing than Namiyango – which is testimony to the effectiveness of AYISE’s approach at community integration and education about Whiteys. Rach will be doing a lot of the general workcamp induction stuff, whereas I have to give up to 2 days of induction specifically on World Heritage Sites and the Lake Malawi National Park – as the workcamp aims to have the volunteers going out to the villages in the national park to educate them and convince them of the importance of conserving world heritage sites…so I’ve got a lot of learning to do myself before then! We will then provide ‘communication skills’ training which will hopefully combine to leave the volunteers educated and effective communicators who can really help to improve communications between the villagers and the national park authority.

This will be a great experience, and it’s probably the closest thing to what I expected to be doing when I came out here – so in some ways I’m really looking forward to it. Also, the hill behind our accommodation should hopefully provide me with good training facilities so that I will be fit enough to take part in the Mount Mulanje Porters Race next Saturday…yes, the day after we are potentially travelling back for hours and hours in minibuses…good preparation! The website for the race is here - http://www.mountmulanje.org.mw/Porters%20Race.htm – 25km and I reckon about 4000ft plus of ascent and descent (mostly in one huge uphill, and one huge downhill), so should be pretty tough. I’m hoping for a time of around 4 hours, and as the start time is 6am that should get the ascent out of the way before it gets too hot.

In other domestic news, we are still living with 14 students, all but 2 of whom being aged 21 or younger. Things are going ok at the moment, just a bit messy which is hard to avoid with such a big group – but still issues to be raised. A guitar (pink – must get a photo of that) has been found in one of the SVA cupboards, so that’s been great to play again – and some of the SVA guys are pretty musical too, so some fun sing alongs! On that note (pardon the pun), we didn’t go to the Folk Night this month, as the desire to play had been quashed by the presence of the new guitar, and Rach and I fancied a wee date-night at the cinema instead (saw The Blindside – it’s ok, for Hollywood sentimentality).

Well, I think that’s about it, and I really need to get back to real work as I have to write 3 days of training on world heritage sites and communication (no sniggering please!).

I hope all are happy, healthy and enjoying the mid-summer-ness.

Andy (and I suppose Rachel too, although I seem to have really dominated the blogging).

PS – Congratulations to Dave and Claire! (this blog could turn into an Edinburgh engagements notice board – although at a very relaxed speed!)

PPS – Well done Lauren on being a published journalist! And thanks for such an amazing parcel (including chorizo – stroke of genius!) ‘mon the Pride!