Beautiful Blantyre?

I've been told to write a description of Blantyre, so here it is for those of you who are interested. I don't have any photos yet as I don't feel overly safe carrying my camera around, and it would appear that some of the local Malawians hate having their photo take even more than I do!

Blantyre is a lot hillier than I was expecting. I was looking out of the window as my plane flew into South Africa and everything I saw looked unbelievably flat. Not here. We're surrounded by a few mountains (after which Dominic's school houses are named) and apparently one of them is so tall that it is still snow capped...I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a doubting Thomas and say I'll believe it when I see it!

It is very hot here. At night we sleep with the windows open and it's still too hot (for me) even without my sheet. And it's only going to get hotter as we approach the wet season, which starts mid way through November. This means that currently it is very dry and dusty.

In general it is quite poor here – the shops are quite run down, most people walk or use the minibuses, there are people begging on the streets etc. but then there also seems to be a fair number of big cars (not all owned by expats!) and I even saw a sports car the other day! The houses we've looked at are large with big gardens and cost around £600 p/m unfurnished, and there are plenty of them, so there must be quite a market for them. The city is split up into areas, and there is quite a divide – some of them have loads of these big expensive houses with massive gardens, security and servants' quarters, whereas other areas are just stuffed full to bursting with small, poor quality, decrepit houses. Nobody here seems to own their own house – everyone rents, even those in the squalid houses.

The river, which flows through the city centre, is absolutely disgusting and the area around it stinks. Most buildings are one storey and most houses are bungalows although there are taller hotels and office blocks in the city centre.

I haven't seen much in the way of wildlife (mosquitoes excepted...) but I'm pretty sure there's plenty of it when you move away from the cities.

Food wise I'm not finding it very hard to be veggie. There's a nice vegetarian restaurant in town, and a few fairly well stocked supermarkets. I haven't done enough food shopping back home to compare prices, but mum says instant coffee is expensive and I can tell that chocolate costs a lot. Sad times :( (our address is name C/O Susan Heyes, College of Medicine, Medicine Department, Private Bag 360, Chichiri, Blantyre 3 – jokes! Sort of...!!)

The roads are interesting – there are a few main roads which are fairly wide and reasonably (I think) well tarmacked, but the pavements are just the side of the road marked by yellow line which in most places has all but disappeared! The lorries are very slow and everyone else is very impatient which leads to the maddest overtaking I've seen in my life! The situation only gets worse when there are fuel shortages as this results in queues for petrol stations miles long down the roads! Other smaller roads are pretty bad – lots of pot holes, narrow etc. and I can imagine they get pretty treacherous when the wet season arrives!

The minibuses are CRAZY! They are the only viable form of public transport as there are no trains or normal buses. There are some coaches but I think they are mainly for long distance. In the UK I guess these minibuses would seat about 10 passengers. Over here they try to make sure they have around 12 and I've heard of them seating 7, with more hanging on outside! They aren't obviously (to me) marked with their destination, there is no timetable (they just go when they're full) and no obvious stops as far as I can tell. So if you want to get on one you just have to keep flagging them down until one of them with spaces stops, and then try to find one going where you want to go, which is hard because there is slight language barrier and I find that the just want the fare (around 30p) so they'll say yes to whatever you ask them whether they are actually going where you want or not! This has resulted in me ending up on completely the wrong minibus going to quite a poor area of Blantyre which meant that more and more people were staring at me on the bus trying to work out why this white person was still there! It then reached the end of it's journey and, when I still hadn't got off, the driver asked me where I was trying to get to. This was when I discovered I was on the wrong one. Anyway, I made it home safe later on that day. And getting off them is another hurdle completely! Back home we have buttons to press to request the next stop. Here, when the minibus is getting close (hard to tell when you don't know the area) you're supposed to just shout out the name of where you want to get off. Unfortunately it would seem that we and the locals use totally different land marks and so they have no idea where we mean when we request to get off! We're slowly getting the hang of it, though.

In terms of the social side of life I'm afraid to say I haven't investigated it much since my reggae venture into Club X! Shop-wise there is quite a choice. We have Chichiri shopping mall, which contains a few shops selling various things from stationery to clothes, a large supermarket and a shop called game which sells food, household items, electrical items, bedding etc. There is also a cinema, showing fairly recent films (Harry Potter and Transformers are on at the moment, plus a few that I hadn't heard of, but I think are other new western films). I'm excited about utilising that! There are lots of shops in the city centre, but I haven't looked too closely at those yet. Most of these shops seem to have all their items behind the counter and you have to ask them to find what you want – you can't really browse through their stuff. This therefore requires you to know what you want before you go to town – no window shopping here! Also in town is a massive flea market selling everything of no value and little of any real use! That's not fair, they sell clothes and shoes, lots of electrical and DIY bits and pieces and there is a food market behind where there are lots and lots of stalls all selling the same vegetables! There is also a meat and fish section but I passed through that part as quickly as I could! People seem to use whatever land they can find, be it on a road island or a roundabout, to grow vegetables to sell, so these are available all along most major roads too, as well as the flea market in town. There are a couple of other markets throughout Blantyre but I've only passed those I haven't actually been in them. I find them quite stressful as everyone tries to get you to buy their stuff and I suspect they mark it up quite a but when they see a white person coming. I'm going to have to bite the bullet at some point and get bartering, as I can see that's going to come in handy at some point over the coming year!

I can't really think of anything else to describe to you so, if you haven't fallen asleep by now, thank you for reading. If you have fallen asleep, thanks for trying!

God Bless,

Julez

xxxx

Muli Bwanji :)

Muli Bwanji! Hi, how are you?

So you're back! My last blog didn't bore you too much, evidently?

A couple of inspirational bible verses, first:

“ 'I am God, the God of your father,' he said. 'Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again.' “ Genesis 46:3-4

“Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.” Psalm 9:10

This week has passed in a flurry of mosquito bites and power cuts. Both of which are generous in supply! My legs are so bitten right now (over 30) that I look like I've got some kind of disease. Dad has a system going where Dom (and I if I push it) get 1 Kwatcha (about 4p) for every mosquito we kill – we're doing quite well out of it! I can probably catch about 20 in a day. Power cuts are pretty regular – approximately 6pm-7pm alternate nights. At least we pretty much know when they'll be so we can plan meals around them, but candles are not actually that bright we've discovered!

So this week feels less eventful than last, but that may well always be the case, as I don't think much will live up to my reggae clubbing experience! I started the week quite unproductively – living in a foreign country with very few belongings aside from the clothes in which I travelled and my Bible can make one feel quite unsettled. But, with maybe a little bit of a push from the parents, I got on with contacting various people about voluntary work. Unfortunately, most of my contacts chose this week to go away to Lilongwe so I didn't get to see as many of the projects as I had hoped. I did see three very different places though.

The first was an (unregistered) primary school in a very poor area of the city. It is a Christian school, with what seemed to me to be very important visions. They wanted the children to be able to go to school – which isn't so easy. There aren't that many government schools , and those that do exist seem to be very full. The one the headteacher mentioned to me had up to 70 children in a class, and someone else told me about a primary school that had over 4000 pupils!! The school system over here is a bit different. Government primary schools are free, but there seems to be a fee you are expected to pay to the school anyway. Government secondary schools aren't free, they cost around K3000 per term (£12) but if you fail the year you have to repeat it – you can't progress until you pass the year. So, in theory, you could spend your whole life just trying to graduate from high school. Although I suspect most people would have given up before they reached that point! Anyway, back to the school I visited. They want to be a secondary school, too, as many children can't afford the fees but they don't have enough teachers yet even for the primary. They can't register as the teachers aren't qualified (they're trying to get them trained, but they can't afford to lose them for the year that would be required for training as they have nobody to fill their post). Basically they need all the help they can get, financially and physically, but I'm not sure that I'm ready yet for teaching.

The second project I visited was in a township outside Blantyre. A guy called Mac is working with the children there. Basically he wants to make sure that the children manage to go to school (they must have the uniform, which most of the can't afford) and that they gain the skills they need so that they don't end up on the streets. Most of the work he does, as I understand it, is in organising sport for them after school. There are about 110 children with whom he works and they play a mixture of football and netball after school. He also works with a group of 55 women from the area who have formed a group. They all have AIDS, and are working together to support each other and give each other help with food and childcare etc especially for when they are really ill. They want to make sure that the children for whom they are responsible will be provided for in the eventuality of their passing away. So they have rabbits and chickens which they breed for eggs and meat, and they have a vegetable patch, all of which means that they have food and an income. I met the woman who set up this group. She's called Lucy and she's a widow to AIDS. I'm not sure if she has children, but if she does they have grown up and left home. She is looking after her nephew's daughter (her nephew died a while back) along with two other children who I think are distant relatives. Her mother died of AIDS, leaving her the sole carer for these three children. She is quite ill with her AIDS, but remains upbeat and concerned about the other women in her group. She is also worried about the children in the group, as some of them need to repeat a year of school, which means more money for school. Mac is also trying to raise the money to pay for a building (they have been given a patch of land) which can be used to house the children he works with who are already living on the streets. Again, this seems like a really important project, but I'm not sure how much help I would be here? I'm not sporty in the slightest, but I might be able to help the kids with their homework (Mac says) and teach them English.

The third project was an orphanage which you can google as this is on the internet. It's called Open Arms and is based near the city centre. It is mainly for 0-2 year olds, but they do have some older children. They really want to rehabilitate the children, as it were. So they want them to live with proper families as soon as possible. Most get sent to their parents or other relatives, but some of them have none. These stay in the orphanage until they reach about 4 years old at which point they really want to see them adopted or fostered. This appears to be very well run, but a little low on volunteers at the moment. So if I went there, there would definitely be work for me. I just feel that maybe the fact that it is so well known means that they have other ways of finding volunteers? Also, it is not a Christian orphanage which may be an influencing factor when deciding where to go.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the local hotel to use the pool there (well Dom and Dad did, Mum chickened out as the water was cold and unfortunately all my swimming stuff is in my air freight) which was nice and relaxing. Dom and Dad were playing frisbee in the (fairly small) pool, but unfortunately managed to lose the frisbee IN the pool as the water was that cloudy that you couldn't see where it had landed! Niiiice, not quite so disappointed now that my swimming stuff hadn't yet arrived...

The big thing, for me, that happened this week is that my luggage arrived on Friday!!! I now have lots of clean clothes, but I never want to see those jeans ever again! I have nice shampoo and conditioner, my retainer (less excited about this as it was so tight the first night that I struggled to sleep, and my teeth massively ached in the morning) and those all important Winnie The Pooh shaped cookie-cutters (courtesy of the wonderful Mimi!). We're now just waiting for our air freight to arrive, which has got a few more luxuries in it – like a torch, which will come in very handy during the power cuts. We now have a dongle (more modern than what we have back in England which I find slightly ironic) so we have internet at the house, but you have to top up the internet, and you have to buy it in mbytes, which expire after 30 days so we're not sure how quickly we'll use it up – so if you stop hearing anything from any of us, then we've probably used it all up!

This coming week for us involves: another week at Queens for Mum and Dad, another week at school for Dom, and another week job hunting for me.

If you are that way inclined, then prayers for me would be very gratefully appreciated - that I will look at these projects with an open mind, and listen to where God wants me to go, and not just choose the place with the cutest kids! I'd also like to praise God for the safe arrival of my luggage, a nice, safe place to live, a car on loan, and many people viewing our house back home with a view to renting it.

God Bless,

Baggageful in Blantyre ;)

xxxx

P.S. As ever, if there's anything you want to hear about that I'm not mentioning, do let me know so I can include it.

In 7 days God created the universe...

...let's see what I can achieve!

My First Week

            So my first week in Blantyre has gone very quickly! I set off for Heathrow on Saturday morning, full of anticipation for the coming journey. I arrived very early and so had plenty of time to sit around twiddling my thumbs. My flight to Cairo was uneventful, despite an hour's delay. The (EgyptAir) plane exceeded expectations with comfortable seats, edible food and in-flight entertainment. My overnight flight to Johannesburg less so. It was delayed by an hour and a half, post-boarding which meant a very long wait on the plane. The seats were less comfortable, the food less appetising, and the company less friendly. However, I arrived in Jo'burg in one piece.

            Unfortunately (as many of you know) I left Jo'burg in a less complete situation – my rucksack decided it hadn't seen enough of South Africa and so refused to board the plane :(

            I was joined for my 5 hour (now 3 hour due to the delay of my flight from Cairo) wait in Johannesburg by Mum and Dom, who had flown directly there with South African Airways. The AirMalawi flight to Blantyre was delayed (not unexpectedly by this point) and was on a much smaller, older, rickety plane. But, again, we all arrived alive and were met at the airport by Dad.

            The rest of Sunday was spent settling into Kabula Lodge where we were to stay for the next couple of days. We hired a car for Monday to Wednesday so that we could do some shopping, move into our temporary housing, and start viewing the houses on Dad's short-list. Dom started his new school on Tuesday (7am start!!) which he is enjoying.

            On Thursday, Mum and Dad started work properly and I, still luggageless, took the opportunity to do some much needed (hand) washing. Our temporary accommodation is only two bedroom, which leaves me sleeping on a two-seater sofa! So I am looking forward very much to finding a house (and my luggage...).

My Bed. In the living room. :(

            There is no doubt in my mind that the most eventful part of my week was Friday evening, when I went clubbing (totally unintentionally!). One of my contacts for some potential voluntary work out here, Andy, invited me to a gig outside Blantyre. I, assuming it was an opportunity to discuss the project in which he is involved and my possible involvement there, agreed to go. In fact, it turned out it was an African club with live Reggae music. It lasted 5 hours! 9pm-2am! Which, considering that in Blantyre 9pm is the local midnight, was very late. I was forced into dancing by many strangers, who did not understand why the white girl wasn't enjoying the music. I could talk about that evening for quite a long time, but I don't want to bore you. The summary being that I spent 5 hours dancing to loud reggae music, trying to avoid random men who constantly tried to dance with me, all the while being harassed (for want of a kinder word) by one of Andy's local friends who seemed to have got the wrong impression from me, mainly due to my white skin and a massive language/alcohol barrier. Ooops. I suspect I may have to get used to this/better at handling it.

            Since then we have met up with an English family - the parents work at the same hospital as Mum and Dad, and the children go to Dom's school. They were lovely, and the mum, Jane, has lent me some clothes! Yay! :) Massively coincidentally, it turns out that Jane's brother (and family) live across the road from us back home in Wortley, and we've met the family a few times. Small World!

            On Sunday we went to a nearby Church. The service was unlike anything I had been to before lasting 2 and a half hours, and comprising mainly of music and a discussion/debate between the leaders and some members of the congregation which stemmed from an off-hand comment one of them made during prayer.

            Anyway, it's time for me to get back to job hunting, I hope you enjoyed reading this, if not then I wouldn't bother checking my blog again as my writing is highly unlikely to improve...

Over and out,

God Bless,

Baggageless in Blantyre

xxxx