Hello from Malawi, Muli Banji! Apologies it’s taken a while
to write this first post but it’s been pretty non-stop since I arrived and
internet is sketchy to say the least.
I finally arrived at around midday on Sunday 2nd
after almost 24 hours of planes and airports. There were 9 of us arriving on
the UK flight, the rest of which I’d managed to track down during a stop in
Nairobi. It felt good to be part of a group who were all new and finding our
feet together, we all got along really well and I’m hoping that we’ll stay in
touch and be a support for each other throughout the year. Aside from myself the rest of our intake are
nurses so I’m guessing I’ll be ok for medical advice!
Our first week was spent in a local guesthouse getting
training on Malawian culture, language and VSO’s objectives. We were also given
some orientation in town and got to meet the management team behind our various
projects.
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| Riverside Hotel |
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| Lunch at Riverside |
During the week I got chance to have lunch with the rest of
the volunteers from my project (iHRIS.) It turns out that the project isn’t as
advanced as people had originally hoped and so my job description is going to
be somewhat different from what was planned. Originally I was supposed to be
based in Zomba, a small town in the south of the country where I would be
deploying iHRIS and training users. Unfortunately iHRIS is nowhere near ready
for rollout yet and much of the system still needs to be written, as a result
I’ll be based in Lilongwe (the capital) for the foreseeable future, helping to
build out the system itself. For those of you interested in the technical
detail of the project I’ll post a separate article shortly.
By the end of the week I think we were all chomping at the
bit to get going and move into our project housing. Although the training had
been very useful it had been a long week cooped up in the hotel with little
opportunity to get out and explore Malawi. On the last night the VSO staff took
us out for pizza, expensive by Malawian standards but a comforting taste of
something familiar.
The next day (Saturday 8th) we were all picked up
by our respective employers, in my case the ministry of health and driven to
our new homes…
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| All packed ready for moving |
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| New volunteers class photo |
And, as promised, the fairly embarrassing pictures from my
leaving party in Leek here:
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