The House

My House

Compared to some of the horrors we were shown during training in the UK my place in Lilongwe is actually fairly palatial. I have a proper bathroom complete with hot running water, a western style toilet, tiled floors and a fairly spacious living/dining area.

My Kitchen

My Living Room

When I arrived it was filthy, the previous tenant had been living there for six years and I don’t think he’d cleaned once in all that time! Luckily my house is in the same compound as Judy’s and she very kindly helped me scrub the place up a bit.

Our compound is fairly typical for Lilongwe; 5 or 6 houses surrounded by a 6-10 ft wall with razor wire all around the top and a 24 hour guard at the front gate. Despite it sounding a bit like a prison it feels fairly safe in Lilongwe and I wonder whether having a guard is really just so someone can have a job.

Our fortress walls

The Compound

We pay a local security firm to provide us with guards and so we often get different people day-to-day. Some of them look slightly less convincing than others, we often have a woman in high heels and a dress show up which is amusing but I dare say pointless.

Joking aside, being a guard is not a very well paid job. VSO gives us an allowance of 15,000 KW per month for ours which is about £30 or just over a dollar a day. We try and help them out with gifts of stuff we don’t want anymore and food where we can.

Full pictures available here: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjG6A3si