It has not been my best week

It would be fair to say it has not been my best week, not withstanding the chocolate tragedy, I have also still not been able to get into my old email address to check for post, so therefore have had to arrange a whole new email account, for which ofcourse I don't have any of the old contact addresses so am having to rebuild my contacts. If you are reading this and have tried emailing me in the last 2 weeks on my old email account and have not received a reply, you now know why. Please let me know how to contact you again with my new email address. The latest mishap ............
I don't know if this is age related or just general stupidity.

I got up for work this morning and thought, that is strange.........the freezer door was open, I don't remember going in there..........

Had a look and then the evidence caused me to remember

I had got home from work the night before and thought – I know what would be really nice, a little vodka and diet coke, however there was no ice, and hadn't put any cokes in the fridge to chill, so had a brilliant idea, I will stick a can in the freezer, that will be the quickest way.

Got caught up with cooking dinner and playing solitaire, reading my book and then went to bed. It is an exciting life that I lead sometimes.

Anyway you guessed it – sometime during the night the can exploded. Fortunately no damage to the freezer was incurred.

It has been a tragic day

It was my birthday at the end of July and I have been making regular forays to the post office to see if any of my parcels have arrived yet. My first inclining that it was not all as it should be at the post office was when the postmistress looked at me with pity when I asked if there were any parcels for me. She went and retrieved my parcel and I could see that there was a piece of white paper attached. I carefully perused the said letter –

If it doesn't show up properly it says

"Apology Letter. The attached package was damaged by rodents in transit. Please, we are sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused."

Now I knew what was going to be in that package and had been dreaming about it for weeks, ever since I knew it had been sent.

I took said package tenderly in my hands and noticed the damage corner.

I was still optimistic but sadly that optimism proved to be misplaced when I got back to work and opened the parcel. It was not just the corner of the packaging that had been chewed off.

I did inspect the remainder of the contents quite thoroughly to see if anything could be retrieved but with great regret had to admit defeat and consign the rest of the package to the bin.

Obviously rats/mice or whatever love giant chocolate buttons as much as I do.

It is not as though you can't get chocolate out here, you can, just not this particular type, my favourite......

You can even get chocolate named after you. Thank you very much Ruth for these.and thank you to everyone else in Malawi for all the lovely birthday gifts that you gave me and for coming to the partae. Great time.

I should be grateful that it made it this far as am still waiting for parcels sent in February and still for some others sent after that a further 3 that I know of. It is very depressing knowing that people have taking all that trouble, effort and money to send you stuff and you never seem to receive it.

Oh well guess I will just have to wait until Christmas.

The Flames came to Blantyre

Today the Malawi Flames – Malawi's national football team – were playing at home to Botswana. It has to have been one of the most wintery days so far here, very stormy and windy with that horrible drizzly rain that is moving sideways so that you can't hold up an umbrella without it blowing inside out and all the rain comes in underneath anyway. This did not dampen the spirits of the Malawians who are extremely passionate about their football. Apparently according to my students the president had declared that there would be a half day public holiday so that people could get to see the match as it was being played midweek and in the afternoon. I can't imagine that they would have an evening match as there would probably be a power failure and the flood lights wouldn't work and there would be absolute uproar. Malawians are very passionate about their football. From lunch time onwards there was the sound of the horns again (just like the world cup all over again). Where I work is the other end of the road to the Kamuzu stadium so lots and lots of the fans went past braving the very inclement weather. I could also hear all the cheering etc from the stadium as I sat in my office wrapped up in 3 layers with the electric fire going trying desperaltly hard to keep warm without success as the louvre windows let a howling draft through them constantly. My office is on the cold side of the building which will be great in the hot season but not so good in the winter. My housemate was taken to see the match and said the atmosphere was absolutely amazing and it was a great experience but was absolutely frozen to the marrow by the time she got home. Perhaps as part of the cultural experience I should try and go and see a game for my self but think I shall wait until the weather is warmer. The result was a draw apparently with Malawi managing to equalise at the end of the second half.

Internet difficulties

Besides work, life and the universe for not writing much, one of the reasons that I am not very up-to-date with posting is the somewhat erratic internet connection. Have been having quite a lot of problems recently, the internet at work is not working at the moment and hasn't been for at least 3 weeks if not a month. Something wrong with the box where all the internet cables go into it. I have my own internet dongle but that didn't work for a while either as someone pinched the internet fibre optic cables and these were replaced with I am sure go much slower than usual cables. Also someone told me that the internet cables that run under the sea were cut as well. At the moment I am managing to access most things except for my email. Have not been able to get into that for most of this week – don't know why but it is really frustrating as I know there are few emails I need to reply to which are related to work and also it is the main way of being connected with people at home etc. Although no doubt when I do get access I will be extremely disappointed to find that it is just the usual circular emails etc and nothing nice to see at all, most of them will end up being deleted without being read as lovely as all the money off offers are at boots etc they are of no great use to me at the present time. If the internet were to work quickly enough I would take myself off their mailing lists, but when it can sometimes take as long as 40 minutes to be able to load and read the emails I want to read I really don't have the patience to read and get rid of the ones I don't want.

Whoops it’s been a while now

Haven't written anything on here for ages now, it is not because I haven't been doing anything but rather I have probably been more busy with work and from starting off with not very much to do I now seem to have too much to do, isn't that always the way. Work wise things have certainly been getting busier; the students have all been doing their end of year exams. This meant that we had to put together exam papers for each subject for each year as well writing the supplementary exams at the same time for those that might end up not passing. These papers all then had to be vetted, at the same time there were students on the ward to be supervised. The students have now all done their exams so we are busy marking and second marking them. It wasn't only the student nurses doing exams but also the trainee clinical officers had their midterm exams and as I had been teaching them as well needed to do exam questions for them and mark those papers as well. So having marked 350 exam papers and second marked a further 300 I feel quite worn out by it all – poor me.

Some of the students have also just started their district placements so we have had to go and supervise them in the district hospitals. Once students qualify they can be sent to work at the health centres, the district hospitals or the central hospitals. The system of employment post qualification works very differently here to what I am used to, as the nurses will get assigned to these different places and don't actually apply for jobs specifically as such. The good thing though is that as part of their training they do get to work in all the different types of places they might get sent to.

So last week saw me and a colleague travelling to Chikhwawa, which is quite some distance from Blantyre. I would meet my colleague at the Catholic Institute which is the staging post for the minibuses going in that direction. This was about a 15-20 minute walk from the house. We would then get the minibus to Chikhwawa, the journey involves one of the most scenic roads I have been on so far in Malawi but also sometimes a bit of a scary journey, and is about 45-60 minutes long. Chikhwawa is at a much lower altitude than Blantyre and getting down the side of the mountain is via a long steep windy road with not much leeway on the cliff side of the road. Often there are very big trucks / lorries that need to be overtaken on a blind bend. I chose to be in the back of the minibus as didn't want to witness overtaking on a blind bend at first hand. As you went over the top of the mountain each day the valley below was always below the cloud line. Each time we went we were fortunate enough that we only had to wait for about 20 minutes at the longest for the minibus to fill up. Next time I go on that route I will have to get some photo's – it always makes me think of Top Gear and how they like to go on steep curvy roads very fast and am sure they would enjoy this road. Getting to Chikhwawa involves going through at least 4 police check points, we were stopped each time and the vehicle inspected, on one occasion we all had to get off so they could see properly inside. This is quite a palaver as there are lots of people crammed on along with all their possessions. On one occasion the driver got fined much to the hilarity of the passengers, he had too many passengers having picked up someone just outside the town, so to make 50 kwacha he had to pay a fine of 1500 kwacha. There was much discussion about this for a long time and teasing of the driver.

On arrival in Chikhwawa the difference in temperature was quite noticeable, at present it is still fairly wintery in Blantyre, so I would arrive there warmly wrapped up in my fleece only to end up needing to discard it within a few minutes of arrival. The district hospital is still a couple of miles from the main boma of Chikhwawa and no minibuses go along that route, so the only way to get there besides walking is to get a bicycle taxi. These are literally bicycles with a cushioned seat at the back which the passenger sits on. The bicycle riders have a hard job lugging everyone up and down the road to the hospital; they can make the same journey up to 20 times a day. I wouldn't fancy cycling myself up there let alone doing it with some great big passenger on the back. I have to my hat off to them, the ride was very stable and I felt very secure, they were very careful of dodging the myriad of potholes in the road and even off road were very smooth. Being more a rural area I of course was the object of attention and all along the route would hear the children shouting out Mzungu and waving at me. You often hear people calling out Mzungu in Blantyre but not to the same degree, as we are not such a rare sight here.

This is me and my bicycle taxi just outside the hospital on the way back to get the minibus. The taxi driver is called Money.

On the way home again we never had to wait too long for the minibus to be full – I did however only realise that I had had a chicken sleeping on my foot for the whole of the journey back to Blantyre just as the journey ended. The minibus was rather full of chickens that day but I had thought they were all behind me.

It was a really interesting experience going out there and seeing how the district hospitals work, and learning all about it myself whilst at the same time supervising the students.

I have also now started working on the adult oncology unit at the local hospital, this is the first proper adult oncology unit in Malawi and it is great to be working alongside the team there. There has been a paediatric oncology unit for many years, but the consultant for the adult unit is the first trained oncologist to be employed. They have been really welcoming to me, and I spend roughly one day a week there, teaching as much as I can about oncology and chemotherapy administration, writing policies and procedures for them.

We have also been handed our teaching programmes for next year, and I am the programme co-ordinator for two of the modules and also teaching on a third module as well – so currently have about 30 – 40 lessons to prepare ready for the new academic year.

I will definitely been in need of a holiday again soon – am fortunately have one planned for the beginning of September.