Wednesday 1 September 2010

Busy busy busy

Last week I was back down in Chikhwawa again on the Monday and Tuesday to revisit the students there and see how they were getting on. Anyhow I decided this time as I was being let loose all by myself that I would drive. This time I took my camera to take pictures of the road and the obstacles but sadly the battery died and I didn't get many at all. And there would have been some amazing ones. The picture below is the view of the hills/mountains as you are coming out of Chikhwawa. (And a very badly focused picture also – but then my camera battery said no)
Now if you can imagine a steep road curving all the way down those hills, with nothing but cliff on one side.

On the way up I had to overtake 3 huge broken down Lorries, who have of course conveniently broken down on a steep part of the hill right on the apex of the blind bends. We are coming to the conclusion that it is probably a law in Malawi that if you break down it should always occur at either a junction where there is no room to overtake or on a blind bend, preferably on the steepest hill you can find. 'You always get lots of warning though (if it is in town – a long queue of traffic and if it is in the country – half a dead tree for about a hundred yards in front). Will have to get some pictures so you can see what I mean.

Otherwise have been busy supervising the students on the ward, doing OSCE tests, skills practice in the lab, lots of marking, and helping the college with the end of year collation of all the exam marks and clinical evaluations. The students all finish the school year at the end of this week and are then off on holiday, as am I. Very excited about that as have friends coming from the UK with more goodies for me. Prior to that though on Friday am meeting up with Bex and Matt who have also just returned from a short break in the UK, and who have also ............ yup you guessed it brought back stuff for me, and happily have picked up two parcels from the main VSO office that were sent out back in July for my birthday and have now finally arrived. It feels rather like Christmas.

How to make a volunteer happy

One of my housemates has recently returned to Malawi from a trip to the UK, she brought back loads of goodies for me, and also

and this was not all of it
this should keep us going for a little while. It is not that you can't get cheese here, but the cheese we can afford to buy is of the plastic cheddar variety, a decent bit of cheese requires a mortgage being taken out, and as we are volunteers I fear the bank will think we are not a good risk.
Not only did the huge amount of cheese come back with her, but on hearing of my tragic tale of woe regarding rodent activity, to my utter amazement and delight, not one but two bags of giant chocolate buttons were in the Mary Poppins suitcase as well.

Watch out there’s a chisoni about

Recently we have taken up gardening; well this is of course the royal we. My role has been very influential in so much as that I have brought the seeds and directed where they need to be planted. Then of course there is the surveying of the growing pattern. What is coming up and what isn't. All very time consuming I am sure you will agree. Whilst walking around the garden I noticed lots of holes in the ground. I decided to ask Wayson our night guard/gardener what was causing these holes and he informed me it was the chisoni that were causing them. Unfortunately he didn't know how to translate chisoni in to English and my hideously bad understanding of Chichewa didn't extend to translating this either. So we both agreed to not being able to translate.

Later that night I was taking the tea out for him and he said he had something to show me. He brought over an old charcoal bag and informed me that he had caught one of the chisoni's and had it in the bag. Busy holding it out for me to see, I gingerly peered in wondering what strange creature might possibly be lurking in there, imaging all kinds of wild beasts, snakes obviously being on top of the list, and very worried that whatever was lurking in the bag might jump and bite or sting me. Imagine my relief when this is what was in there,



 

So chisoni is Chichewa for hedgehog. Well that was a relief as there are an awful lot of holes in the garden. One side effect though of this is that we have had to deflea the dog (I am refering to the royal we here again as my house mate actually did it)