Mikä Malawi

Training farmers about heat detection. I was told here that every 9 cows out of 10 are not giving any signs of heat and are on silent heat.. We all know that´s not possible. So we went through the signs again and reminded the farmers that heat detection is one of the most important works in their farms. No calves, no milk.  Introducing a very simple and easy to use "heat calender" for the same group of farmers that were getting the training about heat detection. That´s my pilot group working with this calender. I am looking forward for the feedback on it´s usage and later will introduce it to more farmers if it seems to work out well. The only problem is that not all farmers are able to read, especially the elderly farmers so this comes out handy only for those who are able to read.  Teaching our community animal health worker to crab a cow for deworming.  With these Malawian cows you need to really strong!! No matter how small jerseys they are. Must say th

Last week I turned 29, should I freak out? That´s like hitting the thirties.. No, I am actually quite happy about it. Growing older and wiser is not bad at all. I am glad to be in the right place in the right time, knowing what I am doing, knowing why am I doing it and above all, enjoying doing it! So many stupid things I´ve done in my life and repeated way too many mistakes, I am glad to have these brains of a 29 year old me J Love the view but tough roads to ride. And some hundred meters from here a two meter long python crossed the road when I was walking so need to watch where you put your feet also! My motorbike finally came to Mzuzu. Things happen slowly, yes you know it already and because of one thing and another it took quite some time for me to get my bike. But it´s here now and we are out in the field doing the work that we are suppose to be doing.  First things first, we are terribly late with the pass-on program so that was the first thing we started to work on.

The weekend has been just great! I´ve been out a lot to see Mzuzu, getting to know new people and I´ve really enjoyed it. People are friendly and happy, they smile a lot and smile is always good for you. I think we should smile much more at home, we often let little things bother us too much. Nightlife is all about dancing and I must say it´s a very good exercise to do. Today I read the news from Tohmajärvi, Finland where a cowhouse was on fire and 40 cows died. It´s terrible, no one should have to face such tragedy. It also brought my thoughts to a farmer whom I went to see on Friday. She had one cow, her livelihood is pretty much depending on that one cow. The cow was a nice jersey cow, she had well kept “khola” (the “cowhouse”, will get you pictures later). Everything seemed to be in good order. Unfortunately the cow had been sick for a month now and on Friday morning it had died. It had been treated 3 times during the sickness but there is continues shortage on animal drugs.

Almost 3 months have passed in Malawi now and I am getting nicely settled in to Mzuzu. The weather is getting colder now that we are getting closer to winter. Well winter in Malawi cannot be compared to winter in Finland, I would still consider this as a Finnish summer. Our house starts to feel more like home every day and I am learning how to cook Filipino food which is so delicious.  The president died some time ago so we are facing big changes now in Malawi. The national mourning started with 10 days but was soon extended to 30 days. The whole episode was quite strange and I am convinced that the whole world knew about the death of the president before the news were finally released to Malawians. The dead president was travelling around the country, he came to Mzuzu also. The money spent on the funeral exceeds over 1,1 million in euros which is just a bit too much in a country where people die of hunger every day. But we have a new woman president now and hopefully things will cha

Sorry for being so quiet but I am still alive and kicking. Well, I was in Lilongwe for the past 3 weeks. First attending a peer support meeting with all the VSO volunteers who work under secure livelihoods and after that doing my motorbike training to get the motorbike license. Basicly the training could have been done in a week but just for that fuel again it took us some more time to finish the course. But I am fully licensed to ride a motorbike now and that´s pretty awesome! Easter I spent at Nkhata Bay. It was beautiful, amazing, I really enjoyed it. So today I am finally back at work after being away almost a month. Doesn´t look like much have changed since I last attended a meeting at our work place.. I guess that´s the Malawian time. The same issues we discussed a month ago are still here though progress is there but it´s very slowly. Because of no fuel again (do I even need to mention that anymore..) I will do what I can this week and hopefully head to the field next week. We a

Things happen slowly in Malawi, very slowly. We are slowly getting more to the field but not nearly as much that we should be going there. Last week we managed to see some cows. Our field team got a new volunteer from Canada offering veterinarian services. That was great! So at this time we are working on a proper database of all the farmers who are members of MDFA. The information is bit and bits there and there so it´s going to take some time but slowly getting there. Me and Abdullae on the field Just using the word slowly a lot now to make you understand the reality we live in. No point to get frustrated about it, just need to live with it. And anyway we are left with lot of other things to do so might as well enjoy the slowness. I can never talk enough about fuel and diesel, there might be some but you need to be really lucky to get it. There are days when even the black market runs out of fuel. The political situation is very unstable and we basicly living under alert all the time

Time goes by and it´s been already a month in Malawi. Life isn’t too bad here. The usual African culture takes a bit of time to adapt but I think I´m getting there quite well. I really like Mzuzu, people are friendly and helpful. Everyday basics, shopping and going around in town is not that stressful at all, no one really bothers us and the sellers in the market don´t try to cheat you too much. Am sure there´s a little “rich white people” extra added to the prices in the market but it can be solved fast after some chitumbuka greetings and mention about volunteering. Last week was the first full week of work. We went around to get introduced to a lot of people we are going to work with. There´s a lot of activities going on with the farmers and I am getting to understand that we just need to motivate the farmer´s enough to care for their animals and understand the good profit that can be achieved with good farming. On Wednesday I went to see silage (fodder) making at Lunyangwa research

Catching a bus is always an interesting experience in Malawi… You arrive to the bus station and in few seconds you are surrounded with “bus boys” who are all trying to get you to their buses. They will tell you everything to get you to go with their bus..” Take this one! This is the fastest! This is the best! This is the fastest of the fastest!” When you ask for the time they are leaving you get all kind of answers.. “It´s leaving just now now. It´s leaving 7.30. It´s leaving 9.00. It´s leaving when it´s full.” The last answer is always the correct answer, the bus will leave when it´s full, that´s for sure. So basically you just need to look for the bus which has the most people in it already. It might also be that they put some random guys to sit in the bus to look like it´s full though there is not nearly enough people for it to departure yet. They will also step on the gas to make it sound like they are leaving though they are not. It´s a tricky thing. It´s better to leave hurry to

Greetings from Mzuzu, the capital of Northern Malawi! I am writing this with a candle light in our dining room. The power cuts are everyday and normally come around 6pm lasting about 1 to 4 hours. First few times are surprising but by now we are already use to them and basically the only way to be prepared is to have a good set of candles available for those times. Though when it happens you are always in the other side of the house from the matches and flashlights.. Our house So after having to spend some extra time in Lilongwe we finally made it to our new home. When thinking about it now it was actually a very good thing because we had time to settle and get to know the town before we started to work. We arrived last Thursday and mainly spend the weekend cleaning and setting up the house. We were really lucky to get a wide range of kitchen equipment from some previous volunteers so we didn´t have to spend a lot of money on those. We are still missing quite a lot of furniture since t

Greetings from the sunny side of the earth! Where should I start from.. Well, my flight finally arrived to Lilongwe and this is where I have been ever since. We started with the real intense and busy In-Country training week. We had sessions about quite a range of subjects, including for example security and culture in Malawi, not forgetting the corruption, HIV/AIDS and health issues and general understanding about the sustainable development in Malawi. Most of all I enjoyed our chitumbuka lessons which is the local language we are going to use in the North of Malawi. It was so much fun and we pretty much covered the basics during the first week, greetings and how to get lower prices at the market, very essential. The training week ended on Saturday with a meeting with our employer, Edward the manager himself seemed such a nice person, I am sure we are going to get along well. So about the situation now. Since we are in Africa, delays and miscommunication is normal and not really surpr

Yesterday I started flying towards Malawi. In -25 degrees I left Helsinki. Knowing that there will be no need for winter jackets, hats, gloves, layers and layers of clothes for the next 2 years it made the leaving quite easy. But must say Helsinki looked really beautiful when looking from above, really white like winter should be. The next departure from Frankfurt didn´t go quite as expected.. We were just talking with few fellow travelers today that the announcements were not so nice, it went somehow like this: - Dear passengers, we have a problem in the engine one, we will try to sort it out but we will get back to the airplane parking space to get the engineers working on it. - Dear passengers, we will now try the engine one if it works correctly ( after this you could see a smoke coming out from the engine) - Dear passengers, we are still working on the engine problem, we will let you know in about 15 minutes - Dear passengers, we we will now try the engine one and then make the fi

All my bags are packed I´m ready to go... Well, about being ready I am not so sure about, can you ever really be ready to leave and live in another country for 2 years? I don´t think so. But at least my bags are ready so that leaves me some time to relax for tonight. I think I have left so many times already from one place to another that the whole thing about leaving and saying goodbye is easy for me. I always wanted to go back to Africa and haven´t really realized yet that I will actually be there on Sunday but I am sure it will be such a lovely feeling to land my feet back to the true African ground. And I love these moments where you can start a whole new page in the book of your life! I have really enjoyed the last pages and will probably stay on the same chapter still, just adding more adventures to this page. You might know that I have never really settled anywhere. Becoming older sometimes gives me the feeling that I should consider settling more but now at the moment of one mo

Well, time is running and my "to do list" is still quite long. The good news is that my flights to Malawi have been confirmed and I will be flying out on the 4th of February. So there is less than 3 weeks to go which at times brings a slight "panic related feelings" but calms down fast after realizing that 3 weeks is plenty of time to get everything sorted out. Autumn time passed fast with all the training we had to do with VSO. It seemed a lot in the beginning and I was wondering how am I going to survive all those studies both in England and online. If you come with an academic background it must be not that bad at all. But if you come with less studying background like I did it really seems like a whole lot of work to do, with lots of paper work, lots of big issues packed with big words! But now when I look back at it all it's been amazing times, have learned so much, enjoyed the conversations with other volunteers and had so much fun too! And I am happy that