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Exploring Lilongwe

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 surprising me. Edward, our employer, was ready to travel with us to Mzuzu on Saturday. Mzuzu is where we, me and Rona from Philippines, are going to work for the next two years. We were also prepared to go on Saturday or Sunday but then we found out that our house there is completely empty with no furniture in it. We could have travelled with our mattresses but it didn´t really feel comfortable since no one seemed to know when we are getting the rest of the furniture there. So we decided to stay at the VSO guesthouse in Lilongwe as long as our furniture would be sorted out. There´s been some progress now and it could be that we are able to travel there this week. We would love to go already and get settled in our house but we´re not too stressed about it, anyway it´s been a nice week getting to know Lilongwe and we have definitely took the best out of our free time :)

The VSO country office is just a walking distance from the guesthouse, there´s internet but it´s really slow and sometimes working, sometimes not. I got this usb dungle (mokkula finns.) thing today but we need to get it activated tomorrow so let´s see if I will get connected more soon. It´s quite cheap but not sure about the reliability yet. We´ve been taking the minibus to town centre. Malawian minibuses.. cheap and the best way to get around in town, not sure always how they keep working, actually the one from today dropped a door on the way but it was quickly fixed back to its place. The town itself is quite a mess, we´ve been going around everywhere to find the cheapest things with volunteer prices, apart from the Chinese stuff which even here has the reputation of lasting only 24 hours. We are packing up some things to take with us to Mzuzu, things like pasta and some special foods which are harder to find in the North and more expensive there. I am so happy that I have found real coffee and they actually produce it in Mzuzu so no worries about that! And it´s good! Me and Rona are both into gardening so we are busy planning our vegetable/herb/flower garden in Mzuzu. We were even planning to get some chickens so that we could have fresh eggs every day.

It´s the rain season now. Rains come and go in Lilongwe, Mzuzu has more rains. It´s really nice and green now here. After midday it gets really hot but not unbearable. Power cuts are really common and happen every day. Not sure if it´s like that also in Mzuzu but after one week I am already use to them though we had quite weak dinner yesterday when there was a 4 hours power cut in the evening.

I hope to get you some pictures soon!

Comments

Sanna said…
Sounds great Milla! Hope you get to your house soon and can settle down :)
Leif G said…
Here in Nauvo only two power cuts in month.

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