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From home and work

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 the house is really big for just the two of us but hopefully we will get some more next week. The good thing is that we have plenty of space so if you are ever planning to visit you are most welcome and our guest suite will serve you with own private bathroom! Next task is to buy some curtains and carpets to get some colour in the house, and get rid of the echo which too much empty space does.

Home sweet home


Mzuzu seems nice. Not as busy as Lilongwe. You can actually walk on the road side without being afraid that cars will hit you. The side of traffic is still a bit confusing but crossing the street is getting easier everyday when you figure out which way to look before you cross. And need to watch out for the bicycles too! There´s plenty of them and the nicest thing is the bicycle taxis. You can get one anywhere and it´s cheap and actually quite comfortable too since the seat is equipped with a nice soft pillow. We have a market close by where you can find anything you need, seriously, anything. In town there are few “supermarkets”, small ones but with good selection of anything you need, though some foods we are use to eat might be expired so better to check for dates always. People are very curious about how a Pilipino and Finnish have arranged their cooking in the house, who cooks and what are we eating. Luckily we both eat almost everything so no matter which one cooks the other one will eat. I think with this housing arrangement we will be just fine for the next 2 years.

Bling! And the lights are back on, great! It´s not a sad moment when the power goes off but it is always a nice moment when they are back on! There are no street lights and such so darkness is total darkness.

We started our work on Monday. Rona on the marketing and me on the production. Just few feelings after the first 3 days of work… There are lots of problems and we are facing a big challenge. For the marketing side it´s right in front of our eyes. The processing centre is next to the office, it´s small and processing is slow. The milk collection from the MBG´s (Milk Bulking Groups where the farmers bring their milk for there to be collected) is taking a lot of time. The staff is lacking a lot of knowledge of effective marketing strategies. There´s something to start with.


The processing centre


Production as well is facing many challenges. To start with is the feeding of the animals. Poor feeding lacking a lot of important proteins to produce milk. Farmer’s laziness to care for their cows has been raised as a big issue. Farmer´s lack of understanding the profit which could be made with a good milking cow. Different diseases are also there but the fight against these has been started quite effectively. There has been lot of problems in calving lately because of Holstein breed. I am working together with a current Field Officer but he hasn´t been able to go to the field lately because of a broken motorbike and fuel shortage which is bad all over Malawi at the moment and seen on the unbelievable long queues to fuel stations. The experience from the past has shown that when the Field Officers are able to visit farmers often the farmers get more motivated to the work they are doing. Hopefully we will get things sorted out soon so that we are able to go to the field more often. We will work out the schedule for trainings for the farmers next week and start to set up some goals to look forward to.

Lot of work to do and we are just at the very beginning of the hopefully truly successful 2 years. I am happy that our colleagues all seem very nice people and easy to get along with. We are all packed in one small room at the office so good atmosphere is really essential.

It´s time to go to bed. We have an early morning tomorrow because we are attending a workshop on Friday in Lilongwe so we want to catch a bus there early in the morning. I have no idea how long the journey will take with a bus but will tell you all about it in the next update from the warm heart of Africa.

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