Skip to main content

Motorbiking

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 are working on some gender issues, how to secure the livelihoods of women. Especially in farming it´s the women who do the work and on top of that they also take care of the children, cooking, cleaning. Another issue is HIV and for that I will bring my knowledge from my experience of HIV/AIDS work in Zambia. So for this week I am moving aside from cows and concentrate on the farmers themselves for a while.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes pictures tell more than words

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 sa...

good morning and welcome

so I've finally decided to open my own blog, I try my best to keep it updated. This time I'm still in Finland, but soon I will start a new journey. The summer has been great, I'm glad I came home to spend it with my friends and family. I went away for one month, but that time was really good for me, I took a deep look inside myself and got many answers, learned a lot about myself. Now I feel the cold wind blowing so I think it's time to move away from the winter and find some sun :) but it still takes some time, hopefully i can go on september.

Smiles and losses

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. ...