An interesting journey back and then the work continues!

I had a HORRIBLE journey back from Mulanje last week. After saying good bye to Patrick and Jo in Blantyre I got the 6am AXA bus back along the lakeshore road. The bus was due to get to a village called Dwambazi at 5pm and from there I was hoping to get a matola back to Matete. Molly had agreed to meet me and walk the track with me in the dark. However, all the ‘due’ to leave and arrive times never transpired. Given the transport in this country I really should have known better!! We didn’t leave Blantyre until 7:30am and we stopped at least every 20 mins. I still haven’t quite figured out where and when they decide to stop or how long they decide we will stay in one place. Anyway, I didn’t get close to Dwambazi until around 6:30. I realized then I was in trouble and there was no way I was getting back to Matete. The lakeshore road is dead quite most of the time anyway, let alone on a Sunday evening and we live so rurally getting stuck with no where to stay is not a nice prospect. After I had some discussions with Molly about my options another mzungu girl on the bus approached me. Luckily (thank god!) she was a peace core volunteer living in a village about 30 km south of us. She made a few suggestions of places I could stay and then said that I could stay with her if I didn’t mind the bare minimum! I took her up on it and spent the night on her floor – good thing I always travel with my sleeping bag and mosquito net.
Anyway, I got up at sunrise on Monday morning and was back at Mwaya Beach by 8am. Exhausted and very dirty but back!
Travelling in Malawi leaves a lot to be desired. It can be quite fun and at times funny as long as you ignore the fact you are gambling with your life everything you take public transport. The people though usually make it an enjoyable experience – on the matola back to Matete we were squished in as per usual and the woman next to me had a baby, her bag and her chicken. She kept having to move things and get things out of her bag and so kept handing me her chicken to hold. I’ve learnt how to hold a chicken properly so it doesn’t flap and squawk in your face – should be a useful talent for the London underground. I’ve also learnt how to put chickens away in a coup for the night. Maybe I’ll raise chickens in my flat when I get home.

This past week has been one of renewed frustrations but also of a new commitment. I’ve begun to really learn that one of the only ways to really help the communities out here is through education. I’ve spent more time at the health centre, working with one HSA, still helping with wounds and some of his pill dispensing (the medical officer here has TERRIBLE handwriting so I’m constantly running out to clarify). The wounds are so frustrating! What we would see at home as simple cuts/scrapes out here turn into nasty wound infections, necrotic tissue and sutures not being removed etc. I continue to endeavour to do what I can with the basic dressing supplies and also to try to teach how to care for different wounds. There seems to be a belief here that putting Vaseline gauze on everything will do the trick! I’ve seen a variety of machete wounds, wounds inflicted by other people (one man came with a note about how he had been attacked by an ‘embicile’) and burns. Down at Mwaya we get a lot of people coming to us to clean their wounds. We do what we can but by the time they come to us they are already infected. Basic wound care seems to be lost.
So I’ve now started to follow up on previous volunteer’s efforts to do first aid in the community. This week I’ve turned my attention to the people who work at Mwaya Beach. We have a lot of people who do ground work and house keeping etc. and I have the hope (small but it is still hope) that by teaching them, they can take it home and teach others.
Teaching out here moves at a very slow pace. It seems that people really have developed a learned helplessness where they see mzungus and expect us to do it but in the long run this does them no good. So much of what I am doing feels so redundant and futile but you can’t give up.

Our Lifeskills (sex ed.) class continues at the secondary school. We have learnt more myths that are rife in the area –
Men eat raw cassava because it improves their sperm
They believe you can get Vitamin K through sex (where they got that I have no idea!)
And apparently the local men have sex an average of 3 times/night (not sure I believe that one!)
We also get some really good questions about pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. There is a big problem here with the number of children people have. The average family has about 7 children and a lot of men have more than one wife and so have many more children. But with the size of the families it becomes difficult to feed them. So family planning is of huge importance. Unfortunately though the girls in the class remain very shy and a lot of the questions and comments come from the boys. It is great because the boys need to be more involved in family planning and protection but we want the girls to feel more empowered. There is still quite a noticeable gender difference here and the girls/women don’t have a lot of choice in the number of children etc. they have. And some of these girls are as young as 14 when they have their first baby. It tends not to be the educated ones but sadly if a family is unable to pay school fees and the girl has to drop out her only option is to get married and have children. Some of the mothers are so young and never had any other opportunities or choice.
There is also local group of young men who have formed a club called the Toto Club. Their aim is to educate about HIV. It is positive because hopefully if young men are out talking about it will help to lift the taboo that is still present. We are hoping that once we get to the topic of HIV they will come into the classroom. But I may not be here to see it because I only have 3 weeks left and this week has been midterm break for the schools.

Geoff and Liz, who own the organization, arrived a few weeks ago. It has been great because we now have a supply of drinks every night and some great food – including meat! I was actually seriously considering becoming a vegetarian at one point because I forgot what it was like to have meat; I am still thinking about it but the meat is slowly luring me back! For dinner tonight we are having goat, there has been a lot of firsts for me out here and eating goat is certainly one of them.
Geoff is full of energy and actually got me up on a Saturday morning before sunrise to swim in the lake. We had some visitors from the states here and they were up as well. On a weekday we are usually up around 6am so it wasn’t too, too early. But we were up at 5:30 and in the lake at sunrise. It was surprisingly warm and lovely at that time of day. There really are no crocodiles (I hope) at this time of the year because it is the dry season. Plus crocodiles don’t eat mzungus because we look like hippos!

This evening Molly and I are straining the wine. We make our own ‘banana wine’ here and after 10 days of brewing it needs straining with a pillow case and left to brew for another 10 days. I’d liked to say it is delicious but I think it is more of an acquired taste!


Victoria
xxx

Mount Mulanje

YOU MAY SEE ARMED GUARDS

DO NOT BE ALARMED
THEY ARE THERE FOR YOUR PROTECTION
PLEASE INTERACT WITH THEM
WELCOME TO MOUNT MULANJE

So that was the sign posted upon entering the forest - it was a bit strange, made me feel like I was entering Jurrasic Park or something. We didn't end up seeing any armed guards, or many other people for that matter. It was an amazing, but hard, 3 days though.

We got the base of the mountain in Mulanje town on Tuesday morning. The mountain looked rather impossible, as the top of it is just rock. I couldn't figure out how we'd get up there. It is the highest peak in south, central Africa, at 3000m above sea level and has various huts scattered around the top. It also has 5 different habitats on it, rainforest, long grass land, bare rock face....everything. It was also the inspiration for The Hobbit setting when J.R. Tolken visited here. Enough facts though.

We got a local guide and porter arranged (there was NO way we were carrying all out stuff, including our food!) and we went to stay at the local church run hut at the base of the mountain.

The next day out guide, Felix, and out porter, Pitman, met us at 8am. I was a bit nervous because of the season here the mist can set in really fast and then you are in trouble. But we set out and after a STEEP and difficult climb through the various landscapes we made it to our hut in 4 1/2 hours. Quite please with out time. I think it was getting so tiring that we all just wanted to get it done. We stayed at the CCAP hut that was built in something like 1890 (I'm not joking). It was weird - very Little House on the Praire. We got to the top and there is a massive grassland plateau with the hut on the edge of it. It hadn't fallen apart or anything but felt and looked like it was built in 1890, complete with an open fire for cooking, a pit toilet and a hut to wash in. At least the water was warmed from the fire!

In the evening we went out to watch the sunset and it was one of the most amazing sights I have seen. We sat out on the edge of the mountain and it felt like we were sitting on top of the world. To our left were the mountains of Mozambique, to the right Zomba Plateau and the sun setting over the mountains directly ahead of us. It was incredibly beautiful. And we were the only people out there.

We spent the next day exploring out the other huts before heading down yesterday. In some ways coming down was harder than going up. It took us just as long. We walked across the plateau, back to the edge and down the side. We started on the rock face, through the grass lands and back through the rainforest. It was really quite frightening on the rocks because there was nothing to stop us from going over.

All in all, the 2 nights up there were enough! I am grateful to have lights, a shower and a toilet now!

Once we got down Jo and I went to the tea farms around the base. Tea plants were bought here from India originally and now there is a massive tea plantation at the base of Mulanje. It grows best in the area and we had a cup, it was lovely! I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into tea picking and the manual labour involved from the pickers. I will endeavour to buy fairtrade tea from now on!

I am back in Blantyre for the night and back on my 12 hour bus tomorrow back to Mwaya. I have only 4 weeks left out here. No more travelling for me. The next 4 week will be spent focusing back on my work here.

Trips and a little bit of work!

Trips and working in between
I have spent the past few weeks off of working and doing some travelling. We were away for a week and then back at the beach for a week and now I am away again.Likoma IslandTwo weeks ago most of us from the beach, plus two of Patricks visiting friends, headed over to Likoma Island for the week. We took the Ilala night ferry to the island and had to stay for 5 days as the ferry only goes twice a week. The ferry was crazy!! I have bought a book while here which as the perfect way of describing it;"The 'Ilala' can only actually dock at two or three places, so at most of her ports of call she has to anchor offshore after a warning blast on her hooter. She then lowers her two lifeboats and the scarmble begins. Personal belongings and children are handed down into the rocking, rising and falling boat and it motors to the beach." The Great Rift.It was insane! This was all done in the middle of the night as we arrived in Likoma at 4am, so we had to make the sramble to the boats in the dark and I had to fight with a woman and a bunch of bananas to get on! The was all after spending the night under the stars on the deck.The place we stayed was paradise - secluded and white beaches. I got one scuba dive in, a visit to the cathedral and a visit to the local witchdoctor (who I lied to and told him I was teacher when he asked!) It was an amazing week of pure relaxation!HOME VISITSMolly and I have started trying to get out into the community more. Bascially the health center is a very difficult place for us to do anything productive. THere is a language barrier combined with lack of resources. Doing home visits in the community seems to make more sense right now. We went out on Thursday and visited the children who are underweight. THe first woman we got to had a child of 1 year and 3 mos who was severly underweight and under developed. He couldn't hold his head up nor could he bear his own weight on his legs when held. We found that she actually became impregnanted because she has been unable to pay for medication from a witchdoctor and had instead paid with sex. She very little at the house. We were able to give her some food supplements and discuss nutrition with her. There is a belief about not giving children eggs because they cause seizures and the elders also do not believe in putting infants down on the ground and so they are constantly carried on the backs of their mothers.We visited a few more homes with children who were still underweight but not as bad. Hopefully when I get back we'll be able to do more in the community.It was depressing at the clinic the other day when a woman came in with a bad leg injury - she had cut through the tendon in her leg and could not move her toes. There was nothing we could do but refer her to the local hospital. Her husband had to carry her on his back to the main road to find a minibus. I felt totally helpless in being able to at least get her to the hospital.

Now I am down south in Blantyre. We went north first for the weekend to a place called Mushroom Farm and then a hellish 12 hour night bus which played music all night! Now I am about to attempt to climb mount Mulanje! I will updated it once this week is done!xxx