ROAD TRIP!

End of Week 14 – definitely one of the best weeks yet.

Where to start?

At Nama Simba, our role seems to have shifted from ‘teachers’ to ‘First Aiders’ – a progression I am definitely in favour of. First, it was Andrew cutting the underside of his little toe, which Louise tells me is a very common dancing injury. However, it was usual to be losing such a crazy amount of blood. Two weeks later, we were eating our nsima when one boy fell by the swings and hit his head. Again, they was more blood leaving the wound than I thought his little body could contain and we began to worry about a concussion. This was confirmed when he had trouble walking straight and began to throw up. It made my Chichewa seem pretty pathetic when we were running inside for the dictionary in order to ask him if he was feeling dizzy. I worried about him that night, knowing his mother wouldn’t be able to afford to take him to hospital. I was comforted when we saw him going into nursery the next day – Mary told us that his mother was extremely grateful for all we did, which was lovely to hear. This is the difference I came out here to make.

TST has been fairly common place – mostly getting to know the children better and hassling them about going to school. Millie organised a TST Nativity which the children loved getting involved in. It’s all part of the fundraising Millie’s doing to get a collection together for the children’s Christmas presents. Here it is - http://youtu.be/dmTfeypgbik  It’s a good view, I recommend it. Millie’s asking for donations of as little as £5 to help us buy Christmas presents for all the children. They want for so little, it’s hard to find children more deserving. But then I am very biased. Please click the Samaritan Trust link above for more details about donating.

However, it feels like I haven’t been to work in ages – due to having to repeatedly go to into town for visa extensions and this week’s Lake trip. Ever since arriving in Malawi, everyone has been asking us ‘Have you been to the Lake, yet?’. Well, now I can say I have. And it was an absolutely awesome experience. We were lucky enough to be invited by our friend Walter’s family to spend the week at their holiday cottage, right on the Lake’s edge. We were literally a 30 second walk from the beach, as well as having hot showers and electricity all day! Our crew was made up of the Ridderhofs – Walter's parents Isette, Janneman and himself – the lovely Sung and the volunteers – Matilda, Steph, Georgia, Louise and myself. From delicious meals to bonfires on the beach to boat rides and swims in the beautifully warm Lake… I am definitely suffering from Lake Malawi withdrawal. The visit was bittersweet, however; as the boys are off to university in South Africa in January and Janneman is being transferred to Zambia next year. It felt the same as saying goodbye to my friends when I left home, but without any guarantee of seeing them again.

It’s my own fault, really. I would be able to see them over Christmas and New Year, but I am spending the holiday with my family in Dubai. When it became ambiguous whether my sister or Dad would be able to come out to see me in Malawi, I decided that I would take an early holiday and go out to see them. It’s going to be really odd being away from the children for so long – or away from the other volunteers for that matter. So expect another two weeks of silence as I’ll have nothing to report.

So a million thanks to the wonderful Isette, not only for putting up with us for the past 2 months, but also for her extremely generous hospitality and tremendous cooking of the past week. You could not have doted on more grateful subjects.

Might have unearthed more pictures before January, but otherwise, see you in the New Year!

TTFN

"There's no food that I really feel like I'm missing... apart from bagels."

End of Week 5! Only, like, 47 to go!

So it's getting hot. October is the hottest month and, man, are we feeling it. I have discovered that there's nothing better than an ice cold shower after a sweaty walk home.
This week has been pretty busy; on Monday at Nama Simba we were asked to do some teaching... which was quite a fail due to the massive language barrier between us and the kids. And between us and the care givers, for that matter. We also don't really have the authority to hold the kids' attention. Like when Catherine, one of the care givers, shouts "Alphabettie Lettas!", the kids scream back "ALPHABETTIE LETTAS!!!". But when we do the same, they just look really confused and mumble to each other in Chichewa, perplexed as to why the azungu entertainers are shouting weird things at them. I have also discovered this week that the kids love being lifted up, twirled around, tickled, held upside down etc. However, they never want me to stop, no matter how many times I say I'm 'topa' (tired). The nsima and ndiwo was really good this week, though. It had potatoes in it! :D
Been doing bits of teaching at TST, mostly Maths with some adjectives and nouns on the side. At the end of the English class, Louise came up with the idea to get them to describe what they were wearing, as I had been pointing to my clothing to show that t-shirt is an noun, but then the colour is an adjective. However, this proved tricky as my colour blindness meant that I couldn't actually decide what colour my t-shirt and skirt were... and I didn't have the confidence to correct them when I suspected meant they green, not blue, or brown, not black... Urrrrgh, it was such a stress. I'll be leaving that to Louise next time.
I was also asked by one of the older boys what 'anxious' meant... far more difficult than I thought! I said upset, sad and another adjective that I can't remember, didn't even think of worried. I am the worst English speaker ever.
On Wednesday, some Med students from Queen Elizabeth Community Hospital came to play a football match against the older boys at TST. We helped the girls to make a massive fruit salad for all the kids - it was the most fruit we'd eaten in a month! Unfortunately, the QECH boys won. We'll get them next time.
I think I'm starting to get used to life here; there are little things that I'm sure would have shocked me in the first few weeks that now feel normal. For instance, that we found a kitten living in the pet food aisle at our local supermarket, or that minibus drivers often run out of petrol in the middle of the road and have to fill up from a bottle they carry around with them. Today I even said to a minibus driver 'There's plenty of room!' when he said he couldn't fit Louise, 4 carrier bags, 2 back packs, a mirror and myself into his nearly full minibus. I'll have you know that we did fit. Ha.
On the other hand, I wouldn't say we're completely accepted here. On the walk home one day, I was walking behind a man who had a child on his shoulders. The child burst into tears at the sight of me. We are constantly a target for beggars or street sellers in Blantyre and men are always striking up conversations with us that include the sentence 'Are you married?'
While I say we've been busy, we did find time at TST this week to play 'I spy', but Louise said she wouldn't play anymore when I got bored and used E for Existentialism. Also, we often don't have power past 6pm and it's no fun trying to catch the cockroaches in the dark. So that's why you'd find me in bed at 6.45pm on a Friday night, making shadow puppets against my mosquito net. At least until I accidentally made one that creeped me out, then stopped before I gave myself nightmares.
In other news, we watched a lizard eat a live cockroach on Tuesday. Louise cheered it on: we love lizards and despise cockroaches so it was great entertainment.
Next week promises to be busy too, with more time being spent at Nama Simba and around Baluti. Plus, we're gonna make a cake!
TTFN

Quotes:
We'd just been going over adjectives
Stella: Louise's hair is LONG.
Catriona: Yeh, well done.
Stella: Your hair is LONG.
Catriona: Nah. my hair is SHORT.
Stella: Well, it's a little long.

Nice man we met on the way home: Don't get burnt! It's too hot!

The power had been off most of the day
Catriona: (looking at phone) I'm gonna turn off my phone to save power.
Louise: Well, I've got mine on.
simultaneously
Catriona: So, if anyone desperately needs to reach me...
Louise: So, if a murderer comes...

I'm here!

Friday the 21^st of September – Baluti, Blantyre, Malawi

It seems fitting that I should finally sit down at my laptop to chronicle the beginning of my experience exactly two weeks after I left home. I write this in the kitchen of our house in the village of Baluti, about 10 minutes’ walk plus 15 minutes by minibus from Blantyre. We have three rooms:  a bedroom, shower room and kitchen. I am sitting in the kitchen to write this as, while we do have fairly reliable electricity, we only have two working sockets and neither of these are in the bedroom. Imagine my delight when the bed I happened to choose in our room had a double socket above it! Alas, it doesn’t work. Our unofficial host Stevie, who works for the Joshua feeding project that runs Nama Simba, has been gradually improving our abode, amazingly quickly by Malawian standards. In less than two weeks, the gate has been ‘fixed’, the shower painted (we didn’t have the heart to tell him that the water just causes it to peel off) and the burglar bars and windows repaired. We have been promised that the door will be fixed, as it currently has a gaping hole, and the roof will be more securely attached. It gets incredibly windy here at night and the corrugated iron really wants to be free.

There are little aspects of living in our house that took a bit of getting used to, for example, our shower room it lacks a sink. Also the handle of the toilet doesn’t work, so we lift the lid of the cistern and pull a valve to get it to flush. While we are extremely lucky to have a western toilet and shower, cold water showers have not gotten any easier over two weeks.

Project Trust provided us with a basket of useful things when we arrived, such as sheets, pans, cutlery and… a shower curtain? With nowhere to attach this to, it has been utilised as a window curtain, washing line and ‘banana hammock’ (literally a hammock Louise has constructed to keep our bananas away from the ants). They also bought us an electric hot plate for cooking, although the electricity usually cuts out around six, resulting in a very late tea or peanut butter sandwiches. For some reason, the plug for the hot plate is for South African sockets, but another volunteer at our project managed to source us an adaptor. We were also given a second hand toaster which we only discover was white after scrubbing it within an inch of its life during one of my cleaning frenzies.

Our cosy little house was once the Nama Simba nursery school, which has now moved into a bigger building on the same lot. We rarely escape children as there are swings, climbing frames, a sand pit and a slide surrounding our house. It means that we always have to have our makeshift chitenje curtains closed, otherwise the children chant ‘azungu’ at us; which can become very creepy as it starts to get dark. While I’m sure the entire village knows us from our walks to the market and to our project, the staring has not lessened any. It is really very unusual to have white people in Blantyre, never mind in a small village like Baluti. We went to visit some other PT volunteers in Nancholi, we were sitting in their house waiting for two other girls to arrive from Limbe. Louise and I went to meet them off the minibus so they wouldn’t get lost in the midday heat like we did. When the bus driver saw us, he simply pointed in the direction that Gemma and Anna had gone, without a word. I found it hilarious that it was so obvious who we were looking for. A German guy visited the Samaritan’s Trust on Thursday while Louise and I were playing with two children and Florence shook my arm and pointed at him as if to say ‘Look! One of you!’

I truly hope that people will begin to accept us here, as the constant badgering does take its toll.

Our project is at the Samaritan’s Trust, an ‘orphanage’ that houses, teaches and feeds children who have had to live on the streets on Blantyre. There are about a hundred children, aged 6 to 22, and about 15 staff and volunteers.  The organisation is, frankly, amazing. The children get fantastic emotional and physical care, as well as uniforms so they can go to school or practical education in things like brick laying and carpentry. They treat all staff and (most) children with great respect and really seem to look out for each other. We are told that they can be aggressive, and were even taught the words for stop (basi!) and let me go! (tayeni!) just in case, but we haven’t seen any evidence of this yet.

We have decided to really try to grasp Chichewa, which is fricking hard by the way, as it will make it so much easier to talk to and influence the children. Some of the kids’ English is absolutely amazing, but the younger they get, obviously, the harder it is to communicate with them. I’ve found that I can make most of my intentions known with njala (hungry), basi (stop), ndikhuta (I’m satisfied) and zili bwino (well done). While nowadays I actually look forward to nsima for lunch every day, for the first couple of days I really didn’t have an appetite and the children get really angry when you don’t finish what’s on your plate. Now, I simply say ‘Ndikhuta, zikomo’ and hand them my plate. It very quickly disappears or is kept for what we interpreted to mean a ‘midnight snack’.

Greetings here start with ‘Muli bwanji?’ (How are you?) to which the response is ‘Ndili bwino, kaya inu?’ (I’m fine, how about you?). Everything is followed by zikomo (thank you, excuse me etc.) and I’ve found it to be the easiest word to say, so I chant it constantly. The locals really appreciate any attempt at their language, however I am struggling with good morning/afternoon as the response is different to the question. This is because they literally translate to mean did you sleep well/have you spent the day well?

I knew I’d regret leaving it this late to write a blog post, as there’s so much more I want to say, and it’s already really long. I want to mention how we killed 9 cockroaches on the first night in our house or how I met a guy from Inverness in the back packers place we stayed in at the beginning or how people say Ls and Rs exactly the same here or how we saw a gecko in our kitchen last night. Well, I hope to get an internet dongle tomorrow which means I can update this when I like, meaning more regular, shorter posts. 

So, TTFN, take a nice hot shower for me.

Quotes 9 – 21 September

Lydia: I am going to Plaslott.

Catriona: I’m sorry, where are you going?

(She was going to ‘Praise God’)

Nice man on minibus: Where are you from?

Catriona: Scotland.

Nice man on minibus: Ah! You know what I like about Scotland?

Catriona: What do you like?

Nice man on minibus: The men wear skirts.

Catriona: I HATE YOU

Louise: I’m not too keen on you.

Catriona: What?

Louise: I was talking to the roof, too. I’m not as forceful as you and I don’t like to say I hate people, even if the people are roofs.

Louise: (As the children point and laugh at us) Well, now I know why clowns cover their faces with white make-up, apparently white faces are hilarious.

Photo of the Safety Instructions on Kenya Airways. I couldn't understand why the girl was in a tutu.






Oven gloves and a switch for the cooker when we had no cooker.







The welders' method of using the sockets.