Despite my promise that I would not write this blog as a daily activity journal, i thought i’d give a bit of “a day (or two or three) in the life” … need to catch up a bit, so if you can stand an erratic, stream-of-consciousness sort of post, hopefully i can fill you in on some of my activities and other interesting insights…
Thursday 5/29
meeting with the District Community Development Officer (district level of Ministry of Gender, Child Welfare, and Community Services), which was several kilometers out of town, in a completely run down, un-electrified building (interesting what you can discern about priority from the status of a gov’t or organization’s building) … make some phone calls to schedule/reschedule meetings… buy some more phone credit from one of the hundreds of women selling Celtel and Telcom mobile phone units all over town (mobile phone service here is beautiful in that it’s readily accessible and affordable to just about everyone, but damn, it gets really expensive when you actually need your phone to make calls on a daily basis)…return to Kabula Lodge, hang out w/ the other expats, mainly medical students, doctors, and a couple researchers here for a couple months or more from the UK, Holland, Spain, and Belgium… power goes out (which it does almost every evening) … draft emails in Word to send tomorrow … power comes back on, make dinner – vegetables and rice – with whoever else has ingredients to share that evening, or whoever went to the market that day…
Friday 5/30
Drop off some info at the Blantyre City Assembly… try to meet with someone in the Social Welfare Office, but she is busy dealing with the crisis affecting Malawians in South Africa, although says she’ll compile some reports and budgets for me next week … go to the ATM at the bank (cash economies are a pain!) … have a very productive meeting with the director and projects officer of an NGO called PACENET (Pan-African Civic Educators Network) who are doing a lot of great work promoting women’s involvement in Malawian politics and local decision-making bodies … go out to dinner with some friends, then head to a local bar/club called Chez-Ntemba for a night of live music, including Malawi’s most famous musician, Lucius Banda, who interestingly enough, was a former politician (MP) and spent some time in jail for speaking out against the current administration (for which he wrote a song, “Cell 51″). Malawian politics…. that’s another post.
Saturday 5/31 – Tuesday 6/3
Take a minibus to Zomba, about an hour outside of Blantyre … buy some peanuts from one of the many hawkers who flock the minibuses at every stop, selling oranges, bananas, eggs, peanuts, green beans, tomatoes, soda, biscuits, and airtime for mobile phones…
stay with my friend Jenn who lives in Domasi, a rural village outside of Zomba, where she is an English Language Fellow for the U.S. State Department teaching at Domasi College …
Jenn in front of her house on the Domasi College campus
hike Zomba plateau on Sunday, and take in the beautiful view, but also witness first hand the deforestation that is depleting Malawi’s trees and keeping girls from school who carry huge bundles of wood on their head home to their families several days a week (wood is still the primary fuel source here) …
The “Queen’s View” on the top of Zomba Plateau. Pictured are myself, Jenn’s best friend Deliwe, her brother Mavuto, and our guide, Adam
Bringing down a load of timber…most likely illegaly… from the forest on Zomba Plateau
Monday collected a HUGE amount of data from the National Statistics Office (NSO) which involved a stop at the headquarters office, a trip up the road to the NSO library, back to the headquarters office, across the street to the demography department, and then a ten minute car ride to an employees house to get some “personal copies” of surverys he had (classic!) … all morning Tuesday in the University of Malawi Centre for Social Research resource library …
One of the many old colonial building in Zomba that combined with the large trees, mountain, and university, give the town a very homey and cool vibe. In this case, the building has been converted to the National Statistics Office Publications department and library.
stroll through Zomba’s market (the cleanest and most well organized I’ve seen in Malawi), waiting for photocopies of hundreds of pages of reports, articles, policies to be made … drive back to Domasi, drink some beers and play Bow (a traditional Malawian game) with Jenn and Deliwe … wake up to the barking dogs and rooster who starts crowing incessantly at 5:30am … eat breakfast … run some errands with Jenn, including the ATM (again!), store to buy water, and a stop at a tailor where her and Deliwe were getting a dress made (actually a woman’s house who supplements her income working at the University library by making dresses and hospital nurse uniforms, as well as baking wedding cakes – I’ve found most women here who have “day jobs” still supplement their income with a side business or two) … drive back to Blantyre … eat incredible Indian food for lunch … have a meeting with the director of the Malawi Law Society to discuss gender issues from a legal perspective and any legal provisions/aid specifically targeting women… chat with friends back at Kabula… pull the mosquito net down… sleep.
