Life on the Chimaliro Road

The Chimaliro Road leads up the hill to the north east of Mzuzu through the township of Chimaliro and to the dust track road which takes you eventually (after two and a half hours) to Usisya .   The Temwa compound is half way up it, next to Masimbiro Private Secondary School.  It's been my home for the past two and a half weeks and will be for the next four months.  It's also my office.

View down the Chimaliro Road to Mzuzu town - it's a 25 minute walk (or 250 kwacha in a shared taxi)

View from the Chimaliro Road past Masimbiro school to Temwa compound.

View across the valley from the Chimaliro Road

It's a strange experience living in the office - you never get away from it.  My alarm goes off at 7am, I have a shower, take my anti-malaria tablet, go out to the kitchen for a strong coffee (Mzuzu blend of course!), say the first of my 'mwauka uli?'s ('good morning, how are you? ') to staff as they arrive, sit at my laptop at 8am, stop for lunch at 12 noon, start for the afternoon at 1pm and finish at 5pm (the fixed hours remind me of one of my first jobs in the UK when I worked as a researcher for the National Union Railwaymen in the early 1980s and everybody was at their desks at 8.55am, knocked off for lunch at 12.55pm, back at their desks at 1.55pm and knocked off at 4.55pm - all ex-railwaymen used to making sure the trains ran on time and getting off on time at the end of a shift). While officially I finish at 5pm, living in the office means I am never properly off duty...

...not that I am the only one.  Fishani, who leads Temwa's HIV/AIDS work (Straight Talking, Mobile Voluntary Counselling and Testing Clinics, and Teen Clubs), was in the office in Mzuzu all last week and then spent the weekend in the field (our Nkhata Bay North catchment area) leading Teen Clubs and other activities.  Maria, who is the micro-finance loan business manager who lives nearby, came into the office on Sunday to ensure repayments are up-to-date on the Mambu loan system (Jericho, the micro-finance project officer, had been in the field collecting loans last week and had sent her a spreadsheet with the information she needed to upload) .   And Charles, the Finance and Admin Manager, is in most weekends; he would have been in last Saturday to complete the audit of the accounts were it not for the electricity being off for most of the day. Work life balance appears in short supply.

Maria submitting loan information to the Mambu system on Sunday

Animals have dominated my early days in the Temwa compound. We have two kittens, Mpatso (meaning 'gift') and Chimwemwe (meaning 'happy') whose main purpose is to get rid of unwanted visitors but have, during their growing up stage, made themselves fully at home.  We have quite a few lizards around the place but, although I don't see them as unwanted guests, Mpatso and Chimweme appear to do so!  We have  a resident bird (a heron, I think) who greets me outside my bedroom window in the morning.  The watchmen tell me that we have small black snakes in the garden - Wellington, one of the watchmen and somebody who enjoys a bit of mischief, claimed one was a black mamba.

Best of friends - Chimwemwe and Mpatso cuddling up on a chair.

Welcome visitor for me; unwelcome (or, possibly, more welcome!) for the cats

View from my bedroom - heron(?) can just about be made out in the distance

I have learnt a bit of Chitumbuka - enough to say good morning, how are you, I am fine, thank you etc but not enough to converse in.   As I said in an earlier blog, most Malawians speak English but to varying degrees.  There is also some interesting pronunciation - 'l's and 'r's are often treated as interchangeable.   So, Gideon, an auditor who is working on our accounts, asked me if I was going to the 'rake' for the weekend - he clarified by saying Nkhata Bay but it still took me some time to realise the 'rake' was Lake Malawi.  And I've constantly been confused by the name of one of the watchmen who greeted me when I arrived here.   To start with I thought his name was Howard; he then spelt it out to me and I started to call him Harold.  But in practice, as I found out when I was looking at some papers in the office, his name is Halord (I presume a Malawian version of Harold with the 'l's and 'r's switched round).

Wellington enjoys mischief, and often wears Wellington boots!

James and Halord - couldn't have given me a warmer welcome to Temwa

Ronald, the fourth watchman, who had to pose for this about 5 times until I got the light right!

Because I have no Chitumbuka and a lot of Malawian people's English is basic, conversations can be at quite a basic level.  Nkhoma, who looks after the house and garden, was in work on Saturday doing a deep clean of the kitchen.  I asked him if he thought the rat (unwanted visitor) was still around; in response, he shrugged and, more in hope than expectation, said 'perhaps catty got ratty'.   My sighting of the rat disappearing behind the sink the next morning suggests the cats need to progress from lizards (and cockroaches) to the bigger stuff.

Nkhoma who told me 'perhaps catty got ratty'

My life outside work has been dominated by shopping for food in Mzuzu and football - not playing (if you recall from an earlier blog - old men don't play football in Malawi) but watching.  All the Arsenal games are shown on television so I have been going to Red Chilli (or Red Chile as it says on the sign outside!), an Indian/Malawian restaurant just up the road, to watch them.  A group of us sit round the bar watching the game - unlike the UK equivalent, there are a fair few people not drinking alcohol. I also went to see Moyale Barracks, one of the two local Mzuzu teams in the Malawi top division, play KB, one of the Lilongwe teams.   It was a  1-1 draw.  There was some enthusiasm in the crowd but the biggest cheer came at 4.20pm Malawi time (3.20pm UK time) when Manchester United scored against Everton. People were paying as much attention to their transistors listening to the Premier league live as to the Moyale game.   Ticket prices are a bit different from the UK - 500 kwacha which is around 60 pence.

Fans 'invade' the pitch at the end of the Moyale v KB match

My last blog talked about the work Temwa does in Nkhata Bay North and the day I had out in the field seeing it at first hand in Kasasire.  An unanswered question in previous blogs was what work I am actually doing!!!   My primary purpose is to support Charles on budgeting and financial reporting. I'm used to working for large organisations where whole teams of people keep the finances running. Charles has to do  it largely single handedly (he has a colleague, Gift, who supports him on certain aspects but he has been off most of the time I have been here - studying for and taking exams - and so Charles has had no support for the past week or so). Plus he faces a number of obstacles most of us in the UK don't ...nearly all transactions are in cash so there is a huge amount of paper money that has to be accounted for (the largest denomination is the 1,000 Malawian Kwacha note which is worth about £1.20, the smallest is 20 Malawian Kwacha which is worth two and a half pence); there are frequent power cuts which prevent computers being used (once laptops run out of power) and access to the internet; inflation is running at almost 25% which complicates managing budgets in  a way that most in the UK have not experienced (the last time inflation in the UK was at a similar level was in the 1970s); he has to operate in Malawian Kwacha and Pound Sterling at a time of continuing (but not predictable) reductions in the value of the Kwacha relative to the Pound; and he has to work in multiple languages (Chitumbuka, the main language used in Northern Malawi, Chichewe, the national language of Malawi, and English which is the official and business language of Malawi and the language used by the Malawian government, the UK office and UK donor organisations).

And Charles also has multiple accountabilities...to Tiwonge, the Malawian Programme Director, and Jo, the UK Managing Director; to a Malawian Board and a UK Board; to Malawian government agencies; and to UK donors.    Each has their own deadlines.  Each asks for reports in a variety of formats.  And each wants explanations of the information provided.

So I hope to be able to support him managing conflicting deadlines, planning the reporting workload, and anticipating and therefore reducing requests for additional information.

Movement in Kwacha to £1 - from under 300 in 2011 to 847 now

Tom and Elle, the other volunteers from the UK, cooking on charcoal during one of the frequent power cuts

Enough about work. Liz arrives this evening and I have taken tomorrow off work to show her round Mzuzu.  I think I have been suffering cabin fever - staying and working in the same place - so hope to get to the 'rake' next weekend.  It's meant to be beautiful so expect some pictures....