Hello!
Anyone on here going to Malawi for 10 months in August?
Bho Bho,
It’s week three in Mzuzu, and we’re all finally beginning to adjust to life here in Malawi. The Malawian way of life is in stark contrast to how we do things back home and naturally it’s taken some getting used to for all of us. Foremost of these differences is something called ‘Malawian time’. Whereas in Britain punctuality is a characteristic lauded by one and all, here in Malawi it is a trait treated with less reverence. It is commonplace for meetings to be delayed by anything from 30 minutes to an hour, tardiness, it seems is something we need to embrace if we are to survive our ten weeks here without losing our minds!
That said, we cannot fault the warmth and generosity with which we have been accepted into our new host families and surrounding community. Although things do seem to go slower here, family life seems ever the richer for it. Evenings are spent together with many friends and family milling around- all are welcome.
Following our orientation week getting briefed on Malawian culture and meeting our local counterparts we were all allocated to our new families and also our ICS partner organisations. Throughout our time here Lattitude Global Volunteering is working with three NGOs.
APAUSE, which stands for Added Power and Understanding in Sexual Education is a peer education programme, which aims to deliver lessons on sex education and sexual health in schools. The problem for us at the moment is that the schools are on holiday, so we are desperately trying to find youth groups to deliver the programme to! The organization is a Catholic organization however, so some of us are finding it difficult in terms of what we can and cannot talk about. The workshops follow a strict script and effectively promote abstinence in order to avoid the risks associated with sex. Some of us have raised the issue that this message isn’t the most practical, and that contraception needs to be taught! Aside from this, the workshops undoubtedly deliver some good advice on healthy relationships, peer pressure etc.
Our goal is to create lessons on STIs/HIV and distribute leaflets– as knowledge on these is still seriously lacking. Whilst in the UK you can go to the doctors are pick up a bundle of information leaflets, they just aren’t available in Malawi. Last week we had a really interesting talk from a doctor about HIV in Malawi. There were some surprising facts – such as that male primary school teachers are among one of the most infected groups.
We have also started work planning an event in order to raise awareness of sexual health and hygiene. The event will be a talent show but will also include role plays, workshops etc. Today we have been drafting letters in an attempt to acquire sponsorship.
Saved By the Ball (SBB) is a community-based organisation that uses Tennis as a vehicle for education on a number of issues, providing a platform for youngsters to gain new skills and confidence to pursue their own personal ambitions. As well as providing education and information on HIV and AIDS the current cycle of volunteers are hoping to include English lessons, sport nutrition and also fitness/conditioning sessions in to their ‘curriculum’ in a bid to improve performance at tournaments across Africa and keep with schoolwork in the classroom.
Mzuzu Young Voices are currently changing tact, with schools out for summer their emphasis has shifted from improving literacy in schools to addressing some of the hygiene and sanitation issues which affect Mzuzu’s surrounding hospitals and clinics. The current plan of action is to establish health committees in each hospital.
Certainly, expectations have been adjusted in terms of what we will be able to achieve during our time here. Although arriving here in Malawi whilst schools are on vacation has made progress seem infinitely slow, preventing us from hitting the ground running, it does give us the opportunity to take stock and implement new ideas for the long run. Progress is progress – no matter how slowly it happens.
Much Love,
Team Mzuzu
Lattitude ICS Project Sangilo, Malawi Explained
Interested in volunteering with Lattitude ICS in Malawi, but would like to know a bit more about the project you’d be involved in? Team Leader Becky Bush provides a brilliant summary of the project thus far:
You will be working within a community that consists mainly of subsistence farmers, most of whom live on less than $1 a day. The village of Sangilo and its surrounding depend on cassava and maize production as well as fishing in the lake, which has consistently yielded decreasing fish harvests.
Despite the poverty, culturally the communities are very committed to education, realising that it is a gateway to development at the family level and have demonstrated this commitment through their allocation of their own small resources in establishing and supporting education facilities in the local area. Such structures tend to be inadequate in size to house their need and are of local materials which provide insufficient durability and shelter for the children.
All projects are supported and encouraged by the traditional structure (chieftancy) and local development groups within the village with educational projects given priority.
Although some children enter primary school after having attended nursery, pass rates of standard 1 are very low, around 50%. The community hopes to increase this with better understanding of the basics.
Our primary aim is to prepare pupils for entry into the national educational system at the primary school levels by improving facilities and programming at the nursery level. This project is primarily education focused and is mainly focused on nursery education but with secondary projects along the way.
Mzuzu Project - Cycle 2 - Week 2
It’s been 2 weeks since we arrived in Mzuzu and it’s already hard to believe how fast time is going. 10 weeks are going to up ridiculously fast. We spent the first weekend in Mzuzu undergoing orientation where the UKVs arrived after a long journey to be introduced their ICV counterparts. Both Mzuzu and Sangilo teams learnt about culture in Malawi and being updated on the projects that we will be spending the next 10 weeks working on. We also consumed an amazing amount of CHIPS for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Welcome to Malawi!!!
On the Sunday we were paired with our counterparts and moved into host homes, this was exciting for everyone, but also highly nerve wracking, as we discovered who we would be living with for the next 2 and a half months.
Lattitude ICS is currently working with 3 organisations is Mzuzu. Apause, which delivers sex education to young people. Saved by the Ball, raising awareness of HIV/AIDS through lawn and table tennis, and Mzuzu Young Voices, which aims to enhance literacy in Primary schools through organizing ‘Spell a Word’ competitions, and raising awareness of health and sanitation issues.
After 2 weeks at work, it’s becoming clear to all of us that things really do happen slowly here. ‘Malawian time’ is fast becoming something we are getting used too, but with a lot of hard work and determination progress will definitely be made over the next 10 weeks. Also a few words of advice for anyone reading this from the next group; prepare yourself to eat a lot of NSIMA!!! Don’t expect to lose weight because your in Africa, your bums will expand by the day and also if they tell you in the UK you won’t see a drop of rain, chances are………………..you will!!!!
Up and Coming Africa
As our returned volunteers from the likes of Malawi, South Africa and Ghana will know, many African countries are far from the skewered portrayal they too often receive as archetypes of impoverishment, disease, conflict and corruption.
You visit a country like Ghana or Botswana as I and many Lattitude volunteers have done and you find a vibrant and exciting culture, a happy people and increasingly visions of wealth, prosperity and success.
Africa is a continent of over 1 billion people and 54 countries. It has some of the greatest supply of the most valuable natural resources in the world and has some of the most varied and dramatic natural beauty and biodiversity. Looking to the future, many African countries look to be the generators of global economic growth with their high proportion of young people and consistent growth rates of 7-8%.
African’s, for the first time, are excited about their future prospects and this is being translated into a burgeoning confidence of self-expression through all manner of means, both on the continent and within it’s diasporas across the world, including hubs of African culture in cosmopolitan societies like the UK. When this is compared to the grimmer outlook of the rest of the world, this African vibrancy and cultural confidence is becoming increasingly alluring.
None are more so emblematic of this trend than the British-Ghanaian Afro-Beat artist Fuse ODG, who with hits such as Antenna and Azonto has been bringing Ghanaian music and dance to the forefront of popularity in the UK. It is no secret that African culture has often punched above its political and economic weight in the past, namely through the success of African-American artists in the US and UK who have systematically been the instigators of sequential popular music trends the world over; from blues to funk, disco, hip hop and rap. Furthermore artists such as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon have been instrumental in exposing the world to more traditional African music. However, unlike in the past, this latest expression of African culture by artists like Fuse ODG comes directly from Africa and importantly is being identified with particular countries such as Ghana.
As Fuse ODG is keen to make a point of through his campaign ‘TINA’ (This Is New Africa) and in his recent interview on Newsnight - Africa is changing, it is different and it represents a positive and aspirational outlook, which in much a reverse to the past, the rest of the world is increasingly looking to.
Now more than ever it is an amazing time to volunteer in countries such as Ghana and Malawi and it is important to realise that as a volunteer you will not only be helping within the community you will be based in, you will also be gaining a lot from the experience – being exposed to an exciting cultural environment, which will be playing an ever more important part in what the world of the future will look like.
ICS Mzuzu Youth Association, Malawi, Photo Album by Joshua Harris
ICS Photo Album
Project: Mzuzu Youth Association
Country: Malawi
By: Joshua Harris
Back to all ICS photo albums
We almost forgot to write this blog!
Bobo!
In the total, utter, incomprehensible whirlwind of beginning our placements in Mzuzu, Malawi, we’ve hardly had a second to think of home! Between our 27-hour trip from Heathrow to Mzuzu (including a precarious 8-hour bus ride from Lilongwe to Mzuzu on what is generously called the M1), our in-country orientation, saying our goodbyes to the Sangilo group and meeting our host families and starting our projects, it feels like our feet have hardly touched the ground. At long last though, we’ve set aside the afternoon to update you all on some of our first impressions of Malawi!
It’s hard to know where to start really, simply because the first few days passed in such a blur that it’s hard to know exactly what happened. Our first weekend in Malawi was spent at Nyachenda Hotel, where we first met our Malawian colleagues, attended numerous briefings on negotiating cultural difference and the likelihood of getting Malaria (turns out, not so likely), performed awkward and poorly-rehearsed welcoming songs and ate chips for breakfast. During this time, we also made our acquaintance with Nsima (the ‘n’ is silent), the maize-flour paste which forms the basis of all meals in Malawi. Our amazingly patient Malawi volunteers had to spend their first dinner of orientation explaining how to ball up the nsima in your hands and use it to scoop up the other dishes, which most of us now do to certain degrees of success! Since then, they’ve patiently helped us to negotiate the trials of life in Malawi, ranging from stuffing nets under mattresses to mosquito-proof our beds (which, going by the bites on hands, feet and sometimes eyes, some of us obviously still struggle with!), tying the chitenje, the traditional printed fabric worn by women in the house and as a sign of respect, and teaching us the basics of Chitumbuka, the regional language. More than cultural fixers, however, they’ve become close friends and members of our new, Malawian families.
We got a chance to celebrate these friendships on our last night of orientation. After learning the do’s and don’t’s of life in Malawi and having our expectations of how much of an impact we could make checked pretty radically by Matt, the country coordinator, we got to toast our new friends and say goodbye to our Sangilo friends with a party so loud it rattled the windows. Christina and Lisa also made the painful discovery that compared to Regina, Ruth and Ellen, the quick-footed Malawian girls, we neither can, nor should we ever, dance!
Waking up early the next morning (days in Malawi usually start 5.30 – 6.30 and end at 9) and taking our usual cold bucket showers (which are surprisingly refreshing!), we waved off the Sangilo volunteers and Nat and made our way over to Mzuzu Youth Entertainment Hall, where the nervously anticipated the arrival of our host families and work colleagues. One by one, all of us were assigned to projects, one Malawian and one UK volunteer each (except Hillary, who is mastering the PACE theatre project all on his own), and one by one, we departed with our host families, all of whom except one are linked to the subsidiary projects of Mzuzu Youth Association which we will spend the next months working on.
While there is a large variation between the host families and homes in terms of facilities, number and age of family members, distance to town etc., their overriding similarity is that all have overwhelmed us with their hospitality. After several days of loose bowels, all of us were glad to see the western style toilets (with working flush – we’re looking at you Nyachenda) which gleamed invitingly in the houses! We were also particularly relieved to find out that water in Mzuzu is completely safe to drink, and although we were warned of a strong chlorine-taste so far it hasn’t been noticeable.
In certain respects, however, domestic life in Malawi is different to home. Meals are cooked on a small, portable burner which uses coals, wood, or paraffin and sits on the floor of the kitchen and hot water is only available if you boil it for yourself. Clothes are washed in a tub of cold water, much like humans, except outside and with a bar of greenish laundry soap that’ll take the skin off your fingers! The clothes themselves are scrubbed to within an inch of their lives and then hung up – and if necessary guarded from clothing-thieves – until dry. For most of us, access to milk and milk-products has also stopped as these are scarce and expensive – margarine is king.
The warm welcomes we received in our homes has certainly helped to make our placement seem a lot less daunting, and most of us set off for work on the first day (whether on foot, by car or on the ubiquitous and surprisingly comfortable bike taxi) feeling a lot more reassured and settled than we had the night before. For most of us, despite the differences in the projects we’re doing, the first day and those following have stood out above all as being slow-paced. For some of us, particularly Christina and Alex, the work-load has since picked up, but overall it seems that in Malawi things happen in their own time.
The spare time this slower pace leaves us with has not gone unused, however. Most of our afternoons are spent catching up at the Coffee Den, Mzuzu’s first café and prime tourist attraction, sipping the famous local coffee (or stuffing our faces with milkshakes and burgers when we want a break from nsima) and nattering away, or exploring the town which, despite “not being a town tourist would visit for its own sake” (according to the Malawi travel guide) has its own quirky, occasionally smelly, charm. Particularly the girls have loved the markets and the wide selection of chitenje and cheap used clothing they offer.
Our initial fears that we would run out of things to do by the weekend (the “city” isn’t exactly big) were quelled when Owen, one of the MYA project leaders, invited everybody to his house for a barbeque. It was our first chance to kick back, relax and enjoy a Malawian party after a week full of new impressions!
On Sunday, most volunteers joined their families at church. A big difference between England and Malawi has been the dominance of the church in Malawian culture. Everybody belongs to a church, from New Apostolic to Church of Christ, and a few of us have had the privilege of accompanying our families, trudging through pouring rain and deep mud, heads bowed (in devotion?), although some stayed in due to the rains. The girls all wore their chitenje and everyone wore Sunday best, long skirts or trousers, blouses or shirts – shoulders and legs covered, in contrast to everyday wear which is remarklably similar to England – jeans, tank tops, high heels and tight(ish) dresses are all a common sight here, with the slight difference that midriffs and thighs are never on display (unless you see tourists).
Overall, our second week has been far more settled than the first, although punctured with the highlights of a trip to Mzoozoozoo, the only backpackers’ hangout in town, Tionge’s birthday and an unexpected visit from the Sangilo group who’d had to take an emergency trip to Mzuzu central hospital for their stomach problems! It’s definitely been a great fortnight so far, and we’re looking forward to the challenges and continued cultural experiences the next eight weeks will bring!
In the meantime, over and out from Lisa and Christina!
Lots of love and donations.
As you will probably assume…my interview was a success and I was accepted onto the programme. I’m not going to talk in much detail about the interview day other than by saying it was actually quite a lot of fun, the best part being meeting all the other ‘candidates’ and realising that we could all talk forever, everybody was interesting and interested in one another!! It lasted a whole day which links back to my previous post…on the contrary to other programmes I had applied for which didn’t even have an interview, this interview day was great and I (we) left feeling like we had fully expressed ourselves, our hopes, motivations, ambitions and expectations for this project as well as finding out a lot more about what we could potentially be involved in!
As a commitment to ICS & Lattitude, all volunteers must commit to raising a minimum of £800….although we were reassured that this was a managable target I couldn’t help but shreak (literally)!
I was in a in cafe with two wonderful Amsterdam friends, Krisztina and Maria, when I had my very simple eureka moment. I was doing the typical Stef thing of over complicating things, I was thinking up ridiculous ideas like cycling from Amsterdam to Leicester…in my year spent as a Dutchy where I conducted most of my life on a bike it seemed to make total sense…for about 5 minutes. Or the idea of shaving off my newly grown hair (I don’t have the cheekbones or jawline to pull it off I can assure you)!! Of course, there’s a place for all of these challenges but with the timescale that I had and the fact that a very cold winter was on it’s way the bike ride was never going to work (or the shaved head for that matter).
I was worried that living in Amsterdam meant that I was not surrounded by a network of supportive people like the one I have in the UK, I thought that this would hinder my success. How wrong was I? My first port of call was the internet. It started with a justgiving account which I shared on my facebook page. As soon as the first donation came in they flooded in. From family, to school teachers, to university friends, school friends, old friends, distant friends, employers, family friends etc etc. It was actually quite overwhelming to see how many people were willing to back me.
Alongside this I decided to make the most of the social groups that I did have around me…au pairs. With the help of some incredible friends, I arranged an au pair social. We decided to hold it in the infamous Vondel Park where a lot of us spend most of our time with our children!! We provided lots of baked goodness (lemon cake, chocolate cake, victoria sponges, cookies, brownies), tea, coffee and cold drinks. We had a suggested donation of 3 euros and in return for this not only would we provide the refreshments but a place where au pairs old and new could come to meet other au pairs within the city (from Amsterdam and the surrounding cities). I owe a lot of the success to the Amsterdam girls and families that attended the event, and a special thank you to everyone that helped me with the baking!! It was such a lovely day, and so many people attended. I think it helped because when you move to be an au pair, you usually move to a country by yourself. Everybody that is there is in the same position as you in that sense and I found that this made people incredible open, warm and inclusive…for me this meant that girls I had known for a year, just met, or had never met took a great interest in what I had set out to do.
My fundraising ‘phase’ has been motivating; it has been the catalyst for an immeasurable amount of conversation about Lattitude, ICS and surrounding topics of develpoment, voluntary work etc. It made me feel very proactive and excited about everything that was about to unfold!
Africa…a long time coming.
As the end of my time in Amsterdam was fast approaching, so was the exciting inevitability of making a new plan. For those that don’t already know, I’ve spent the last year working as an au pair: living with the most colourul, real and loving Dutch family looking after their two beautiful children, Dieuwertje and Brechtje. This was a precious & adventurous year with memories that will last a lifetime. How could I follow on from this and where could I go next that would give me the same sense of learning, challenge and fulfillment.
Africa has been on my mind for years and I’ve always hoped that one day I’ll be able to go, it has always been a matter of waiting for the right time (in my life) and the right purpose to take me there. So firstly, I found a potential au pair job in Nairobi, Kenya. Nothing was confirmed but I was in conversation with a French family there who had an opportunity in which I could work for them looking after their 3 young boys (paid work), and volunteer in a school/orphanage on the side. On paper this seemed like the perfect opportunity so I didn’t know why I wasn’t absolutely buzzing about this possibility…but the fact that I wasn’t got me thinking whether this was the right option for me.
Well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this if that was the right option because as it goes I decided to turn down that job. What would be the point in being an au pair again and doing a ‘bit of a good deed’ on the side of that when really my au pair year had been incredible beyond belief, but I had somewhat exhausted the au pair in me! I wanted something a bit different, and I knew that it was the voluntary part of that venture that excited me. I began trawling the internet to find ‘something’, that thing that clicked. I applied to a few organisations who responded at unbelievable speed with a link that you could click on to ‘make a payment.’ I was really disheartened by this; despite the fact that I couldn’t afford their extortionate figures, they had accepted me knowing barely anything about me, except a few answers to a few generic questions on their website. If they didn’t even meet the volunteers before they are accepted onto placement I really feared for the quality of the projects and people taking part (group dynamics, sincerity of the volunteers and programme leaders etc).
Voluntary Service Overseas are an organisation that I heard of many years ago, and at the end of 2013 I remembered them just at the right time. I had a look on their website to find that they had a dedicated section for young people known as International Citizens Service. I sent off my online application. I just said that in a very blasé manner which is totally not what it was, in actual fact I kept hold of my completed application for about a week before finally plucking up the courage to stop checking over it and send it off!!
I received a call & email to say that I had got through to the next stage and this is where my Lattitude Journey begins…
