Nsima, nsomba, nyama, nyemba: food!

A milestone in our first week here (which seems a long time ago now) was buying bowls so we could get food at the canteen with the other students. 

Lunch and dinner are served on campus every day, 12-1 and 5-6, prompt.  It costs 750 kwacha (MKW750, around £1), or MWK500 (about 75p, ish) for the veggie option.  This was our first taste of traditional Malawian grub.

The menu’s familiarity ensures you know what you’re getting. The students were all excited for us to try nsima (a dense maize flour porridge – think polenta or American grits but more finely ground and cooked for longer).  A standard portion consists of 4 patties (or bullets) known as a cross. We got a few funny looks as we dug in with our camping sporks... it's more common to use your hand to pinch the nsima into bitesize pieces with a dab of sauce and some of the relish (stewed veggies)

Nsima is the staple of the Malawian diet, the alternative being rice. Either option is accompanied by a choice of nkhuku (chicken), nyama (meat, usually beef or possibly lamb), nsomba (fish) or nyemba (kidney beans) for the vegetarians. There's also stewed greens (pumpkin or bean leaves), a tomato based sauce, and maybe aubergine or okra if you’re lucky. Some days you can also get a boiled egg in a spicy sauce. They're really good. The portions are also so huge that at first we thought maybe the students made do with only one big meal per day. They tell us that they usually have lunch and dinner, but breakfast is usually just a cup of tea (with milk powder and plenty of sugar).

We have talked about Malawi time already, which means that most things seem to involve at least half an hour or more of waiting around. Meals are the one exception to this and if you’re not fast you’re last. Some days we’ve rolled up just before one to find only empty pots and the apologetic faces of the ladies who cook and transport the food to campus.

There are other places to eat in town, for when we’ve reached our rice limit, but these are all much more expensive and require a tuktuk journey. There are also little roadside stands where you can get freshly cooked chips (mbatata iriisi - Irish potatoes, or mbatata - sweet potato). Luckily, most days we're too tired to be picky, and rice definitely does a good job of filling you up. 

Salima trip.

Wearing the KCN colours with pride

On my first weekend in Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing had organised a football match with Salima Technical College, situated on the shores of Lake Malawi.  Recognising the importance of integrating into the KCN, I (Michael) agreed to go on a road trip with a bus full of rowdy boys (and girls) to play football.  It also sounded like a good laugh.

We assembled at 8am on board the ‘Mighty Torino’, KCN’s bus and flagship mode of transport and set off through the beautiful Malawi landscape.  

We stopped off in Salima itself to buy snacks and supplies and I had my first glimpse of rural life.  Upon the bus’s arrival, locals carrying armfuls of fruit and raffia headgear with a fervour that belied their desperation to capitalise on a much needed source of income, including one forlorn looking little boy who came up to me and tried to sell me a ragged page from an exercise book scrawled with various letters and numbers.  Unsure how to react I and not wanting to show myself out as being an easy mark I mumbled some apologies and walked on, but in retrospect I wish I’d given him a few Kwacha.

Kondwan, myself and Godwell before the off.

We got stocked up then headed on to the campus at a place called Senga Bay which resembles a desert island, 100m from the shore of Lake Malawi, with fresh water breakers rolling in to the beach and the water a balmy temperature (or balmy enough for this Scotsman basking in Malawian ‘Winter’). 

The football pitch at Senga Bay

We gathered for the football match and I was assigned position of Right Back, then I remembered I’d not played a proper game of football in at least 5 years.  After a few simple passes left me wrong footed and sprinting after the ball, my team mates spared my blushes and kept me out of the play.  I knew things weren’t improving when people were saying if I was tired I could come off, and eventually I got the order that I was being substituted for someone younger and more agile.  I’d lasted about 20 minutes.  Ah well, the game ended up a respectable 2-2 draw against strong opponents and no-one seemed to hold a grudge.  Stuart, the KCN director of Sports summary was rather positive about my performance (‘quite fast but with poor co-ordination’).

The post-match bath was a dip in Lake Malawi then we had a stroll along the beach for a traditional meal of nsima, fish and beans, in an honest-to-goodness proper shack, where I was greeted with gasps of amazement, I don’t think they get many of my sort around here.  The students of both colleges were incredibly friendly and I got know some great people within my first week of being here.  

Result!

Getting here: the never ending journey

We left Glasgow a week ago, and have spent the past few days settling in on campus. We still haven't got logins for using the internet on our laptops, but students have helped us to connect to WiFi with our phones. So we will be playing catch up with stories on the blog for a while. Let's start at the beginning...

We've been planning this trip for so long, and have had to negotiate quite a few obstacles, but it still didn't quite feel real as we waved goodbye to our loved ones at the airport.

Our journey would take 22 hours, via London, then Johannesburg and eventually to Lilongwe. As the plane took off from Glasgow we all breathed a sigh of relief as we realised Caley to Malawi was actually happening!

A miscalculation in London about how much time we had before boarding our plane to Johannesburg, led to a panicked 15 minute sprint across the terminal. The tannoys were announcing final calls and doors closing. As we tumbled down the tunnel to board the plane, the air steward kidded on that he was locking the door and we'd missed our flight. But all the ground crew fell about laughing at the sight of our faces, and we were able to settle in for our 11 hour journey.

We flew over Europe and then the Sahara Desert, down to South Africa before changing planes and doubling back up to "the warm heart of Africa".

Feeling a bit sleep deprived, but still just as amazed to be where we were, we waited to board our final flight.

On the flight from SA to Malawi, I met a Malawian nurse called Jacinta who was travelling back home from Boston where she's doing her Masters. She teaches in Lilongwe, at the sister college to Kamuzu College of Nursing, and was very excited for us. She reassured me that we would learn a lot while we are here, and said she would check in on us.

At the airport, we queued up and were waved through security, with a vague instruction to present at the visa office within 30 days. Then we walked through to the arrivals area, a jostling sea of taxi drivers all competing for jobs. We split between 2 taxis, to have enough space for all 6 of us and our luggage. And then we got our first proper glimpse of the place which will be our home for the next few months.

Next up... A tour of campus, and our first taste of nsima - the national food staple of Malawi.

Malawi time

We are now officially registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of Malawi! Malawi time takes some getting used to, and the process took us 3 days (with multiple trips to banks, letters from our uni, and forms signed by our lecturer Alan as well as the Dean here at Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) ). Things move slowly here, but everything seems to get done eventually.

On Tuesday, we were told we would need to pay $100 to register with the NMC Malawi. Unfortunately, on Monday we changed all our dollars into kwacha, so we had to head back to the bank. ATMs only allow you to withdraw 40000 kwacha at a time (about £57) but we needed to change 48500 kwacha. So, two ATM transactions, two charges from the bank, then the charge to change it into dollars next door at the bureau de change (they couldn't give us foreign currency directly using Visa). Then, when we finally got to the cash office at the NMC, we were told that they no longer accepted dollars, as it had led to corruption in the past. So we were asked to pay 15000 kwacha instead (much better deal...). By this point, I didn't have enough kwacha left (it was beginning to feel a bit like a chuckle brothers episode) so our escort from the admin department and the uni bus driver lent me 3000 until we could get back to a bank.

We also had to pass a surprise interview with the NMC Director of Educational Exchanges, to discuss our previous theoretical and practical experience, and our objectives for this placement, to make sure they could provide enough opportunities for learning here. Luckily, we aced it. And next week we join the KCN third year cohort!

This week we have also tried nsima (maize flour porridge), bought bowls so we can use the student canteen on campus, learned how to greet people and say thank you in chichewa, met some students, braved the showers (a story for another day), and visited the Lilongwe wildlife centre next door to the campus (where we came face to face with a wild boar on the trail! And also saw crocodiles, monkeys, baboons, a duiker and a serval cat).

Apparently classes start at 7.30am here. Some of us (ahem) struggle to make it in on time for 9am lectures at GCU so we'll need to make sure we don't show ourselves up. It's not as easy for us to sneak into the lecture anonymously here. Early night on Sunday I think.

This time next week...

Arms have been jagged, flights are booked, Memos of Understanding have been emailed across thousands of miles and I'm now well versed in the medicinal options for preventing the contraction of Malaria and how to fly to Southern Africa avoiding countries with a risk of Yellow fever (via London and Jo'burg) -6 days to go and it's actually starting to happen!

When we started planning this almost a year ago we knew we'd have to do some fundraising and we decided on a Kickstarter type project where our sponsors get various little rewards in exchange for support.  We've had some extremely generous donations already, but why let them hog all the glory- there's still time to donate today!

Seriously though, today is the last day and your last chance to help us with this project, if you can spare a few pounds, dollars, pesos or yen that would be greatly appreciated, please do so using PayPal via the link below:

https://hubbub.net/p/caleytomalawi/

Many thanks,

Caley to Malawi Team

All systems go!

The long awaited email finally arrived! All paperwork is now approved, which means this project is finally real. It's happening. It's time to book flights.

I am currently on a train heading to London for the Student Nursing Times Awards ceremony, so I will write a more complete post later. But we wanted to share the good news. We are so excited. It's all coming together!

Countdown: 20 days.

3 weeks to go!

Exams are over. We've had our vaccinations. I've started packing up everything I own so it can go into storage, as I can't afford to keep my flat while I'm away. We are continuing to prepare for our placement, even if things have been quiet on the blog for a while.

Basically, due to a couple of things out of our control, we are still waiting for the last official bit of paperwork. This is the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between our university and the college of nursing in Malawi, and without it nothing can move forward.

We have been assured that this delay doesn't mean the project is doomed. But being in limbo like this, so close to when we're due to leave, is frustrating. Especially since we completed our part of the official paperwork in November. And until we have the MOU, which is the last piece of a seemingly complex jigsaw, we aren't allowed to book our flights, or arrange accommodation. This does not match up with the timeline I had planned, or the Gantt chart I drew up way back last September. But I am trying to be optimistic, and flexible. The planning process so far has been a lesson in patience and perseverance.

Every time I get an email, I hope it will be the news we're waiting for. Fingers crossed we'll have more of an update in the next few days.