Away again...

This afternoon, I am departing for Salima...or more accurately, Senga Bay (the beach) for 11 days. Don't get too jealous - I will be working for 9 of them.
We have two workshops in the same location so I thought we could tie the two together with a weekend of camping for Jules's birthday. I will be doing my best to access internet while I am away, but don't expect that it will be all that frequent.
In the first workshop, I am facilitating an M&E section, but in the second I am mainly a partcipant and am looking forward to being immersed in Disaster Risk Reduction concepts.
I will miss two volleyball games, which I am not excited about, though I do wish my team luck!
And also I might miss (but will be trying my damnedness not to) So You Think You Can Dance. For those that watch at home, I am sure you realize that the show has already shown in North America, but it just started a few weeks ago here, so I am avidly watching every second.
Wish me luck in finding a place in Senga Bay that will allow us to watch on DSTV!

Life in Lilongwe

I just realized that I haven't posted since last Friday! How does time pass so quickly?
Anyways...last weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday we had a chill night in. I have started watching Buffy again (SO addictive) so we watched a few episodes.
On Saturday we got up to go for a walk. Jules had a coffee while Regan and I had some beauty treatments at the salon and then we did some grocery shopping at the market. Since we have been walking everywhere lately, this whole procedure took quite a bit of time, so luckily we ran into Heather, who offered to drive us home. Before we went home though, we found a new restaurant (well, new to me - Jules's colleague had taken him there before). The restaurant is called Amina's take-away and serves local fare. What was remarkable about it was the size of the servings...Jules and I had decided to split a t-bone and rice - when they brought out the t-bone, it was the size of the whole plate! And the rice, veggies and beans were on a separate plate! Between us, we couldn't finish it all and we were stuffed. The whole meal cost $4, so it was $2 each....I don't know how they can stay in business.
After I got home I had to bake some cookies and arrange some flowers to add to my Martha Stewart costume for the Alter-Ego party. Before we left in the morning, I had sewn my apron and looked up Martha's actual number to put on a black and white striped shirt. Once the cookies were ready, I helped braid Heather's hair so that it looked crimped for her 80s rock-chick costume and helped Jules get his hair to stand up for his Einstein costume. I haven't downloaded my pics yet, so check out Heather's blog if you want a preview.
Sunday was sweet - we relaxed by the pool at the Capital Hotel (where the water is NOT green), while Regan spent the day hanging out at ABC and playing frisbee.
This week has been busy so far - I was able to work from home for two days (Monday and Wednesday) to try and finish up some followup activities from my workshop. I also had a tripartite meeting (these are meetings with the partner organization (CADECOM), the volunteer and WUSC), where we discussed what I shoudl focus on during the remainder of my time here. Although the goals are still very ambitious, I am happy that I feel they are acheivable. Some of the items originally included in my workplan have been removed and we will inclued them when we write a position description for another volunteer so they will get done eventually.
Last night, Chambo with Head won our first game of the season (and it's only our second time out!!!), so that is super exciting - we look forward to a better season than last, with a couple new players and a great core team.
Tonight Jules was invited to a formal reception - I am a little nervous that it might be a little stuffy, but we will check it out and see what it's like.
No big plans for the weekend - apparently the Portuguese Club pool is scheduled to be repaired and treated this week, so maybe it will be a good place to go on the weekend - we will see.

Random updates

So this week has been productive....I think September must be the only month so far that I haven't been out of town for work! My feet are even starting to get (a little) itchy.
Jules is actually out of town for one of his rare trips next week, so I am glad that he will get to see a little more of the north while he works with farmer groups in Ruimphi.
After finally getting everything under control for my workshop Aug 26 - 29, it has taken me most of September to finalize materials for sharing and working on the follow up from it....but the end is in sight - by the end of next week, I should have a good handle on the workshop follow up stuff and be working on the M&E framework for my organization....whew!
This weekend a friend of ours is having a birthday party, combined with another friend's housewarming...the theme is alter-ego - so you are supposed to dress up as someone you've always wanted to be...it threw me for a loop for sure - it really is hard to say!
I feel like I respect a lot of people, but I am not sure I actually want to BE any of them...finally I decided to take it a little tongue in cheek and go as Martha Stewart. Though I wouldn't want to actually BE her I was a former Martha addict....
Anyways, so our weekend is shaping up - we have been a bit hermit-y lately, partly due to lack of funds and due to the flu that I had, so it will be refreshing to get out to a party. On Saturday we have tentative plans to maybe do a bit of climbing as well as we have friends going to hike in Dedza, but the jury is still out on whether or not we will go...since we have constumes to finish!
Regan has been busy lately with joining an Utimate Frisbee team and studying for her upcoming ICGSE exams....she even has to write TWO exams on her 16th birthday, poor girl.
Back to preparation for the next M&E workshop (only 2 days this time, thank goodness!)...

Not too much that is new...

But I thought I would post anyways - since we had to pay Regan's exam fees this month, money is pretty tight - so we have spent a lot of time in Lilongwe with not too much to do.
Unfortunately the pool at the portuguese club (which we were so excited to join as it would provide countless hours of free entertainment once the membership was paid) is completely green. They ran out of chemicals in May and have not treated the pool since. It is totally gross and I don't want to go to the club and just hang out BY the pool because #1 - I like water and want to be in it, not by it and #2 - it is free to do that anyways - the only thing we were paying for was access to the pool. What a miserable situation....
But we have been going for lots of walks, so that has been nice - and we found out that a bakery I like stocks BRIE. So I think we might indulge in a little fresh bread, brie and procuitto on Friday night as a treat!
Today is the start of the hot season of volleyball, so Chambo with head will start the season off tonight at 6:30 - I am excited to be playing again but wishing we had managed to slot at least ONE practice in during the six week break!
Anyways...on the work front, panic is setting in as I look at the crowded weeks ahead - you can now count to the end of my contract in weeks (well I guess you always could - but the number was much bigger before) and there is SO much still to do. I am trying to come up with a reasonable work plan for my remaining time here, but as weeks pass - I am so busy with other things that my work plan items get pushed to the next week...a process that can not continue indefinately!!!
Anyways - wish me luck as I continue to plug away!!!

Where do I start???

Well, I have yet again to apologize for the length of time it has taken for me to get around to getting another post up. I think besides being busy, I was a bit intimidated by the fact that since I now know how to upload pictures, I should be loading pics into every blog...and I haven't had time to sort through my photos, so....
Anyways, as I am sitting here today, I figure it will be better to just get a darn blog up than to fiddle with pictures, since it seems to be a bit of a block!
So I never really did justice to Mom and Meghan's trip here with us - I know my mom kept great notes, so I am hoping she will do a guest blog and email me some of her details so I can post them.
Since my last post, I completed the daunting amount of work required in order to facilitate my week long workshop on M&E....it was a battle, but I got the job done in the end, and have recently compiled the results of the workshop evaluation - it seems that many people were extremely happy with their experience and learned some valuable lessons, so that made me feel great. I can see how teaching is a rewarding experience - one day we were doing a recap and people were all participating a lot, and I realized that they learned some of the things we were talking about from ME! I was pretty tickled.
Anyways, the week after the workshop was a bit of a blur - I arrived home on Friday night and Jules and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary (1 day late) with Regan by going out for dinner, and then Regan went to a party while we went home and crashed out. On Saturday we went to a friend's birthday/one year in Malawi party, which was really nice - we met some new people and had a brilliant evening. On Sunday, I started getting really puffy eyes - I used to get this occasionally in Canada - some kind of undiagnosed allergy I guess, so I wasn't too worried, but it did continue until Monday when I spent the afternoon at home to rest my eyes. The rest of the week was taken up with trying to capture the notes from my workshop in order to create my workshop report and thinking about the best way to divide the rest of my (too short!) time here.
I don't know if I ever reported that we were finally able to recruit a counterpart for my position here? Originally, they were hoping to hire an M&E Officer that I was to work with way back in February just after my arrival...unfortunately the recruitment was unsuccessful, and my colleagues decided to wait until new salary levels were approved before attempting to recruit again. The new salary levels were supposed to be approved in February, but in actuality were not approved until June! Then there were all sorts of administrative delays involved and we didn't actually make offers until much later. Finally we thought we had the candidate lined up and the position was filled - the officer was invited to attend my workshop as his first week of work. I am trying not to be personally offended, but in fact, since the workshop ended, he has not been seen again here at CADECOM. Sorry - slight exaggeration - we had his computer all set up Monday morning and he did pop in Monday afternoon (when I had gone home to rest my poor eyes), but since then, he has not returned.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I asked my boss what he was planning to do, and his response was that we should give him to the end of the week!!! When he hadn't shown up for two days with no phone call or anything??? Anyways, it was not my call, but he didn't show up all week, so we are now assuming he is not interested. I wasn't too sure of him after the workshop (he was pretty quiet and I worried how we would get on), so I am not sure if I am relieved or dissapointed, but I am definately back at square one. Not having a counterpart here has severely limited the amount I can hope to get done in my year here, and now with a new recruitment scheme on the horizon, it seems unlikely that we will get someone in before Christmas.
Anyways, most of this month I will be focussed on rewriting my work plan to accommodate these new circumstances and trying to plan for my highest impact activities to be completed before I go.
This week there is a week long training in Nutrition, but I am staying back today and tomorrow to try an finish up some loose ends from my workshop...I will attend while the focus is on successful program design and indicator selection for nutrition.
This past weekend was super - on Saturday we walked around and did some errands on foot, which got us outside and also some exercise. On Sunday, unfortunately I had puffy eyes again, worse than last weekend, so I wasn't capable of doing much and just laid around watching movies - since this is something I rarely do, I have to say it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend a Sunday! I am better today, so that is good.
Anyways, have piles of work to do so I must get on with it - I promise (AGAIN - do you still believe me at ALL?) to try and update more regularly now that things are back to normal after vacations and workshops etc...

Radio Silence....Continued

Well, I am sorry for the extended radio silence on this end, but I am sorry to report that it will likely continue for another week - but I do hope to get another post up before the end of the month (fingers crossed).
Mom and Meghan and the Arntz-Grays had a fabulous trip around Malawi. We viewed the majestic tea fields south of Blantyre, found out that it rains. Hard. In dry season on the Zomba plateau, saw TONS of elephants, hippos, warthogs, waterbuck, crocs and birds in Liwonde National Park, went snorkeling at Cape Maclear, and visited Senga Bay. Mom and I also discovered a great little place called Ntchisi Forest Lodge and went hiking in the temperate rain forest there.
With only one day of rest, we were back into travel gear and heading to Zambia, where we had a fabulous safari (food excepted) in South Luangwa National Park, viewing giraffes, zebra, lions, hippos, crocs and even the elusive leopard.
With spectacularly poor foresight I planned my major Monitoring and Evaluation workshop for this week, and Mom and Meghan just left on Friday...the result being that I have been working all weekend to try and finish due to my lack of focus last week...
Since I am (still) preparing, and the workshop is out of town in Zomba (we are leaving today at three), I will likely not have access to internet. It will be a hectic week (last workshop involved many 12 hour days and it was just a three day workshop whereas this is FIVE), so I expect to crawl into bed on Friday night and not emerge for some time. Hopefully I can pull together a better post with pics on Sunday - chat with you then!

Visitors!

So my Mom and Regan’s friend Meghan arrived safely on Monday. Thanks to my roommate Heather, we found out that there is a viewing platform at the airport from which you can watch the plane come in. Regan and I each paid 5 kwacha to go up and waited excitedly. The plane was pretty much on time, and we could see well enough to watch our guests come down the ramp. We waved excitedly and they saw us waving down at them.
We had thought they might be too tired from their trip to do anything, so had nothing planned, but they got a second wind and we took them down to the big vegetable market, then Regan and Meghan went out for chips with Regan’s best friend from school, Hawah, while I took my Mom to see where Jules works.
On Tuesday, the girls had some sleeping in planned and an afternoon shopping trip. Mom and I attended the Rotary Club of Lilongwe lunch meeting – it was my first Rotary experience here and it was very nice. Afterwards, we went to my workplace to meet some of my colleagues, though I hope we will visit again as there were many people away.
On Wednesday we were scheduled to drop off a donation of medical supplies that my Mom arranged at Madisi hospital, about an hour north of Lilongwe. We met the Hospital Administrator, the Matron and the doctor who will be working with the drugs. The drugs were very gratefully received and I think my Mom was inspired to make a presentation to her Rotary Club upon her return to see if more assistance can be given.
Thursday was the monitoring trip I had planned to take my Mom and Meghan along for so that they could see a Malawian village. Jules and Regan joined us for the trip, since neither of them has had an opportunity to see a village yet. The day started in the regional CADECOM office, where my colleagues briefed us on the work being done under the I-Life DAP program – a program being delivered throughout Malawi by a consortium of NGOs. In Mchingi, it is delivered by CADECOM. The strength CADECOM has at accomplishing work on the ground was apparent – CADECOM’s I-Life beneficiaries are the only ones (of the seven I-Life NGOs) to succeed in motivating their beneficiaries achieve self-sustainability in an irrigation scheme, as well as in a warehouse building project.

Since we were going into a village, we dressed in chitenges, traditional wear for females:

The event we were there to witness was a bicycle handover – the community members who volunteer to be leaders of actions in their communities receive bicycles in order to complete their work (they also act as an incentive). Nine bicycles were distributed and the event was attended by the local parish priest as well as the Traditional Authority (chief). At the village level, each village is represented by a village head, and a group of village heads will be organized under a GVH (group village head). A group of GVH’s will then be organized under the TA (Traditional Authority) – so you can imagine his importance. It was thrilling after the event for my Mom to formally be introduced to the chief and to sit for a short chat.
After the handover, my colleagues took us around to show us some of the work completed under the program. We met with a Village Savings and Loans committee that had saved up 104,000 kwacha, a marketing group who had completed building a warehouse and a group involved in an irrigation scheme. It happened to be the day a new chief was being inducted, and the gulewankulu (masked dancers) were out dancing as part of the celebration. It is a rare even to happen upon gulewankulu and from our cultural training we learned that outsiders are not always welcomed into the ceremony. I don’t know if it was because we were with CADECOM staff who are known to the community or if these dancers were just more open to outsiders, but we stopped the car and got out and were encouraged to take photos and mingle with the dancers – it was an incredible experience. Once we got back into our car, dancers jumped onto the back for a ride…again, very unusual and exciting. It was a very long and tiring day, but worth every minute….what an experience for us, and for Mom and Meghan as well.
Last night we invited all the WUSC volunteers to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Blue Ginger. The food, as always, was delicious and the company was great – Mom got to meet almost everyone we know here in Lilongwe in one night.
Now it is Saturday morning and we are finalizing our packing to leave on our big trip today…not sure how often I will have internet access, but I will try to keep you up to date!