May
on Rachael's VSO experience (Malawi), 21/May/2011 09:09, 34 days ago
Sorry been really busy and not had much chance to update the blog.So work carries on being work, not really much I can tell you about that. I work bloody hard and we aren't achieving a whole lot in terms of development but we are making very small improvements! This week we had another bank holiday on Monday and then the lab opening was on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday we were forced to attend a workshop about performance management. The only way they can get their nurses and doctors to attend is to provide them with drinks and biscuits (a whole packet each morning and afternoon!) and they pay them!! This is on top of their normal wage which personally I think is awful especially when you find out how much they pay... MK3500 (£14) per day! Now you may not think that is much money but bear in mind that most of my colleagues earn between MK35000 – MK50000 which is £140-£200 a month! It is the equivalent of a nurse in the UK who might take home £1000 a month getting paid an extra £200 for attending a two day course!I had to speak to the chief administrator and explain that my contract with VSO clearly states that it is not acceptable for me to accept this kind of money. It just seems so wrong that a hospital that regularly can't afford to buy certain drugs is spending extra money on staff workshops. I'm sure the hospital would say it all comes out of a separate budget blah blah, I just wanted to make my personal opinion clear that I am not able to accept their money.So as I said it was a bank holiday weekend so I took the Friday off work to get an extra long weekend and went down to Lilongwe the capital of Malawi. I needed to go to pay the deposit for my holiday at the end of June, so I figured I may as well make the most of it and Rosy offered to put me up for the weekend. So Friday I left Mzuzu at about 6am on the bus and arrived in Lilongwe about 13.30ish then went and paid my deposit and went meet Rosy. Rosy had been on the phone to some friends in Zomba who I started in Malawi with and they were having a party on Saturday night so Saturday Rosy, Mark and I got on another bus at around 10.30 which left at around 12.30! We arrived in Zomba around 17.00 and had a really lovely evening. Then Sunday we decided we wanted to have a little walk around Zomba as it's beautiful. We paid a driver to take us up a huge hill and wait whilst we went for a walk. We got a bit carried away and didn't get back to the bus station until 13.30. Unfortunately we then found out the bus to Lilongwe had already left and the next bus arrived in Zomba at about 20.00. We decided to get on a minibus, Mark and I had absolutely no leg room and both had chickens under our seat!! The chickens started fighting with each other at one point and one appeared to attempt to fly up Marks shorts! We were not entertained. So after 5hours we arrived back in to Lilongwe, Mark had lent his house to another volunteer who had some friends from home arriving so they had cooked a big dinner and invited us all over. Rosy was on call on Monday so we left Mark's about 22.30 and went back, we were then up at about 7am the next morning as Rosy wanted to be in work by 9am. So I went straight to the bus depot and found a bus to Mzuzu, sadly the bus didn't leave until 12.30!! It was so frustrating people would get on realise the bus was kind of empty and get off and do some shopping, I didn't dare do this as I was really worried about the bus going without me! So I eventually got back to Mzuzu about 18.30. It was such a hectic weekend but it was amazing to get away and catch up with some friends.Peer support gives a chance for the VSO volunteer nurses to get together and discuss challenges and where VSO should take their health programme in the future! It should be a really good weekend it's just unfortunately a long way away from Mzuzu but it doesn't start till 16.00 so I'm hoping I can travel in one day. Which really meant that this coming weekend I need to do some shopping so I have enough food to last and I need to clean and tidy my apartment. I was hoping to move flats this weekend, this is complicated so concentrate!! There are 18 flats in our compound although some are used as storage, 3 house United Nations volunteers, 3 house VSO volunteers and the rest are used by the Chinese medical team. One of the VSO volunteers Gen has just left. Czar finds the flat he lives in too noisy as he lives by the gate and can hear people arriving home, so Czar wants to move into Gen's flat. Whilst we were discussing this we realised it would make sense if I moved into Czar's flat as he has a shower and hot water and I don't have either. So we spoke to the administrator who said that should be fine. Everything was all set for us to move stuff around and then a guy who organises our water bills turned up at my flat on Thursday lunchtime. He said that it isn't appropriate for me to move into Czar's flat, basically the problem is that the flats on Czar's side have outside taps and the Chinese medical team use these taps to water their garden so this apparently means that these flats have to pay a lot of money for their water bills so they felt it would be unfair on me to have to pay possibly 10 times the amount I do now. So I said that is fine with me but I need hot water and a shower. So the guy from the water board (Jerry), who is strangely in love with me (I don't mean that to sound self-deprecating I mean he is strange!!) is apparently going to sort out my hot water and shower. He is like a 5 year old with a crush he randomly starts talking about inappropriate things he's very harmless and very funny although I think this is not intentional humour!! For example he came to my flat to give me my water bill and discuss the issue of moving and the water bills ect, so he then accompanied me back over to the hospital (our accommodation is about 5min walk from the hospital) and there was a condom packet on the floor and he said to me“Oh why would someone throw that away” then got really embarrassed and tried to change the topic but couldn't think of anything to say so just kind of ummd and errd for a while! Who thought life would get so hectic!!