Last day of ICT
on Rachael's VSO experience (Malawi), 12/Feb/2011 17:57, 34 days ago
Well that's it! ICT over now for the real work.Yesterday we went to the black missionaries and they were amazing, sadly they didn't come on until 1am in the end I only stayed until around 2ish but the hotel is literally right next door to where they were playing and they played until about 4am! Nice when we had to start lessons at 8am!! Obviously everyone was really tired today luckily ICT officially finished at lunchtime. Then we had the scavenger....So the point of the scavenger was to catch a minibus (public bus although more of a mini bus than you are imagining I couldn't take a photo but i'll get one one day, basically can seat around 14 but they get really cramped!!) and go into town, then we were supposed to catch another minibus to the city centre (the business area) where the VSO office is and then get on our tour minibus and head back to the hotel.So everything starts off brilliantly as we walk out of the gate of the hotel there is a minibus so we flag it down and jump in. Now I'm never gonna explain this well but basically the minibus has a driver and 2 'conductors' on it and they play reggae music as loudly as they can. The conductor hangs out of the window of the minibus screaming where the bus is going to, in Lilongwe the town is split into areas so they normally scream 'city centre' town centre' or the area they are going to 'area 49'. Get it? no ah well....So we jump on the minibus for the town centre and pay our 100MK (like 40p) and off we go. Now we have been warned that minibus drivers often don't have petrol and the buses are .... well lets just say they wouldn't be road worthy in the UK!! So we make it into town and then go for a little bit of shopping. We are still very unclear where we are going to be staying the only thing I'm clear about is that I need to be at work on Monday! So I buy a small amount of food for the journey tomorrow as it may take around 5hrs! Then after an hour or 2 we head back to the minibus to get back to the VSO office.We jump on a minibus who manages to fit us all in with one of the girls climbing in through the back window!! Now the guy in charge of our ICT has told us to say we want to go to the shack by peoples supermarket i think and he said you go round the corner from the bank then get off. Well we got round the corner and the minibus stopped and I went to get out and the conductor said it's not here yet. So we keep going and get dropped off by a big supermarket... way out of town! So we talk to the conductor and he says "no the British council building is round the corner sister!" well it wasn't. So we wait on the other side of the road and get back on a minibus which takes us right back to round the corner from the bank where we first stopped and we get out and are there!!Today was a gorgeous day and despite the cloud and wearing factor 30 I've managed to get burnt! I thought I'd got my morning routine down perfectly. I have my shower put on bug spray (as apparently bloody mossies love me) the once thats dry put on my sun cream then let that dry and get dressed!I am keeping all the locals entertained, those who know me know that as soon as i am warm i look like someone has turned on a fire in my face! So these lovely Malawians who aren't used to seeing white skin very often find it very funny especially when it's rainy season and not that hot.. but to a poor girl from the UK 24oC is hot trust me!!!Well unfortunately I am now not gonna have access to any wi-fi. I'm going to attempt to keep this blog up to date on my laptop then up load it when I get the chance. There are a few different ways of getting internet and I'm not sure whats going to be the best or cheapest or easiest! For those of you who have emailed for my address I'm not ignoring you I need to wait to get to Mzuzu to find out whether to use the VSO programme office address and then pay to have it delivered to me or use my work address but I need to find out how safe my work address is going to be as people will automatically presume that I am rich and receiving lots of expensive exciting things!! The morale code is slightly different when people are white!!Hopefully I'll update you soon!!