I’ve been asked different times – “What does a typical day look like for you?”. I can honestly say that I haven’t experienced a “typical” or “normal” day. To quote Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie Blood Diamond, “TIA – this is Africa”, each day seems to bring some sort of surprise or new experience.
That being said, I thought I’d describe a day back in November where I went to visit some of our village sites. The main purpose of the visit was to see the progress that had been made and view some of the demonstration teaching.
7:05am – Pearson (one of the project staff) comes by our house. We get in the vehicle and drive up to the office to get a motorbike for the day.
7:10am – We’re at the office but the mechanic with the key to the motorbike is not. I thought I had this prearranged, but apparently not. So we wait.
7:30am – mechanic arrives and we get the key. The bike needs to be filled with gas. Pearson, takes it into town to do and plans to meet me back at my house so I can return the vehicle to Sarah.
7:50am – Pearson arrives back at my place with a full tank and off we go to Liwonde (field office) which is about 50km away (all paved road). By car/pick-up it takes a little more than half and hour. Today, with two of us on the motorbike it takes about an hour. Pearson is driving slow and steady with his boss on the back of the bike.
9:00am – we meet up with another staff member, Khumbo, in Liwonde and the three of us set out on two motorbikes to visit some village sites. Again, Pearson is driving slow and steady (max 60 km per hr).
10:00am – we arrive at Nsolomba village to pick up some materials. This village is on of the villages we work in but today we are just passing through. As we are getting our materials, one of the older village women greet me in the local language. I respond as per the usual response and think all is fine. Pearson laughs a little and explains to me that in addition to the usual greeting she added, “My husband, how are you?”. I had to laugh – a few of the older women in this village like to joke around with me like that. I even had a marriage proposal the first time I visited the village. I told them I’d have to ask my wife first….
10:15am – we arrive at Ntweya village where we conducted a demonstration on constructing a specific latrine design. This is ecological sanitation so the idea is that you only dig the hole about a metre deep, so that in 6 months or so when it is full you pick up the “structure” that is over the hole and move it to another location. You then make use of the manure from the original hole by planting a tree (usually some sort of fruit tree, depending on the area). The whole demonstration takes about an hour and seems to be accepted well by the villagers.
11:45am – we set off for Oga village to check on the progress that they are making. We take a number of back road trails to get there. Once the heavy rains come in December it will be hard to reach some of these villages – even by motorbike.
12:00pm – we arrive at Oga and they are surprised to see us. More so, they expressed that they wish we would have told them that the “big boss” (aka me) was coming so they could have been ready. This village was a little behind the other villages in terms of progress. We ended up watching (and a little bit of directing) some of the village committee members start to dig a hole. It was hot, so I took out some of my water to drink, and started to eat an apple. They don’t grow apples in Malawi (the apple was a green apple from South Africa) so some of the villagers started to wonder and talk about what I was eating. Pearson finally broke their silence and asked me what I was eating and was it ripe (mangos, which are abundant here, before they are ripe they are green on the outside and white on the inside – much like the apple I was eating). After about another 20 minutes of watching them dig, and twenty minutes of brushing the ants off of my legs, it was time to go.
1:00pm – for the ride back it was decided that I would drive one of the motorbikes. I hadn’t driven a motorbike since last time (98/99) we were in Africa, but it didn’t take too long to remember all the basics. So off we went – this time I wanted to find out if the bikes were slow, or if it was just my staff riding slow because their “bwana” (“boss”) was with them. Even though the bikes are only 125 cc, it was clear that these bikes could go faster than they had been riding them.
We were doing 60km/hr on the dirt roads and paths, but did closer to 80km/hr on the paved roads. When we finally arrived back at the field office in Liwonde, Khumbo simply said, “You were cruisin’!” We all had a good laugh and they explained how they thought they should be going slow and steady when they are with the bwana – but not this boss….
2:30pm – we had a little meeting in the office to discuss work plans for the next week and recap the progress in the different villages.
3:00pm – they dropped me off at the side of the main highway in Liwonde where I picked up a “mini-bus” (a large mini-van used to transport people, their luggage, bags of rice and maize, chickens, you name it…). The mini-bus was pretty full (so I thought) when I got on, so I sat squished in on a 3 seater-bench with 4 people. A few minutes into the trek we picked up a few more people (with luggage), and then a few more…. In the end we had about 20 people in this vehicle. Going up hills was agonizingly slow, but I was thankful that I had safe driver. Road accidents are all too common here in Malawi.
4:00pm – I got dropped off at the side of the highway at the bottom of the hill that our house is situated on. It was a hot 10 minute walk in the afternoon African sun, but finally getting home and enjoying an orange Fanta (if you’re 30 or older, you’ll remember Fanta). I reflect on the day and what was accomplished and what wasn’t, and then I remember – TIA – my expectations need to be realistic!
I likely won’t have an exact day like this again, but I’m sure there will be variations of it….
