trip to the lake.........

Hello everyone and welcome to another blog!

I had hoped to write one earlier in the week but I have been out of office for 2 weeks - in Blantyre and then in Salima so I had a lot of work to catch up on in the office!

I headed off to Salima on Easter Tuesday for a workshop to refine the Early Learning Standards for Malawi.  As I was going down the road to Nkhatabay, I had to stay behind this vehicle for quite a while.  As you can see it is packed full of people and tomatoes and iron sheets and plastic basins - and that is only what I can see from the back!!  The road here is so narrow that its impossible to pass so while I was slowly dawdling along behind I thought why not take a photo!

As you can see safety belts are not an issue here!!

This is the view in Salima but when I reached there it was 7.30pm, pitch dark and no street lighting and I had no idea where to go, and neither did anyone I asked!  I phoned a colleague who told me I still had quite a drive to go through sand dunes - I drove another hour before I reached my destination but it would have only taken 30 minutes in the daylight.  The place was in the middle of the sand dunes but I would not have cared it was in the desert I was so tired!!

As I said we were a small team refining one of the documents for Early Learning Development Standards in Malawi.  We always do some ECD songs and games at our workshops and here you can see the Director of Children's affairs in Malawi with Dorothy from Save the Children taking part in a game!!

We did not have time to even look at the lake as we worked all daylight hours!  However I spotted fishermen bringing in these two big fish and Francis decided he wanted a photo with them - they were enormous and very heavy!!

I arrived back on Friday night tired once more from the long drive but thankful to be home in one piece!

Then last week we had various training courses taking place in different areas.  One was in Mzuzu so I took a few minutes to go and see how they were getting on.  Here you can see Madalitso our trainer taking a class - they had a great time!!

Schools started back this week after the Easter holidays (I think I missed Easter this year), and of course there are always challenges and problems at the beginning of term so I had to go and sort out an issue at one of the centres in Mzuzu.  This is the caregiver with one of the children - such a pretty girl!

The past 3 days we have had horrendous weather here - its has been teeming down with rain day and night and because of that bugs and other small creatures are plentiful!  The snails are still in abundance in the garden and some of them are enormous!

And for those of you who appreciate spiders I thought you might like to see this orb spider which has woven an enormous web outside my door.  Here he is actually munching on a fly and I watched him munch munch!  Today he was eating a grasshopper!  I have no idea if he bites or not so am hoping he stays outside. All the more reason to put the mosquito net on tonight I think!!

I am always talking about praying for travel on our roads.  Another incident happened yesterday but thankfully everyone is safe.  The road that I travelled on from Salima has many bridges to cross on it and from Nkhatabay to Mzuzu there are also a few bridges.  Colleagues were in Nkhatabay on Saturday and on the way home they were stopped because one of the bridges has literally washed away with the heavy rains!  I am not sure if they managed to get home or not but I heard people were being transported over the river in canoes!  I will know more in the morning.

Wishing you all a blessed week,

Diane

PS I am taking four days off this week to make up for having no time off at Easter!  I would take a full week but I have an important meeting tomorrow - no rest for the wicked!!