Back to Work!

I arrived back in Malawi to a sweltering afternoon and unfortunately the horrible news that several of my VSO nurse friends had been involved in an awful car crash. Ali and I went straight to the hospital and saw the two who are here in Lilongwe, the other 2 were flown out to Nairobi. We’ve had news that everyone is now ok, thank goodness, but I’m sure for them it’ll be some time before they’re back on their feet.

A huge thunderstorm happened while we were on the way to my house and having sat in the car outside the locked gate for some time unable to raise anyone, Ali and I eventually got out and soaking wet, wriggled the padlock off (into a huge puddle – ooops!), slid the bolt across and got in! I feared the landlord had been ignoring us on purpose as there have been a few issues while I was away – they’ve raised the rent by a huge amount which VSO is grumbling severely, a communication cock-up meant they weren’t happy people lived in the house when I wasn’t and now they’re asking for a penalty charge for breaching the contract (you really shouldn’t bother helping out sometimes should you?!) and to boot they say I’ve employed someone (who they sacked because of security issues) and they aren’t happy about it. All a load of bollocks and they know it – typically half arsed Malawian nonsense but after a word in VSOs ear and a smoothing over by giving of gifts I think everything is ok and I’ll be able to stay where I am – for 6 months at least. I’m disappointed that the garden is completely dead but the rains are coming and I shall just start again.

Annoyingly my phone had unregistered itself (functional again now) and the bank has changed all the cards (it unceremoniously spat mine out when I tried – click, click, thuubpptt!) but amazingly 2 hours and 5 queues later I find that in fact one in my name has been printed! But its in Blantyre…now on its way here.

So, all that remained was to get back to work – there was much hugging and shrieking which was very sweet. I dished out the little presents to everyone (socks and pens for the boys, earrings and perfume for the girls), rearranged my desk and rooted about in my drawers - as I was doing the stationery inventory (!) there was a knock on the door – the two lovely accountants came in and said, “Clara, may we show you our legs?” “Oh, sure” I reply, a little confused? They hitched up their trouser legs, and there were their socks, pulled up as high as they could go! “Lovely” I said “You look great!” They giggled and turned to leave, patting their jacket pockets where their new pens were perched! Ahhh, it makes it all worth it!

Next day, I got a handover on all that’s been happening with the CPD programme. It was sketchy but you know what, they tried, and that’s the main thing. Some of the excuses about why some people hadn’t been spoken to or their reports received were a little dubious though…

‘I can’t make more than 2 phone calls in a day’ (eh? – you’re always on the phone!!)

‘ The fax machine was behaving badly so we could not see the writing’ (h’mmm!)

‘ The person left and made someone else in charge (ok– who is this new person? Ah, they have not been informed yet. Riiiight – good, fine, that’s errr…. ok)

I’m glad to be back though and have written a nice new ‘To do’ list – better go get on with it!