Abit of art and crafts in Malawi..

Current location: Blantyre, Malawi

I have had some great vocational visits so far, visiting the Henry Tayali art gallery and studios (Lusaka, Zambia), meeting Roy Kausawho works for the Lechwe art trust (Lusaka, Zambia) and visiting secondary and high schools. It has been fascinating to meet actual practicing artists.

La Galleria

My first vocational visit in Malawi was in Lilongwe, visiting La Galleria art shop with Bob (Team Leader). It is a small art and crafts gallery, run by an artist called Elson Kambalu, unfortunately I did not meet him but did see some photos of his artwork. Elsons art is the most conceptual of what I have seen so far on the trip, one of his pieces was a collection of paint pots that were stuck on a board, with dried coloured paint inside each pot. This piece was titled something along the lines of ‘These tins are empty’. It made me think further about the meanings of the piece and what the artist is trying to say. 

Around the shop were lots of intricate and colourful painting by local artists, all with very different styles, some very realistic, some very large, some abstract and some mixed media based. I particularly liked a very intricate wooden carving of a crowd of people and also some batik paintings (I bought some!).On tables all around the room was lots of beautiful craft objects and jewellery for sale. Some of the craft sales goes towards an orphanage under the company name of ‘consol homes’ and other craft sales went towards a fund for refugees.I met two artists that work at the art shop, called Raphiq SandiKonda and Mathews Chimalito. They told me about their styles of work and Raphiq said he only likes works in an abstract way. I think both of them produce commercial art and crafts to make money too. This is the first vocational visit so far where I have seen art workshops available for the public to join in on, they said that children are able to come along each day to do art activities.

Memorable Mzuzu

The GSE team and Rotarian Gibbs with their Mzuzu coffee!!

After a truly epic mini bus journey up from Lake Malawi we finally arrived at Mzuzu , the most northerly stop on our trip. We were greeted by the Rotarians and treated to a very welcome indian meal. We stayed at the unique accommodation provided by the Hot n Spice lodge.

Solar at Mzuzu University: pumps water to the cafe, & keeps vaccines cool in the clinic 

Our programme included vocational visits for each of the team. I went to the Test and Training Centre for Renewable Energy technologies (TCRET), at Mzuzu University. I met Titus Bwalo who is a Lecturer at the department. We discussed the huge potential of renewable energy to help the 83% of the population who are not connected to the national grid in Malawi. One of the biggest barriers to this happening is cost, but Titus described some of the partnerships the department is involved in which are testing the practicality of small scale solar in low income households. For example, there is a project to provide solar lanterns to 44 households which charge in the daytime and give 8 hours of light. The lanterns mean that the family don’t need to buy kerosene, which is very expensive and also not always readily available. The project has proved a success and there are plans to roll it out to more households. It was very interesting discussing renewable energy and climate change with someone so knowledgeable and to compare the situations in Malawi and the UK. I learnt so much and really could have stayed there all day!

Meeting university lecturer Titus Bwalo at Mzuzu University

Mzuzu is famous for its coffee production so we found a new café set up by a local co-operative and enjoyed some wonderful coffee there. However, Adele managed to get locked inside a toilet by accident - luckily I was there with her and was able to fetch someone to help her escape! (this is why ladies go to the toilet in twos!)

Our presentation to the Rotary Club at Mzuzu was our 10^th of the trip, we are all learning a great deal about public speaking and hopefully with all of this practice we have improved! We enjoyed a dinner with the club and exchanged banners. We’d like to say a big thank you to the Rotarians for their hospitality and the lovely gifts of Mzuzu coffee and beautiful chitengas. We will certainly remember our time in Mzuzu!

Work as well as play!!!

So, just to remind you all that we are here on a vocational trip and aren’t only having fun (although we are having lots of fun!!), I thought I would blog a little about some of the vocational visits I have had and what I have learned.

I have been very fortunate in Malawi to visit two amazing youth projects that really inspired me:

NANSADI:

The first was NANSADI (National Awareness Network, Sensitisation and Development Initiative), which was in Lilongwe. The project works with young people in the community, particularly vulnerable young people. They provide HIV/AIDS counselling and sponsorship for school fees; they encourage educational and vocational participation, and teach important life and practical skills. During my visit I was treated like an honoured guest; the young people performed a drama for me around the subject of HIV/AIDS, which was all in the local language Chichowe, but I understood the message. I was then given the floor and asked if I would like to lead the project for the day, which was awesome for me and a great honour. I spoke to the young people about my job as a youth worker in England and about my journey growing up as a young person and how influential the role models in my life have been. I tried to encourage them to make the most of the opportunities they have been given and to dream big. They seemed to receive the message pretty well. Afterwards, I hung out with the young people and we took LOTS of pictures. I learned a lot from this experience about the spontaneity of youth work; the importance of being prepared and of being real – being willing to open up. I was inspired by how much the project does in the local community despite having very few resources. One of the main things that has affected me whilst being here is how much the young people here seem to appreciate what they have and this is something I think young people in the UK can learn a lot from.

Saved by the Ball:

Probably the best name for a youth organisation ever!! My second visit was to the Mzuzu Youth Association in Mzuzu, which is the umbrella organisation for around 50 youth projects. I spent time with one of these projects, ‘Saved by the Ball’. This project was set up in 2009, to train young people as coaches in minority sports tennis and table tennis. The coaches go into the primary schools and teach sports workshops and build relationships with the young people through these sports, as a result they then educate them on HIV/AIDS and drug/alcohol abuse. Young people with potential in these sports are then selected for the regional teams and compete nationally. This links in a lot with the dance classes that I teach in the UK – physical activities such as these are such a great tool for building relationships with young people and being able to address other issues.  I was really inspired by this project and the vision of the guy that set it up, Owen – during my visit I thought a lot about how I would like to move forward in my profession and pioneer new, innovative projects where I see the need for them. I was also able to learn about the challenges of setting up a new project from scratch, which was really useful for me.

These visits have been so valuable in terms of vocational learning and networking; I have made a lot of really great contacts. I’m looking forward to visiting many more exciting youth projects and continuing this reciprocal learning process.

Visit to Paradise

Whilst being on this GSE trip we have seen some stunning places of natural beauty that have really taken my breath away. One of these places is Lake Malawi in Salima; I was blown away by how gorgeous and peaceful it is. We stayed right next to one of the local beaches, opting to hang out there and experience the ‘real’ Lake Malawi instead of venturing to the more touristy beaches.

It is incredible how vast the lake is, I kept getting confused and referring to it as the sea!! The water is crystal clear and nice and warm, so we enjoyed a swim. For me, it was lovely to see local life going on at the beach – women washing their clothes in the lake, children playing with old tyres (so happy and appreciative of their ‘toy’!), and men bringing in the nets of fish. Despite all the goings on it was such a peaceful place and we all relaxed as a team and got some much-needed rest before continuing on with our programme. Definitely a place I would visit again (and again…)

The journey to paradise:

On the way to Lake Malawi ‘paradise’ we made a few stops. The first was to a solar powered hydro pump (I think that’s the right term?!), although I didn’t see any of the project or the pump, as I was too busy playing with the local children in the community. As soon as we got off the minibus a group of around 30 children appeared and gathered around us. Although they didn’t speak a word of English, Alice and I decided to try and communicate with them. We played ‘Simon Says’ and then taught them ‘Old Macdonald’ followed by quite a few rounds of the ‘Hokey Kokey’. We were in our element running around like children and as both of our jobs involve working with children and young people it could be counted as vocational too!!! :)

Our second stop was at Kuti Community Game Ranch, where we picked up a lone game ranger (with a massive rifle!!) who accompanied us on our tour of the ranch. Along the way we encountered a herd of zebras and ‘Soldier’ the ranger took us on a stroll to the middle of the herd where we were within touching distance of the zebras. It was such a surreal and amazing experience, one I won’t quickly forget!!

Malawi

Malawi – Lilongwe

A visit to the tobacco auction house, a vast warehouse of over 30,000m² undercover in one building split into the delivery and then auction area itself. The auction room had 50 lines of bags of tobacco with 100 bags per line, each one weighing approximately 100kg each selling for an average of $2/kg. Watching the auction happen was incredible, the auctioneer and his team walk up and down each line and auction off each bag individually with all the bidders from various local tobacco processing plants were bidding to get the bags. It was similar to the old nokia game “snake” where every time you eat something it gets longer, this seemed similar every time a bag of tobacco was sold another person joined the line! The auction house sells approximately 8000 bags of tobacco daily, so it’s a busy place from the start where bags are offloaded from lorries, weighed and stacked into different type, stored then transported to auction house, sold then loaded again to processing factories. Every time a bag is moved, it’s loaded onto a pallet truck then people race along to deliver it for the next phase.

A visit around the production factory for Premier Tama Tobacco, a 38,000m² building comprised of 6 Nr. 30m clear span structures approximately 200m long, fantastic steel structure! We enjoyed a tour from Bernard about the entire process from the leaf to prepared tobacco shipped to cigarette production factories.

 A burning Jatropha nut demonstrating the amount of fuel within.

Kate and myself visited BERL – Bio Energy Resources Limited, the core business is built around the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy bio fuels. The company works with over 25,000 local farm families planting Jatropha trees as an additional crop to their primary (food) and secondary (cash) crops. The Jatropha nuts are processed to produce Jatropha oil for blending with diesel. We were privileged to enjoy a tour of the new processing facility from Laurie and Tim and the entire process from farm to oil was explained.

We did enjoy a night out with some of the Rotarians from Lilongwe and Bwaila and got to experience some of the nightlife in Malawi, we visited Harrys bar and sampled some local beer – Carlsberg! I discovered last night that this is the only beer in Malawi as the previous president liked it so much that he said to Carlsberg, you come into my country and make Carlsberg here and I will make sure that you are the only company selling beer here and set this agreement up for 25 years! We popped into the Diplomats pub to listen to the live band and boogie. 

 Good times!!

The everyday at Lake Malawi (Salima beach)

With lack of internet we are bombarding you with lots of blogs from the last week....

We are so lucky to have a chance to pop to the Lake on this trip. We arrived at Salima beach on the 9^th June. There was ‘massive’ hiccup on arrival with our planned accommodation, but we were able to stay in some chalets not far from the beach. We had a good nights rest and tasty breakfast in the morning to start us off.. the hotel was right on the beach!! We spent the morning swimming and relaxing in the sun, it felt so strange that the lake is not a sea, because you cannot see the other side!!

I really enjoyed sitting and watching the local people on the beach, they seem to use it as part of their daily lives, the ladies washing and drying their family clothes on the beach and the men going out fishing in little boats. There were lots of children playing on the beach and in a small boat close by, which seemed to keep them well entertained!

GSE presentations

I thought I would blog about our presentations so far.. we as a team have been doing very well with them as we have had lots of different settings and clubs to deal with. We are all improving our confidence in public speaking. A couple of nights ago we did a presentation to the Lilongwe and Bwaila rotary club in Malawi, our humour and stories seemed to be received well and we all enjoyed the company and good food, Zikomo! We have been adapting our team presentation along the way, adding what we have been experiencing so far from team and vocation trips.

Photo from our presentation with the rotary clubs of Kitwe, Zambia.