Second day in the office and I'm already off to Mangochi for a conference on Friday morning on nutrition with my boss. Takes about 4 hours to drive down there, hence we're leaving today. Laz has said we can pop into some NRUs on the way down. All go here. Got A LOT to learn on nutrition - interesting as I'm the assistant nutrition programme officer. Hmm...how misleading job titles are. Had some training all morning yesterday on the NRU (nutrition rehabilitation units), for therapeutic and supplementary feeding. Or rather, I watched some training of people who are going out measuring how malnourished people are. Interesting stuff about the middle upper arm circumference measurements (MUAC), and length rather than height of those under 2years. I have a lot to learn. A couple of things about being in the WFP, or rather, being in the wider UN: everything is in acronyms, we get some rather large radio things with our own signal - complete with manual about how the radio could save our lives, a 24 hour private police type call-out number, and a snazzy ID card.
Our house is getting in shape. After a rather dismal arrival, with the shock of forced adoption of two dogs (who we now love), a really awful brown sitting room, and the need to sack the nightguard, everything is getting there. Pagono pagono as they say here - little by little. So, our friendly neighbours, Heather and Floris, took us 'shopping' last Saturday to buy masses of fabric to cover the sofas, and also helped us with the hunt for a mirror (still looking). Seems the 'shops' here stock pile, so there's either 5 shelves of toothpaste, or absolutely none. It's taking a bit of time to get used to Dave, our garden/house/washing man, who lives attached to the house with his wife and three children. Anna and I had been looking forward to getting stuck into the garden as a time occupant, but it seems Dave just does everything. I merely mentioned how nice it would be to have a flower bed around the front of the house, and when I got back that evening, it was done. Because of such lofty and not necessarily genuine wonderings, we now have many many flower beds, marked out in brick. Still, this morning we thought Dave may be cross with us for the sacking of the night guard (his friend) - which was did last night, and had to recover from with some Malawian gin (very famous stuff, and affordable at four pounds a bottle). The night guard nearly cried, so we were quite tempted just to keep him on. But no. Stand firm. Questions now pop into my head as I try to fall asleep at 9pm (have to get up at 5.30am these days) that the nightguard (we don't even know his name) may try to torch the house while we sleep.
Still, there are some positives; meat is unbelievably cheap (50p for two steaks), whereas a bunch of carrots costs about four pounds.
