A month in

How time flies when you're having fun, and how it drags when you're waiting for your water to be reconnected. In this instance I think I can blame ‘African bureaucracy’ for turning up one day while I was in Dedza, monitoring food distributions at a health facility for the malnourished, and disconnecting it. Still not entirely sure why, but being the harbourer of a blaming tendency, I go with the previous tenants. Then comes the tricky business of trying to get it reconnected. All bits paid, yes, but it doesn’t result in a reconnection despite a ‘reconnection’ fee being paid.

So beside water problems, a house infested with fleas (now killed thanks to the magic powers of DyFlea – they also sell DyRoach and DyAnt) which I blame entirely on the two dogs we seem to have adopted, the sacking of the night guard, which actually occurred twice due to some misunderstandings, and a bout of fever and accompanying sidekicks, what’s been going on?

First the job. For anyone who says the UN wastes money please come and have a look at WFP. Not a model agency by any means, but with overheads of just 7%, a fairly run-down office like ours (the VSO office is much nicer), and staff members even buying their own notepads, this place is pretty impressive. For an entire country’s nutrition programme there are just two of us, the boss – Lazarus – and me, and considering there are over 90 Nutrition Rehabilitation Units (NRUs) in the country, about double that for the supplementary feeding programme (SFP), and the Community Therapeutic Care (CTC) programme to implement, it’s a bit busy. Plus, it’s a bit acronym friendly. Entire sentences can be formed with a verb and a list of acronyms, which makes conversation with anyone out of WFP little difficult.

Not that there is anyone out of WFP. With working hours of 7.15am to 5.15pm, and Anna, my housemate and fellow VSO, and I running at 5.30 in the morning, our lives so far revolve around WFP, the British High Commission (which has a lovely swimming pool and very cheap carrot cake), and five shops the combination of which means we can usually find the food we are looking for – with some notable exceptions being herbal teabags, nutella, normal chocolate and pork.

It's been a good start, perhaps far too good, so I dread what is to come...