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...

Beginnings...

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.