On Monday, Sept-15th we arrived in Lilongwe after a quite long journey. After standard passport controls and fever/ebola checks a dusty taxi drive brought us to our first accommodation – the Mabuya Camp. It’s rather simple and cheap, but it has everything a traveler needs (beds, shower, mosquito nets, WiFi and lots of other travellers). After settling down (+ taking the desperately needed shower) we met Mrs. Classen and Mr. Kuhn for dinner to discuss our plans for the next days.

On Tuesday we took our first trip to the primary and secondary school in the village of Chikhosi, having Patrick Zakunja as our local guide and translator (he’s been working with the ABC Gesellschaft for several years now). It’s been a two hour ride on the M1 road, passing lots trading centres and also single farmers selling their agricultural products (tomatoes, cabbage, mice and bats) or the brick stones they’ve produced.

After some additional 10 minutes on a small dusty lane we reached the village and the adjacent schools with happily shouting and waving children awaiting us. We got introduced by Mr. Kuhn to the chiefs and to the teachers, then got some first impressions of the school, the living

So first we had a look at the pump that’s already installed (but only providing some 1-5 buckets of water per day). It appears it’s being built at the highest and driest point around (but very close to the schools though).

At the teacher houses some people were doing some last works on the teacher houses and also the kitchens and the toilet houses (1x1 meter, a hole in the ground and 4 walls around). The roofs, made of corrugated iron are slighty damaged: “We had strong winds this summer. We need to do maintainance” (headteacher).

Back at the school, Mr. Kuhn passes some sweets to the classes of the primary school. They sit on the floor. Everyone stands up as soon as we enter the room. "At the moment, we have 78 students in this room, sometimes up to 100. The numbers are growing.” (class teacher).The rooms were built to teach 25 to 30 children.

Then – with a large group of teachers, chiefs and people from the village we headed to the river close by. Well, at the end of the dry season it’s more like some small lakes than an actual river.

Nevertheless there’s still water being carried from the river to the village (it’s the women carrying the water) until it’s completely dry (around October, “…maybe even earlier…”).

We’ve taken lots of notes, pictures and of course GPS positions of all these places. Most important note from these first impressions is that there are already a lot of ideas and also a lot of expectations by the chiefs for our first Malawi project (e.g. for the water supply they’ve suggested to build a small dam “… like those they do in the Netherlands…”). Seems like there’ll be some further discussions on what’s possible, what’s really needed and what’s most practicable (esp in matters of maintenance!).

circumstances in the village and the surroundings.