So, after the first very impressive days we continued our exploration at the ‘Tsologo La Ana’ Kindergarden, located in Mpemba – Blantyre, and the Dalani secondary school in Blantyre – Limbe (together with our friends from the ABC-Gesellschaft). The main intention was to also get an impression of other schools/kindergardens plus to look out for potential future projects.

We’ve had very interesting conversations with the nurses and teachers – also getting some very impressive insight in their traditional dances (Fig 1).

While being at the Limbe village (Dalani secondary school) we’ve also paid a short visit to the primary school close by. Main impression was that, even if there’s still some potential engineering work to be done at the ABC Schools (e.g. in matters of sanitation and water supply) a lot of the state schools are in a quite different situation in matters of school equipment and numbers of students (e.g. 29 teachers for 4000 students at the primary, 17 teachers for 780 students at a ABC secondary school). There’s still a lot to do for education in this country.

Well, don’t want to keep back that there are also weekends in Malawi that we’ve also used for not working but doing some safari and chilling..

So, that was our first week in Malawi – “the warm heart of Africa”.

In our second week we wanted to have some more meetings with suppliers, potential project partners from the Mzuzu University, other NGO’s, embassy, ...

Monday we started off visiting the Chambala school in Chikhosi again to meet Rochelle Holm and Mr. Mawuto, to have some more detailed interviews with the teachers and to take water probes. Don’t want to bore you with the chemical results of the water probes, let’s just say that the first results are close to what we’d expect (better quality at the bore holes than in the wetlands of the river). The interviews again brought many interesting details about the actual needs and expectations of the teachers and village inhabitants that you’d never get without being here.

Tuesday to Thursday we spend talking to further suppliers, the German embassy, GIZ, Engineers without borders Canada and to many administrative and authorities.

Bottom line is that there are already many NGO’s working in Malawi (also in the areas of water supply and sanitation) and that we are glad that many of them support us (esp with their already existing network). The other thing is – again – there’s still so much to do over here as an NGO.

So, we’re almost finished here for now… many information gathered that waits for proper compilation, met many potential partners (actually found out that EWB Canada already has a local office here in Lilongwe), met many new friends… now we’re somewhat tired but happy about what has been achieved.

See you back in Germany next week!
Christian and Sebastian

28.09.2014 18:23, Markus Grafen