Malawi part one

The plan for the two week Malawi visit was to spend the first week focusing on the coffee project and seeing the reality out in the field, and then spend the second week working through some of the programme requirements and project documents. 

So, after a a few meetings in Lilongwe, we set out at 6am on Thursday morning to drive south to Ntcheu and Blantyre. 

Our first stop was just outside Ntcheu, where we had a roadside breakfast / snack and waited to be joined by our partners and one of the volunteers. 

Once they joined us we had a meeting with the Board members of one of the cooperatives, and then travelled to see a coffee farm. 

The meeting was held at a local school,
in beautiful surroundings

This cheeky chappy started posing for a photo
as soon as he saw me taking pictures!

The views were fantastic and getting out into the coffee field was really interesting.

One of the vols

In the coffee nursery

We left the farm and started the drive down to Blantyre stopping twice along the way - once for lunch (nicest food I ate in the whole two weeks) and once to deal with immigration officers. One guy was getting a bit stressed about the fact that my colleague and I were travelling with copies of our passports rather than the originals, and that we didn't have a photocopy of the entry stamp. After ignoring some less than subtle requests for money/bribes we managed to get underway without coughing up any money. Once in Blantyre we had a meeting with another NGO and then retired to our hotel for the night. 

After hours on the road together it seemed everyone was keen for some 'alone time' in the evening. I went for dinner and a cold beer in the hotel where I met a very animated older Malawian guy who was disappointed I only had one night in the city, wanted me to find him an English wife (preferably around the age of 40) and kept trying to get me to go out drinking with him. Knowing that we had an early start I accepted a beer in the hotel and declined the offer to see the nightlife of Blantyre! 

Setting out at 7am that morning I was pleased with my decision. We had a full day on the road. First we drove back to Ntcheu (about a 2 hour drive) and then drove off-road for about 45 minutes to go and see one of the more distant cooperatives. We had been 'umming and ahhing' about whether to go as we knew that after this visit we had a much further group to drive to, but I am really glad we did. They sang us into and out of the field, seemed really happy to see us, and were a really nice group. 

Singing and dancing

From red cherry to 'parchment' -
a step before green bean.

We then drove back to the main road (another 45 minute bone-rattling journey back the way we came) and started making our way to the furthest cooperative - 100km away on an un-made road. It took us 3 hours to drive there and 3 hours to drive back, but the views were spectacular and my colleague and I were apparently the first white people to go to the village (I'm guessing for some time rather than ever!) so we had some great reactions from kids (and adults). 

At one point I felt like the pied piper

By the time we got back to the main road it was around 9pm but we decided to push on and drive the 1.5 hours back to Lilongwe. I reached home just before 11pm thoroughly exhausted after so much time on the road, but glad we had made the trip. 

* You might notice I didn't mention lunch / food breaks. Four out of five of us had stomach issues from something we'd eaten the day before (the chips maybe? See the first photo!) and we seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to try eating anything while we had so much driving to do!