Got to get the shopping done

Basket Stalls in the Market

This weekend I decided I had to finally sort out what I'm going to be taking home for people, so I wandered out of the house in the morning, prepared to put in a great deal of foot-slogging around Blantyre.

I first went for a mooch about Blantyre Market, which is quite big, and contains all manner of stalls selling everything from 1970s English school textbooks through to second-hand clothes and shoes, to furniture and food.

It's bustling, quite dirty in some areas, but great fun at the same time.

The "Photographer"!

I didn't buy anything, but the highlight for me was one young guy who let me take his picture, and then offered to use my camera to take a picture of me. Thankfully I saw that one coming, and politely declined (otherwise I had a totally unjustified vision that he'd have been off with it faster than Linford Christie).

Then on to Mandala House where there's a crafts and gifts shop called La Galleria. I picked up a few little items here, before pausing for a coffee at La Caverna, a lovely cafe with seating on the verandah of the house overlooking the gardens.

La Galleria, Mandala Houe

Refreshed, I headed back into town, and roamed about, popping into various shops. There's another little Africana shop opposite the Metro supermarket, and I went in there to buy a few bangles. I asked the owner, a very nice young Malawi lady, if she knew where I could buy some Malawi music CDs, and she gave me the email address of a friend who is a musician (I've emailed him and am now waiting to hear back from him when and where I can meet him. She also pointed me towards an electronics shop across the road from the Mount Soche Hotel, and I next went there and bought 4 CDs for 3050 Kwacha (that's about £10) - and they're all good stuff.

By this time, it was the middle of the afternoon, and I'd been on my feet all day, and had developed a large blister on my right foot, so I hobbled back towards the house, and to pause at the Alem Ethiopian restaurant on Victoria Avenue for a quick bite to eat.  I had Zigin Wot (a very spicy beef dish served with injera - a yeast-risen flat bread made of teff flour, with a slightly spongy texture that is the staple bread of Ethiopia).

Then back to the house for a bit of work and a lie down.

It's still the weather.....

Last night it got cold.

And this Friday morning it still is.  Grey and damp, I gave up the battle and wore my fleece into work.  The internet is now sorted, but alas the water isn't.  So it's crossed legs until lunchtime.

We try to have no client meetings on Fridays so that the focus moves to training for the apprentices.  The consultants also have a review and team meeting with the apprentices to review the past week and flag up any issues going forward.  Of course, with Rick having left, and Sharife on the plane heading for Jo'burg, it was just me.  They'd asked for some help with getting to grips with what marketing is all about, so I decided to have an interactive session to start with so that I could answer any specific questions they had and then I'd be able to plan out what I could do over the next couple of months.  It seemed to go quite well, and so I'll try to do 30 mins each Friday to build up their knowledge and expertise.

One thing I did do was develop a spreadsheet to log useful online resources for each of the core and non-core CMI training modules (plus marketing) which can be developed over time to provide a helpful directory of websites and online reference materials.  The apprentices really liked the idea.

The office closes at lunchtime on Fridays (it's something that NGOs tend to do here, but drives Peter mad because it means we aren't formally working the hours we are contracted to do - despite the work we do back at the house in the evenings!).  So apparently there's a new policy whereby the UK consultants will be working Friday afternoons in the office, but it will be focusing on developing new training modules, etc.

We needed to get some shopping in for the house, so we went to the Chichiri shopping mall (well, the shopping mall in Blantyre) to buy stuff and have a bite to eat.  We ended up in a curry house - I had a very nice chicken aloo with a naan, Then to the Shoprite supermarket for the shopping - I indulged myself with a bar of Dairy Milk and some fruit for my room.

We we due to have a Skype call with Edinburgh at 4pm but the call never came, so we emailed to say we were going home and they could contact us there later if they wanted (this is to do with a large project that might be coming up).  So then back to the house, and get online.  The Skype call eventually took place at around 7.30pm.

The plan was to go to a local bar to watch the England game.  This bar (Mustang Sally's) is an amazing place.  It's owned by a guy from Manchester who's been out here for years.  He bears more than a passing resemblance to Roy Orbison - when we got there he was sitting at the side of the bar dressed completed in black, wearing sunglasses.  The place is designed like some sort of tropical island, with bamboo lining the path from the car park, and there's an upstairs area where they have discos, but there is also a large kidney-shaped swimming pool in the middle of the floor!  I'll get pictures later on.  In the meantime the match was rubbish, but we met up with some of the expats who'd come round to the house a few days ago, and so had a good chat with them, before hitting the road around midnight.

Well - today I had to go to work!

This was my first day at work.  We left the house at around 07.45 to drive to the office.  I was immediately plunged in to a whirlwind of introductions to the Business Consult Africa team, as well as the other guys in the office (such as the apprentice consultants, Henry the owner of BCA, and many many others), before I attended a 3 hour progress review meeting with the client on a project I'll be taking over from Rick who is leaving for the UK next week.  It's a really interesting project, but there's a lot to get my teeth into.

We went for lunch at a local shopping mall where I had the highly-recommended chicken kebab - it came with rice and chips and a few token veg, but was huge, so I couldn't eat it all.  Rick, Sharife and I then went to the supermarket to stock up on beverages for the World Cup weekend ahead.  Then it was back to the office for a meeting with a prospective client to outline the scope of the project and to provide him with the information necessary to allow him to commit or otherwise.  Again, this might turn out to be another project that I'll be taking on, so we'll wait to hear back in a week or so.  Tomorrow I'll get my phone, and access to the shared drive so I'll be able to go through the templates and documentation.

I'll be having a more extensive handover with Rick over the weekend (in between football matches), and we picked up a load of flesh for a BBQ to hail the World Cup that starts tomorrow.  There'll be around 16 people here for that.

But first there's a team meeting in the office at 8am in the morning, so no rest for the wicked.

I'll try and grab some pictures of the office tomorrow and will post them as soon as I can.

It's Getting Real...

Yesterday I headed off to the Travel Clinic at my GP's surgery to embark on my programme of vaccinations.  Not being a huge fan of needles, having four stabs was a little unnerving, but nurse Tina was gentleness personified (thanks Tina), and I've had no discomfort at all. Back next week for stage 2!

I've also just loaded up the credit card online with various items which will hopefully allow me to (a) repel insects; (b) deal with being bitten by insects; (c) handle minor surgical procedures; and (d) recover from any erm.... gastric upsets!