The oldest standing building in Malawi....

First of all, I suppose well-done to England for progressing to the knock-out stages of the World Cup.  Overall I thought the performance was much better than in the first two games, although Rooney continues to look well below par, and it would have been nice for the best parts of the performance to have been carried on for a bit more of the game.

We watched the match at Club Mustang Sally, having worked through lunchtime so that we could nip off a bit early to see the game.

This morning, I went to Mandala House, home of the Society of Malawi.  I'd got in touch with them before I left home, and wanted to learn more about what they do, and decide if I should join.  I firstly met with Seth - an American who has been in Malawi since around 2000, when his parents moved here to do missionary work - they are located near Lake Malawi.  Seth moved to Blantyre a little time ago, and is doing various IT-related projects, including some for the Society (e.g. he has digitised the Society's photo library that includes thousands of images from the 1820s onwards).  We talked about various ways in which the catalogue could potentially be exploited at a relatively low cost, and it will be interesting to see if anything becomes of the suggestions I made.

I then went up to the first floor of Mandala House to meet Dora Wimbush, the Honorary Librarian.  Dora is clearly a  passionate supporter of everything Malawian, and eloquently talked me into joining up.  The Society occupies the entire first floor of the building, which is the oldest in Malawi.  On the ground floor there's a cafe and a arts & crafts gallery.  Upstairs is the Society's office, library, records archive, and meeting room.  It's a pretty and  atmospheric environment.  I've taken a few pics of the building, which you can see on this Flickr slideshow.  By the way, the French Tricouleur is flying because the building is now owned by a French organisation.

Finally I wanted to mention that this morning I was introduced to Abraham's wife.  I've mentioned Abraham before - he is the lovely man who cleans and cooks for us, and is being very patient whilst teaching me to speak a little Chichewa, and I asked him if he'd mind if I took his photo.  He was more than happy for this (I reckon that secretly he yearns for the spotlight), so here he is in all his glory.

World Cup Day 1

... and we're hosting people from the office for a bbq which was to mark Rick's leaving next week after 4 months on the project, and also (this was a surprise) a welcome to Blantyre for me.  This is a team picture taken on our verandah - all a bit indistinct I'm afraid, but a larger version is available on my Flickr page.

The morning was taken up with a weekly team meeting with the apprentice consultants where we review any issues that may have arisen over the week, and also get any feedback from them on how things are going.

After that I had a financial review meeting looking at the financial analysis that has been done on the project I'm taking over from Rick.  I then got my mobile phone to use whilst in Malawi, and my laptop was finally connected to the shared drive so that I can now access all the project files and the teaching materials for the apprentices' training programme.  Peter Moar, our Programme Manager also arrived back from the UK today, so I've been able to catch up with him this afternoon.

It was then back to the house and set up for the barbecue - chicken, sausages, salads - and there was then a presentation for Rick followed by cake.  In fact there were two cakes - one for Rick's departure and one for my arrival.  They were home cooked and very good indeed.  The barbecue ended at around 3.30 and we then went into town to a bar in the KPMG office building to watch the South Africa v Mexico game.  Great atmosphere in the bar, but a bit weird because they had two TVs tuned into different broadcasts of the match, and there was about a 5 second difference between them - so there was a big shout when SA scored from the people looking at one screen, and the goal went in shortly afterwards on the TV we were watching.  I also met several ex pats that Rick and Sharife have made friends with over the past few months, and many of them are coming to the house for tomorrow's England v US match.

I decided not to stay in town to see the second game tonight, so I'm back here doing this blog and a little bit of work.

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.