Fri 12th December 2014 - Jonathan Groves writes: After a busy weekend of preparation and then four days of Learn2Serve training, it was great to have a little personal space on Friday morning. I still had plenty to prepare for the final few days of my visit, but to have a morning without imminent deadlines was pleasant! last night, the power was on (unlike some of Wed evening), but alas no water. People in Malawi are used to this, and it goes un-remarked. There are always buckets to see people through all bar the longest cuts. In the afternoon, Connex and I went into Blantyre to change money and do some shopping - I had somehow got through the first a week without getting any Malawi kwacha. We then went hunting for office furniture for his room in the new J-Life office that is being furnished. After failing to find anything suitable at the one secondhand office furniture dealer in Blantyre, and found a chair on a special promotion that brought the price back to about the same as that in the UK. In Malawi, house rents are perhaps about ten times lower than those in Aberdeen, petrol costs are comparable, and office desks and chairs seem to cost up to twice you would pay at Office World in the UK. It seems amazing that a simple desk and chair might cost 3 months house rent! In the evening, we had fun doing self-assembly using the Chinese-English instructions provided. Some things are the same the world over...
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 01:43:48 +0000