My First Trip to Malawi

{ November 12th, 2008 }

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Last week I had the great opportunity to visit the Water For People—Malawi program. As Regional Manager for Africa, part of my job is to support the country program in its work. Up until this point, I have supported the Country Coordinator, Kate, and her staff from afar. Our schedules hadn’t lined up—when my time was open, she had conferences or was hosting visitors; when her time was open, I had meetings in Uganda or was in Rwanda. Finally, we were able to agree on a week that worked for both of us, and I was off.

I had never been to Malawi, and I really didn’t know what to expect.

The first thing I learned is that there is no straight shot from Entebbe, Uganda to Blantyre, Malawi, though both are international airports. There were essentially three flight option. The first was all on South African Airways. However, the flight from Entebbe to Johannesburg just missed the connection to Blantyre, and so would require an overnight in Johannesburg. The second was a flight to Johannesburg with transfer to Air Malawi, and the third was Kenya Airways to Nairobi, then to Lilongwe, Malawi, then Air Malawi to Blantyre. I can’t remember why I didn’t go with the Joburg-Blantyre option, but I ended up with the Kenya Airways flight.

The flight to Nairobi left at 5 am, which required that I arrive to the airport at 3 am, and leave the house at 2 am. Early morning and long layovers aside, the flights were smooth and uneventful, although there was an unexpected stop in Lusaka, Zambia for people to get on and off the plane. I should say that the stop was unexpected to me—nowhere in my itinerary did it mention another stop—but it was a scheduled stop. A mere 16 hours after leaving my door, I arrived in Blantyre.

The view from the doorstep of the Lilongwe airport where I had a really long layover on the way to Blantyre. I love the colors of the flame trees, the jacaranda trees, and the bougainvillea.

Needless to say, I was sort of a zombie when I arrived. But that changed when I saw Kate waving madly at me from the observation deck as I made my way from the plane to the airport. It was really wonderful to see her smiling face. I retrieved my bag, and found Kate just outside the baggage area. She gave me a big hug, and quickly escorted me to the car. It was a wonderful welcome, and it was much appreciated. Kate was doing well. One of her sons was just getting over the chicken pox, but otherwise her family was well.

Blantyre is the largest city in Malawi and is the business center of the country, though it’s not the capital. The city has a population of approximately 732,000, which is about double what it was 20 years ago. Although I’m sure that the rapid growth of the city makes the city feel very large to people who have been there for many years, coming from Kampala—with its more than 2 million people—I couldn’t help feeling like the city was small and very manageable by comparison. I actually spent very little time in Blantyre itself while I was in Malawi this time, and so I can’t speak too much about it, except to say that it felt very comfortable, and is a city I would like to spend more time in.

View from the hotel patio over a part of the city. This view doesn’t show it to be very densely populated, but it does show some of the steep–but beautiful–terrain.

One of the most interesting things about the city, I thought, is that a good chunk of the population lives in very densely populated neighborhoods. As we drove from the airport, Kate pointed out hills that were packed with small houses. She pointed out that the terrain was very steep and the spaces between houses were very small. We discussed the sanitation challenges that result from such terrain: Pit latrines eventually fill and need to be moved, but in when space is so limited, moving them is hard. Furthermore, desludging latrines in such conditions is difficult because you can’t get a desludger between the houses and up the hills. This area, Kate pointed out, is an area that Water For People hopes to work in soon. We’ve been thinking about ways to address some of these challenges, and it will be great if we can make it work.

Kate dropped me off at the hotel, but before she left, she introduced me to the World Water Corps team that had been working for the week prior on monitoring Water For People—Malawi’s work. The purpose of monitoring is to assess what is working and what is not working in our programs. Volunteers conduct interviews with beneficiaries, partners, and other stakeholders to determine how well the project has been sustained since it was completed.

The team was made up of six volunteers ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-60s or so, engineers, doctors, mapping specialists, and people generally interested in Water For People’s work. They had worked for the past week within Blantyre and in Chikwawa, Southern Malawi. The next, four members of the team would stay and continue to work on interviewing people who had received water and latrines as part of Water For People’s work in the south, and two of the volunteers, Kate, and me would head north to monitor the work that had been done there.

I ate dinner with the team, but by then my sleepless night the night before and the prospect of taking off at 7 am the following day put me to bed shortly thereafter.

The drive up north took about 11 hours when all was said and done. We passed through several different landscapes. Part of the drive was along the Mozambique border. Growing up in Tucson, with the Mexico border a 90-minute drive away, I was familiar with borders that are fenced and heavily locked down. I know lines at the border where passports are checked and cars inspected. The border between Malawi and Mozambique had none of that. The landscape to the left of the car looked identical to the landscape to the right, but to the left was Mozambique and to the right, Malawi. Kate told me that trade between the two countries in this area is easy. Sometimes it is done in Malawi Kwacha, other times (though less so these days because the Malawi government is cracking down) in Mozambique Meticas. People on the left side of the road learned Portuguese in school, but often they sent their children to the Malawi schools which were closer, and so their children learned English. It was fascinating.

An amazing outcropping of rock, which resembles the area where I was working Northern Mozambique

After another good night’s rest in a very hot guest house room, we awoke to monkeys eating mangoes from the tree outside along Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi makes up one third the area of Malawi itself. We visited half a dozen or so schools along the lake to assess how the sanitation program has been working there.

A view of Lake Malawi from the road. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera when I saw monkeys eating mangoes…but really, who’s surprised?

Schools have been building arbor loos, which are shallow pits covered by a relatively small cement slab (about 80 cm in diameter). The pits are shallow so that they can be filled quickly, then a tree is planted in the full pit. Students designed where the latrines should go, and as a result where their new tree grove would be. The most amazing thing about these school latrines, was that there was no smell. Even well-kept pit latrines often have an odor, but these latrines, despite some of them being quite full and nearly ready for tree-planting, didn’t have an odor at all. The reason? Kate explained that like with other composting latrines, after using the latrine, students were placing three handfuls of sand and one of ash to neutralize the contents. It was the ash that was keeping the smell down. It was very impressive.

A student demonstrates how he places three handfuls of sand and one of ash into the latrine after using it to make better compost, keep the flies away, and keep the smell down. It works!

That afternoon we drove up the plateau to Livingstonia, a mission that was created in the late 1800s. We spoke with a water committee that has been working to implement at gravity-fed, piped water system, that when complete, will serve 22,000 people. The water committee and the engineer showed us their plans and talked about where they were with the project. We talked a lot about management, and the importance of getting management systems in place before the water itself was available. A system that large will hold its own complexity and so it’s important for water users to understand what will be expected of them—what their regular monetary contribution will be, who will fix the system when it breaks, etc. The monitoring team interviewed members of the committee as well as members of the university that are now getting water from the new system.

The next morning, we set off at 6:30 on a hike to the source that was feeding this massive system. We hiked through people’s farms and into the forest. Much of our hike was covered in a canopy of fig trees and other vegetation, but every now and again the view would open up to a beautiful valley. After about an hour, we reached the source. The engineer explained that the water was flowing into a capture box that would regulate the pressure coming into the system. The capture at the source is nearly complete, only awaiting cranks to open and close the system. From there, they would continue to expand the system.

We passed this homestead on our hike to the spring source. This family is growing coffee. I brought home some Mzuzu coffee, and it’s delicious! Some of you may find it in your Christmas stockings if you’re very good.

We had another full day seeing schools and interviewing students, then it was back down south. On the way back, rather than driving along the Mozambique border, we drove along Lake Malawi, stopping along the way to buy rice, mangoes, and other goodies that are local to various parts of the country north of Blantyre.

One of the Water Corps volunteers interviews a student about the important times to wash his hands: Before and after eating, before preparing food, after changing a baby’s diaper, and after using the latrine. He got them all right!

Friday and Saturday I spent more time in the field. I visited a number of community homes that had begun their own composting latrines. We talked about what they liked and what they didn’t like about the toilets they chose to build, why they chose to build them, how much it cost, and what their plans were for when they were full.

This woman has constructed a beautiful arbor loo for her home. The designs were all painted in different muds. Sadly, the structure will have to be destroyed when the pit is full and she plants a tree. We’re working on ensuring that everyone understands the concept of the arbor loo. The wonderful thing here, is that the woman and her family appear to really like their latrine, which helps in usages.

Finally, Sunday morning came, and I was out the door of the hotel room at 5 am to catch my flight home. Another long and indirect flight pattern later, I was back home around 9 pm, where Jon had dinner waiting for me.

Written by Sarah in NGO, Travel, water for people, work ~ Trackback