Sorry my blogs may sound a bit same-me as most activities are very much the same as I have already covered in previous blogs.
Work as mentioned in last blog has now picked up and fully occupied each day.
I normally start at about 7.45, hardly anybody in the Ministry, by 9 it has filled up.
Lunch now days is a sandwich as there was a canteen for all the ministries but this closed down without notice 3 months ago.
Some days we will go out, but on our total allowance of about £4 a day and with the cheapest meals costing about £2 we cannot afford to eat out much.
So we try to go the the outside canteen area and sit there to eat what we have brought in. We take about 30 mins.
Then we normally leave around 16:00 with most of the other workers.
So the working day compared to what were used in the UK is quite short.
We have now started working in 3 Pilots sites so two mornings a week I work at Lilongwe Hospital so it's nice to be out at a different location.
The people are far more friendly there, but their work ethic and accountability is totally bewilderingly bad.
Biggest problem for us is that there HR department had only one working computer when we got there , now two. but only one mouse.
However they have no internet in there building so we have had to provide a dongle as the database in Internet based. Speed on the dongle is snail pace.
So big challenges.
I just had a 2 week holiday and went to Ethiopia trekking. I joined up with the UK Adventure/Trekking firm 'Explore' in Addis.
From Addis we flew north to Gondor where we saw a few ruins before driving 2 hours further north to the foothills of the Simian Mountain Range.
This is a huge Mountain range that covers most of North Ethiopia we started at about 2000m high raising to 4500m.
After being dropped off we had 11 days trekking trough the valleys and on to the top of many escarpments where you had over 1500m shear drops spectacular views, very difficult to capture the size of this landscape but hopefully you will get an idea from the pictures. Half way though we trekked and scrambled the last part to the top of the highest peak at 4500m a 12 hour long hard day.
What surprised me was that at over 3500m there was a lot of Cereal crops Wheat/Barley and two other plus loads of cows, sheep and a few goats eating the meadow grass.
Most countries over 3000m its just glacial rocks.
There were a few villages about or really hamlets of people there were no shops.
Construction of their houses were spliced wood on a frame with mixture of mud and straw to fill the gaps. However surprisingly for there roofing they had corrugated tin.
Inside they would live with their animals and have stilts with straw bedding for them to sleep on. Very dirty smelly and dark.
We did get invited into a couple, one for coffee.
Coffee is a main export and a local pride.
She washed the beans and then roasted them on a metal plate over a wood fire. The beans were then bashed up in a pastel to give powder.
This was put in a pot with water and then poured, extra water can be added twice more so that you get three cups.
The first was very strong and not nice. by the third just about drinkable.
She was very proud of entertaining us so had to act that it was very nice.
Unfortunately for the adults and kids it is a very poor part of the country and most of the clothes they wore were literally rags and very dirty, in-fact if they washed them I would expect they may have fallen apart. This is very different to Malawi where the clothes are well worn but always clean. Women are always washing everywhere. I did not see a single Ethiopian woman washing!
The kids were very thin and always asked for food or a tee shirt. A bit surprising that they were hungry as you could see so much food about but obviously don't have enough to go around for the full year.
The trekking was tough, long walks each day 8 hours or more covering at least 1000m ascents and same decants each day, in the full sun and most of the time above 3000m. So with the decrease in the level of oxygen in the air you had to walk slower.
We were camping but had a mule train of about 9 mules to carry our packs, tents and cooking equipement. Also had a Cook and two assistants who would do the cooking and set up camp. We were always amazed by the meals we got each day, we had not been expecting much. But his meals were better than the ones we got in the hotels we had stayed in.
We had a spare mule that followed us for anybody who was tired or ill. This was well used, always somebody would go down with a problem. Heat stoke/Altitude Sickness/Stomach complaint being in the middle of the mountains there were no roads no mobile signal or any other communications so the only way forward was on a mule.
Because the terrain was very steep I could see it was no fun on the mule when doing the tricky parts. Fortunately I did not experience this.
During the day we just had the sun blaring down on us so the temperature would be in the low 20's. But as soon as the sun went it would drop to zero.
So we would eat about 18:30 with as many cloths on as possible. Then we would al be in bed by 20:00, snuggled up in our sleeping bags to get warm.
Loads of big birds about Eagles/Hawks also loads of gaboons sometimes these can be intimidating but these ones were very friendly as in that they ignored you and let you walk within a metre and not be bothered. The babies were always playing and rolling about. One was a showman kept climbing onto a rock about a metre high and do multiple backward summersaults, always crash landing.
Had a good time and as always with Explore a good crowd of people.
Now back to work and hopefully we can start rolling the database out to all the other Hospital soon.
I doubt if I will write another blog before Christmas so wishing you a good time.
