World AIDS Day

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I am wearing a red ribbon made by my roommate today!

I am working hard

Well half way into my placement, I can finally (I hope, touch wood…) say that my work is going better. So far, my main job is to establish something called “National Gender and Education Steering Committee.” This process was started last year, but after the former gender coordinator resigned, it was inactive for more than a year. This is a committee initiated by the ministry, and the membership includes all min. ed departments, governmental educational institutions and other civil society orgs in the education sector. In total about 32 organizations. I am trying to coordinate and facilitate this committee in order to ensure gender mainstreaming in the education sector. We’ve had three meetings, and we have adopted TORs, finalized the structure, elected executive positions and came up with annual action plans.

This work has kept me quite busy these days, running around in the city, contacting people, preparing documents, writing proposals& reports, planning meetings etc. I have to say I am kind of enjoying myself.

The photo is taken in my office.

Muli bwanji?

The whole last week, I was in Salima (Sanga Bay more precisely) attending a cultural and language training, which was organized by my country office of the sending NGO.

We learned about the geography, history, some political issues and culture. What interested me the most was about different tribes in Malawi and their customs. Particularly, their marriage systems and some of traditions have significant impact on the gender relations, which is relevant in my work. Refreshed my memories from Anthropology classes.

The language (Chichewa) training was interesting. I love learning languages, but I felt my brain was totally melting down especially on the first day. It is not an easy language to learn, not to mention just having three days of training. However, it is always interesting to see some similarities of grammars, rules as well as its own uniqueness of the language. I adapted a new Chichewa name, Mwayi. It means fortunate, and I am hoping that this name will bring me some good luck. ;)

I feel now that I learned a bit of Chichewa, my little Spanish was completely wiped out… After all, I have only so much capacity in my brain.

The hotel where we stayed was along a beach (of Lake Malawi.) I went for a walk or short jog in a morning, and I swam a couple of times. It was nice to get away from Lilongwe for a while.

Fun Weekend!

I have been quite busy these days with my work and haven’t had a chance to update this blog. I will write about the progress of my work some other time.

Last weekend, it was the first time when I got out of Lilongwe for non work-related stuff.

Recently, I got acquainted with some JICA (equivalent of CIDA in Japan) experts and volunteers. They organized a trip to a village in Deza district.

They have a famous pottery place in the area, so first we went there to have lunch (they have excellent dessert!) Afterwards, one village was organizing traditional dance.











On Sunday, my housemates and I had a belated Thanks Giving Dinner. We couldn’t find a whole chicken, so we substituted with chicken breast. We had wine, Malawian coffee liquor and Baileys!