Work and Blantyre

It's been a busy few weeks, I was on placement last Monday-Thursday, working hard on the female ward. One day I was invited to join my mentor, Shyreen, for a tea-break (the only one i've had), when she offered me tea I said yes, and was really looking forward to it, although it turned out she had forgotten the tea so we had sugary hot water, with sweet potatoes as that if often eaten for breakfast, it was slightly strange but good.  The weather was dreadful all week with heavy rains and cold temperatures. It didn't help my mood to hear it was 29 degrees in Glasgow, but now we have blue skies again I don't care. The usual golf club dinner on Thursday was cancelled due to the weather, but luckily we always have something to rustle up in the house (that night we had home made chips and a fried egg). On Friday we walked to Chitakali again but went a different route, we thought it would be quicker (it was by an hour) but we ended up following this girl to her house, as the path turned out to be a dead end, so we were basically standing in someones back garden, when we said where we were headed, the bunch of children who had gathered and this woman all burst out laughing. This man (with a big machete) came to our rescue and told us to follow him, which we did. He lead us to a different path and we carried on our way. We ended up passing lots of houses and endless fields of tea. We then came to a bridge, where two boys were squaring up to a monkey, which was holding it's ground. After crossing we thought we should turn right, we came to a fork in the path and obviously looked rather confused as this man stopped and asked if we were lost, we were. After turning around and heading left we eventually came to the road leading to Chitakali, from the opposite side we were expecting. After having a nice cold beer, we looked around the market, where we bought some nice material to take to the tailors. Friday night was pizza with everyone which was nice (especially as we were not required to cook).

On Saturday we decided to head to the city of Blantyre, we hopped on a bike taxi (my new favourite mode of transport) to take us to the road for a minibus. Minibuses here are a very different experience (more on that later). After arriving at Blantyre (takes about 40-60minutes by car, it took us approx. 120mins), we walked to this lovely hotel, Chez Maky, which I would recommend to anyone staying in Blantyre, although there are massive spiders everywhere. After dumping our stuff, we grabbed some chicken burgers and then headed out to the market. I have been desperately searching for a camera cable so wanted to have a good nosy around the stalls, one gentleman decided to help and took us through a maze of buildings and stalls to try find one, but unfortunately the only one that fit was to connect it to a TV not a computer, so the search continues. After browsing we decided to have a beer before dinner so checked out a local bar, it was very nice and we were soon joined by two locals for a chat. We then headed to Bombay Palace for the best Indian meal I have ever eaten. We have been in bed (and asleep) before 9 most nights, in Blantyre we managed to stay up til 9.30. The next morning I had a hot shower, it was such luxury. I don't think I will ever forget how good that shower was. We are lucky to have a shower in our house but at best it is luke warm. The rest of the day was spent reading by the pool, enjoying the sunshine.

We then crammed with 20 other adults, 1 child, 2 chickens and piles of luggage into a 15-seater minibus, which had all its dashboard lights on (check engine, check oil etc) and near empty gas tank, to make up for this the driver will turn the engine off while going down hill. After a 3 hour journey we were home