some oatmeal and coffee (the french press was the best idea I've had
in a long time and the Starbucks coffee is coveted by all of the
azungus who've been in Malawi for a while), and have been sitting on
the "veranda" outside my room for the past two hours. It's sunny,
slightly breezy, and just a nice Sunday morning.
(I'm not mentioning the swarms of flies that won't go away--
seriously, I have about 5 on me right now--or that the stray dog we
call Stinker just got sick on the grass just up-wind from where we're
sitting).
Last night was a big party to celebrate the last night of fieldwork
in Mchinji. There lots of preparations (like 32 crates of beer and
sodas, 4kg of meat), including extensive time spent making the
playlist. But, commonly, when the time came for the party I wasn't
so into it. I went and had a few Cokes, chatted with one of the
azungus who's having a hard time being a little aimless here too, and
then went with Kim (who was here last summer and has been working in
Malawi all year) out to the railroad tracks behind the inn to
stargaze and chat. The music got better (at least for the
Malawians), but I was in for the night when I came back from the
tracks. I came late enough into this phase of fieldwork that I
didn't know any of the local staff, so it was just as well.
I ran into one guy who worked on my project last summer--he's a
supervisor for this project, too. He's a really nice guy; we emailed
back and forth a little over the last year, I sent him a bunch of
material for qualitative research and project management (similar to
logic models, for those SHDHs) via the Principal Investigator. It
was nice to see him, even briefly (they all left for the site in the
north this morning). He mentioned that C's been in country this
week, but I guess we didn't connect up. Oh well.
I'm feeling increasingly better about the work here. I feel like I
have a scope of work, which really helps. It consists essentially of
two things:
1. building the program into which all of the data will be entered--
they export it to India, which I find sort of ironic--and
2. working on a village level survey, including coordinating the
piece that involves getting GPS data and looking at the presence and
quality of the major community structures like roads, churches, etc.)
I think the work will be sort of interesting, and could potentially
be quite useful down the line. It'll also get me into the field,
which is good.
I like one of the main people I'll be working with, and I like that
I'm going to be in Mchinji for another few weeks. I also like that I
have some ownership over something--I grabbed onto one of the last
few things that was in development that I could help start, because
otherwise I knew I was going to get the short end of the work stick.
The main survey team will go to the new sites first and then we
follow once they're done. I'll probably get to see all of the sites,
which is good.
There's already a trip coming together to the lake in a few weeks.
And Emily's coming down from Rwanda in August, which will also be
awesome. I don't think I'm going to get out of Malawi this year, but
I hope to see a little more than I did last year.
It's nearly lunchtime. I'm off to eat.
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