Last Post Until we get back to Mzuzu

March 8, 2008

Tomorrow we’ll head back to Livingstonia, and it has felt like such a treat to have internet access for all these days.  It has also been a spirit lifter to find such a nice hotel.  I feel like I could do testimonials for the hotels in the US that advertise about how much more work you’ll be able to get done if you stay at their hotel.  I certainly do have more energy staying at this place than I have the others in Mzuzu, and I wouldn’t have believed how much difference the hotel you are staying in could make.  Funny after all those years of travel that I wouldn’t notice, but then most bad hotels I’ve stayed at in the US aren’t that bad – with the possible exception of a Holiday Inn in South Dakota that had water running down the wall, and a Ramada in Newark that really smelled disgusting.   Still a lot better than the one here in Mzuzu that I kept seeing rats in, or that had half the tiles in the shower peeled off and a hundred mosquitos flying around – and me recently with Malaria.

I’m thinking it’s time for a “humor blog”.  We have so much fun here and find so many things to laugh about.  The Malawians have a great sense of humor and love to laugh too.  Because English is a second language for them, there are some sounds that are very difficult for them to make, and it creates some words that give us a real kick.   I hope the Malawian’s find as many things about us that are funny – I’m sure they do.

Malawians have a lot of trouble pronouncing “R”, and they use “L” and “R” pretty much interchangeably.  The carpenter we have worked with stopped over one day and had some drawings he’d made for a laundry area at another house and the drawing was labeled “raundry”… the Malawian President’s last name is Mutharica, and when I hear anyone say his name it always sounds like they are saying Mettallica (an old heavy metal band for president?) … walking through town the stores have signs painted on the outside that list of the kind of goods they carry and in the space of a block there was a place that sold “door and window flames”  and another that sold “hair crippers” … the windows have “buggler bars” to prevent theft and they use “burbled wire” for fencing. John’s friend Justin talks about the “bosco’s” that were sent for transportation, avoiding the use of the “L” in bicycles altogether – and making me think about the Bosco chocolate powder I always wanted as a kid.  And you want to be very careful and keep a straight face when you are having a political conversation and they start talking about the about the “elections”(I’ll let you figure out how that gets pronounced) in the US right now.

Lots of people have a speech pattern where they are describing something and then stop for a rhetorical “what?” and then answer that question them selves.  Since they also often also add the vowel “I” to the ends of their words it sometimes becomes “whati” and becomes pretty funny when it is interspersed into the conversation.  “As you work on whati(?), the strategic plan, you will be able to help us whati(?), develop a budget, so we can whati(?), grow.” Is a bad example of what it might sound like.

My favorite one lately was the Principle at the College of Nursing talking about a time when he was supervising a construction project, saw that the brick wall was crooked, talked to the contractor about the quality of the bricks, the amount of sand they were putting in the mortar and the quality of workmanship and said “did you think I was born in the city!?” – so opposite of what you would hear in the US where people worry about being seen as some hick from the country that people can pull something over on.  Here the wisdom is in the country – rather than our pejorative “did you think I just fell off the turnip truck?”

Just to be sure that I don’t make the Malawians sound like objects of ridicule, let me say how incredibly bright so many of the people are that we work with.  The principles of a couple of the colleges that we work with could do well in leadership jobs in any organization I have worked with in the US.  The principle of the College of Nursing is a great example, and John is trying to set up a collaboration with the Dean of the Nursing College at the U of M, and we have  said how much they are going to enjoy working together because they are both such dynamic leaders. 

The College of Nursing is the first college to ask us to attend, and help facilitate a 3 – 4 day strategic planning workshop with their staff and department heads which was quite thrilling for us.  Their strategic plan from 5 years ago was one of the best, and the Principle has gone through that one in detail with us, looking at each part of the plan and saying what their results were against the plan, and what more they are hoping to do.  He really understands the importance of doing a plan, of having his whole staff develop and have ownership of the plan, of implementing the plan and using it as a guide for prioritizing activities and use of scarce resources and of measuring results.

I’ve seen plenty of leaders in the US that were not as good at this as he is, and he has grown the college of nursing from 56 students to 147 (his goal was only 120 students in the last strategic plan), tripling the size in 5 years with a goal to grow to at least 250 in the next 5 years – so still a small institution.  The Nursing shortage in Malawi is so great that Diploma graduates are snapped up so quickly they can barely pack their bags to leave at the end of their time, and in many cases are hired by NGO’s operating in Malawi for starting salaries that are more than double with the Principle(who has a Masters degree) is getting.  A really remarkable guy. 

Time to go again, and I’m going to head off to send this from an actual internet café close to our hotel rather than walking the ¾ mile or so to the Presbyterian Synod offices where they have wireless internet and we can work after hours sitting on the steps outside.  I attached a picture of John doing that on our last trip to town as it was getting dark.  You can picture us when we are emailing or blogging much of the time while we are here.