Pump Training at Lago Niassa

I always try to think of an original way of writing these blog entries, I try to avoid the “I did this and then I did this” style of writing, but prose has never been my forte. It’s been good for me to be forced to write and I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. Anyway, this week’s news is in the form of the highs and lows. I hope I can get everything across that I want to!

+ The boat ride was beautiful – Lago Niassa really is amazing and it was a privilege to be travelling on it.
- It wasn’t that comfortable sitting amongst 160,000 condoms destined for the same location as us.
+ Arriving in Wikihi was like arriving at the end of the world and we arrived just as the sun was setting after an 8 hour boat journey. There were hundreds of fireflies around which made me feel like I was standing amongst stars – it was stunning.

- That night there was the most terrific storm and even though we’d pitched our tents under a roof I was the only one to stay dry!
+ For the rest of the week the weather was very good to us in terms of rain, we pitched our tents 10 metres from the lake on the beach every night and lit a fire to cook over.
- No rain, but the sun was soooo hot. I struggled quite a lot with it and it sapped my energy very quickly every day, particularly when standing in the sun at the pumps.
+ Gloria and Patricio are very quick learners and I soon didn’t need much energy to run the training sessions are they were extremely competent at doing it themselves – and much more efficient because they could deliver it straight into Nyanja rather than via Portuguese. Their ability to now teach without me is sustainable practice in action – by the time I leave next week, I’ll no longer be needed :-)

+ We trained 8 different communities along the lake and built up an inventory of the pumps which exist. We managed to solve many of the problems people had simply by teaching them to carry out basic maintenance and replace worn parts and people were so keen to learn. We based the sessions on the training manual I’d produced which worked really well.
- Most people we were training couldn’t read Portuguese so for the future the manual will hopefully be able to be translated into Nyanja, the local language of people in that area.

+ We were greeted very kindly at every place we stopped. 5 year olds would plonk my heavy bags on their heads to wherever we were going and I’d be lucky if I got to carry even my water bottle! Gloria is a good cook and I never had to worry about organising food as it was all under control.
- Unfortunately the food available is not all that varied and I began to lose my appetite for Nsima or rice with beans or fish by the end of the week and found it very difficult to eat at meal times, particularly when I was tired from the days work too.
+ We had small treats along the way: some mushrooms, fizzy drinks as we got nearer to civilisation, some chocolate éclairs from Lichinga that I carried with me and spaghetti in Cobue.

It’s nice to spend some days away from electricity, gas, running water (apart from pumps!!), roads, etc but I find it pretty tiring being in the field and definitely couldn’t survive without my head torch, a book and my diary which kept me sane in my tent in the evenings! There’s definitely a balance to strike between materialism and living with nothing but the world around you. I also find myself looking forward to receiving a phone call from England or being able to access the internet, both such foreign concepts to so many people!

I’m into the last week in Lichinga, which suddenly feels like it’s come all too quickly. It’s going to be a busy week too. All of the adeptos are coming on Wednesday for a week for training and reporting so there’ll be lots to do and also lots of fun people around.

It’s great to hear from people that have read my blog just to know who I’m writing to! Thank you to everyone who’s communicated in any way over the last few months – it’s really helped and kept me going.