Day 20. Thu 6th May
Mwabvi, first trip, day 1
About five o'clock I hear talking so I get up and find that one of the
day watchmen has arrived. His name is Tommy - I think - he speaks no English.
We have cornflakes and coffee and Auxies tinkers with Dusty some more.
The campsite is no more than a cleared area. There are four tiny structures,
two with roofs and two just grass walls. Auxies informs me that these are
the toilets and washrooms but there is little to indicate their function,
although on closer inspection I notice that the roofed ones do have holes
in the floor. I use the bush!
At 7:30 we drive to the gate house to meet Lester and Gracious
We then go on to the PAW site, where my first task is to sort out wages
for various people. This done I look round the site and take some pictures.
The PAW site is an area of ground just outside the main entrance which
has been donated by the Nguluwe village to be used as an administrative
site for the project. The site will eventually contain a store, a workshop,
a car-port, an office building, accommodation for staff, and separate accommodation
for the site manager and for visitors. The store is already almost complete,
and work is underway on the car port, and on septic tanks for the staff
accommodation and the visitors' accommodation.
It turns out that Lester has to go away this afternoon and is not back
until Tuesday, which is a bit of a blow, especially as Gracious is immobile
with his broken leg. However, Lester agrees to take us to Kanyimbi village
to see the clinic and the school before he goes, and to deliver the photographs
that Gaynor (the UK director of the PAW project)
took on her last visit. We drive south west through the reserve.
The road deteriorates seriously once we get past the Mguru campsite, and,
although it is only about five miles to the village the journey takes the
best part of an hour.
Kaloga School in Kanyimbi Village (part of Kangani Trust) has 214 pupils
aged 6-20. The headmaster is not there, but we are greeted by two teachers,
Mr Mangani and Mr Fole, who are delighted to show us round.(I am informed
by Lester that a qualified teacher in such a government funded school might
earn 11,00KW a month - about 50UKP). The school has four classroom buildings
and a small office. Our visit coincides with break time, and so the children
are all assembled and I speak to them about England and answer questions,
with the teachers acting as interpreter. The children are well behaved,
bright and obviously intelligent, with enquiring minds and a lively sense
of humour. The younger children are shy, but the older boys are eager to
ask questions. Finally they sing me a song,
led by the daughter of one of the teachers, which is delightful and displays
their innate sense of rhythm and harmony.
The clinic has one open building with a small Out Patients room. It is
manned by two medical assistants (no qualified doctor) one of whom lives
in an adjacent house. I can see little evidence of any equipment or drugs.
The clinic seems to deal mainly with family planning and paediatrics. Apparently
they used to receive free baby food, but no longer.
After lunch Auxies announces that he needs a part for Penny. Penny is the
PAW Land Rover who lives down here permanently. She has had some problems
and one of Auxies' tasks is to give her a once-over. The nearest town to
Mwabvi is Bangula, just a couple of miles south of the reserve.
We drive down, but it is a tiny place with one filling station that certainly
doesn't stock Land Rover parts. As it turns out they don't have any diesel
just at the moment either! This is a bit of a problem as the nearest filling
station is in Nchalo, 60Km north. Auxies thinks we might just have enough
to get there. Gambling on Bangula getting a delivery of diesel before we
run out seems like a fairly bad idea, so we head up to Nchalo. We do have
enough to get there, but it takes up the rest of the afternoon, and it
is dark by the time we get back. Auxies wants to hitch-hike up to Blantyre
to get the part for Penny - he reckons he can do it in a day, but that
would leave me either sitting around the camp site for a day, or driving
the Land Rover myself. I give the idea some consideration, but then Dusty
mysteriously stops on the way back to the camp site, in the dark somewhere
in the middle of the reserve. Auxies fiddles with some wires under the
seat and away we go again, but if it had been myself alone I would have
been in dead trouble, so I veto his trip to Blantyre. It means he will
have to make another trip down from Lilongwe sometime, but so be it.