An exciting few days in Zambia!

Hi everyone!

Since we last blogged we have had a very eventful few days. In fact just after leaving the internet cafe it all got a little too eventful! Lorelei was harmlessly walking over a grate on her way out of Shoprite when she appeared to fall over. But she had not just fallen over. She had managed to fall down the grate and trap her leg in it!!! She realised she was not able to pull it out and panic set in! Thankfully a crowd of useful (and many not so useful) Zambians came to our rescue. After lots of attempts to pull her out, causing immense pain, and me (Ruth) to shout very loudly, someone came over with a car jack and managed to force the grate apart. We were very relieved that Lorelei did not break her leg, or worse but she is proud to have a huge bruise on her leg. What an eventful day with this and a baboon mugging!

On Saturday we got up early to go on a safari to Chobe National Park - in Botswana! We got a speed boat from the border to Botswana and were all very happy to get more stamps in our passports. The day began with freshly cooked donuts and coffee then we embarked on a 3 hour water safari. This was amazing. We saw elephants, crocodiles, hippos and buffalo as well as many beautiful birds and smaller animals. This was followed by a tasty buffet lunch then a 3 hour 4 x4 safari. Here we got up incredibly close to elephants, giraffes, various antelopes and enjoyed seeing lions from a distance. We got the speed boat back to Zambia after a fantastic day. Went to an excellent Chinese restaurant for dinner - perfect end to a brilliant day.

On Sunday Lorelei and Elizabeth embarked on an all day whitewater rafting trip down the Zambezi. Elizabeth fell out the boat twice and enjoyed swimming two of the rapids by herself. Lorelei only fell out once - impressive for a first timer! Ruth and Hayley spent the day sunbathing and swimming in the freezing hostel pool while Kirstie caught up on some sleep. The others came back exhausted after a adrenalin filled, thrilling day. We then tried to go for a meal but repeat power cuts meant we were served raw pizza - so we decided that cereal bars back at the hostel was far more appetising.

Today Ruth, Lorelei, Hayley and Elizabeth went to the bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe and stepped over the border line - so that is 4 African countries down! Kirstie is currently on an elephant back safari - hope she is having a fantastic time. We have a not so exciting 7 hours back to Lusaka tomorrow followed by another 13 hour coach ride to Lilongwe, Malawi. One rest day in Lilongwe before we fly home on Friday.

So I guess this is goodbye from team Malawi. Hope you have enjoyed our blog. We will be meeting as a team in September for de-brief and will update you about this.

Lots of love

Team Malawi (minus Emily)

We have arrived in Zambia

Hi all,
We have had a exhausting journey to Zambia but finally made it yesterday.
We said goodbye to Emily Tuesday morning and she flew home a day early just incase the riots kicked off in Malawi.
We got up on Tuesday morning at 4.30am!!! We caught a coach across from Lilongwe in Malawi to Lusaka in Zambia, it took 13 hours - Woah! It was a fairly boring journey, very bumpy, but we were quite impressed as we got coke and biscuits half way through the journey and it stopped several times for toilet breaks. We also think we saw a giraffe along the roadside in Zambia which was very exciting.
We then spent the night in Lusaka and got up at 5.30am and caught a very posh coach to Livingstone. This took 7 hours. We then went for a chinese that evening which was yummy and then got some much needed sleep.
Today we had a bit of a lie in and then got the free bus to Victoria falls. It is a 15min drive to the falls from our hostel and along the way we saw some elephants - this was soooooo exciting!!! Some of us also saw some zebras! We then spent the day at Victoria falls - which was amazing. Whilst there we had a paddle in the water at the top of the falls and took a very long hike down to a place called the boiling pot, but it was worth it. We got very wet from the spray of the falls, which was nice and refreshing. There were lots of baboons around Victoria Falls which we thought were very cute until a rather large one climbed up Ruth and stole her shoulder bag. We were told just to relax and wait until the baboon had finished rifling through the contents and then some very nice men who worked there retrieved the contents of her bag - minus the actual bag! We being the amazing friends that we were literally ran and abandoned Ruth whilst the Baboon was attacking her!
As you can see we have had a rather exciting day. We are busy planning what she shall do for the next few days - possibly whitewater rafting, a day safari to Chombe (Botswana), boat trip along the Zambezi, elephant back safari and many other possibilities.

Speak soom
love
Lorelei, Ruth, Elizabeth, Hayley and Kirstie
xxxx

Last day of GOLD in Malawi for 2011

Everybody here today updating the blog for the last official time.
Today we had our in country debrief, it was attended by the GOLD Co-ordinator, the MAGGA Co-ordinator and 4 national trainers from the central region.
They were extremely grateful for our training and said that our project was very succesful, they highlighted the main reason for low attendance of the sessions as people struggling to get to trainings due to the petrol shortage and money to pay for food during trainings. This is a big problem in Malawi as the ladies who are trainers and leaders do not have the money to travel to deliver the trainings or the funds to stay away from home. Many of the ladies identified that they really wanted to come to our trainings, apparently our trainings have become known around Malawi as being fun and interesting, which is nice!

We have been really pleased to see the difference in MAGGA this year and it seems that they have taken on some advice from last years GOLD team. We have seen a significant amount of girls and leaders who are from different religions and faiths and were really chuffed to see them part of Guiding in Malawi. Last year the organisation was predominantly Christian and GOLD advised them that they should become more multicultural as Guiding is NOT a Christian organisation.

They have also become less strict about uniform and we were pleased to see girls wearing just neckers to signifiy their membership in Guiding, this has allowed girls from poorer backgrounds to gain from Guiding in Malawi.

We have had an amazing 3 weeks on project and are very sad that it is now over. It has been a humbling experience and we realise how lucky we are in the UK. We hope that through our 3 weeks of training we have imparted some knowledge and developed MAGGA to become a stronger organistation in Malawi. We have met fantastic people, danced fantastic dances, ate not so fantastic food and made 5 fantastic friends. We are grateful for the support that we received to make this opportunity a reality and look forward to boring all our friends, family and supporters with photos and stories of our journey here!
We hope the next 3 years of GOLD projects will be as succesful and enjoyable as ours and that by the end of the 5 years MAGGA will continue to move and grow from strength to strength. We are very proud of ourselves for what we have achieved and look forward to following the journey of next years GOLD Malawi team!

Over and out

love
Team Malawi
xxxx

PS - We (Lorelei, Ruth, Elizabeth, Hayley and Kirstie) will carry on updating the blog during our travels to Zambia if you are still interested. Please note that this is purely a holiday and that project has now finished!

Last day of training, boo!!

Hi all,

Lorelei & Hayley updating the blog today!
Today was our last day of training on our project, we taught all about how to plan for a camp.
The ladies were quite engaged, they struggled a little deciding what should be done first when planning a camp and decided that they should plan activities before deciding on the number or age of girls or even what the budget was. They managed to plan a 24 hour camp with little problems and presented their ideas back to the group - using lots of the activities ideas that we had shown them in previous trainings, which was good.

We did a evaluation of the trainings, which was very positive. Their only complaint was there was not enough dancing during training sessions!!! What can we say - we had to fit in 5 days of training into 2 and half, which limited the amount of time we could give to dancing. As that was their only complaint, we felt that it must of gone pretty well!

They were all very appreciative and the Central Region Commisoner gave a nice speech at the end about how grateful they were and who ever comes next year need to come and say hi to everyone!
We have debrief hopefully tomorrow with all the important people.

We are now off for a celebratory meal at a secret location as Lorelei won't tell us where we are going!

lots of love
Team Malawi
xxxxx

2nd day of Training in the Capital

Hey guys,

Emily here doing the blog with Elizabeth :)

Today we had our 2nd day of training out of 3 and our last full day! Today we continued working on WAGGGS and then moved on to the 8 point programme and first aid. We looked in depth at the WAGGGS goals and what they meant to Guiding in Malawi. They didn't really seem to know much about the 8 point programme (this is the equivalent to the UK's 5 essenitals!) and had great fun doing the recovery position and slings during first aid.

We had an unexpected surprise during the day, where we stood outside the school with all the Guiders and saw the President of Malawi (Dr Bingu Wa Mutharika) drive past with his HUGE bodyguards with guns and police escort.

Tomorrow we have only a half day with the ladies and then we have debrief on Monday back at MAGGA HQ.

We can't believe how quickly the last few days have gone and that tomorrow's our last day of training!! It's been a privalege working with the ladies and girls and meeting everyone.

Blog soon,
Love from Team Malawi :) x

1st Actual day of training in Lilongwe!

Hi all,

Lorelei here today updating the blog!
We used a different taxi to get to training today and your be pleased to hear had an uneventful journey. We arrived today bright and early and with lots of hope that lots of ladies had arrived over night! When we arrived the ladies were still eating their breakfast - we were meant to be training at 8.30am and eventually started training at 9am. Our hopes of lots of ladies arriving were soon dashed when we started training with only 8 (Less than yesterday, lol) by the end of the day we had managed to hit the magic number of 16 - not quite the 45 promised!
Today we trained on scavenger hunts, treasure hunts, time management and WAGGGS (world association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts).
We were very impressed as for once we weren't met with blank stares - the ladies we actually very engaged and keen to learn which was nice.
We enjoyed a nice lunch of nsima, relish and kidney beans and learnt how to play the traditional game of bao - we think we know how to play and are going to have a practice tonight!

We have had a slight change of plan - due to the riots planned for Wednesday - we have made arrangements for Emily so she can get home safely on the Wednesday and the rest of us are leaving Malawi early morning on Tuesday so we can go to Zambia - you could call it fleeing the country, lol. We had been told that the borders get shut and no vehicles are running during riot days - so we thought it was best not to hang around.
We were very shocked to hear all about the riots that have been happening in the UK and would like to send our wishes to all our families and friends and hope they are all well and not been caught up in it.
Speak soon
much love
TEAM MALAWI
xxxxxxx

1st and 2nd Days of Trainings in Lilongwe

Heya, Elizabeth and Hayley here!!!!  So we are in Lilongwe for own 3rd week of training.  It was meant to start on Wednesday but we finally recieved a text at 8.30pm saying the training would start on Thursday instead.  This allowed us more time to plan and another lie-in (except Kirstie who is the early bird of the group!) Today we were meant to be picked up at 8am to be taken to the school we would be training at, but come 8.15 we received another text asking us to get a taxi. We wondered into town to find a taxi but everyone was really expensive.  We found a guy who said he would take us in his car and when we finally negotiated on a price, he declared he was not a taxi driver! Crazy! We eventually found a guy in the market who would take us in two ramshackled vehicles.  Lorelei, Kirstie and Elizabeth went in the death trap mobile first which stalled over every bump and scraped over the road.  At the training we discovered only 8 ladies out a possible 45.  So we sat and waited for 1 1/2 hours to see if more would turn up, and only one more did.  The others were  "On the way".  We made a decision to plan the timetable for the remaining 3 days and discuss the norms (rules) of training which we exactly the same as the previous 2 weeks. We said we would start training properly tomorrow morning when (hopefully) more people have arrived!  We then had to wait for 1 hour for the taxis to arrive where this time Ruth, Emily and Hayley were given the pleasure of the stalling car which caused much hilarity when it stalled in a ditch!!!!! We arrived back in 1 piece and now have the lovely job of cramming 5 days worth of training into 3 days!!!!!

Much love,
Hayley and Elizabeth xxx