I bloody hate mosquitoes

That is all for now.

Market Research!!!

Wohooo!!!! I've been doing looooooads of this over the past 3 days!

The organisation I'm working with does an ongoing programme entitled the "Basic Needs Basket". The research I was describing in my earlier post was a new measure to try and extend this same programme, which has been running in urban centres in Malawi for years, into rural areas. What they do is they spend 3 days to a week going around various urban marketplaces - we did 9 over the last 3 days - and get quotes for, say, potatoes, onions, fish, vegetables, etc sufficient to feed a family of 6 for a month. They then publish this information, and compare it to people's actual incomes on a monthly basis. I've been asking lots of questions about it since I started and the disparity between the cost of living here and the amount people actually make is shocking!!

It's now estimated that it costs just under 50,000 Malawian Kwacha (approx. 250 euro) per month to feed an average family of 6. By way of contrast - a shop assistant at a popular supermarket here earns about 3,000 MK - 8,000 MK per month (approx. 15 - 40 euro). I'm not kidding - they've actually asked people this, this is what they get paid. A police officer gets between 15,000 MK and 30,000 MK a month (75 - 150 euro). So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the majority of Malawians fall depressingly short of earning enough to fulfil their basic needs. The government-designated minimum wage here is the equivalent of a couple of cent per day.

So, armed with my sunhat - which was a pain in the bum to lug around with me - my sunglasses and a big bottle of Factor 50+, off I set to scour the marketplaces for the best value spuds I could find! I had a great time - I know I keep raving about my colleagues here but they really are fantastic. I've learned some basic Chichewa from them already - "Moni" (Hello/general greeting), "Muli Bwanji?" (How are you?), "Ndili Bwino, kainu?" (Im fine, how are you?), "Zikomo Quambiri" (Thanks very much), "Dapita" (Goodbye), "(Mu)Ana" (child/children). I'm probably after spelling ALL of those wrong, but then, I have seen none of this written down, I'm just learning how to say it so I'm probably spelling it all very phonetically. I'm hoping to get lessons soon!

The kind of foods they eat has been a real eye-opener! Almost all of the fish they eat is dried, which I hadn't really encountered before I came here. And they're so TINY!! They eat this kind of dried fish, heads and all, called kapenta - it's a pale beige colour and bout half an inch long, they often mix it with tomato paste, apparently, and eat them whole. They're supposed to be delicious, but I haven't tried them yet. I might be convinced sometime, but I'll have to work up the courage :-D Some of the larger fish have been guteed and opened up to dry, and to be honest they look more gruesome than appetising, but they're cheap so people eat them. No lemon-and-herb crusted sole fillets on a bed of Cos lettuce for these people. Oh no - but it's still interesting to see!

One thing a colleague of mine bought that it very popular in Malawi, which I will decidedly NOT be sampling, is mphalabungu. To cut a long, gross story short, it's a type of dried tree worm that, en masse, greatly resembles the droppings of a tiny mammal. "Ew ew ew ew" would sum up my reaction to it, at the time. My colleagues thought it was hilarious, my process of initial curiousity, followed swiftly by absolute revulsion. Needless to say, my curiousity didn't quite stretch to a bowl of mphalabungu stew or something. Another one I won't be trying, but which we didn't see at market, is ngumbi, a kind of giant white ant that I understand tend to be spit-roasted before eating. Both are supposed to be quite tasty, but I think I'll opt for taking my colleagues' word for it...

But I've learned a lot, even in such a short time! I've had conversations with people in situations I'm still struggling a bit to get my head around, and I think that I'm beginning to come to an understanding of the reality of abject poverty that I never could have obtained through study at college. To add to this, a lot of what I read about it in an academic context seems to make a bit more sense to me, now that I have a practical grasp of the issues involved too, so that's great. It is hard - there's no getting across to someone who hasn't seen it, what it's like to speak face-to-face with someone who laughs hysterically when you ask them how much (on average) they spend per month on the hairdresser. Not my question, I might add!! But regardless of what anyone might say, I think it's good to be affected by it, to some extent.

Before I got this gig with Trocaire, I had an interview for another placement in Kenya where I was asked to outline my biggest weakness. I always think this is such a ludicrous question - I mean, who really answers this honestly in an interview context?? "Well, I'm a complete scatterbrain and I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on" would be a completely honest answer, LOL! But another one I thought of, which didn't make me sound like a dithering idiot, was my sensitivity. In a sense, I think it's both a strength and a weakness. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm an enormous softie. I cry at films, I cry at book, I cry at songs, I cry at stories on the news, I cry at pictures... the list goes on. I find it very hard to see people scrape a living out of the ground, living in a dwelling made entirely of mud and grass, with no food, what little clothes they have torn and ragged, little or no access to medical treatment, sick and hungry and tired, and grateful for the kind of things I take for absolute granted - and not feel like crying from sadness and a little bit of niggling guilt.

I am convinced that telling them this lost me the placement. They had been really positive about me up to that point, and I suppose that to an extent I can understand where they are coming from in not wanting a huge softie on placement with them. But I in no way meant that I was going to spend the entire 6 months in hysterics and not doing anything constructive. I simply meant that I can't view poverty dispassionately. I don't think this makes me a great person - I just think I need to get up off my ass and do something with my passion. Why is it considered a bad thing to be sensitive about this? I don't know. Personally, I think a great deal more harm than good has been done by those who view poverty entirely in an empirical, macro-economic sort of way, like a series of numbers and statistics on a page. How can you hope to solve the issue of poverty if you don't feel the urgency of it, or if you don't understand its personal aspect?

M'eh. I'm whinging again - sorry, I've been doing a lot of that lately! Big shout out to my friend Savannah with her Fairtrade sugar from Malawi! Both Fairtrade sugar and Savannah rock my socks!!

I think that's all for today, my fingers hurt. :-D

The Football Match

Hello again!

Well, last Saturday - on my first weekend in my new accomodation within the campus of the partner organisation I'm now working with - I was invited out by a colleague to see a bit of local football. Not just any old football now, but the semi-finals of the President Bingu wa Mutharika cup, between Lilongwe Silver Strikers and Blantyre Escom! Not that that meant a whole lot to me, I'm not normally remotely interested in football :-) But nonetheless, I thought, why not? It would be interesting to see a local game, and maybe get a bit more accustomed to the city centre while I was at it.

I actually really enjoyed it! I had been unsure about coming - this was the day after my sickness on the field trip in my last post, and I was still feeling decidedly un-kosher!! But I put on my sunhat and a pair of sunglasses and braved the Lilongwe heat anyway. We were not sitting in the VIP stands - though tickets were about the equivalent of 5 euro each and I could easily have afforded it, LOL!! But no, we were in the normal open-air seating, and I tell you now I couldn't have stood out more like a sore thumb if I was 8 feet tall and green with purple spots. I was a bit self-conscious at first, but I soon eased into it - apart from everyone being eager to know which team the azungu was here to support - *pffftttt!!!* - I didn't really wan't to say "I don't give a monkeys", so I decided I was supporting the local Silver Strikers.

They lost though... LOL! I probably cursed them with my support, poor things. It was a good match, though, from what I gathered in my extremely limited knowledge of football stuff, offside rule and whatnot.

What I found really funny at first, though, was the cheerleaders. That's what I dubbed them anyway!! Apparently, these gangs of about 20 or 30 men, one for either team, are paid to walk around the innermost ring around the pitch, chanting slogans for their team - most of which is entirely ad-lib - and waving the team scarves, etc. Generally to get the crowd going. You get the idea. They were very entertaining! Basically, the regular seating was just like ring upon ring of giant stone steps that people sat on, and this innermost ring was slightly cordoned off from the rest of the rings.

To get to the bathrooms, however, you had to walk around the pitch in precisely this innermost ring, and therein lay my problem halfway through the game. I'm currently drinking a ferocious amount of water to prevent dehydration - I'm aiming for 3 litres a day - and as the Frenchman once said in the Matrix Reloaded, "cause and effect, my love - I drank too much wine, now I must take a pees". Well, I really needed a "pees" halway through, and myself and my colleague had rather unfortunately positioned ourself precisely adjacent to the toilets. I was going to have to walk through the cheerleaders...

My colleague insisted on escorting me as far as the bathroom. I thought, at first, that this was probably unnecessary as I was pretty confident I'd manage to find my way to the giant sign marked "TOILET" all by myself. Ah, Grace, silly silly Grace...

Well, it rather quickly transpired that his presence was extremely useful! I eventually had to pass through this gang of locals, whereupon they instantly took up the booming chant in Chichewa - "the azungu has joined us! Look, the azungu supports our team!!" etc, etc - something along those lines, and crowding around me and stuff. Well - apart from being more absolutely MORTIFIED than I ever recall being in my adult life, I was also more than a little intimidated, not to mention ticked off, at this massive gang of guys who basically wouldn't get the hell out of the way and let me pee! My poor, beleagured colleague more or less had to bulldoze my way out of the group, up the steps, and take me around the stadium on the outside, to use the bathrooms of the VIP area.

I was ticked off, but hey... I got to pee! plus I got to use the "VIP" toilets without paying, which they let me do for free, more or less solely because I was white (well, there was no chance of me sneaking into the seating unnoticed, LOL!!!). So, drama was over, and my colleague was very good about it. I think he was probably just embarassed for me, though it wasn't really necessary - I don't think anybody meant to be intimidating, it was just a tad annoying...

Anyway, all's well that ends well. And as we all know, all is fair in love and football.

So this is how it went

Well. Let me tell you all, I had quite the experience. Whether it was good or bad, largely depends on how you look at it. I certainly had an experience I won’t be forgetting for some time. I saw a lot of things I will never forget, but unfortunately they were seen through the rather distorted lens that comes with being very ill. This is a long one, so bear with me!

I set off Thursday afternoon, as planned – myself, and four men who work for the centre. I was the only one who didn’t speak Chichewa, so one of them came as my translator. The journey was long and fairly arduous, certainly longer than the 2 hours I had expected. I had a bit of a headache, but didn’t want to take anything or drink too much water because I foolishly thought that if I drank too much I’d just end up dying for the bathroom halfway there. Peeing alongside the road isn’t quite so easy as a girl, you know. LOL

I managed quite well to amuse myself, however, with gaping at the stunning vistas as we were passing through hills and valleys, town and markets and tiny villages. We weren’t going to do any interviews until the following morning, so when we got to our destination we dumped our things in our two different accommodations – as the only girl, I stayed with the local nuns – then we headed to a restaurant for something to eat at about 7pm.

Now, the word restaurant probably conjures up pictures in your mind’s eye of Nando’s or Wagamama’s or something. This was neither. This was a tiny, tiny place obviously run and operated by a local family, and it had a very limited menu – basically tea and 2-3 different nsima (prn. “seema”) dishes. I chose nsima ya nkhuku, chicken with nsima. Nsima is very much a staple food in Malawi – absolutely everyone eats it – made from maize flour, with a sort of porridgey or mashed-potatoey texture. It’s quite bland to taste, like rice or couscous, but with the chicken dish I was served with, it was delicious. I had been told earlier that nsima can be very hard on the stomach that is not accustomed to it, but unfortunately I very much underestimated the truth of this statement, and ate away happily.
I paid for my folly the next day.

Basically, the following 24 hours revolved around throwing up, resting in the car, trying to eat something, then throwing up again. For anyone ever heading to Africa in future – approach nsima with caution, if it’s your first time, only have a little bit. I did do the interviews, but they didn’t start off well. I hadn’t slept much the night before, so I was tired. When we got to the first village, I quickly had to find the first pit latrine I came across, where I promptly gacked up everything I’d eaten for the previous 24hrs or so. I’m sure I made quite the impression on the locals... or not.

I feel kind of disappointed, really, in that I’m sure I would have enjoyed the whole experience a lot more if I hadn’t been sick. I was absolutely miserable the whole time, and my colleagues were just worried about me. The combined nausea, the vomiting, the now agonising headache, the dehydration, the exhaustion, the hunger and the fact that it was bloody ROASTING and I’d forgotten both my sunhat and sunglasses, really made for a pretty nightmarish few hours. I felt like I was going to faint on more than one occasion while interviewing people, and when I got back at approximately 5pm on Friday, I went to bed and slept until about 8am the following morning, and then I still wasn’t feeling kosher.

Having said that, I had to acknowledge certain positives to the whole experience, even through my foggy veil of thorough miserableness :-D LOL!! The local people in the villages welcomed me with so much enthusiasm and warmth that I couldn’t help but be touched by it, no matter how sick. The conditions in which some of them were living were truly shocking, and yet when I arrived with my translator, they would go to so much pain to ensure that we had a mat – probably the only one they had – to sit on! Also, what I had underestimated, apart from the mighty stomach-churning power of nsima, was just how much of a novelty I would be to the local people, especially the children.

The children were probably the best aspect of the whole event. They are, without a doubt, absolutely the most perfectly beautiful little creatures you could ever, ever possibly imagine. Anyone who knows me personally is well aware of how fond I am of children in general, but to me, these precious little things represented all that I love about human beings. They were a perfect blend of shyness and curiousity, guileless friendliness, innocence and playfulness. They would get so excited by this azungu (“white person”), smiling at them or waving at them. I even ventured a “Muli Bwanji?” (“How are you?”) with some of them, and although several of them nearly ran away in fright when I spoke, they were delighted. I absolutely adored them, I can’t describe to you how beautiful I found them. I was surprised by just how interested they were in me, though.

I suppose I am so accustomed to my own whiteness, that it didn’t occur to me that it should be interesting to these kids!! But lo and behold, I would step out of the car and immediately more or less every child in the village would be by my side semi-instantaneously. I loved it though :-D it really made my day. And in a funny sort of way, so did the care of my colleagues while I was sick. Africans, generally, are capable of so much warmth, with a lot less of the guile and polite sort of standoffishness I associate with home. The guys were so genuinely concerned about my health, and they took such good care of me, offering me drinks and giving me their hats to keep me cool, etc. I was well cared for, anyway!

Africa has been such a mixed bag so far – there are aspects of it which I honestly love, and those which I am still struggling to come to terms with. The villages were, as I expected, a shock to my senses. I have seen mud huts innumerable times in pictures and in books, and yet somehow it still came as a shock to me that people actually live in these tiny buildings made from mud, with no windows, no electricity, no running water, no locks, nothing. I can’t imagine how to explain why this is still shocking to me. Possibly because the reality of it was always so distant, it never really occurred to me to think how I would feel, if it were myself and my family living in these conditions, rather than just accepting the existence of some sort of parallel dimension where it’s normal or ok for people to live like this.

Anyway, I could go on forever about my first field trip, so I’ll try to stop now. Suffice to say that whatever impression this azungu left on the people of Kalulu village, it’s nothing compared to that which they have left upon me!

Getting stuck in!!

Hi everyone!

Well, what a few days I've had since I posted last. It's been nice up until now, mostly introductions with the people I'll be doing most of my work with, getting the feel for my surroundings, etc. It' been enjoyable, apart from a spell of homesickness over the last few days.

I'm sort of, you could say, being thrown in the deep end today. I'm going with a few others out into one of the rural districts within about 50-60kms of Lilongwe. That will no doubt entail lots of bouncing around like a ping-pong ball in the back of a 4X4, but at least it's not too far away!! Once we get there, we'll be interviewing poor households about how the bridge the gap between the cost of living - which has taken a jump of about 30-40% since last year - and their income. This is something the organisation have been doing for years in urban areas, as it's easier to easure there. They simply go around the markets to monitor the price of basic food staples, as well as the cost of basic rent and heat, etc, then compare it to people's wages to see the defecit.

It's easy enough to measure in urban areas, but once you get ot into rural Malawi, this gap becomes considerably harder to measure. To begin with, only 15% of Malawi's population are in formal employment, and these are virtually all city-based civil servants, etc. So, the rural population gets what little income they do from more diverse sources than a paid wage, and it's harder to measure. To add to this, while the urban population buys almost all food in the local market - making prices easy to measure - rural populations grow some food, trade some, pool some, and buy very little. So it's considerably more complicated.

So, basically I am very nervous about it. I have visions of me making the most enormous gimp of myself in the village - it still disconcerts me to see people in the city wearing ragged clothes with no shoes on, begging, and since most of Malawi's most abject poverty is concentrated in rural areas like the one I'm heading to, I can only assume that it's going to be quite a shock to my senses.

It sounds stupid, but I'm actually quite nervous about meeting these people, in and of itself. I'm still adjusting to the culture shock of Africa as a whole, and I'm afraid that I will be so utterly unable to relate adequately to these people and their lives that my input into the programme will not be worthwhile. I want to toe the delicate line between sympathy for their obviously difficult situations, and having respect for their dignity as human beings. Not being incredibly patronising, basically. I'm still not totally sure where that line is... I suppose I'll just have to be as friendly and open as possible, and pay attention to the other interviewers, who are all local guys with lots of experience. So I'll just have to watch them like hawks at first, LOL!!!

I'll let you all know how it went as soon as I can when I return!

Finger crossed for me en masse, please!

My First Few Days

Well, they’ve been pretty good actually!

I’m just starting to get settled in, and so far I am really loving it.

I just want to first state that today is my beloved fiancé Matt’s birthday. I really hope he is having the best day imaginable and that God blesses him mightily, today and for the rest of the year. Happy birthday my darling. I am not ashamed to say, you are my sugar dandy!!! It’s also my friend April’s birthday, and since I know she’ll be reading this – Happy Birthday April!!! :-D

As I said in my previous post, I was met at Lilongwe airport by the Trocaire driver, a local man named Blessings who is an absolutely lovely guy. He helped me out with my bags and we set out post haste for (one of) my bosses’ house. I say one of my bosses, because I’ll be working not only with Trocaire, and so under their supervisors’ instructions, but also I’ll be doing a lot of work with one of their partner organisations. I headed, however, to the home of my Trocaire boss and his family.

I am struck, even so early on in my stay, by how much kindness I have been met with since I got here. I believe I am going to have some shared accommodation sorted out late on, but at this stage I am staying in my bosses’ home. They have spared no effort in making me as comfortable as possible, showing me around Lilongwe, telling me more of what I will be doing, and of course letting me use their computer to post this! :-)

Lilongwe, it appears, is incredibly difficult to navigate until you are very familiar with it. It is spread out over miles upon miles – there are no footpaths except in the very, very centre – there are little or no roadsigns, and the average driver seems to follow no code of conduct/rules of the road whatsoever. You would pretty much have to either have a very good map, a driver, or a photographic memory to navigate it. I don’t have the map or the memory, so thank God for the driver! LOL!!

It is incredibly hot, too. It isn’t even summer here, though, because we are in the Southern hemisphere. We’re actually heading into winter, but still the heat is making me drowsy a lot. I hope I’ll get more used to it, or I’m going to need a couple of gallons of coffee every single day! The sunshine is cheering, though, and the people are friendly, and these things more than compensate.

It’s rained more than you’d imagine it would in Africa. Before I left, Matt was telling me that it would be rainy season in April, whereas I insisted that it wouldn’t be. As is transpired, we were both right. The rains are still here alright – but they shouldn’t be.

I was shown around the offices on Friday, where I got talking to a local man who works there. He said that the rains should have stopped a month ago here in Malawi, but due to climate change the weather patterns have gone haywire. Apparently, rainy season used to be something you could really depend on here. You knew when it would start, and when it would finish. It was predictable, and the 80% of Malawi’s population who depend entirely on agriculture to survive would plant and harvest their crops accordingly. Now, though, climate change is pushing people who were already on the breadline, over the line into starvation, debt and further struggle because what little crops they could produce, are being ravaged by erratic droughts, floods and storms where previously they had stable, predictable weather patterns.

I guess it was something of an eye-opener to me. I know that in Ireland we’re aware of climate change, and it’s something we think about occasionally. But good grief. It’s just such a stark distinction. At home, climate change is something we think we can afford to ponder at our leisure, a sort of abstract concept we think about on a logical level but feel no sense of urgency about. Here, climate change is killing people. It is actually killing people. I mean, I really never grasped the scale, the importance of it until now, and I would have considered myself interested in the subject as people go anyway! It’s a devastating thought for me. I don’t blame people at home, really, for being complacent about it – in a way, I think you would have to see its effects here to understand the urgency of the matter – but I just wish I could grab the shoulders of the developed world collectively and give them a good shaking!! Look, just look at what we are doing!

*sighs*

I don’t know what I’m going to be like at the end of the six months, if four days is enough to produce this much astonishment in me. I don’t think it will be bad, though, for me to open my eyes. In fact, I think it will be one of those things where the pain of realisation produces greater understanding. And as much as I know it’s going to hurt, I’m looking forward to it. Does that sound preachy? It probably does, LOL :-D Sorry!

The Journey Here

Well, I’m here!

I’ve finally arrived in Lilongwe. And thank God I say, because I wasn’t always convinced during the course of the journey here, that I would complete it. This is a very long spiel, but bear with me because I think it’s really worth it.

To begin with, the delightful folks at Aer Fungus (sorry, Lingus) wouldn’t allow me on the plane because of visa complications. Oh joy! Cue much panicking on my part – I had to ring Trocaire, who in turn rang the travel agents, who in turn altered my flight itinerary to coincide with what Aer Lingus were telling me. I was assisted in all of this by the most lovely woman imaginable, whom I’d get chatting to in the queue for check-in. She took it upon herself to help me carry my (HEAVY) bags across the airport to somewhere I could sit down and charge my phone, bought me a drink of water – though I could probably have done with something stiffer at that point – calmed me down, and then helped me drag my bags all the way back across the airport to check in again.

Isn’t the random kindness of strangers amazing? Doesn’t it just make your day, month, year? This woman was an angel! And thanks in part to her help, I eventually got checked in and everything was sorted. The drama - the suspense, the action! - of my journey was not over yet though. Oh no.

I had been a bit concerned, on seeing my itinerary for the first time, about the fact that they had only allowed me an hour between my 1st flight arriving into Amsterdam, and my 2nd flight leaving it. Excluding the 20 minutes early I would have to be in order to get there before the boarding gate closed, I would have 40 minutes left to find the gate I was at, get my stuff together, and get on my 2nd plane. My luggage for the entire journey was going straight from plane to plane, rather than me checking it in and out every time, so I really needed to get the flights I was scheduled to take.

But guess what. My Aer Fungus flight was delayed. Guess how much by?
An hour. MY hour. My bloody precious hour which was all I had to catch the 2nd plane. I thought I was going to cry. I could feel it coming. I looked at my phone as the plane waited to taxi in to Amsterdam, only to see that the time for the boarding gate to Nairobi to close had already passed... I got that sinking feeling you get, when you know that something you really need is totally out of reach. There was no way I’d get that plane. The only way I’d get on would be if it just so happened to also be delayed, by at least half an hour/40 minutes. I resolved to find the gate, just on the off-chance.

I’d forgotten, in the 4 years since I’d been there last, just how bloody BIG Amsterdam airport is. My boarding gate was literally about as far as possible from the one I entered through, and Sonia O’ Sullivan would have been proud of the gut-wrenching sprint I performed across the airport, shoving my way through hordes of daft tourists taking photographs of themselves on the escalators. Who the hell takes a photo of themselves on an escalator?? I ask you.

Anyway. I got to the gate and nearly cried again. This time, though, it was from joy. The flight had indeed been miraculously delayed by 45 minutes, and the queue to board was just forming as I got there. *Sniff* I looked up at the ceiling. “Seriously, God... Nice one” I would have said it aloud had I still been able to breathe.

It got better yet. There was free wine with the plane meal!!! Some of you reading this may not drink a lot, or at all. Nor do I, usually. But after the evening’s events, I felt a glass of Famille de Castillo 2007 reserve Merlot, was quite in order. As usual, 1 glass was quite sufficient to send old Two-Drink Tess here into a stupor, and the rest of the 9-10 hour flight passed by on a breeze.
Now, had that been the entirety of the good fortune I enjoyed on my journey, I would have been perfectly content with it. I’d been pretty darn blessed so far, and I was well on my way to Lilongwe.

I had one more flight to catch, and that was Nairobi – Lilongwe. I eventually navigated my way to it through Nairobi airport, which by the by, is an experience in and of itself. It’s more bloody confusing than trying to solve a Rubix cube when you’re colourblind. In fact, you’d probably have more chance with the Rubix cube.

I had been nervous before I went away, about missing the church I go to at home, and the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to go to one while I was over. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for one, and I usually prefer to choose anything important based on personal recommendation than anything else. I’d more or less consigned myself to just bringing over some Christian music and books, and trying to feed myself spiritually as much as possible.

On the final flight, however, I was sitting next a very pleasant man from England, who was also heading to Lilongwe. He got chatting to me first, and asked me what I was doing in Lilongwe, how long I was staying, etc. You get the idea, small talk. He seemed very nice, and eventually out of curiosity I asked him what he was heading to Lilongwe for. I actually felt like bursting out laughing when he told me.

He was a travelling pastor. He spent a lot of time between England, and the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre, also in Malawi. He came over as a guest speaker to churches he had contacts with in both cities, and when I said that I went to a similar type church at home, he duly supplied me with the email of the main pastor for his contact church in Lilongwe. I am so, so delighted about this, I can’t tell you enough how bowled over by God’s grace I was. I mean seriously, how many pastors can there have been on that plane? Not only that, but normally I would never chat to the people sitting next to me on planes – not that I don’t like to, but I usually prefer to read or sleep. It was an amazing, miraculous answer to so many prayers. I actually would not have dared to hope for something like this, I’m actually blown away...

This man was such a gent. When we got off the plane, he helped me out with the immigration forms and waited until I got all my bags before he headed off. I was so grateful to him, I was really nervous at this stage and he was so helpful. I eventually got everything together in my final destination, and it all came together when I was met in the arrivals hall of Lilongwe airport by the Trocaire driver. A lovely local guy, shall I tell you his name? You’ll understand how hilarious it was to me, when I do.

His name was Blessings.