Activities this week

In this post I'll tell the activities I've been doing this week to show more about what I've been doing in my project as a volunteer. On Monday, I went to DAPP office in Limbe to finish the poster and leaflet which I've been working since last week. These poster and leaflet are for the annual DAPP Book Fair on 26th and 27th of March. As a part of my volunteer work I've been working to promote the advertisement of events, book fairs and sales to DAPP Book Shop. On Monday, I also had a meeting with Ole Thomsone, director of DAPP, to talk about the donation of books to Malawi prison. I had this idea of donate more than 3,000 books from DAPP's book old stock and I needed his authorisation to go ahead with this action. He agreed with the donation and this make me very happy because I've been working with this idea of donate books since January.

On Tuesday I enjoyed a mobile sell of books to the oner of a school, Mr. Kaphuka. He wants to improve the library of his school so I went there, with Atupele and George, to delivery education books. In total he bought more then 4,000 books and next month he wants more books! The books that he bought were education books classified in different subjects like ma thematic, science, computer, history, geography, language, business and arts. I found two good books of calculus and microbiology which I used in my University. Mr. Kaphuka is doing a good thing to his school to improve the education of his students.

On Wednesday, I went to the book shop to help the staff organize the new arrivals of books. On Thursday, I visited three DAPP Second Hand Clothes shops as they also sell books, I informed them about the donation of books to Malawi prison and told them to select some books to the donation. On Friday, I went to DAPP office to talk to my project leader, get my allowance and access internet.

Donating toys to orphanage

Last Sunday Mi-Hong and me went to an orphanage, in a village located near Lunzu, to donate some toys and snacks to the children. This orphanage has 73 children that the majority of them lost their parents because of HIV/AIDS. A teacher told me that 10% of the children are HIV positive. The orphanage started their activities in 2009 by initiative from local people. They don't have so many features, the 4 teachers are volunteers from the village, there isn't any building for the classes, their activities happen under a tree on the ground floor. They started to make the clay bricks with the community help to build the classrooms but for now they decided to buy a house that can be used to their activities as buying it will be cheaper than build a new one. So they are doing fund raising to buy the house.

The toys donated to the children were from CICD (College for International Co-operation and Development) and, as they weren't enough, I bought more toys. The children were very happy to receive the toys, I think the toys can bring them some hope to feel like children since almost of them has to work at agriculture and they don't have time to play.

My way to DAPP Book Shop

I don't need to take bus to go to the Book Shop where I work as a volunteer, as my house is not so far away, I'm very glad for that. The Book Shop is 15 minutes by walk from my house in Chitawira, Blantyre and to go there I take a short way. It is a footpath just for people between maize plantations, guava trees and mango trees, and I have to cross a small bridge - a primitive footbridge made of wood - over a polluted small river that each day has a different color! Now it has been raining a lot so there are many pools of mud and the ground became slippy, I need to be careful. Many people walk trough this short way so there are 2 stands with sellers of chips and fried chicken. If I go earlier, about 7:00 in the morning, I can see them preparing their stuff, peeling potatoes, lighting the charcoal stoves and killing the chickens! This footpath is located behind the Polytechnic, a College of University of Malawi.

The Malawi Polytechnic was established in 1965 and has now grown to six academic faculties offering degrees in the are of Engineering, Commerce, Applied Science, Education Media Studies and Building. I went there to visit this week and talked to the director of the Department of Environmental Health, Mr. Kingsley Lungu. He explained me about this department and told me the college has 2,500 students. I asked if there was Environmental Engineering but he told me they don't have this course. There are only three Engineering undergraduate courses: Civil, Electrical and Mechanical. The university wasn't so busy as the students are coming back from holiday this week.