Our first week in Malawi was an orientation training week in which we learnt the essentials about living in Malawi. It also included meeting with the National Malawian volunteers; our partners for the next nine weeks. Just in that week already we had learnt lots from them, as they had from us. We performed an exercise where the British volunteers and the Malawian volunteers formed groups and wrote about their first impressions of each other and what had surprised us about the behaviour or cultural elements of each nationality. This provided some amusing responses with the Malawians very confused as to why we cleared up our plates at the end of each meal and we were very impressed at how friendly and welcoming the Malawians were. When asked about the introductions, William Tiyanjane, a Malawian volunteer said that ‘It was very nice to get to know each other at first through greetings and when we met, the UK volunteers were open to talk to us but liked also chatting alone just like Malawians.’
Through the training we learnt some of the native language, Chichewa; when we started Chichewa orientation there was cooperation because a Malawian had to teach a UK volunteer the basics. The Malawians were very helpful with teaching us the pronunciations and phrases. We tried to answer any questions about British culture that the National volunteers had and they seemed intrigued by our obsession with queuing! The Malawians were very impressed with the effort that some UK volunteers had made to learn the language before we arrived; William highlighted that ‘It was important to find people like Sam from the UK who already had information about Malawi and was able to teach his UK colleagues Chichewa. This was very interesting in such a way that UK volunteers did not struggle much to know the basics.’
The week that we spent together was very valuable as it allowed us to bond and meet with all of the volunteers placed in Malawi, not just our own group. There are three teams in total, two with a mix of UK and Malawian volunteers and one with just Malawian volunteers. It was sad to say goodbye to the other groups when we split up to go to our different partner organisations, but together with the Malawian volunteers, we are very excited to start our placement as one big group working with Arise and Shine International.
Tionana! Or see you later!
Blog by Sophie Claessens, Niamh Caines and Willian Tiyanjan. Photograph by Tamara Macauley.
