Wednesday 26 January 2011

Out of Africa...

So, we organised our flights back to the UK through a number of manic phonecalls and then a plater of emails between London, Addis Ababa and Malawi and finally got a date to return to London.  Unfortunately our onward flights to Belfast were going to cost us far too much (£50 to change and then an extra £230) so we decided to rebook flights with a different airline (Easyjet) which worked out at less than £50 all in!

The only problem was - and this required the utmost of careful negotiations and tact - our final flight back into Belfast wasn't going to be for 5 days after we arrived in London! We would be stuck in England for 5 days so what could we do?

Thankfully a close friend, Aaron, and his partner Tara, helpfully agreed to let us stay with them for the few days we were to be there - a God send!  It was all looking good and it would be great to catch up with them since we hadn't seen them since the wedding.


It was so nice to be back in cool/cold weather too! We landed after 13 hours of travelling (excluding the 7 hour to, and overnight stay in Lilongwe) from Malawi to the Congo, on to Addis Ababa and then to London.

We arrived in around 6.30am and went to pick up a hire car to help us get around over the next few days - it was once again nice to be back driving.  We got to Aaron and Tara's shortly after 8am just as Tara was about to head to work - and she was shocked to see these two tanned figures appear at her door in summery clothes!

It took me a while to acclimaitise (hence the flipflops and t-shirt) but Danielle was feeling the cold straight away so our first port of call, after a quick nap, was into High Wycombe to get some clothes to wear that were more suitable to the temperatures in the UK!

Danielle really felt the whole reverse-culture-shock sensation while we were driving around.  Not seeing multitudes of people walking around, seeing animals actually in fields, how green everything was in comparison to Africa, not seeing people working in the fields to the same scale, and even having running water that you could drink!  I don't know why I don't get those sensations - I seem to be able to switch from one world to another like turning on/off a light.  It is possible that some of that comes from the years spent as a child at numerous times throughout the year living in Donegal in the West of Ireland.  I remember having to go and collect water from the river and local wells so that there was something to wash and drink, I've experienced cereal with the fresh milk still warm from the cow's udder.  When in Donegal I wouldn't think twice about going outside for a pee, back in Belfast I wouldn't consider it - an immediate switch happens and I think that is the same between UK and African living.

We also began looking for work for when we got home to cover us until we would leave for Korea.  We had a quick chat on Skype with our recruitment company out there too and finally set a firm date for our interviews which were scheduled for 5.20am for Danielle and 6.20am for me! Doh!
We had a great time in England - we got to go into London to see Wicked (though Danielle's cousin Rachel was off that night - she plays Elphaba (the green witch)) and enjoyed it so much that we swore we'd go back again to see it when Rachel was working.  We also got to enjoy Bonfire night too and it sort of made up for not having been around for Hallow'een.


Hot food, good craic and, of course, fireworks! We had a great time!  And even little Sam showed no fear or shock at seeing or hearing the fireworks at all!


On the Sunday night we left and headed to Luton airport and got the first flight home to Belfast.  We arrived in and again got a hire car just to help us get around and surprise everyone.  We stopped up to my parents' house first.  My brother Tomás opened the door saying, "Holy S%&T! Holy S*"t!" quickly followed by tears from my mum.  After a bit of breakfast we drove over to Danielle's mum's and again there were tears flowing as they were so surprised and happy to have us back home.

So, that's us home until Jan/Feb when we head off again.

(Well, its techincally the end of Jan 2011 now and we now know that we leave Belfast for South Korea on the 15th of February.  We have been told we will be placed somewhere in the Cheungbuk province - an area that wasn't even one of our choices!  So, the next time we post it will be from Korea!

It will be much easier to post on the blog from there - super internet speeds! And I am sure there will be so much to tell!  I also hope to get some video footage on here too so that is all still to come!)

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Korea was calling and we had to go!

Well hello folks!

It has been a very long time since we last posted anything on here and that has been due to a number of various reasons that I will quickly skirt over so we're all on the same page! lol!

Since I last posted we have celebrated Danielle's 25th birthday while in Malawi.  This was preceded by a number of bouts of what appeared to be an emotional breakdown (nothing to do with her age) due to the medication that we were taking for Malaria - Lariam.  It seems that the drug was causing her to be extremely overly emotional resulting in tears flowing at any point - even in the middle of laughing she would break down into floods of tears!

There was an up side to the tablets in that they temporarily rid Danielle of any intolerances to the food types that normally plagued her - but the final straw was when she started having nightmares about the snakes and scorpions crawling over her during her sleep.  So it was clear a change was needed.
So we made a big thing of celebrating her birthday as a bit of a pick-her-up!  I was a bit crap to be honest - we were in the middle of nowhere and the option of even getting her a present was a far fetched one! A card.... well, they don't even seem to have postcards here nevermind Birthday cards!

We went out to the next lodge, Chintheche Inn where two of our friends Nick and Zana are in charge, for a lovely meal and a change of scene.  It was great food which we were so glad it lived up to our expectations. 

On Danielle's actual birthday we all got together to have a brie (BBQ) with Richard, Lauren, Zana and Nick.


During the course of the evening of the party it was sort of decided that Danielle and I needed to escape from Makuzi for a bit and it was agreed that if we could sort out the logistics of it all then we would take the following weekend off.  We decided to head south ( a 7 hour drive) to a music festival called Lake of Stars - an event that was also to be Danielle's first experience of CAMPING!!! (Something she swore she would never do!)
So, we went for broke and did it - borrowed a tent, some mats to sleep on, the ute and hit the road!

The drive down was great - it felt like we'd had our wings released and it was such a relief to see Danielle suddenly come back to life as we enjoyed the scenery, trees and people.

Even though we had already done our sums and knew it was going to be an expensive 5 days away - we knew we both needed it and even if it left us broke it would be worth it!

Lake of Stars is quite a good idea as far as festivals go.  It is organised by an organisation in London and really tries to attract UK based artists along with a number of African based ones to perform at a weekend festival.  It is also promoted via STA which means that a lot of young people take the opportunity to visit Malawi for Lake of Stars and then also either have a safari or travel around the country which helps feed into the economy of the locals - not necessarily the government (which is possibly the bane of the country's problems).


Anyway... it was great to get away and I really enjoyed the driving too - could have been a longer trip but work called!

The next thing we knew emails expressing concern over our skype connection and telephone line began to come through to let us know that if the connection wasn't improved then we would not be able to conduct the interviews for Korea... and therefore would not gain a placement for travelling there.

This stumped us... there was no way we could possibly do anything about the quality of phone or internet connection in the whole of Malawi... so we were pushed into making the extremely difficult decision to leave Malawi and return home... devastating for both us, our friends, the school and the children.

Danielle's class.


Colm's class.

The following week, after numerous phonecalls and emails, we were flying back to London.

What happened next I will blog later this week! Promise!