Just to keep you up to speed on what's happening up north in beautiful warm Malawi. The Zambians left yesterdy after 4 days in Lilongwe. Was wonderful chatting to Nelson, he's full of passion and enthusiasm and made me feel very excited about this work i'm involved in. We visited a number of settlements in Lilongwe, one being Area 49 where the land is being cleared and graded for the housing construction and development to begin - 222 plots have been identified. The women are so committed and full on energy and have already started making/moulding the bricks, they've broken the stones and cut hundreds roof planks...and have managed to do this all while singing and dancing. I start to sweat just watching them.

(I think the Kenyans were right. I'm going to leave this country a dancer. No matter how much of a fool you think you're making of yourself, it doesn't matter here, you get up and dance! It's that simple! So i've managed to sufficiently embarress myself enough with my rigid and very conservative dance moves, however, i've made hundreds of women and children laugh so that's got to stand for something. No matter how hard you try it's just never looks as easy and rhythmic as how these women do it. I'll be getting lots of practise though so hopefully i'll learn to loosen up a bit.)

We've had two meetings with city officials, one where Nelson was interested to find out from the Director of Planning the nature of their relationship with CCODE, how they came into partnership and what kind of support they've offered them. The the second meeting was to sort out the issue of the grader to mark out the roads in Area 49.

We also attended a meeting with WaterAid and met with the country rep and his colleague. Once again Nelson was interested to find out how WaterAid and CCODE's partnership was going and how they're able to help each other. He was also looking for some idea of how to partner up with them in Zambia.

We've visited 2 different settlements that have started the ecological sanitation toilets project and have attended numerous federation meetings.Skue says you cannot just visit an area without sitting down, introducing yourself, dancing, singing and talking about what projects have been happenning in the community, what the needs are and how to move forward...so fair enough, it's exhausting though!

Last night Skue and i sat down and did some planning for the next 5 weeks while i'm here. We looked at the 3 areas in Malawi where things are happenning fast. What needs to be done:

Lilongwe:

1.) Mtandile: there is a request for upgrading so an enumeration needs to be done

2.) Area 50: People have settled on land that has been reserved for industrial expansion and risk eviction. We need to do a quick enumeration for information purposes, present it to the city and work with the them on how best to manage the situation.

3.) There is a groundbreaking ceremony on the 13th September to launch the constrution of the housing project in area 49. This past Wednesday we sent out a letter to all significant people inviting them to attend.

3.) A detailed programme report needs to be compiled for SELAVIP. The report will look at Area 49 specifically and will be accompanied by photos and a video that i've already taken.

4.) A funding proposal needs to be written to UNICEF for the onging programme that the youth federation is involved in. They want to know what's been done, what are they presently doing and the plan for the next 2 years.

Blantyre:

1.) The upgrading programme - Cities Without Slums Programme. The city have allowed us to do a pilot 'learning' project however we still need to identify land. We're apparently in negotiation with the Ministry of Housing for land, we're hoping for 2000 plots. Want tenants in unplanned areas to benefit from this. This seems like quite a complicated process this one. I think i'm off to Blantyre next week some time.

Mzuzu:

1.) This September there will be a formal launch/meeting between the city and the federation. The city have been impressed by their work and are keen on forming a partnership. This will be an opportunity for both sides to articulate their needs, ideas and plans and hopefully the federation will be given some land. The Director of Planning is now waiting for an MOU from us to be processed

So there appears to be a substantial amount of work to be done here, i just hope i can be of real help. Have had a very interesting time so far and look forward to getting stuck into it. The people here are so warm and welcoming it's hard not to feel at home.

Hope you are well and all the best with the millions of things that you're involved in right now.

Chat soon

Zoe

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