more pix from scottland

link zu emily's pix

Christmas on the beach and Trip to Scottland

a week earlier than planned, we finished up field work in malomo and went back to LLW to prepare the follow-up survey which will be administered in the first 2 weeks of Jan.

After a few days in LLW, my X-mas gift arrived by plane from Rome, wrapped in woolen garnment and a beard ;-), a direct import from italy. this meant i had 3 x-mas this year. once at the airport, once at the beach (on the 24th, when Austrians and Italians celebrate x-mas) and once on the 25th, as we were travelling with our American friend Emily.

The highlight of the 24th was the x-mas tree with candles that my mum had sent with Heiner. Unexpectedly, some sense of a chrstimas -feeling eventually came up!

The highlight of the 25th was our adventure on the 4x4-only road, which we thought was the only road to the camp in the Nyika Nationalpark where we were headed to. When we started off on that road it was already getting dark and it looked a bit scary but we still went ahead until heavy rains started, the road got worse and worse, the vegetation denser and denser, the plants on the "road" higher and higher and we could hardly see where we were going. given the road conditions - it did not not seem as if anyone had travelled that road at least for weeks - i started to doubt that place was open and I was also afraid we would be stuck with the car in the mud or even worse, break an axe or something trying to drive on it. so we just stopped the car at a relatively even spot where
we would be able to turn around the next day. after the rains eased, we put up our tent hoping that no elephants, jackals or hyenes would come close...

The following day we got some water from a river, just in case the camp would be closed and decided to continue on the road. It was really in a bad condition, but at daylight at least we could see how bad it was and where the wholes in and the stones on the street where. Eventually we made it to the campt and it turned out this road was not the only one leading there but only for those who were looking for adventure - well yes, we definitely had our share of it.

Nyika is a beautiful national park in the northern reagion of Malawi. It looks like scottland with its hilly highlands, frequent rains and foggy weather - just with zebras and antilopes, warthogs and jackals. after a fews days of touring through the highlands, taking tons of pictures of orchids and other pants, and hiking to a waterfall we left the park passing through all possible climate zones on our way to the lake.

here we are now, at a precious spot called nkata bay, with clear water, bright colored fish, both rocky and sandy beaches, staying in a beautiful chalet.

a few days and I will be back in Malomo, working on the Project for another 2 to 3 weeks before we can head south to discover Liwonde & Mulaje National parks.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I am looking forward to hearing more from you next year!!

Mein Nikolo dieses Jahr: Besuch in Malomo

http://thelongweihome.blogspot.com/2009/12/picture-is-worth-thousand-words-and.html

Geschichten ueber Malawi

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/09/14/090914fi_fiction_theroux?printable=true
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Clara Höpler
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Malawi cell phone: +265993213078

Hier ist alles viel besser.ich fange am mich zu entspannen,arbeite
nicht mehr so viel,war gestern sogar aus! rundherum wird alles
grün,prachtvoll!
Ab morgen bin ich auch
Baumeister,haha.werden die strasse reparieren,damit wir auch während
der regenwehu fahren können- bin schon gespannt. Arbeiter, truck und
quelle für die steine sind gecheckt und hoffentl geht's morgen los. Im
besten fall schaffen wir's in einem tag.
Meldet euch mal, will wissen,wie es euch geht und was ihr treibt!
Alles liebe,clara

--
Von meinen Mobilgerät aus gesendet

Clara Höpler
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Malawi cell phone: +265993213078

Rainy times............

Just last night we were discussing a strategy to get the road leading to the villages a repaired. We would get the villagers to provide stones and labor and we would get a lorry to carry the stones. Their contribution to the project would increase participation and a sense of ownership among the villagers and would help us to continue throughout the rainy season without spending too much money. That we would already be stuck at our house this morning no one was expecting - and this is only the start of rainy season!!!!

Operation Mini-Bus

We are going towards the end of the 3rd week of the operation of the
Mini-Bus and the 2n week of Activities Surveys. And - although I am
not even in the field right now and should probably wait until I am
back to see whether this is actually true - but it seems like things
are finally running smoothly.

After 2 days of strike and negotiations, the enumerators agreed to the
initial terms that I had offered (we just don't have money to pay them
more) but I found a system that would allow them to make a decent wage
while staying within our budget. The days of strike actually gave me some time to sit down and think things through and I came up with a few measures to increase
output (=questionnaires per enumerator per day) so that everyone wins
(we pay fewer enumerators a day for daily allowances, and enumerators
increase their daily wage by increasing the number of surveys
administered.)

I could finally start with more interesting work - the ridership
analysis of the 1st week of of bus operation. Working on the
qualitative part of our study which consists of journal entries of our bus stop monitor capturing conversations (rumors,
discussions, etc.) is hilarious - the rumors about our bus (we are
satanists and will cause an accident to get their blood) and the
discussions among villagers (they heard on the radio that a cure
against HIV was found - if this is true, this i great - they can have
multiple women!!!) are a lot of fun to read.

The past few days I spent in LLW working on the template for the data
entry. This was less satisfying since I had to fight with a stupid
program (CSR PRO) and corrupt files that kept deactivating entry
forms....

Now I am going back to the field and hope that that the supervisors
did a good job while I was away. Again, I will have no money to pay
may people (a recurrent theme) but I hope this issue will be solved
soon!

--
Clara Höpler
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Malawi cell phone: +265993213078