This is the end of my final week developing a Training Manual for Branch Managers working for the MicroLoan Foundation. It's finished, much to my surprise, (given the short timescale), & huge relief, (because I really didn't want to have to work on it remotely from the UK).
It is a minor miracle that it's done, given how little I know about finance in general & Micro-Finance in particular. I have had some help, but it's been fairly intermittent. More of that in another Blog. I've just got Monday to do any revisions the CEO wants.
Then on Tuesday I'm starting the 2 day journey back to the UK for a good mug of breakfast tea with real milk, a hot shower with plenty of water pressure & a trip to M&S "Simply Food" for some treats. I'm also looking forward to no power cuts every day, my own bed & not being woken at 5am every morning by the kitchen help in the "Lodge"! My close friends know I'm not a morning person.
I will miss many things about Malawi. The sunshine. The landscape, which I love. The people, who seem to be eternally cheerful & friendly in the face of various levels of adversity.
It is a country which deserves to be better served by it's politicians - Check out Maize-gate for example to see how a Minister is currently in Court for a huge fiddle involving Zambian maize. He is by no means alone in defrauding the poorest of people.
I was talking to a Forestry NGO man who was telling me similar stories about misappropriation of money meant for tackling the huge problem of de-forestation. The people need wood. Most of the population live in very rural areas & use wood for almost everything - their fires for cooking, houses, stalls to sell goods, stockades for animals.....They just need to be taught not to cut down old hardwoods & to be given alternatives. Meanwhile money for projects is "diverted"
How can Malawian politicians treat their disadvantaged countrymen & women so badly in order to line their pockets? This in a supposedly very Christian country.
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