Training

I led a training for my team in the clinic on Saturday.  I had to fight the Country Director for authorization for a Saturday training (they all get paid a stipend for weekend work) but I didn't want to take away from patient care, and in the long run I think it's worth it to really focus on training and be away from the workweek distractions.  The training was scheduled to begin at 8am, and me and my type-A personality arrived at 7:30 to print some notes and be ready to go right at 8.  At ten after eight I realized I was still the only one in the building.  I went outside to the car park to learn transport had just left to go across town to pick people up.  Right.  This is Malawi time.  A start time of 8 means we'll be lucky to get going by 9.  As people started to trickle in we chatted a bit in the morning sun waiting for everyone to get there, and I was actually pleasantly surprised when we were upstairs in the conference room at 8:40.  There was only one other glitch.  The accounts manager didn't show up to give cash to the administrative assistant to buy snacks for our morning and afternoon tea breaks.  Having any kind of meeting without tea breaks is a big no-no, so I gave one of the clinical officers all the cash I had on me and sent him out for food.  The team was very involved in the training and we had a great interactive dialogue about how we are going to handle different scenarios.  I think the fact that they didn't completely rebel at the missed tea break demonstrates their dedication to this work, and I am very excited and anxious to move forward.  At lunch we took a team picture:

To relieve some stress on Sunday I went for a short, but steep hike up Bunda Mountain, about 25 km south of Lilongwe.

It's very dry and dusty this time of year.  The sky is hazy from the dust and smoke from people burning their fields in preparation for planting this years maize crop.