We have quite intensive language training. Four of us are going north so we are learning Chitumbuka. ‘Ndile makola kwali imwe’ are my first words. I’m fine and how are you? I have a lovely language teacher and I manage to learn plenty of basic greetings and one liners. We don’t attempt any grammar but it is a good start. I had a chat to Jackie Buckley the Education Programme Officer about my job. The Ministry of Education have recently established a school sports association with the hope of raising the profile of PE and sports in schools. Three sports volunteers will be recruited with the challenge of ‘rejuvenating school sports’ in Malawi. I’m the first to arrive so my next six months will pave the way for the others. It seemed like a job to make my own. What a challenge? Remote schools, very limited resources and limited funds. It sounded like just what I had come to do.

We are being fed well on fish, beans, vegetables and nsima (the Malawian stable diet made from maize). Food is eaten with the hands as in all parts of Africa but knives and forks are available. In the evenings we meet up in the bar, talk and drink the only beer in Malawi Carlsberg ‘Green’ or ‘Brown’ label. In my room I record my language lessons onto a tape player. I practice well into the night.

We are taken into Lilongwe for a visit but I felt a bit on show in a big group. It is raining a lot at the moment usually in the afternoons. We meet some year old volunteers and listen to some negative stuff but I know why I’m here and filter most of it. We are invited to the British High Commission for drinks. The Deputy High Commissioner talks to me about Malawian women. Do you have a girlfriend yet? ‘I have a Barbadian girlfriend in the UK’, I reply. Then he says ‘if you hang around sheep long enough’. I’m appalled and go and tell his wife. These people are representing my country here. We go to Likuni Market to practice our language skills. I ask a man selling plastic buckets ‘what is your job’? ‘I sell plastic buckets’ he replied. It works. We listen to a lot of guest speakers about all sorts. Gender issues, politics and how Malawians act in relation to work and socially. Before we leave for our placements we are going to stay in a village nearby. I’m lodging with the Kwalira family. It was a humbling experience and I thought maybe that was the reason behind it. The simple life, his beliefs and close family network was humbling. We talk finances before we leave. I will get 5660 kwacha a month (2600 kwacha from the government and a 3060 kwacha top up from VSO). I’m also given 9600 kwacha to buy household goods for my house that the government provide. I will be staying in a school house at Mzuzu Government Secondary School. It works out at about £40 a month.

I met Fabiano Sibale my counterpart at work. Hopefully we would be in pursuit of the shared goal of trying to rejuvenate school sports. It was a huge task so we initially didn’t talk about the job much. He was more excited that his football team’ Apatseni Socials’ were going to have a ‘Mzungu’ or foreigner playing for them. We had a workshop. I was in charge of a talk about being sexually frustrated. ‘Mrs. Hand and her five lovely daughters’ got a big laugh. Fabiano in his presentation made a comment about girls wearing tight jeans making them unable to play sport. The women in the audience looked at me astonished. Afterwards I asked him if he meant it and he just smiled and said it was a joke. I wasn’t sure myself. He has a sense of humour and I think we will be a good team. On the final night we say our goodbyes and wish each other good luck. I pack my bags and sleep well. The Mzuzu Government School vehicle had been assigned to collect me. In it I have a bike, a fridge and my big bag. We spend a frustrating few hours at airport customs but Fabiano managed to get the sports equipment out as I sat in the vehicle well out of the way of extra charges. We were off north up the main tarmac road through Malawi. As it got dark I remember being concerned about being bitten by mosquitoes and covering myself in repellent. It seemed like an endless trip and it eventually took seven hours.

The lights of Mzuzu just appear in the darkness. We have arrived in my home for the next two years. Mzuzu Government School is just out of town and then a right turn down a very bumpy dirt road. The air is heavy and the crickets are chirping loudly. Fabiano shows me my house but there are no keys ready tonight. My neighbour and school teacher Charles Choka is still up and he let me stay at his house. He even lets me have his bed. My house isn’t going to be ready for about two more days as some school girls are coming to repaint it tomorrow. I’ve only been away three weeks and Jenny has been busy writing as a letter is waiting for me. She said it was an amazing time that we had spent together before I left and she was thinking about me too much. I replied but knew I was here and she was there. She wanted to visit and I thought that would be a great thing to do at this point in our relationship. I slept well that night and late into the morning. When I went outside my house looked great and the setting of the school was beautiful on one side of a valley that stretched out of town.

Today is Sunday and mine to relax and explore. The school is set in a lovely spot in the valley. The surroundings are green and lush. A short walk away is a beautiful lake and forest. I love it. It is a thirty minute walk through fields into Mzuzu. I meet Downs Nyasulu the man who worked for a previous volunteer in Mzuzu. I had half promised to give him a job. He lives near the school with his wife and three young children. I gave him a job looking after the house and garden while I was at work and doing odd jobs. He was very happy. We would be good friends for two years. He never once let me down. We even opened a ‘Chibuku’ bar together that the school teachers frequented. I have also inherited a night guard which VSO consider essential. His name was Wenson Misbah. For almost two years I would listen to the same routine. He would arrive, make himself comfortable on my porch, his big knife would hit the floor and seconds later the snoring would begin. He was harmless. More than once he made me laugh. Two incidents stand out. One night all my potatoes and bananas were stolen from under his nose. Another time the police brought him to my house early one morning as he was cutting down trees illegally. On my first day I met my new football club. ‘Apatseni Socials’ FC meaning ‘give them’ meet regularly in the Casanova Bar across town in Chibavi. That night I was elected ‘Head Coach’ for the upcoming season. I still had ambitions on the field but first I had to prove myself. The beer of no-choice in Malawi is Carlsberg either green or brown. The chosen method of opening seems to be the teeth. The chosen nibble to go with it is small strips of barbecued meat. The chosen seat in most bars is an upturned Carlsberg beer crate. I felt at home.

In 1999 Mzuzu has a population of 87,000. It lies in the centre of an agricultural region. Tea, rubber and coffee plantations surround the city. Mzuzu was granted city status in 1985. The large Viphya Forest just south of the city is the largest man-made forest in Africa. We are at 1,254 metres above sea level. Mzuzu was originally set up around the Commonwealth Development Corporation Tung Oil Estate in 1947. It was a low rise, quiet and an unhurried place. I liked it immediately.

It is my first day at work. Fabiano and I put on our ties and head for the Divisional Education Manager’s office. Mr. Tasokwa Msiska is a small man hiding behind his big desk. He doesn’t really know totally why I’m here so I have to explain about my role and what I can bring to school sports in his division of Malawi. He remembers the good old days of Malawian school sports. He was previously a teacher from the Nkhata Bay area. He mentions Khina Phiri the most famous footballer to come out of the Northern Region. He tells me of the fierce rivalry between the North and the rest of Malawi. I like him and he promises me his support. I meet the other Education officials. Mr. Kalumbi is a big man and the Deputy Divisional Manager. Msiska and Kalumbi have history I am soon to find out. Someone told me to the point of putting ‘juju’ or curses on each other. Mr. Derek Zimba is the young confused Finance Manager.

Mr. Kamaga is the well organised Personnel Manager who quickly sorts out my pay and got my water and electricity turned on the same day. Mr. ‘Max’ Mtongo is the store’s manager. Mr. ‘Morris’ Makakwa is the transport manager. Trywell and Maxwell make all your calls from the communications room. Mr. Starkey Beast is the typist. Joseph is our one legged incompetent office clerk. Andy Bottomer is the new Northern Divisional Sports Development Officer. Fabiano Sibale plucked from teaching obscurity is to be my right hand man.

The Divisional Education Manager explained to us the educational structure in the division. There were about nine hundred primary schools and two hundred secondary schools in the division. We have long established government schools, more recent community day secondary schools and a fast growing number of private schools. All schools would be included in our programme. Schools were clustered in geographical zones. About four or five secondary zones and about fifteen primary zones made up a district. The division was made up of eight districts namely Mzuzu, Mzimba North, Mzimba South, Nkhata Bay, Rumphi, Karonga, Chitipa and Likoma Island. The districts had a district education officer and primary education advisers in each zone who visit the schools. Transport was an issue. Big government schools had a flat-bed lorry used for moving goods and children. Each district had a similar vehicle. We could utilise these if requested. Schools had no trained PE teachers as such and those interested or not ran sports in their schools. There used to be well organised school sports competitions I was told but over the past twenty years nothing organised had really happened in school sports. It was our job to ‘rejuvenate school sports’. We obviously needed a plan of some sort.

We needed to meet the teachers on the ground and gauge their enthusiasm for sports, identify the problems holding them back and get some local knowledge about what was happening and ideas about the best way forward. A letter was written to all schools outlining the government’s recent formation of MASSA (Malawi School Sports Association) and its plans for school sports. All schools were invited to a district meeting at their district education office over the next few weeks. I sat down and wrote a draft of an action plan for the year involving teacher training courses that would focus on football and netball coaching and officiating. A football and netball competition was devised from zonal level up to divisional finals. A clear timetable of events was outlined for the coming school year. It was time to see what the schools thought of my plan. I shared my ideas with Mr. Masebo the Regional Sports Development Officer working for the Malawian Sports Council. Fabiano told me he was a good man but had no funds to do anything constructive. He sat there behind his desk in his Malawi tracksuit talking but I guessed he hadn’t got up a lot recently. We agreed to try and work together to help sports in the North.