Saturday morning, January 28, from Mzuzu, Malawi
The is the first opportunity that I've had to access a computer long enough to work on my blog. I'm going to try and "journalize" the last few days. This is going to be without pictures this time until figure how to do that. Sorry!

Jan 20 ... left Canada from Toronto for London. Night flight ... not so good for sleeping in the seat that I had!

Jan 21 ... 10 hour layover in Heathrow and I was getting pretty dosey by the time we boarded for Johannsburg. Had a better seat so got a couple of hours of broken sleep. Long flight (at least for me) being 11 hours. Oddly enough, I didn't feel that tired when we arrived in J. Short layover of 3 hours, then on to Lelongwe, Malawi.

Once in Lelongwe, we booked into the Sunbird resort, which wasn't too bad at all. But, my air conditioner wouldn't work! Wah! With the help from a fan, I had a good night sleep and all was good.

Monday Jan 23 ... stayed in Lelongwe to spend the day at MUSCCO headquarters. This is the national organization for Malawi's credit unions, known as SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperative) here. In the morning we met with the CEO and his executive team. They reviewed the state of the SACCO system with us and then let us know which SACCOs we would be visiting. Further details were then provided on those SACCOs, including names of management and board chairs. After lunch, we expected to resume meeting with the exec team, but they didn't return. Bev Maxim had an ERM presentation on her laptop and asked if anyone would be interested in seeing it. The head of risk management eagerly agreed and brought two of his department staff. It was an excellent presentation.

Malawi is experiencing a severe fuel shortage. Service stations are essentially closed until they can get a fuel delivery and then they service as many vehicles as they can from the long line-up that has been waiting for hours, maybe days. Still, MUSCCO had fueled up vehicles with drivers to take the 3 teams to various parts of the country.

Tuesday Jan 24 ... a travelling day for Heidi and me. A MUSCCO employee named Venge (Ven-gay) drove us north to Mzuzu. Before leaving, he stopped to pick up his wife and small daughter to bring them on the trip. Malawian children are extremely well behaved, if this child is any example. I thought it was a thoughtful gesture to his family to give them an outing. The trip took about 5 hours to Mzuzu. There were so many real scenes of Africa that we saw from the car, but it wouldn't be appropriate to take pictures. People are proud here and would think that the picture was intended to portray their poverty or oddity (by our standards). Totally understandable. The roadways are pretty good, and they are shared by pedestrians, bicycles, and livestock. Still, I think our average speed would be about 80 kph. There are so many people along the road, sometimes in crowds. Most are carrying something, usually balanced on their heads. And the bicycles are like trucks for Malawians. Some of the loads they carried were unbelievable. Our driver constantly honks the horn to let people know we are approaching. Sometimes we whipped by them going well over 100 kph, within two or three feet of the people. Yikes!

We stayed at another Sunbird resort in Mzuzu and it was even a little nicer than the one in Lelongwe. I didn't know what to expect for accomodations on this trip, but I really don't deserve sympathy for the accomodations MUSCCO has arranged.

Wednesday Jan 25 ... another travelling day, going north from Mzuzu to Karonga. This is a community near the northern border with Tanzania and is situated on the shore of Lake Malawi (second largest lake in Africa). The temperature was very hot and the humidity was off the charts. We were booked into another resort that seemed somewhat isolated. The rooms were nice, if somewhat sparse. We were very grateful for the air conditioning. I also found out I had a roomate ... there was a frog in my toilet bowl. He went for a swim every time the toilet was flushed, then returned. We got along fine.

The trip over to Karonga was interesting. Just before leaving the Mzuzu area, we stopped in Rumphi to meet the Chair and Manager of the Pindu  SACCO. The stop was short because we will be visiting them again on Monday. The road took us through some beautiful scenery of a mountain pass. We passed a couple of groups of baboons which has been our only wildlife sightings so far. We stopped at a couple of spots to take scenery photos. One one occasion I asked our driver to ask two girls if I could take their picture for a fee. They agreed. A couple of school boys stopped and asked if we had any pens. We found a couple we didn't mind parting with, and that was worth a couple more pictures.

We arrived just after noon and had an appointment to meet the Chair and Manageress of the Tikwere SACCO at 2:30. They were extremely gracious in expressing their apprciation for our visit. The conversation was productive. The hour long visit concluded with a refreshment serving of bottled juice and potato chips. There was a genuine prayer said similar to saying grace. In fact, I was impressed with how much they brought their faith into the workplace.

Thursday Jan 26 ...  we returned to the SACCO to meet with the Manageress, Mrs Itai Msiska. What an outstanding lady she is. She has been at the SACCO for 12 years and has brought the organization very far. The purpose of this meeting was to learn what areas she would like us to consider and comment on for improvement. I had expected very basic operations, but was pleasantly surprised to see the quality of their business plans and policies. We really had to work hard to come up with things that they hadn't already thought of. Mrs Msiska had been sponsored some years ago to come to Canada to spend time in a credit union. In her case, her time was largely spent in Envision CU. If you ever wonder whether or not these exchanges are really worthwhile, you need only look at what Mrs Msiska learned and applied from that experience.

After spending time with Mrs Msiska and her employees (who were just delighted to talk to us), we returned to our resort hotel and began to formulate a report. We worked well into the evening to get a draft that we were both comfortable with.

Friday Jan 27 ... We returned to the SACCO to ask some follow-up questions of Mrs Msiska and then returned to our air conditioned rooms to complete a final draft for presenation at 1 pm. This was the hottest day yet!

The Board Executive, Mrs Msiska, her Chief Accountant, and Mr Ezekiel Thindwa (a MUSCCO officer) met under a tree with us to recieve our report. I won't bore the blog readers with the details, but I think we did a pretty good job. We tried to strike a balance between operational suggestions and strategic observations. Heidi (my partner) had made some great suggestions that could yield results in the short term and I thought these were especially well done (and they were well received). In all, the presentation took about an hour and then refreshments were served, again with prayer. Pictures were taken and Heidi and I were given gifts of appreciation. Very touching.

We left about 3 to return to Mzuzu. Quite a bit cooler here.

Saturday Jan 28 ... We have Saturday and Sunday to explore, get caught up on blogs, and just relax. Tomorrow (Sunday) Ezekiel is going to drive us back to Lake Malawi, but at a different location than Karonga. We'll do some gift shopping and see some sights. I'm looking forward to it.