Breakfast at the lodge was great, but we realized what we had to look forward to dealing with for the rest of the week. Even if we preordered the night before, the kitchen wouldn't even think of starting cooking until we sat down, and would never serve us even close to what we ordered. So it was quite the exercise telling the sweet well mannered waitresses what we wanted, them coming back numerous times asking us to repeat it, and then still bringing something else. Considering the power went out often, and they often had to cook with traditional wood fired stove tops, I was still pretty impressed with them.
Concern Universal (CU) has an office in Phalombe which is quite the interesting place, located in a small building behind the only road with any businesses on it in town, enclosed in a bring wall with a massive iron security door. Outside is a fleet of Yamaha 125 dirt bikes, which the guys use to travel to the remote villages to distribute materials and collect health data. They actually had Internet access to our surprise, but the power was rarely on long enough to use it, which is why all of these blog entries were dumped on here at once. We met Senard, the regional program director, as well as the rest of the team and had a formal 'meeting' in the 'boardroom'. This group of 8 guys were some of the most motivated native Africans I have ever met. They walked Alecia, Jen and I through their entire 4 year malaria project that includes a lot of research and tracking of the problem as well as education. Our part with the net distributions is helping accomplish the part of their project that has yet to have much progress compared to the other goals planned for. As backward as it seems, they have already provided very involved education to many villages around prevention and treatment, which stresses the use of insecticidal bed nets, which they don't have and can't afford. So we learned that even though they had received hundreds of thousands in aid from the US and other Western nations for their malaria programs, that funds have been appropriated for certain functions such as education and research, leaving big gaps in support for their regional net coverage goals. So the CU team walked us through their report that was really impressive, compiling results of cluster samples they had collected from over a hundred villages including malaria contraction percentages, health facility access, death rates, regional net coverage, net usage, etc. They were able to answer all of my questions, although at the typical African snail pace. Literally the meeting made our audit planning meetings seem like the pace of meetings on the trading floor on wall street. They also showed us a wall map of the region that was color coded for the coverage and type of devices they had provided certain villages, and it was really clear that these guys cared a lot about what they did.
That afternoon, Senard scheduled us a meeting with the district commissioner of Phalombe, which is similar to a mayor. It ended up being a much bigger deal than expected. We sat down in his massive office with the regional director of health as well, and they briefed us on their priorities to make their district a place where people no longer had to worry about sickness and death from malaria or other diseases. The DC then made an invitation for Rob, AMF founder, to come visit Malawi and Phalombe district specifically to see the impact the nets are having and their need for more. We shook hands for a photo outside and the girls and I were saying how funny it is that somethings are so formal here, while everything else is completely unorganized and untimely. The DC and Health director had full heavy Italian suits on ties tightened and all in the blistering 90 + degrees, while we were in shorts and t-shirts. They made clear the meeting wasn't over until we re-capped, swapped business cards, signed their guest register and had our photo taken.
