May 31st 2010

So, today is when it all kicks off. My flight leaves Heathrow at 9pm so am leaving home at about 5 this evening. I'm feeling really excited, along with a little bit of apprehension. For me this is a journey into the unknown and I am really looking forward to becoming immersed into everyday life in Mikule.

I am travelling with 6 other people: Rose, Tom, Mark, Emily, Poppy and Joel, all of whom are in Edinburgh but between us we cover several different years. We are volunteering through a student run charity, EGP, or Edinburgh Global Partnerships which aims to work alongside community led initiatives in various locations around the world. The project I am going to be involved with will see little me helping to construct an Apiculture (or Bee Keeping) Centre in a rural Malawian village. This will provide a livelihood and a financial income through the honey production to the people of the village. I am told that the tasks I will be involved in doing include moving bricks and mixing cement - all which should be nice and sweat-inducing under the African sun. I must say that after spending last summer slaving away cleaning mobile homes for Eurocamp, I feel that I am able take on any manual labour that will come my way.
On arrival in Lilongwe, Rose and Tom (our team co-ordinators) will be shooting off to Mikule on public transport, to make sure that everything is ready for when the rest of us volunteers, or "vols" arrive about four days later.

Our plan for the few days before we meet Rose and Tom in Mzuzu, the nearest main town to Mikule, to begin the project, is not really planned :s I think what we will end up doing is travelling slowly towards Mzuzu, taking in our new surroundings. In other words, watch this space. I hope to spend sometime by Lake Malawi and maybe I'll have a chance to practice some of the local language, following our introductory Tumbuka class which was arranged through the Scotland/Malawi partnership.

So that's it for now, before I go I'm going to spend some quality time catching up on this week's desperate housewives.

See you on the other side dudes x