The sound of Ntcheu

My House
En route to Ntcheu
I’m now in Ntcheu. You probably guessed by the decline in my updates that internet here is not the widespread facility that we, in the west, consider of the same order as electricity or water. More reassuringly, the latter are available, albeit with frequent interruptions. So I’m not exactly in the wild but the town, if it can be called that, is very basic indeed. Parts of it remind me of my visits to Riviere du Rempart villages when I was a little boy and even that was relatively developed compared to here. The fact that Ntcheu lies on the main road between Lilongwe and Blantyre (ineptly named the M1) attracts some degree of trade and infrastructure (2 big petrol stations for example). Most of the settlements are down side roads, mostly dirt tracks.
The hospital itself is a stone’s throw away from my house, 3 minutes’ walk to be precise. It’s not very big but relatively tidy. The Malawians place a lot of emphasis on tidiness and on the attractiveness of their gardens, which makes for a pleasant working atmosphere. The hospital has 5 main wards: Female, Male, TB, Maternity and Children’s. It also has a main outpatient’s section, which acts as the casualty area and a follow up outpatient akin to our fracture clinic, where the Orthopaedic clinical officer sits. This is attached to a minor ops area for suturing, I&Ds and plastering mostly- all done under LA or neat! Main theatres are behind this block and I haven’t visited it yet. The laboratory facilities available aren’t too bad, with full blood count, microscopy and cultures possible. An XRay department exists and has the honour of being the only air-conditioned area in the hospital. It is however temperamental, the output very much a function of availability of chemicals and good running water from the mains. The only portable XRay and ultrasound machines are presently out of order and there does not seem to be much hope of an imminent recovery. The hospital also has public health and environmental surveillance offices, where other VSOs are placed. On the medical front, I’m joined by a general/obstetric doctor (Dutch) and a paediatrician (Indian), both very nice and helpful to me. In fact, my arrival here wasn’t scarily isolating, as I had a nice welcome dinner outing with some of these volunteers and I moved into a house where there was already another volunteer (in HIV/AIDS programme). However, I still expect it to take a little longer before I can safely say I’m settled in here- because let’s face it: this IS culture shock!
The chief of the hospital is the only Malawian doctor around. He has only qualified from medschool last year and is already the acting District Health Officer -title which comes with its fair share of administrative duties- such that our DHO is almost always immersed in paper work, when he has not been dispatched to some central ministry meeting. Extremely difficult to pin down but when you do, he is a very amicable person and undeniably has an air of competency about him. This is evident when you judge by the standard of some of the medical students attached to us here. Their knowledge base is impressively wide and most of them are also familiar with minor surgical and obstetric procedures- in stark contrast to our slack party-going lot at home!
As for the surroundings, well I couldn’t have fallen better- rolling hills into the distance, most coming ready with paths. Slight disappointment for now is that I’ll have to wait till the rainy season abates. The way the skies open up here is like nothing I’ve experienced before (save a brief encounter with the Bombay Monsoon- even that was milder). It trickles for a bit, then this massive sky-borne bucket the size of Ntcheu is suddenly tipped over the whole place for 2-3hours, bringing with it a pounding presto raindrop solo on my tin-roof (typically at night). Outside everything simply coalesces into a massive pool with gushing streams carrying the water downstream- so effectively in fact that it dries up quite quickly afterwards (at least up here).
The main road (M1) is the heart of the town. Littered with small shops and stalls selling exactly the same groceries, within ten metres of each other, it also has a number of higher end shops, which sell other basic household items. Anything, in the least, specialised is hard to find here and would normally require you to take a trip to Blantyre or Lilongwe. One such example, I found out to the detriment of my face is shaving cream/foam/soap. Eateries are elementary, serving mostly the Malawian staple food (Nsima/Rice/Chippy(!) + Beef/Chicken/Chambo) and nothing fancy. Vegetarian food can be hard to come by at times, although they will usually have a side dish of cooked greens, but this really does make it into a main dish. Bars can also be found aplenty here and one distinctive characteristic they share is the loud music. This only adds to the fanfare produced by the shops selling clothes, music and ‘gifts’. The way this music is typically played is what stunned me at first. Instead of pointing the loudspeaker, turned up to the max, into the building for the enjoyment of the customers, in here, it tends to be the other way round. Thus your eardrums are constantly being assaulted by random music from neighbouring shops competing for your attention. The one from the Uncle B bar reigns supreme as it goes on through the night most days to my great distress, given I didn’t bring any earplugs! I must have had them on when they repeatedly warned us at the VSO courses that we should have equipped ourselves with a good stock of these. So my nights are now tuned to the rhythm of a distant bass with occasional drums. It’s funny I should say this but it’s kind of starting to even feel normal to me- as long as they don’t push it (as they did on Valentine’s night!).
And now for the icing on the cake, let me tell you about the howling concerto from Ntcheu’s own dog/hyena ensemble when Uncle B’s Bar (aka Black Mafia) or torrential rain aren’t deafening all else. This is a unique choir played on the background of the nearby hills, which also help with the echo. Thus every night the howling conference takes place somewhere around 11 pm and dies out naturally by midnight. It’s so predictable that, again, it becomes almost part of your routine. In fact, I find it even soothing at times, but I still wouldn’t want to venture out there.
So this is Ntcheu, in a nutshell. Of course more anecdotes will come out of it over the course of the next year at least that I’ll be here. But for now I shall leave you to whatever music be with you to join my sweet melange of bass, howls and raindrops...