National Conference/ Peer Support

The next few paragraphs would really have sounded like a déjà-vu of a previous blog (Africa a la VSO), were it not for the fact that this time round, it was my mates and myself organising it! What a completely different experience that makes it all of a sudden. All these fun things, for example, that I took for granted in March, now revealed the hard work that went into them. All in all, it is still fun but a different kind of fun- one with greater longevity. But then also one with a steeper anticlimax- state that I’m in right now. Just to clarify things a bit, I got myself (expectedly for most of you who know me) into a rep seat for the volunteers at the last conference. Since then, I’ve been keeping quite busy outside work really sorting things out between VSO and the volunteers. The culmination of this role really, as I already anticipated, came with the organisation of the national conference. True, I won’t take the biggest credit for it. That, by far, should go to my hardworking city-based mates- Hazel, Ruth and Misja. Of course nothing goes plain sailingly in these matters, as a mere 3weeks before the scheduled date, we got a email from the central office telling us we might have to pull the plug on the whole thing. How do you react to such a shocker after you’ve spent the last two months chasing quotes around like a headless chicken and squeezing business discussions into every social gathering where there was a slightest chance of meeting another rep? But we persevered and made amendments to the programme to allow it to go ahead. The end result, with hindsight, at least in my opinion, couldn’t have worked out better. We had the assistance of a super-motivated team from the programme office, including our interim country director, Anne Wuijits. We included talks and presentations ranging from social volunteer-to-volunteer booster sessions to proper development-centred discussions. I even got to do a talk on environmental issues relevant to volunteers based in Africa. This was in-keeping with the new global strategy for VSO, which our revised agenda had to reflect. Beside all this business talk going on all day, we also got treated to some pretty top-act quiz, as orchestrated by our own Bwana Joel (bwana= chief!). And just to put the cherry on the cake, I even found two spots where to rock-climb in the early mornings (without hangover by the way!). The first one was this brilliant quarry with the longest sweetest traverse I’ve tackled in ages. It got so hot in there though that by 8am it was already too scorching to even breathe. That’s why the second spot had the effect of an El Dorado. It was actually just that in every way. Quaint little volcanic island about 2Km from the shore, which you got to by way of a pedalo (and back from using your own propeller power, if you’re called Ashtin or Klaas!), littered with ascents and traverses of all grades. My overexcitement is manifested, even now, by the deep scratches on all but 4 on my finger pulps from the severe friction with this voracious rock. I was being quietly deceived by a placid looking water with cyclet fish circling around in a bliss-like state.
Facilitating


Taking the plunge!
Rock is back...

The second major difference between this conference and the last lay in the fact that this time round, the end of the conference coincided with the start of another- the peer support. Klaas and I were the main organisers for this one and it took one great big bead of sweat off both our foreheads to keep things flowing as they did. I will probably look back at it as one of my medical achievements while here in Malawi. The peer support is really the main forum for doctors to pick each other’s brains about issues being faced at work and make a collective effort at troubleshooting them. A great opportunity to commiserate above all, but which this year we decided also to transform into something more than a rant- a set of recommendations. Thus we sat down and dissected each of our grievances in turn, trying to look for possible reasons to explain things and then formulating practical suggestions as to who should be made to address them and how. We are eventually going to make this into a consultation document, which hopefully will inform wider medical forums and ultimately land on a government desk sometime... Another greatly welcome innovation at the peer support was a number of joint sessions with the nurse and laboratory VSO groups. This was really an opportunity to explore new ways of working together and making a greater impact in our work. It’s difficult to make such serious work related sessions sound as glamorous as, say, a Lake of Stars festival, but, in our own modest way, we did also manage to throw in some good quality entertainment. This was largely aided by Klaas’s very own natural talent for turning seemingly irrelevant details into an all absorbing canvas of fascinating facts, as evidenced by his medical quiz and an incredible take on the intricacies of the Chichewa language! And this time, he didn’t even have his guitar at hand!

The music of my latest week of organising-meet-fun-meet-delirious-satisfaction will ring for a while to come in my own mind though. Once the anticlimax is over that is!