ICS blog

World AIDS Day was an absolute success. The atmosphere and support were incredible. I haven’t felt this great since the triumph of our last community event! It went down a storm and we could not be more proud, so now it is time for us to take to our keyboards and tell you all about it. It is a tale of tribulation and triumph that we blush at telling ourselves but, seeing as there’s no one else, here we go.

We have been in Rumphi for a long time now and have absolutely loved our work here, we have been embraced by the local people who have all been happy to see us volunteering in the rural communities in the Mzimba district where we work. Within the communities we have engaged in a variety of activities, all with the aim of helping the agricultural work, which many local people rely on for a sustainable income.

I’ll admit that before I applied to ICS I didn’t know all that much about Central America, and more specifically, Honduras. Interestingly, however, I had heard of its reputation for gangs, violence, and drug trafficking. Indeed, upon first finding out that I’d be heading to Honduras, a few quick Google searches seemed to confirm my suspicions, with reports of violence and crime filling the results page.

The war in El Salvador during the eighties was a bloody one. Every day more than 60 people died in the country. The rate of murders was high, with children among them. There were days in which whole families would die. This former soldier tells us that, one time when they were going to the Guazapa mountain, four of his comrades died in an ambush.

We asked the former soldier where all of this took place. He said that, more often, in the Guazapa mountain, where they fought the guerrilla fighters.

The hot, dusty and windy town of Rumphi is located in the Northern Region of Malawi, to the south of the Nyika National Park and an hour north of Mzuzu. It is a small town, hemmed in on most sides by rocky mountains, covered in rural, sparsely populated villages, with one main road to connect the town and its people. To pass into the District of Rumphi you pass through a mountain valley and over a river with spectacularly large boulders.

This week, being Gender Based Violence (GBV) awareness week, we’ve been working to promote the issue here in Malawi. I’m sickened by some of the facts I’ve found. It’s a global issue but the stats that show, how much women here suffer are shocking! From my short time here, being a ‘Mzungu’ in particular, I’ve experienced attacks on my personal space and a lot of verbal abuse and shouting from boys and men; many of which are drunks that can be found spilling out of the local bars at any time throughout the day.

Everyone expects different things when departing for the developing world, some expect rolling mountains and fresh mangos, and others expect potholes and Malaria. When we departed for Zimbabwe, we came armed with GoPros and Doxycycline, ready to shoot the perfect sunset fit for Instagram and not end up in hospital. Yet one can never anticipate the unexpected pleasures found amongst the unknown, joys that you cannot prepare for, and usually when they do appear, the GoPro will be out of battery. 

A Malawian child found playing in the rain will certainly have a case to answer to that evening to their parents. This is contrary to my new brothers and sisters from the UK who have survived the hot Malawian summer and are now enjoying the beginnings of the rainy season. Aged 18 and above, their culture considers them adults, which made it strange to see them laughing and cheering whilst walking barefoot, like poor prisoners in the heavy rains, especially when the locals took to their heels to find shelter.

The art of not getting homesick is a much necessary requirement for any fully fledged traveller, astronaut, or ICS volunteer, right? Three months working abroad with complete strangers is a task only doable by the thrill seeking, wild spirited type, and anyone without these required attributes will be well and truly hopeless and firmly DECLINED from the programme.

Ecotourism is one of the most popular emerging tourism markets. With the environment in an ever-worsening condition, the tourism industry has sat up and taken notice and directed tourism toward exotic, often threatened, natural environments, especially to support conservation efforts and observe wildlife.