Where in the World is Colleen?

After a snowy month back in Calgary, a blustery week in Newfoundland and a snowy/foggy day in London, I boarded a plane and made my sleepy way back to Ghana.   I arrived back in Accra a week ago, and stepping off the plane I was hit by that expected wave of heat and sun.

From Canada:

To Ghana:

I came back to Dedza on Saturday morning to a series of welcomes, hugs and exclamations something along the lines of “where have you been!?”  “We missed you!”

It’s nice to be missed.  And it’s true!  I’ve been gone for a while, travelling around for Concern Universal work related things, EWB related things, meetings, field visits, potato stuff, visits to short term volunteer (Annette and Andrew) stuff… it’s been a busy month.  I’ve barely been home. I’ve been bouncing between Dedza-Blantyre-Ntcheu-Lilongwe-Mzuzu-Livinstonia and back.

This past week found me up in northern Malawi visiting coffee farmers, fixing coffee processing machines, and getting reconnected with the field.  It’s a different part of Malawi, a different crop, but with that similar good feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day.

Mini-buses, big buses, matolas (little flat bed trucks that are probably far from safe), bike taxis, hikes, gracious rides from strangers, and a few NGO Hiluxes later, I made it from Dedza to just outside of Livingstonia and back in 5-6 days.  Not too bad considering the multitude of transportation trials.

(Me on a matola next to a really annoying guy that Annette and I considered pushing off the back.)