My New Home

Myself and the six other interns live on the Mzuzu University campus (or ‘Mzuni’ for short), which is located ten minutes north of Mzuzu by car. We share a bungalow (pictured above) on campus that serves as a guest house. We have electricity and running water most of the time subject to frequent outages, which can make cooking, laundry and mostly any housekeeping activity a tad bit challenging. During our second week, we experienced a 48 hour power outage accompanied by frequent water shortages. It’s amazing how much more organized and resourceful you have to be without the guarantee of water or electricity. But life goes on, as do lectures and meetings. I find that this reality forces you to rely much more upon yourself rather than technology.

The campus is centered on the main administrative buildings and classrooms, which is surrounded by student residences that sprawl outwards. The housing is characterized by bungalows surrounded by large expanses of well vegetated open space. It is common to see people gathering and walking through each other’s properties where well travelled pedestrian paths have formed.It only takes me three minutes to walk to work by cutting through four different yards. As such, the campus is remarkably communal. We often play Frisbee in the street and string up the ‘slack line’ in the yard, which is a rope suspended between two trees that you walk on like a tight rope. This peculiar activity usually draws people from all directions and has allowed us to make a few friends.