Bicycles. Yep, public transport bicycles. Not "to hire" but "to get a ride on!"
Along the main tar roads, as in most parts of Africa, there are pick up trucks and the occasional minibus/van, which continue to take passengers as long as they are willing to climb on. This is one is pretty full, but certainly not the most people we saw! It's generally more acceptable for females to sit in the bed -- something I had to explain to the volunteers. On the odd occasion, I'd end up with a child in my lap (no one else I travelled with had this happen -- I think my kid attraction from my youth has re-blossomed lately!) or less fortunately snuggled up to some stranger (with ones' head at a rather compromising height). Generally, the other passengers were considerate and enjoyed having us there, but I always felt more welcome and less... prey to random advances when travelling with men from our group.
But my personal preference was to travel by bicycle. The first time we did it, it was to a game park from a small semi-touristy town. The bikes were colourfully decorated and had handle bars for the passenger to hold on to. The guys were great, racing and chatting and laughing. I fell in love with public bicycle rides.
When our project car went out of service, we started using the local public transport to get around at home. The big benefit is that you never have to wait. There's always one around. So most of the time, it's faster than waiting for a car.
The less touristy version of bicycle transport is a bit more exciting for very different reason: no handle bars. Just grab your seat and, if its your inclination, keep your thoughts close to St. Christopher, patron of the traveller! Tar roads are one thing, but going over bumpy dirt roads (sometimes poorly planned and wearing a skirt) holding on mostly by squeezing your knees made even me cringe on occasion. It's easier knowing that falling off a bike would likely be much less damaging than any other form of transportation accident and that none of us ever did actually fall off.
These pictures represent the view while riding- much better than through a car window!
Friday, 11 May 2007
Former BCI teacher dies in Malawi
A former city teacher has been killed and a former principal injured in a single-vehicle accident in Malawi.
Sandy Wilson, who formerly taught art and drama at BCI, was thrown from a van Wednesday after a tire blew as it neared the Home of Hope Orphanage.
Former principal Jane Enticknap was injured.
The women were bringing supplies and volunteering at the orphanage which is a pet project of Brantford's Jane Glaves.
Read the full story in Saturday's Expositor.
Sandy Wilson, who formerly taught art and drama at BCI, was thrown from a van Wednesday after a tire blew as it neared the Home of Hope Orphanage.
Former principal Jane Enticknap was injured.
The women were bringing supplies and volunteering at the orphanage which is a pet project of Brantford's Jane Glaves.
Read the full story in Saturday's Expositor.
Psychiatry And Society
The Irish are amazing: You find them everywhere; These are two special ones.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
First post
Hi,
It’s a few weeks since Seamus asked me to give one of the Psychiatry and Society lectures (I’ll be speaking in October about psychiatry in the developing world) and to contribute to this blog, so I guess it’s about time I wrote something.
For a first post I’ll just say who and where I am and broadly what’s going on in Malawi.
I’m Niall Crumlish, I graduated UCD in 1997, and started training in Psychiatry (Tallaght / TCD) in 1999. In 2003 I was special lecturer in UCD and St John of God’s (from now on SJOG), and went on to a research fellowship in Cluain Mhuire / SJOG with Prof. Eadbhard O’Callaghan. In 2005 the research fellowship took me to SJOG in Mzuzu, Malawi. After I spent a week here setting up an RCT, my partner (Sharon Brady, a nurse in the addiction services in Dublin) and I decided to come back and spend 2006 here. We extended at the end of 2006, but our term ends in June.
Mzuzu is a town in the north of Malawi (pop. 100,000 odd). Malawi is a hugely densely populated country, but the northern region is not so. This is good in terms of food security, and bad in terms of services provided by the government (there are two tarred roads, and only one north of Mzuzu). You can imagine what government-provided mental health services are like. (In the 2004 World Bank rankings, Malawi was the the poorest country in the world for which there was data, with a gross national income per capita per year of 170 dollars).
In the early nineties a number of SJOG brothers took a trip around Africa, visiting sites in several countries, and decided that of all the places they had visited, Mzuzu was the place most direly in need of SJOG-provided mental health services. (At this time, as an aside, Malawi was in the death throes of a thirty-year brutal dictatorship.) One of the SJOG brothers, Aidan Clohessy, became director of the new service - that is, he built it from nothing.
It was, literally, all fields around here. The nearest mental health professional was 800kms away, in a then-medieval psychiatric hospital in Zomba, in the south. (It has improved.)
Now, the St John of God Community Mental Health Service comprises an OPD, a domiciliary care team, a forty-bed inpatient unit, a counselling service, a recovery and rehabilitation service (training and supported employment), a programme for street kids, a school for kids with learning disabilities, and (courtesy of Sharon) an outpatient drugs and alcohol treatment programme, established in August of last year. There’s a College of Mental Health Sciences, providing degree courses in psychiatric nursing and counselling, and in 2008 the College plans to commence a BSc in clinical psychiatry - training much-needed psychiatric clinical officers, who are the equivalent of registrars in a country that has almost no medical doctors and only one permanent psychiatrist, Felix Kauye, who is based in Zomba.
My work has been as a clinical lecturer - mostly supervising the clinical work of clinical officers, and training clinical officers and others in diagnosis, management, basic sciences, whatever, with a focus on evidence-based practice. I have continued to run the RCT that brought me here in the first place - a trial of carer education in schizophrenia, from which we are beginning to publish. And with others I have been trying to build a research infrastructure here - partly because we know almost nothing about mental illness in Malawi, which is an enormously complex and rapidly changing country of 12-13 million people; also because training in research methods fosters critical thinking and diagnostic precision, hence improves quality of clinical care.
For anyone interested in what’s going on here, I suggest Googling “SJOG Malawi”. You’ll find the (somewhat out of date) homepage for SJOG Mzuzu, and you’ll find links to Venture Malawi and Wells for Zoe. These are two charities / homegrown, ground-level NGOs that have built links with SJOG in the last few years. Wells for Zoe (www.wellsforzoe.org) is an amazing project, run by John and Mary Coyne - you may have read John Waters in the Irish Times writing about Wells for Zoe in January, and if you didn’t, you may see something soon in the IT, as John Waters has spent the last week in Mzuzu with John and Mary Coyne and Bro. Aidan, before rushing back today to the alternative universe of the Eurovision.
OK apologies for the length of this entry. That’s the problem with blogs - no editors.
My email is niall.crumlish@gmail.com.
Enjoy your rotations.
Niall
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
First post
Hi,
It’s a few weeks since Seamus asked me to give one of the Psychiatry and Society lectures (I’ll be speaking in October about psychiatry in the developing world) and to contribute to this blog, so I guess it’s about time I wrote something.
For a first post I’ll just say who and where I am and broadly what’s going on in Malawi.
I’m Niall Crumlish, I graduated UCD in 1997, and started training in Psychiatry (Tallaght / TCD) in 1999. In 2003 I was special lecturer in UCD and St John of God’s (from now on SJOG), and went on to a research fellowship in Cluain Mhuire / SJOG with Prof. Eadbhard O’Callaghan. In 2005 the research fellowship took me to SJOG in Mzuzu, Malawi. After I spent a week here setting up an RCT, my partner (Sharon Brady, a nurse in the addiction services in Dublin) and I decided to come back and spend 2006 here. We extended at the end of 2006, but our term ends in June.
Mzuzu is a town in the north of Malawi (pop. 100,000 odd). Malawi is a hugely densely populated country, but the northern region is not so. This is good in terms of food security, and bad in terms of services provided by the government (there are two tarred roads, and only one north of Mzuzu). You can imagine what government-provided mental health services are like. (In the 2004 World Bank rankings, Malawi was the the poorest country in the world for which there was data, with a gross national income per capita per year of 170 dollars).
In the early nineties a number of SJOG brothers took a trip around Africa, visiting sites in several countries, and decided that of all the places they had visited, Mzuzu was the place most direly in need of SJOG-provided mental health services. (At this time, as an aside, Malawi was in the death throes of a thirty-year brutal dictatorship.) One of the SJOG brothers, Aidan Clohessy, became director of the new service - that is, he built it from nothing.
It was, literally, all fields around here. The nearest mental health professional was 800kms away, in a then-medieval psychiatric hospital in Zomba, in the south. (It has improved.)
Now, the St John of God Community Mental Health Service comprises an OPD, a domiciliary care team, a forty-bed inpatient unit, a counselling service, a recovery and rehabilitation service (training and supported employment), a programme for street kids, a school for kids with learning disabilities, and (courtesy of Sharon) an outpatient drugs and alcohol treatment programme, established in August of last year. There’s a College of Mental Health Sciences, providing degree courses in psychiatric nursing and counselling, and in 2008 the College plans to commence a BSc in clinical psychiatry - training much-needed psychiatric clinical officers, who are the equivalent of registrars in a country that has almost no medical doctors and only one permanent psychiatrist, Felix Kauye, who is based in Zomba.
My work has been as a clinical lecturer - mostly supervising the clinical work of clinical officers, and training clinical officers and others in diagnosis, management, basic sciences, whatever, with a focus on evidence-based practice. I have continued to run the RCT that brought me here in the first place - a trial of carer education in schizophrenia, from which we are beginning to publish. And with others I have been trying to build a research infrastructure here - partly because we know almost nothing about mental illness in Malawi, which is an enormously complex and rapidly changing country of 12-13 million people; also because training in research methods fosters critical thinking and diagnostic precision, hence improves quality of clinical care.
For anyone interested in what’s going on here, I suggest Googling “SJOG Malawi”. You’ll find the (somewhat out of date) homepage for SJOG Mzuzu, and you’ll find links to Venture Malawi and Wells for Zoe. These are two charities / homegrown, ground-level NGOs that have built links with SJOG in the last few years. Wells for Zoe (www.wellsforzoe.org) is an amazing project, run by John and Mary Coyne - you may have read John Waters in the Irish Times writing about Wells for Zoe in January, and if you didn’t, you may see something soon in the IT, as John Waters has spent the last week in Mzuzu with John and Mary Coyne and Bro. Aidan, before rushing back today to the alternative universe of the Eurovision.
OK apologies for the length of this entry. That’s the problem with blogs - no editors.
My email is niall.crumlish@gmail.com.
Enjoy your rotations.
Niall
May 10 Uranium Stocks Update: Paladin Resources (TSE:PDN)
Befitting its status as one of the go-to uranium plays, Paladin has made steady progress over the last few months. Its flagship Langer Heinrich project in Namibia opened and should have been running at 100% of design throughput since late April. The company projects that Langer Heinrich will reach output of 2.6 million lbs of yellowcake per year sometime next month; an expansion late next year should increase output to a minimum of 3.7 million lbs/year.
Meanwhile, its Kayelekera project in Malawi will be 85% owned by Paladin and 15% by the government, a compromise that assures the company of ten years worth of no taxation or royalty increases. A bankable feasibility study (BFS) confirmed the viability of Kayelekera to produce 3.3 million lbs of yellowcake over the first seven years, with a CapEx of $185 million. Environmental approval and a mining license has also been obtained by Paladin and the project is slated to be commissioned in September 2008 with full production expected Q2 2009. In addition, the threat of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Malawi potentially stopping Paladin from mining seems to have faded as local support for Kayelekera appears to be strong.
Putting the two projects together, if Paladin continues to meet production deadlines (which the company has been able to do thus far), it expects to cash flow ~$2.8billion US from now until 2012, assuming a yellowcake price of $90 US/lb.
Moving to the acquisition side of things, Paladin appears to be successful in its second bid for Summit Resources Ltd, which holds 50% of the Valhalla uranium deposit in Western Australia. As of April 27, the company had received acceptances of 58.21% of Summit’s issued capital and has also extended the bid period until May 18. However, the caveat here is that Areva, the French uranium giant, has filed a complaint against Paladin with the Takeovers Panels, insisting that Summit shareholders be allowed to decide on the deal at a general meeting. Areva owns a 10.46% stake in Summit, so this controversy could take some time to resolve itself.
With a $4.2billion Cdn market cap, Paladin is by no means a small company anymore, but with one of the best track records thus far of uranium producers, continues to trade at a premium. Truly a good stock to hold and perhaps buy on weakness.
Meanwhile, its Kayelekera project in Malawi will be 85% owned by Paladin and 15% by the government, a compromise that assures the company of ten years worth of no taxation or royalty increases. A bankable feasibility study (BFS) confirmed the viability of Kayelekera to produce 3.3 million lbs of yellowcake over the first seven years, with a CapEx of $185 million. Environmental approval and a mining license has also been obtained by Paladin and the project is slated to be commissioned in September 2008 with full production expected Q2 2009. In addition, the threat of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Malawi potentially stopping Paladin from mining seems to have faded as local support for Kayelekera appears to be strong.
Putting the two projects together, if Paladin continues to meet production deadlines (which the company has been able to do thus far), it expects to cash flow ~$2.8billion US from now until 2012, assuming a yellowcake price of $90 US/lb.
Moving to the acquisition side of things, Paladin appears to be successful in its second bid for Summit Resources Ltd, which holds 50% of the Valhalla uranium deposit in Western Australia. As of April 27, the company had received acceptances of 58.21% of Summit’s issued capital and has also extended the bid period until May 18. However, the caveat here is that Areva, the French uranium giant, has filed a complaint against Paladin with the Takeovers Panels, insisting that Summit shareholders be allowed to decide on the deal at a general meeting. Areva owns a 10.46% stake in Summit, so this controversy could take some time to resolve itself.
With a $4.2billion Cdn market cap, Paladin is by no means a small company anymore, but with one of the best track records thus far of uranium producers, continues to trade at a premium. Truly a good stock to hold and perhaps buy on weakness.
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