A Day in the Life of Anna: Part 2 - At the Office

The MUSCCO Offices are upstairs, above FINCOOP, and all the offices open on to one centre hallway. I am the first office on the right, and I share with Violet and Triza. The first thing I do when I get in – and indeed what I do for probably the first hour if the internet is working – is check my e-mail and the major news headlines. It takes a while to get productive in the morning and usually I try to get a hold of the one newspaper that is always floating around the office.

Depending on if we have just done some kind of field work or interviews there may or may not be something to type up, but Violet and I usually just putter around, working on MUSCCO’s policies or the policies that we are helping some of the SACCOs develop. At some point in the morning I’ll pop in to Leroy’s office across the hall for some guidance, or to just touch base, and I usually stop by Elsie’s office to say hello to her and Lena for a bit, and I chat for a bit with Masutano and Killian. All the people in the accounts department seem to be much busier (and more productive?) than we are. lol.

12:00 is lunch time, and usually Elsie and I will go off somewhere. Now that Killian is at the office, he and I go out for lunch a lot together as well. Lunch of choice is usually chicken and chips from Summer Park, or a salad at the Bohemian Café if I’m feeling in a healthy mood. I really like Summer Park because it is the closest thing to sitting in a park eating my lunch that there is in Lilongwe. I would bring my lunch more, but if I do, it means I have to sit at my desk the whole time because there really is no where that you can sit outside to eat without actually having to be in a restaurant. I also might run some errands, or pick up some groceries, or pop into Bookmart, the used bookstore across the road to look around.

Back to the office at 1:00, or shortly thereafter. The afternoon is much the same as the morning – we do different things each day depending on what is coming up, or what we have just done, so it is hard to describe a ‘typical’ day of office work, but that is definitely what I like about the job. The view from my desk always keeps my occupied as well. I look across the road to the Kiboko Town Hotel which always has an interesting mix of travelers coming and going. There seem to be quite a lot of beggars and street vendors around Mandala Road (perhaps because this is the ‘touristy’ part of town, if you can even call it that) and it is interesting to watch the interplay of people.

When 4:30 rolls around, it is time to knock off. Depending on the day, I’ll either head straight home, or stick around the office for a bit if I have some plans in the evening.

Part 3 to come soon...A Day in the Life of Anna: After Work