In Sierra Leone the electricity supply was almost non-existent so everyone had generators. In Malawi the electricity supply is erratic so everyone has candles. My part of town seems to have power cuts 3 or 4 times a week. They are generally in the evening for 2 or 3 hours. However, given that the vast majority of cookers here are electric this means that the power cuts coincide with making dinner. So, even if Dan has been resourceful and managed to rustle something up before I get back from work, there’s very little that you can do. It’s very hard to read by candlelight, no music, no internet, no Strictly, can’t even make a nice cup of tea.

One thing you can do though is listen to your wind-up radio. So one such dark evening, having tired of the World Service with its complete absence of news of the UK (other than football, which is so detailed that it even covers the mighty Tooting & Mitcham United – never knew they even existed!), I flicked through some Malawian channels. Apart from an array of religious channels there was one that had a feature on road safety called “Arrive Alive”, which is a slogan that you can see on billboards around town.

Aside from pieces on seatbelts and drink driving there was also a special section for donkey and cart drivers, who were urged to ensure that they had reflectors front and back (number unspecified), to use a torch at the front and to always drive on the left (one of many legacies of British rule). The article was rounded off with the sobering reminder that the dead tell no tales.

Now, while this is of marginal interest and it did make me smile, it took on a whole new meaning when we got a call on Thursday saying that 5 volunteers had been involved in a nasty car crash. Malawi is world renowned for its health service – how bad it is. That’s why we’ve got such a big health programme here. So it was with some trepidation that Nilesh and I drove off to Nkhotakota, which is north of here, on lake Malawi. As it turns out Nkhotakota district hospital is only a year old. The building may be brand new but that doesn’t mean it has any equipment or doctors. There are something like 1.6 doctors per 100,000 people in Malawi, compared with 170 for every 100,000 in the UK. And the vast majority of those doctors are in health management roles i.e. not actually practising.

The two days we spent in Nkhotakota could form the basis for an entire book but I’ll spare you the detail, as I don’t particularly want to dine or others’ misfortune or risk legal action from a certain insurance company. However, suffice to say that 3 of the volunteers were sent back to Lilongwe in ambulances and the other 2 were airlifted to Kenya for treatment.

Next week I’m due to visit the prison in Zomba and go to a workshop in Blantyre so I’ll be getting to see a bit more of the country. I’ll definitely be going with “Arrive Alive” at the front of my mind.