Greetings.

This time next week, with a whole lot of luck and a bit of tarmac to soften my landing, I will be in Malawi. Specifically, near the town of Mulanje at the Mulanje Mission Hospital.

I'm not entirely sure what to expect.

I mean, I've prepared how I can by reading the guide books and learning a bit of the local dialect. The hospital staff have been very kind and helpful so far and I've no doubt they'll help me to settle in just fine. Everyone says the locals are friendly and the photographs I've seen of the nearby geography are nothing short of stunning.

However, we're talking about a country whose every metric for economic and healthcare provision ranks in the bottom 5 per cent of the entire world. The clinical situation I'm consequently expecting inspires abject terror at approximately the same level as this. Hope I'm up to the job!

Anyway, I will let you know all about it next week, because I've decided to succumb to la mode du jour and "blog" my elective.

I very briefly considered claiming some deep literary inspiration for this decision from the time-honoured tradition of travel writing. Perhaps from this guy, or this, or maybe him. The truth of the matter, however, is that a friend of mine did it for his a few weeks ago and now I've copied him.

Hope you enjoy.