Quiet few days

The last few days have been very quiet as I am the only volunteer still at Mitsidi. Not what I expected, and I can't say I like it, but there we are! I have managed a swim each day, despite overcast and rainy weather and I have done quite a bit of sorting out paperwork and thinking about how to go about planning the Intermediate Course. David will be back in a week or so and I am really looking forward to that. It will be good to have someone to bounce ideas off again.

This afternoon Charles dropped me off at admin on his way to do the shopping for Mitsidi and I arrived to find the place deserted and locked up. I wanted to print off the student's poems about water that they wrote during the session about caring for children's basic needs, so I popped over the road to Mary's to borrow the key and while I was there she very kindly asked me to lunch tomorrow and then to two weddings, so tomorrow is going to be a much livelier day. Apparently I need lots of low denomination kwacha notes so that I can tuck them into the clothing of the bride and groom.

Here is my favourite of the water poems:

 

Without water

All

Things

Even

Rivers die.

 

Here is another that is more typical:

 

I am water

I am not even expensive

Always available in dams, rivers and lakes

I am very useful

 

To wash clothes you need me

To bath you need me

When hungry you cook food

Using me

You even use me to quench your thirst

Plants, children, animals depend on me

 

Make sure I am pure all the time

If I am dirty

I will make you sick

I am a darling to everyone

And very useful too!

 

They are mostly in English, but one or two are in Chichewa.

I have typed them all up in various shades of blue and with a border round each page. I promised the students I would make them into a book. I think we will be making lots of books next term because books in Chichewa are very scarce and I think the Children's Centre will need a good collection.

I walked back to Mitsidi through Chilomoni, which I haven't done for well over a week since the course finished. It was lovely to be spoken to by so many people who if they don't actually know me, certainly recognize me as the azungu who walks home that way. One little girl came running towards me with arms outstretched and I picked her up and swung her round, and then we walked hand in hand the couple of hundred yards to her house. We chatted all the way, I in English and she in Chichewa. Neither of us had the least idea what the other was saying, but it was companionable.

The children mostly wear European style clothes which can be bought very cheaply in the second hand market. Maureen and Annie have offered to take me there and I shall definitely take them up on their offer. It astonishes me how many little girls are clad in chiffon, lace and satin. Apparently they are bridesmaid's dresses from the UK. I guess they are the clothes in best condition from the market, I suppose because they have only been worn once! I often see little tots playing in the mud in frilly dresses that were once white, but they don't stay white for very long!

Chilomoni is a beautiful place despite the poverty. Every family has its small patch of maize and vegetables so it is very green everywhere and there are many trees, both fruit trees and flowering trees and shrubs. The jacaranda and flame blossoms are over now but there is a tree with bright yellow blooms that has been in flower ever since I got here. No one seems to know what it is called, but Jean, who is about ten, told me you can make a poison out of the flowers. The Frangipani is still in bloom, with fragrant pink or white waxy stars, and there is bougainvillea everywhere and in every shade of magenta and purple, I have even seen an orange variety.

It is possible to recognize plants that I know as garden annuals in UK, but which grow into huge trees and bushes here because there is no frost. There is one with clusters of tiny pink and yellow flowers, mixed colours in the same cluster, that I have often seen as a border plant at home, I am not very good at the names of garden flowers. I asked Tamara what it is called the other day and she said 'We just call it 'hedge.''

There is a point on our walk home when we leave the road and walk through an area with about four houses together and then down a narrow path to connect with the road off which we live. When it rains the path becomes a raging torrent and the force of the water has carved out a deep bed for itself so that now the path keeps changing from one side of the channel to the other and you have to keep stepping over. Today it was bone dry. The women of the four houses have been trying to clear the land at the top to grow more maize but they have had an uphill battle because there is a huge amount of rubbish mixed with the soil. It is mostly plastic bags and scraps of waste metal from the bucket makers of which there are several just upstream. I think the rain must bring all the rubbish with it and it accumulates at the top of the path because it catches on the bushes. Anyway we saw women and small children collecting barrow loads of scrap metal from the soil and mounding the soil in rows for planting maize, but I fear their effort was wasted because apart from a double row next to the path which is now almost up to my waist, the middle of the patch looks as though it has been stirred with a giant wooden spoon and sprinkled with bits of plastic bag, and there are no seedlings to be seen. It must be most dispiriting, such a waste of hard work.