News of work and leisure

We are nearing the end of the third week of the new courses. We have worked really hard at learning the student's names and I am pretty confident not only that I know them all, but that I can pronounce them correctly and even spell most of them! During the first and second weeks we played a lot of name games and it has really paid off. I did a session on learning styles and multiple intelligences hoping that each student would find out about their own preferred learning styles and apply that knowledge to the way in which they approach their own learning. At the end we played the game where you introduce yourself using any alliterative adjective and at the same time step forward and do an action, thus giving, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic cues to help all types of learner to remember the names. The second person in the circle has to introduce themselves and then the first person, and so on, so that the introductions build up into a long string, until the last person has to introduce the whole class. It proved to be a hilarious process; it took a while before everyone worked out what alliteration was, although I thought I had explained it! We got through Marvelous Marian, Drinking Dave, Awesome Aida, which somehow got transposed into Osama Aida (?) and several others until suddenly we got Lovely Gloria! Jingle Jangle Jerman caused a laugh. One of the most serious members of the group will forever be remembered as Bouncing Blazio, particularly as Mother Maureen insisted on calling him Bouncing Baby Blazio! All went well until we reached Ruth who introduced herself as Raughable Ruth. Many Malawians are not able to distinguish between 'r' and 'l' and apart from me and David who became quite overcome with giggles, there were only a few people who could understand why we were laughing. The 'l' and 'r' confusion led to some amusement in the exam papers too. We had children frying kites and learning to skip with a lop! Also the rather delightful 'They were in a circle crapping hands!' and 'Abuse means inflingement or violation of one's rights!' My personal favourite is 'If something is long as a Care Giver I am not supposed to tell anyone but the supervisor.' There were a few other amusing errors in the exam papers, such as: 'My responsibility as a Care Giver be that if I suspect that the child in my care was being abused, is my duty to ask the children at light place on what was happened to him then I will comfort him, then telling their friends that they should love one another.' I never did quite work out what was intended there. There were one or two classic definitions of play: 'Play is any activity that involves muscles' and 'A play is any activity which makes somebody be happy, sad etc'. But, I digress!

The student's first homework was to research one of the pioneers of practical approaches to early years education that influence our work with young children today. We had presentations on Froebel, Montessori, Steiner, Malaguzzi and Weikart. The presentations varied from execrable to reasonably competent! They do not really seem to know how to work in groups. Perhaps the Malawian education system does not lend itself to preparing young people to work together. With classes in primary school including anything up to 200 children per teacher I am constantly surprised that children learn anything at all, apart from how to survive in a crowd! Most groups either nominated one of the better English speakers to present the whole thing or took it in turns to read brief paragraphs. In the latter case there was no apparent preparation and students stumbled over words that had obviously been written by other members of the group. I suppose we shall all learn as we go along.

We are putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of observation in work with young children and so following a lecture by David we asked them to observe a child playing for five minutes for the second week's homework. There were some interesting pieces of work, but I was struck as I walked round the class reading them while the students were discussing them, by how few had read the question properly, so I asked the whole class to stand up. The homework instruction was: 'Write up and present to the class a five-minute observation of a child aged six years or less, playing. First I asked to sit down all those who had not written anything down, then those who had observed for less or more than five minutes, then those who had written about more than one child, and then those who has observed children doing anything other than playing. I was left with five students standing. These I said to the class, were the ones who had done the homework that had been set!

We have now begun work on a series of sessions on play and a child-centred approach to learning. I am not sure exactly why but it has felt like a hard week. In some ways it has also been a very interesting week. We had a speaker from the Association of Pre-school Playgroups of Malawi on making toys and play materials from locally available materials at a cost of next to nothing. The students spent a happy afternoon making things from clay, macerating leaves and flowers to make paint, and making toys from packets, plastic bottles etc and also from fabric scraps left over by the tailor. Despite having to send my decent camera home with Jack for repair as it decided to behave very oddly after falling out of my handbag in the bag of the Land Rover and being severely shaken, I managed to take some nice pictures of the things they made.

One morning we split the class into three groups and borrowed 30 children from Standard 1 (5-6 year olds) and did a carousel programme involving parachute games with me, songs with Lindy and making paper aeroplanes with David. This is the first time we have seen the students with children and in some cases it was quite illuminating. It was not always the ones I expected to have a good manner with the children that actually demonstrated it. Children are viewed very differently in Malawi from the way they are at home and I am still learning about local approaches. In some ways our brief is to encourage a new approach to children for Malawi and of course we cannot do this in a day. Sometimes I worry that we should not be trying to make cultural changes and on other days I am certain that we should.

We have continued to work on observation and planning but I think that the students find it all very hard to understand. It is a short-coming of the course that they will have no opportunity for working on placements with young children and thus putting into practice what they are learning before the Children's Centre opens in September. As well as because it is far too much work for me and David to organize without further help, we decided against it because we are teaching such a different way of working from the rote learning approach that is so common it would not help the students to develop good practice to say the very least. There are several expensive, private nurseries that would probably be very good, but many, many local settings with up to 50 children per staff member and very little understanding of the importance of either play or sound relationships with key adults.

I have tried to explain what a story sack is to the students and how they are designed to encourage reading and language development. Everyone has embarked enthusiastically to make their own, but they tend to be in a great hurry and I am not sure how polished or how durable they will be, but I am looking forward to seeing what they produce. I have taken a few photos of story sacks in the making and some look quite promising. I explained the process of collecting items together to help in the telling and re enaction of the story and to support further learning about subjects raised in the story. I recommended that they start with a story book and build the rest of the sack around that. I was surprised by how many of the students were apparently unable to tell which books are stories and which non-fiction. I suppose it is simply that they have had very little access to books at all other than shared school text books. Lindy, who has been teaching English to primary school children from the standard textbook for the Malawian curriculum does not have a high opinion of the quality of the stories recommended to teach aspects of English. Perhaps it is even better an idea than I originally thought that we continue to start every day with a story. David and I are still reading these at present, but soon I plan to hand the responsibility over to the students so that they get used to reading aloud.

Next week we continue with the same theme and will have time to finish the story sacks, and think about how we can encourage play and exploration by the way we set up both indoor and outdoor spaces for learning. We shall also be looking at creativity and recording children's 'learning journeys', so lots to cover in couple of days!

What have I been doing apart from work in the couple of weeks since Jack went home? Well, Friday night in the Liquor Garden seems to be becoming a bit of an institution. David goes straight from work and plays Pool in the Drinking Den while I go home and have a swim and some dinner. Malcolm, who pops into the site to see the night shift, drops me off at the Liquor Garden on his way and then comes in for one or three when he is done at work.

Last Sunday Malcolm and I took the Land Rover and explored where the dirt road goes at the bottom of our drive if you turn right, instead of left which goes to Blantyre. I have been here nearly five months, and never been that way. The road was rough but the country was beautiful. I think I have previously described the view as one approaches the turn to Mitsidi where one comes over the brow of a hill and the mountains are ranged in front of you, each one appearing less green and more blue as they get further away. We were driving into that view and it was a clear sunny day. Even though as rainy seasons go this has been rather a dry one, everything is vividly green at the moment. The maize will be harvested in another couple of weeks and it is now way above my head. In between the maize plants pumpkin leaves and beans make sure that very little red earth is exposed and everywhere looks quite lush. There were wild flowers in the verges in abundance including quantities of large deep pink, daisy-like flowers that I had not noticed before. The road got narrower and narrower and more and more bumpy, at one point the maize was almost touching the Land Rover on both sides. We were never far from habitation though. Just as you began to think that you might be leaving civilization behind, another village or group of houses would appear, or a gaggle of children run out between the trees to wave at the Land Rover. It was not possible to go far without passing people carrying buckets of water or sacks of maize on their heads and what can be carried on a bicycle sometimes has to be seen to be believed: huge bundles of firewood or charcoal, all manner of produce on the way to market, sometimes whole families balanced on crossbar and carrier. Once I saw a man on a bike with no less than six chair frames in a huge fan behind him. The chairs had no seats, but nonetheless it was an impressive feat. We crossed a small river on a bridge that was under repair. Malcolm got out and cast his engineer's eye over it and pronounced it passable, but I was still a bit anxious until we were safely on the other side. We picked up a family of father, mother and little lad of about four years old, all in their best clothes, walking along apparently in the middle of nowhere on the dusty track. She looked stunning in royal blue, with almost impossible high heels and father and son wore pinstriped suits with sleeveless jackets and bright shirts. They were off to an important football match about three villages along the road. It was a good thing that we gave them a ride because when we got there the match was under way and I think it would have taken them at least an hour to walk, especially the mother in those shoes. The little boy asked his father if Malcolm was the preacher, but I said 'No, he is the engineer!' and that seemed to satisfy him. Eventually after about an hour and a half we came out a few hundred yards from Chileka airport, the other side of Blantyre. The road had led us along the back of a ridge of mountains and we were able to get back to Blantyre on tarmac in about half an hour. It was quite an adventure!

We have had a few idle Saturday mornings pottering about the shops and markets in Blantyre and indulging our taste for Mzuzu coffee in the Mount Soche Hotel, definitely an azungu extravagance! Mitsidi is filling up again. Jan, Lindy, Malcolm, David and I have been joined by Philip and Sharon an American couple who were in Malawi 20 years ago with the Peace Corps and are here for three months doing some work with the Bishop. I have not yet discovered exactly what, although I do know that Sharon's role is to do with 'spiritual direction'. I look forward to finding out more about that. Today Jonathan and Richard arrived for a couple of weeks. They are computer people and are going to set up the network for the IT Training College. I'm not a hundred percent clear what that involves either! In the next few weeks we get a JCB expert, another engineer and an architect, so that should liven up the place considerably!

Tomorrow at least five of us are off to Zomba plateau to have a look at Chingwe's hole, an allegedly bottomless pit down which enemies used to be thrown according to the guidebook!

Real life/Holiday balance!

Welcome to Malawi in the rainy season! I am sitting on the khonde of my room at the Dedza Pottery Lodge. The sky is cloudy but before that there was bright sunshine and before that as I was driving back towards Blantyre from dropping Jack at Lilongwe airport, it was absolutely chucking it down to the extent that I almost pulled in to the side of the road to wait for it to stop despite functional 3-speed windscreen wipers. Since I was following a vivid yellow car driven very sedately, I contented myself with keeping it a respectable distance in front, but it was at that time that I decided that I would stay at Dedza tonight according to my original plan rather than drive all the way home in one go as I had thought about doing when my appointment at UNICEF lasted only five minutes as they had failed to get copies of the documents promised a fortnight ago. They asked when I would next be in Lilongwe, but I don't expect to come again until Rose and Joe come to visit me in April, so we have agreed that someone will bring them to me in Blantyre when they arrive from the printer.

I think it is good that I have this afternoon as a sort of transitional period between being an mzungu on holiday with Jack and a volunteer teaching in Chilomoni. Between the two of us I think Jack and I have spent almost as much money as I have got through in the four months I have been in Malawi, during the last two weeks, but we have certainly had a great holiday. I will not record it in too much detail as I know he is going to write about it himself, but we have stayed in a lodge on the beach at Nkhotakota, had an astonishing 24 hours in Liwonde National Park on safari, swum in a pool 68 metres deep at the foot of a waterfall at Mulange, seen a colourful slice of life in the Liquor Garden in Chilomoni and walked, talked, explored, pottered, swum in Mitsidi pool and generally enjoyed each other's company. Of course I am sad today that he has gone but I know that despite a good holiday he is ready to go back to his real life at home. I guess that life in Malawi is real life to me at the moment, but it does not always feel like it and there is a part of me that wanted to check in with him and his fragile luggage, (no doubt he will tell you about that!) and go back to family and friends. However this visit has taught me that it really is true that my family members are only 24 hours away, and it is only two months until Rose and Joe are scheduled to come and see me, so I do not feel isolated in the way that I did at Christmas. This visit has also reinforced my awareness that what David and I are doing here is useful, as so many people have explained to Jack what we are doing and how much they appreciate it, that I cannot help but feel positive about the project. It also helps that on Monday morning before we left to start Jack's long journey home, I taught the first session of our Intermediate Child Care course. It was so good to see the students again and be reminded of their enthusiasm and hope for the future. As everyone arrived we recalled how quiet they had been at the beginning of the Introductory Course when no one knew each other, it was very much like that again as we have classes that are made up of students from all four of the original groups of thirty who took the Introductory courses. I threw all my carefully laid plans to the wind temporarily and got them to make name cards again, partly to remind myself who everyone is, but mostly to give them a task that would involve them getting up and moving around the room to collect materials and get them chatting to each other. It helped a bit, but they were still on the quiet side, I suppose that is to be expected. We have responded to their request for more handouts and agreed a budget with Peter and Vince. The first handout was a brief course outline with the main subjects to be covered each week and the homework to prepare for the following week, so there can be no excuses for not knowing what the homework is, they have all had it in print!! I went through the course outline and explained why we have put it together in the way that we have. Then we went outside and played a lot of name games, so that by the end of the session I really did feel that I knew the name of every student in the group again. I daresay I shall still make a few mistakes, and as David said, 'It is OK until the girls change their hairstyles or come in wearing their wigs!'

We got the class to divide themselves into five groups and then spent nearly an hour and a half reviewing the introductory course under the headings, 'Memories', 'Gains', and 'Difficulties'. We had planned that the memories would be fairly light hearted, David's abiding memory will be of Ruth and Gilbert struggling to pass a balloon between their knees in a team game, and I will not forget the laughter provoked by a session exploring children's books for those which taught early key concepts, I have no idea what set the group to laughing but my photo shows shared pleasure that is a joy to see. However the students' responses to the question, 'What are your strongest memories?' tended towards the serious and included; games, artwork, child development lectures, and most surprisingly to me 'Bowlby's Theory of Attachment'! This last especially in view of the fact that some of the answers in the exam revealed that some students had very little understanding of what I thought I had taught! David remarked that probably those were the ones who are no longer on the course, I certainly hope so!! The 'Gains' were encouraging and included quite a few stories of how applying the theory we had taught to their dealings with children in their own families had led to improved relationships and less discord, which was good to hear. 'Difficulties' were of course harder to deal with and I was a bit shocked to hear one person say that there had been some feeling that tutors had shown preferences to 'favourites' in the class and that this had led to some people failing to try their best. I would like to follow this up because of course I do not want this kind of misunderstanding to happen. I wish I had some idea of who was involved here, but I really cannot think. I have encouraged the class to come and talk to us if similar situations occur in the future. David wondered if this could be due in some way to cultural differences, but I am not sure how. Looking back I guess I should have got them to consider 'Difficulties' before 'Gains' and thus ended on a higher note than we did. This is rather a classic error that I should have avoided, but upon the whole the first session went well and I am actually very pleased that the students felt able to raise such a problem. Other difficulties included more predictable subjects such as minibus fares, hours for the course, and the length of time given for the exam. It is never possible to please all the people all of the time and over these issues I am confident that we have done the best that we can. I am afraid that we may lose one or two people over the bus fares problem, but we really do not have access to any funds to help with this through Beehive. The only way is to arrange individual sponsors for individual students who are struggling, so if anyone would be interested in helping in this way it will cost about K720 a week for 19 weeks for those who take two minibuses in each direction, a total of about £56. This does not seem a lot, but if you put it in the context of the wages here, it is a lot of money. The laborers on our building site get about K5000 a month and a primary school teacher about K15000.

It is over an hour since I began to write and the weather has changed again, there is a steady gentle rain and the temperature has dropped by several degrees. I love that smell you get when rain falls on hot ground, it is the same in Malawi as it is in England, but somehow more intense. In all the weeks I have been here the only times I have felt chilly have been when I have been in Dedza. I think that it must have its own microclimate. It is quite high here I am sure, there are mountains all around, but in Blantyre where I live we are at about 1000m above sea level which is comparable to living on the top of Snowden, so I do not imagine it is much higher here. Thank Goodness I do not live at sea level where it is perhaps ten degrees hotter!

Unicef and the Ministry

The drive from Ntcheu to Lilongwe took at least a couple of hours. We just had time to book into the Korea Garden Lodge before we had to jump in the Land Rover and speed off to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Affairs where we met with The Director, whose name is Hyacinth, but I didn't catch her surname; Francis Chalamander, Dr Foster Kholowa and an administrator who was called, I think, Immaculate. We were welcomed and ushered in to the Director's Office where we sat down in a circle of chairs. Francis Chalamander chaired the meeting. I asked them to tell us about ECD in Malawi, but clearly this was not considered to be the business of the meeting and we had to explain what Beehive is doing in Chilomoni and what our course involves. They seemed concerned that we were wanting accreditation of some sort for a course that has already begun, and also raised concerns about the sustainability of the course given that David and I only plan to be in Malawi long enough to see our current group of students through to the end of the third, practical part of our course. This seems an entirely reasonable comment to me. As far as I know no decisions have been made about whether the course will be repeated after the first students have graduated and are working in the Children's Centre. I probably would not accredit a course myself without more concrete plans for the future. A copy of our draft curriculum was handed round and accepted rather grudgingly as an outline that was OK but far more detail will be required and they did not retain the copy that we offered them for their records. They did however comment that it did appear to cover most aspects that they consider to be essential, so that at least is a start. To get government accreditation for the course it will be necessary for us to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops, such as to be registered as an NGO, and also to be associated with an educational institution and although all this may well happen with time I think it is likely that this first set of students will have to be satisfied with a Beehive Diploma, rather than one which is nationally, let alone internationally recognized. Dr Kholowa was pretty quiet during the meeting, but appeared quite positive and I think it would be good to go and see him at Chancellor College, in Zomba, find out more about the future plans for the course that is happening there and perhaps explore ways of working cooperatively with him. We will need to talk to Vince about the various registration and inspection procedures necessary. It was a pity he did not come with us to the meeting. We were not really aware of the dealings Beehive has had with the Ministry in the past and this knowledge would have been useful. One thing that was clear was that we shall have to work closely with Dominic Misomali who is head of Social Services in Blantyre and this is no problem, we have kept him informed of what is going on and David has visited him since our return and reported on our visit to Lilongwe. I have invited him to speak to the students about Child Protection issues and to come and see the course whenever he is in the area.

The following morning we visited Bruce Parry of UNICEF who was very positive and helped us with some of the UNICEF literature we have had trouble getting hold of. He has also promised to give us the Malawian curriculum for ECD and the Training Manual in electronic versions which will be very useful. I am to go and pick them up next week when I take Jack back to Lilongwe to the airport. He also advised us to register the Children's Centre as a CBCC as this may open up the possibility of funding through UNICEF, which is a useful bit of advice.

Nursery school at Ntcheu

It seems such a long time since I last wrote anything! Indeed it probably is the longest interval ever between posts. However for most of it I have been very busy being on holiday and having a good time. This entry is going to be about the things I did shortly before my son Jack arrived for a visit and then the plan is that he will write about what we have been doing since he arrived. We have had a few days being tourists and now are back in Chilomoni and he is meeting the people I know and getting to know a bit about my life here in Chilomoni.

On Sunday afternoon, ten days ago Vince, Chaliza, David and I set off in a Land Rover to visit the Sacramentine Sisters in Ntcheu who run a nursery school which I have heard variously described as 'Beautiful' and 'The best nursery provision in Malawi', so we thought it would be a good place to go and see. The convent is tucked away behind the BP garage in Ntcheu just off the M1 main road. It is an oasis of calm just behind the busy trading area that is the main street of the town. The nuns have beautiful, solidly built facilities which are a huge contrast to the more typical Malawian buildings which surround it. I imagine they must have had an Italian architect and used lots of imported materials. They have paid a lot of attention to the finish and it is a lovely place to be. We were warmly welcomed by Sister Leonia and Sister Milcha (not sure how you spell this, apologies if it is wrong!). Chaliza and I had a long room with three single beds in it and curtains patterned with 'Bad Rabbit' which seemed a bit anachronistic. David and Vince had a room in another block across the courtyard. Sister Milcha is Kenyan and is in charge of the nursery school. Apparently the Kenyan Government gives a much higher priority to Early Childhood Education than many other African countries. While we waited for the evening service to be over and for the dinner to be ready she told us about the nursery which caters for about 350 local pre-school children. She said it was supposed to be for children from 3 years originally but parents have begged the nuns to take younger children as they feel their little ones will be safer there than at other local provision and now the youngest child is about 15 months. The children arrive from about seven o'clock for an assembly at about seven thirty so we arranged to meet to go down to the school at about five past seven after mass and breakfast. Dinner was taken in the dining room, a long room with three tables, one laden with serving dishes which emanated delicious smells into the atmosphere, one which was filled by a group of novices in blue and white checked dresses and a long one for everyone else including us, seven sisters, a visiting priest who was 'having a holiday' with the sisters and an Italian girl in her early twenties who was an artist staying with the sisters for a few months. Conversation was warm and interested and the food was terrific. There was chicken, pasta, pumpkin leaves cooked with tomatoes and onions, and, Oh Joy! there was a huge dish of leeks and green beans covered with melted cheese. Dessert was fresh fruit, golden bananas and mangoes from the garden.

In the morning the others went to Mass and I had a little wander round the garden. The sisters grow vegetables and maize and cassava as well as many beautiful flowers including a hibiscus with huge orange blooms. There were a few goats penned on the grass under the fruit trees. We all met up for a breakfast of bread and fruit and beautiful espresso coffee brought in specially from Italy. What a lovely treat! Then we walked down the hill to the school. By the time we got there many children were already there and were forming lines outside the building. The boys wore pale blue polo shirts and blue shorts and the girls yellow shirts and blue skirts. For some of the little ones the outfits must have been bought with growth in mind for some of the skirts almost brushed the floor. After a while the teachers began to encourage the children to 'march like a soldier' and the lines of children went into the school marching and chanting 'March like a soldier, march like a soldier' as they went. The entrance hall opened into a big hall and the classes went into their places and sat down in long rows on the floor. Even the tiny ones knew where to go and settled on the floor in more or less straight lines. There were one or two tiny ones who got up and wandered about, but very few. Sister Milcha stayed near the door and greeted latecomers and shepherded them gently towards their classes. Assembly began with songs and brief prayers followed by a succession of activities demonstrated by the teachers and then done by individual children selected by the teachers to come out to the front and show what they could do in front of the whole school. For example the teacher placed large cardboard cut outs of the numbers 1-5 on a low table and asked children to come out and pick out a specific number. I think they must have known the children well as everyone selected was able to get the right answer. The whole school joined in calling 'Well done, well done' while the successful child waggled their hips to the rhythm of the chant and beamed at the whole school. One of the teachers was asked to do the task blind folded, which she did successfully and then one or two of the older children were called up to follow suit.

The assembly lasted for almost an hour. I was astounded that the children sat still for so long. Whether they concentrated sufficiently to get much out of what was going on I am not sure. Certainly the older children were more engaged than the younger ones. After assembly Sister Milcha showed us round the school. The building itself was magnificent and in some ways reminded me of the pre-schools I saw when I visited Reggio Emilia, but the approach to practice was miles away. In all classrooms except the baby room the children were seated at desks in rows and the lesson was conducted from the front of the room by a teacher who relied heavily upon using repetition and learning by rote. If children repeated their lessons well they were given warm praise and the chorus of 'Well done, well done' could e heard from every classroom. Little children stood at the front of the class with their hands on their hips and waggled their bottoms enthusiastically, but did they understand what they had been taught? Were they able to place it within the context of other things they had learned? The answers to these questions I have no way of knowing from such a brief visit. I spent most time in the baby room where one teacher worked hard to keep upwards of twenty babies entertained all by herself. There was a high shelf of toys, well out of the babies' reach. A few children were playing with soft toys and cars. I later found that David had reached the toys down for the children when he was in the room before me. I witnessed one or two tussles over toys, but nothing that could not have been sorted by gentle intervention and bringing a few more items down from the shelf. The teacher was doing a sterling job, singing, chanting, bouncing a ball around. By the end of the day I should think she must have been exhausted and hoarse! In this room the tables were arranged around the edge of the room. The babies were mostly on a carpet in the middle but a good few were under or behind the tables, either playing with a toy or peeping out and watching the teacher or the other children. Many sat quietly for the whole time I was there. I got down on the floor and played 'Round and round the garden,' 'peepo!' and so on to responses ranging from disinterested, to anxious, to enthusiastic, to laughingly responsive.

In one room of three and four year olds some work was neatly displayed on a sort of wire frame on the wall. The children had done their lessons on tiny scraps of paper not unlike lengths of the strips of paper that we sometimes use for making borders for displays in the UK. There was a set of pictures of balls that the children had drawn and coloured. Most were simple attempts at circles which were then coloured in, but some had markings such as you might find on footballs or tennis balls. The work was tiny. With my background in supporting children with special needs I would be giving children of this age sheets of A3 paper, or bigger if I could, but even this relatively rich setting, resources are very limited and must be made to last as long as possible.

Sister showed us some of the exam papers. Even the tiniest children do an exam at the end of term. All the papers we saw were either simply colouring such as the music and movement exam which involved colouring pictures of instruments etc, or employed techniques such as linking similar shapes with a pencil line. David asked how the staff explained to the children what they were supposed to do as they were too young to read the instructions, but the sister did not seem to understand his question.

We saw the children have their cups of porridge at break time. They sat in a beautiful dining room at long tables. They were expected to eat before they were allowed to talk to each other. Sister said that this rule is necessary in order to ensure that every child eats their share. A small side room had a weighing machine. Each child is weighed monthly to ensure that they are growing properly and getting enough to eat.

We saw a small 'sick bay' room which included the only beds we saw on our tour around. Children arrive at about 7.30am and go home about 3.30pm but I saw no facilities for rest. At 9.00am one little boy was fast asleep with his head pillowed on his arms on the desk in front of him while the chanted lesson went on around him.

The teachers spoke gently to the children and were on the whole encouraging and positive but the lessons were dull and repetitive. I did see one group of about ten children make a bid for freedom and run through the dining room door into the garden and climb on to the roundabout when they should have been waiting for their peers to finish their porridge! No one noticed until David pointed out they had gone and then they were gently but firmly returned to where they should be!

I left with such mixed feelings. The provision here is so much better in so many ways than the small nurseries that are the local alternative. The children are well fed and well cared for, the school building is beautiful, but as far as the educational approach goes it is miles away from the way I have been trained to expect and encourage in the UK. In Chilomoni our brief is to train care givers to encourage the development of creative problem solvers who will think for themselves and become new leaders for Malawi, and yet the Ministry of Gender etc is telling us that our training must fit in with 'Things here in Malawi'. But I am getting slightly ahead of myself. I'll tell you about that next time.