Eeeeee! I can hardly believe it. In 38 hours I shall leave Mitsidi and almost exactly 24 hours after that I shall be met at Heathrow by Old Dave, my dearly-loved (note adjectival hyphen!) big brother. My students reckon that 'eeeee!' is my best Chichewa word, probably the only one spoken like a local, and used to indicate surprise or puzzlement. It has something in common with 'Really!' but is not exactly the same! Sometimes it feels as though I have been here a very long time, and sometimes not very long at all. Time is a funny thing, but I shall certainly be glad to see all the family again. I have a suitcase half full of little presents and I am getting very excited. I do hope that the Icelandic volcano doesn't cause me any problems, but I have looked at a map of where it is expected to go and fortunately there is no sandy-brown shaded area between Lilongwe and Heathrow.
Last week was a busy one. Despite being ahead of myself as far as preparation is concerned at the end of the Easter holidays I have still been doing at least a little work most evenings, and of course I had planned to do several things before I went home that remain undone! We have been looking at Communication, Language and Literacy, and Problem-solving, Reasoning and Numeracy. The subjects are so wide and so important it is difficult to choose what to concentrate upon. Also we must focus upon the Malawian curriculum and supplement it with ideas from elsewhere, which is of course a new approach for David and for me. David is the primary school teacher so he focussed on the older end of the age range for both these areas and I concentrated upon 0-3s. We did some nice activities. David encouraged the students to make zig-zag books based upon the new children's books on African subjects that some kind fund-raisers have sent from the UK. Incidentally they also sent a beautiful black baby doll in a nappy that fastens with Velcro with which the students were absolutely fascinated. Clearly they had never seen the like before and commented upon its African features. They passed it round, treating it almost like a real baby. When it was passed to me I asked 'Do you think it is a girl or a boy?''Agggh! Marian, there will not be a difference!' they said, so I undid the nappy and with a little embarrassment they had a good look. It was definitely a girl! They do not really believe me that it is possible to get anatomically correct boy-baby dolls, so I am hoping that our 'second-born dolly' will be male! But as usual I run off at a tangent! I had the students painting with water on the concrete paths and walls and as it was break time for the school pupils we were swiftly joined by at least fifty 5-9 year olds, all wanting to have a go. I had only eight brushes so it was impossible to be fair. I gave them out at random and settled to watch what the children did. I had demonstrated by drawing a face and the first group of children all followed suit. I picked up a stick and drew a car in the dust and soon all sorts of vehicles were appearing temporarily on the path and fading quickly in the warmth of the sun. After some time I realised that although I had started with a mixed group, all those who now had brushes were boys, the girls had moved (been forced?) to the edge of the group and were all watching. So I collected all the brushes back in and redistributed them to all girls, much to the disgust of the boys. Immediately the subject matter of the 'paintings' shifted from cars to people and flowers. Other activities included tying strips of material to sticks and waving them about, making snakes out of playdough and watching the trails they made in a sprinkling of flour covering the table, devising activities to do with talking postcards, and drawing in the dust with sticks. In the afternoon we looked at the role play area in a nursery playroom and discussed possible Malawi-appropriate themes. The church seemed to figure prominently in everyone's list and we had maize mills and markets, as well as the more 'usual in the UK' salons, hospitals, shops etc. I have made a real effort to combine the milestones of the Malawian curriculum with the Development Matters of the EYFS into something reasonably comprehensive to encourage our students to check that they are providing sufficient and appropriate activities to support the development of PSRN skills at least from 0-3 years. Not that the need stops for the 3-6s but this is David's responsibility!
Lindy's music sessions on Tuesday and Friday afternoons have become a very popular part of our course, but she was unable to come last week, however the students were delighted because Jan has been on a recent trip to the UK and brought each of them an A4 document wallet in which to keep their songs. They are just buff coloured cardboard files, but they were received with delight and the students of both groups settled down to decorate and personalise them with great enthusiasm. There was much use of coloured pens, sugar paper, scissors, glue and pencils and when I put out glitter sent by my cousin from Wales as a special treat, they were thrilled! Ever since every student has had specks of multicoloured glitter on their face! It really does get everywhere!
We finished the week with a walk through Chilomoni looking for shapes and numbers and discussing how we could involve small children in fun and games with shapes and numbers spotted in the street.
The weekend was fairly quiet. Giacomo and I got up quite early on Saturday as Tony was reported to be escorting 400 children up the Way of the Cross and we thought we would tag along and see what happened. I counted only about 170 children, but nevertheless it was quite a crowd. Tony produced a box of rosaries from his car and distributed them to eager reaching hands. It was a joy to see the pleasure of the children and the delight on Tony's face as he handed them out. There were children of all ages from babes on backs, to older teenagers. Altogether there were perhaps eight adults. We had been misinformed; it was the Way of the Rosary that we were climbing that day. Off we set following Tony up the mountain. I was reminded of the pied piper as we sang our way up the mountain, moving at a lively pace. We stopped at each station and Tony described the pictures on the bronze plaques, pointing out their beauty and asking the children if they knew who the characters were in the pictures. Some of them were pretty good with their bible knowledge, identifying Gabriel, Elizabeth and Simeon correctly as well as the better known Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Even the identity of the child in Elizabeth's womb was provided by a knowledgeable child. Another adult provided a Chichewa translation of what Tony was saying. There were brief prayers at each station and a decade of the rosary was said. One of the adults explained to me and Giacomo that they came up here every Saturday with the children to teach them how to pray to help them in later life and in the hope that through having a regular activity they would be kept away from less desirable pastimes as they got older. We stayed with them for half a dozen stations and then slipped away back down the mountain the way we had come to join Melvin in our usual Saturday morning trip to town for coffee and shopping. The afternoon was spent at Mitsidi and in the evening it was off to Phoenix School for the concert of the Blantyre Musical Society which featured Melvin, Jan and Lindy in the choir, and Lindy on clarinet. There was quite a selection of music. I tended to favour the lighter items but I enjoyed it all, especially the Gershwin, 'My Grandfather's Clock', and' Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud,' which brought back memories!
Sunday was mostly taken up with the disastrous crashing of my computer. For a while I thought all might be lost, but thanks to emergency intervention by David Chagama, one of the Vice Principals of the IT academy my documents were all retrieved. The whole computer had to be wiped clean and everything will have to be reinstalled, but at least disaster was averted. Like most people I never learn and do not back up my files nearly often enough. It is not as if this has never happened to me before, but all is well that ends well!
This week I shall only see the course once through as I shall be on the way to Lilongwe on Thursday morning when Group 2 start their first session. David will deliver my session on the Key Worker System as well as his own on Transitions on Thursday, and on Friday they will be looking at the positive management of challenging behaviour as we did today. This was interesting. Of course there are many similarities in expected behaviour in UK and here in Malawi, and in the way children are taught to behave, but there are differences too. I made notes on what was said in class, so I will not repeat them here.
Tomorrow we shall work on planning our Open Afternoon which is to take place on 15 June, between my visit home and David's, and then by seven on Thursday I shall be on the road. I am so looking forward to seeing friends and family.
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