Thursday 22 December 2011

Home for Christmas

Well, I am not home yet, but I am on the way! I have completed the first leg of my journey and am sitting in the café at Lilongwe airport with nearly eight hours to go until my flight. There are only two of the fast and comfortable buses each day from Blantyre to Lilongwe and they are at 6.30am and 4.30pm. Theoretically it is just about possible to make it to the airport in time if you take the afternoon bus, but there's not much room for slippage so I decided not to risk it. If I describe the journey today you will understand why! I set the alarm for 5.00am and got up to finish the last minute bits of packing. I decided to travel light in the end and have only really brought clothes for two weeks and Christmas presents with me. I was going to bring some of my books home so that I don't have too much to bring next year but Zoe talked me out of it when I said I couldn't decide what I would need over the next few months. She said that I'd brought them for the good of the project and if I couldn't take them all back with me they'd find a way to get them home. Rita decided to travel with me to Lilongwe as her partner was arriving on the 3 o'clock plane for a couple of week's holiday. Hugh kindly offered to drive us to the bus. He was very puzzled to find the Land Rover covered in mud and with the diff lock in Low. A mystery since he drove it home himself last night and has had the keys all night. Half way up the Mitsidi road we saw that a vehicle had obviously left the track during the night and left deep tyre marks in the maize field. We speculated that perhaps the Land Rover had been used to pull the mystery vehicle out, but who drove it? Did they have to hot-wire it? Who did they have to pull out? I am sure Hugh will solve the puzzle when he gets back! Our tickets required us to be at the bus station for 6.30 to travel at 7.00am, but the bus did not pull in until about three minutes past seven. There was a rush to get luggage in the compartments under the coach and then to find seats. Tickets were for numbered seats but obviously mistakes had been made and when I got to No. 19 it was occupied. Many seats had been sold twice so it became a free-for-all. Rita managed to grab a couple of seats at the back. Possession is nine tenths of the law! We sat tight and watched the poor conductress arguing with people, persuading them to get off and catch a slightly less posh bus half an hour later. Eventually enough people gave in and we were off – half an hour late. The trip is supposed to take four hours and to get you to the middle of Lilongwe just after 11.00am, but the bus dawdled along, taking its time for no apparent reason. Perhaps you use less fuel if you go slowly? We all had to get out at a road block for the police to walk up and down the bus. Goodness knows what they were looking for. Just the other side of Ntcheu we pulled into the side of the road for a black-market refuel. At first the TVs failed to descend from the ceiling and the film played to the ceiling. When they eventually came down properly the sound track was a couple of seconds behind the film. The end of the film disappeared and was replaced by strange music videos. It was all a bit surreal and this was the Executive Bus! We finally arrived at the Palace Hotel in the middle of Lilongwe at nearly half past one, after I had had to leap out of the bus at the stop before to prevent my luggage being left on the pavement where someone had removed it to in order to retrieve their own. Rita and I hastened into the hotel for a much needed comfort break, phoned our lift to the airport to tell them where to meet us and went into the dining room for lunch. Here we ordered a chicken salad which was supposed to come with mozzarella, seasonal fruit, tomatoes, lettuce and a balsamic vinegar dressing. When it arrived it was drenched in salad cream and was only chicken, lettuce and tiny scraps of tomato. An extra bowl of salad cream came on the side, together with French dressing made with vinegar that was definitely not balsamic! When we complained, the charming waiter went to the kitchen and came back with a message from the chef that the description on the menu was a typing error! The only bit of the trip that went well was our lift, and even here we were not collected by the person in the original plan. However the replacements were charming, efficient and helpful and managed to book Rita and Andrea (sp?) somewhere to stay, and sort out a 'deluxe' bus back to Blantyre for them tomorrow. Now here I am at the airport and the only café closes at half past five so I will have to have an early meal. My flight is not until 11.55pm.

The last week has flown by. David and I have taught a session on planning routines for children in day care five times, once each to the staff who are going to work with the different age groups in the children's centre. i.e. babies, toddlers, 3-4s, 4-5s and 5-6s. At one session or the other we saw 58 of our 68 students. I have been very concerned that because of the long delay to the opening some of the students will choose not to work in the children's centre or complete the course. In some ways this might not matter as we are going to open with fewer children than we planned and more staff, but nevertheless I would be sad to see some of them go.

Nairobi airport 6.30 am

I arrived at Nairobi airport in pitch darkness about an hour ago. International air travel is so weird from the point of view of meals! We had macadamia and cashew nuts between Lilongwe and Lusaka. We must have been given breakfast, Continental, at about 2.00am as we left Lusaka. The departure gates here in Nairobi are in a curious semicircular building with a corridor that feels as though it is about half a mile long. I spent about twenty minutes idly wandering along the full length of it looking for somewhere comfortable to sit. There are plenty of hard plastic chairs with rigid arms, and there are open doors to first class and Government lounges with huge leather armchairs that look as though they could each accommodate a small family, but these of course are out-of-bounds. There is a café at each end of the semi-circle and I ended up by the window of one of these watching the sky fade from deep navy blue, through iron grey, to pearl and eventually to palest turquoise streaked with grey and pink fluff. The whole process took only about fifteen minutes.

The most significant event of this week has been the handover of the Children's Centre keys from Hugh (site engineer) to Sarah (Daycare Manager). Sarah spent all of Thursday transferring toys and equipment from the container to one of the downstairs playrooms. Hurrah, no more searching for things in a hot container! More significantly it begins to feel as though we really will be opening the Children's Centre in January. There is an awful lot to do though between now and then and I feel a bit guilty about my trip home for Christmas. However it was planned and booked when we still thought the Children's Centre would open in September so I shall just have to be forgiven. After all this time though, I regret that I shall not be involved in the layout of the rooms. I feel less sorry that I shall not be involved in all the cleaning that will have to happen before the place is fit for children. The area around is still a building site with all the dust and muck that that involves, and it is the rainy season so all sorts of mud and guck comes in on the feet of the workmen who are still installing kitchen units, toilet partitions and so on. However the Centre is beautiful. Even on the hottest days it is cool inside. The walls are painted soft pastel shades (Steiner would approve!) There are built in concrete sinks for water play. There is plenty of light and air. The downstairs rooms open onto grassed areas which are not generous, but bigger than I originally feared, and the upstairs rooms have covered balconies where we can put sand and water play etc to extend the play space. I believe it truly may be the most beautiful Early Years Education Centre in Malawi.

What about children I can hear you ask. Well we are making progress here too. There are three types of places in the centre: paying places for the children of working parents, subsidized places for a very limited number of children of Beehive workers, and sponsored places for local children in need. We think the paying places will fill up slowly at first as parents will wish to see how the nursery operates before they part with their hard earned cash, but yesterday was the first of a series of open days to show new parents what the Centre will be like. We spent much of Friday setting up the Toddler room for play and it looked very nice when we had finished. There was a cosy book corner, puppet theatre, low shelves for children to help themselves to toys, puzzles and games, a dinosaur play mat, a choice of construction sets, baby play corner, home corner, sand and water play. If it didn't look exactly like a UK setting, it was certainly more like one than anywhere else I have seen in Malawi, but with an obvious African slant. Mavuto, Cosmos and Abel smiled out from buggies and chairs in the home corner and looked as though they thoroughly approved of their new home. Still not found the girl doll! I expect we'll discover her in a box in the next few days! I wonder if we actually received any bookings at the open day. I do hope so.

Recruitment for the other types of place is definitely not going to be a problem. Sarah and David have been working together to establish a committee responsible for allocating sponsored places. They have built on the relationships we have developed gradually over the duration of the training and have involved CPOs, people from the local health clinic, churches and the police. A system of visits with either David or Sarah and one of the CPOs has been developed and then the committee decides who will get the places. So far no one who has been offered a place has refused. There has been a deluge of applications for the Beehive places which are subsidized on a sliding scale according to income. Thirteen of the thirty available places have been given to families whose children previously had subsidized places at a local nursery. For the other 17 places there is a lot of competition. Again there will be a committee to decide how the places will be distributed according to a set of criteria. It won't be easy though. Wherever we go people approach us with forms, practically begging us to choose their child. The Children's Centre is seen as a huge and life-changing opportunity for the children.

3 hours later

I have spent the time wandering up and down the semi-circular corridor and exploring what Nairobi airport has to offer. I think I have probably been in every shop but have managed to spend nothing except in the coffee shop. I struck out down a spar from the main track and discovered a Kenya Airways lounge which is really only for Business class and Gold Card customers but the guy on the door must have felt sorry for me because he checked I was really travelling with Kenya Airways and then let me in. Now I am ensconced in a very comfortable bright orange upholstered armchair and I don't intend to move until I can board the plane!

So to continue with the last week in Malawi before my trip home for Christmas…. I find it hard to feel Christmassy in the heat, and it has been hot, and humid too because it has rained properly two or three times this week. On Wednesday Mary and Zoe had a Christmas/Going home party which was fun and I managed to spend most of the time talking to Mary's friends who I don't know very well, so that was interesting and stimulating. When I get back in January I will have a couple of other projects working with children in Blantyre to visit so that will be good. Drank too much wine, but hey, it's Christmas! I am quite looking forward to being cold for a couple of weeks, although I daresay I shan't really enjoy it when it happens. My brother and sister have promised to bring my winter coat when they meet me at the airport and I have a pair of socks in my handbag to put on with my sandals before I get off the plane. Not an attractive look, but better than being too cold. What I am really looking forward to is snuggling under the duvet in my own bed with a hot water bottle. Being cosy is a bit hard to achieve with tiled or concrete floors, and it's months since I slept with anything more than a sheet over me. On the way to this lounge I met a Kenyan airport worker on the stairs complaining of the cold, its 17 degrees here, much cooler than Malawi at the moment, but hardly cold. The paper said max 7 and min 2 in London last time I looked.

The Beehive site was strangely quiet on Friday. The construction department shuts down for at least three weeks over Christmas and Friday was the Christmas party. Admin keeps going for another week so I will miss that party which is the one we in the Children's Centre get invited to. In the morning I helped with the setting up of the Open Day but in the afternoon I prepared to go away for two weeks, writing David a list of things to do in my absence to prepare for the training to go smoothly in January, admiring the new Mother Teresa uniforms, finishing drafting a couple of policies Sarah asked me to look at, and actually doing my filing and tidying my desk. I regret that I shall miss making the CD with the choir and I really wish them well for the next three days when they will be travelling to Chilobwe to sing. In the end it proved terribly expensive to pay all those individual bus fares, so in exchange for swapping the preferred dates for dates in the holiday Hugh has helped us to arrange a truck and driver to take everybody. A friend of mine has offered to contribute towards the cost of fuel. The choir themselves have raised MK5000 and my friend and I have chipped in MK10,000 between us. This is not quite enough, but Hugh has kindly said it will do, so this recording is really going to happen at last. I think I really need this holiday. I am desperate to see the family again and cannot wait for four days over Christmas in a Youth Hostel in Wales with 17 of us all together. I shall miss a lot in Chilomoni but I am sure I will come back refreshed and ready for whatever happens. At last we shall be working with children every day. It's been a long wait!

Sunday 11 December 2011

Start of recording

Oh dear, I have left too long between blog entries again and now have too many things to write about. I don't know where to start. I guess chronologically is the simplest idea. Last week was distinguished by the fact that for the first time since I have been here we had a power cut every single day. The power was off altogether for over two days because of a lightening-strike putting out some vital piece of equipment. It was on only a few hours before the usual Tuesday evening cut took it away again. I am getting tired of finding things to do by candlelight. I can read, but it gets a bit of a strain after a while. Rita has discovered that little locally made oil lamps can be purchased very cheaply. I think I shall get one too and see if it produces any more light than a candle.

On Tuesday I spent a fascinating day with the choir, going to a recording studio in Chilobwe to start to make the backing tracks for the CD. Six of us went on the minibus. Chilobwe is a township clinging to the side of Mount Soche, one of the three mountains on which Blantyre is built. It can be seen from the Beehive site and from the door of our original classroom at St James' School. It has a distinctive clump of trees on the top and when I got overwhelmed with noise or frustration when teaching last year I used to go and stand outside the classroom door and look at it, so it is very familiar, but I have never been there before. Martin, the Choir Master was spruced up in smart black trousers and a pale blue shirt. The two sopranos were resplendent in African traditional dresses and the altos wore respectable black skirts and white blouses. I had not thought about dressing for a special occasion and so was in my ordinary work dress. Some of the others are normally clad in the blue work overalls of the Beehive site, worn by bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and labourers alike. The choir has been saving for several weeks. On each pay day members have given what they can afford to a fund for fares and other expenses for making the CD. Meticulous records are kept and at the business meetings the names of the members who have given money are called out, anything from MK20 from the lower paid labourers to maybe MK250 from office workers or bricklayers. Mary was issued with enough money for our fares, just less than MK500 each, and I contributed enough to cover my own fares and a Fanta each, and we set off for the minibus stage at Chilomoni market. We squashed into a bus with eight or nine others and were off to Blantyre. We had to walk across town to the bus station near the market to get the bus to Chilobwe. The bus station was a heaving mass of people and white minibuses were moving apparently randomly, backwards, forwards and in and out of each other. Eventually we located the right bus and got in. There was a bit of a wait while the other places were filled, but before long we were on the move. The driver had a bit of trouble getting it to start, but fortunately the bus station is on a downward slope to the road and the engine kicked in just as we had to turn left up the hill away from the city centre. As usual I was fascinated by the names of the little shops in the trading areas of the suburbs through which we passed. My favourite on this occasion was the 'God will find a way' cosmetics and salon! The minibus ended its journey where the tarmac runs out in the middle of Chilobwe. Martin set off with confidence towards the studio, turning off the main track and round several corners before plunging steeply downhill. After a few hundred metres he declared himself lost and borrowed my phone to call the studio and get directions. As usual no one else had any credit! Actually we were only a few minutes away, but we were hot and a bit weary. We were revived by glasses of ice cold water and shown into the studio which was housed in a small house. The room was divided into two by a wooden partition with egg boxes stuck all over it, well there was a gap where two had fallen off. The walls were covered with tie dyed fabric in cream and orange. A huge logo decorated one wall, a yin/yang symbol with sun and moon superimposed upon it and 'Weapon of Peace' emblazoned across it. The half of the room we entered was a bit like someone's sitting room, with a three- seater sofa against the wall under the logo facing a wooden bench against the other wall. A large microphone stood next to the partition which had a window in the centre and an open door towards the back of the room. We could see through into the back room where the computer, keyboards and all the other technical paraphernalia was arranged. We met Eugene who worked with us for the whole day. He reminded me very much of one of my students, he had a quiet voice, an intelligent expression and considerable capacity for concentration. We were there for nearly five hours during which time we sang five of our ten songs and he prepared backing tracks for each of them. We broke for lunch for only a short time. All available food was shared. Martin took my extra MK500 out and came back with a Fanta each and a couple of loaves of bread, one or two people had brought rice dishes from home. On the way back on the bus Martin confided to me that he was very happy with the way the day had gone. He repeated several times that 'They understand the music, they care about the music, just like me' he said. He pointed out places of interest all the way home, making sure that I knew the name of every place we passed through and making me repeat the Chichewa names. We paused in the market for the purchase of potatoes, cassava and vegetables and then it was back to the bus station for a minibus to Chilomoni. All the members felt it had been a very satisfactory day. An arrangement had been made to record the backing tracks for the other five songs on the following Thursday. Unfortunately I was unable to go that day as I had promised to run the Stay and Play group for Diddy who had the day off for her birthday, but I was very glad to have the opportunity to go and see how it was done.

I enjoyed the Stay and Play. I rang the student volunteers the day before and gave each of them something to prepare. I also encouraged them to arrive in time for a brief planning meeting before the families arrived and to my delight there was one student already present when I arrived at 7.30am. The session starts at 8.30am and by 8.15am all six of my volunteers were there and the room was laid out with a variety of activities. I gave myself only one teaching point for the session; that the activities we provide for the children at each session should be dictated by what we observed about the children's interests and abilities at the previous session. Diddy has set up a pattern to the way the group is run, with similar activities and equipment in similar places in the hall each week and the children are beginning to know where to go to find what they want to do. I had made some yellow play dough with red glitter in it. We taped strips of paper to the floor and made huge, group paintings. There were cars, balls, dolls, puzzles, maths games, water play, baby play, musical instruments. Each student had prepared a song for the music session at the end and Vasco was ready with a story. I assigned special responsibility for a particular activity to each student, but encouraged them to keep an overview of what was happening in the whole room as well. We had 24 children and perhaps 18 or 20 mums. I was so proud of the students. Each seemed to know exactly what they were doing and the session went very smoothly. I had made popcorn for snack time and was going to give each child their small portion on a piece of paper so they could put it down and keep it clean. Gilbert saw what I was about and immediately started twisting the pieces of paper into cones. This was so much easier for little hands to manage. The others picked up on what he was doing immediately and everyone was served in record time. Such team-work! Story time was a delight. I found out afterwards that the story Vasco told was written by Gilbert. My Chichewa is poor and I could only pick up the gist of the tale which was about a tortoise and a rabbit. They had made laminated pictures of the characters and also Vasco acted the part of the rabbit and used our big, tortoise floor cushion to play the part of the tortoise. The children were totally absorbed. It took a bit longer than I had planned and therefore there was not enough time for all the students to do their songs, but that was my only criticism. After the families had left we spent ten minutes talking about how the day had gone and 'Hey Presto!' we had a plan for next week. Excellent.

We are so busy here that time passes very quickly and the weekends roll around before you expect them to. Saturday was filled up by shopping in Blantyre and swimming at Mitsidi. In the evening Chris and I went to see Hugh and Linda perform in the Musical Society of Malawi Christmas Concert. There are only a couple of Malawians in the choir and orchestra but there are certainly a good mixture of people of many nationalities. There were songs in Chichewa, Swedish and Latin as well as English. It was a joy to sing along to various well known carols although I was disappointed to have to keep quiet during 'Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar', which is one of my favourites. After the performance there were mince pies and Christmas biscuits so we came out feeling quite Christmassy!

On Sunday Sarah and I were privileged to be invited to accompany Matthias, the stores man on the building site, to Chikwawa to visit his mum and family in their home village. I did the entire journey propped up on a mattress in the back of the pick-up. Even in Blantyre it was a warm and sunny day. I was glad I had my sunglasses in my bag and had smothered myself in suntan lotion before we left. I was also equipped with big scarf and a chitenje to cover myself if the sun seemed too strong. All went well at first as we drove out of Blantyre on the Chikwawa road. I noticed that the blossoms on the flame trees were beginning to drop and the rain of the previous weekend had allowed the maize to grow so that it was now about 18 inches high. I could see Mount Soche to my right as I rode backwards in the back of the truck and was able to pick out Chilobwe where I had been with the choir a few days beforehand. As we approached the outskirts of Blantyre and Fisherman's Rest we passed people selling mushrooms at the side of the road and resolved to stop on the way home and buy some. Mushrooms are a rare treat in Malawi. I guess it must be the season for them. We drove down a steep winding road from the mountains around Blantyre to the plains of the Shire valley, and the temperature got hotter and hotter as we descended until it was about 45 degrees and pretty unbearable. As we went down I knelt up and leaned on the cab of the truck so that I could see the incredible view of the valley getting closer and closer. The breeze was quite strong and this was enhanced by the fact that Matthias is no slow driver! The little hair I have left was standing straight up in the air when we got to the bottom and I had to keep my dress from lifting itself above my head by the simple expedient of kneeling firmly on the hem. I excited quite a bit of interest. Clearly it is not a common site to see a middle-aged azungu woman peering over the cab of a pick-up driven by a Malawian. Loads of people pointed and waved and called out 'Azungu, azungu!'. I was just beginning to feel that I was so hot I would have to ask Matthias to stop and let me recover in the shade, when we crossed the Shire river, went through a police road block and after a few hundred yards swung off to the right up a dirt road. A few hundred yards further and we had arrived. We were warmly welcomed by Cecelia, Matthias's mum, who spread a bamboo mat under a tree and made sure we had zitenje to sit on. Matthias and his step-dad had chairs and the rest of us on the mat. This was rural Malawi! Cecelia and Matthias's two female cousins who live with his mum following the death of their father, his Uncle Sylvester, rushed around bringing drinks, and cooking both in the house and outside on an open fire under another tree. When they offered food or drink to the men they sank to their knees to show respect. I didn't see either Matthias or his step dad lift a finger to help during the whole time we were there, but the girls were busy all the time. They made a lovely meal of chicken, rice, nsima, tomato soup, and salad which we ate outdoors under the tree. Occasionally the mat had to be moved round with the sun so that it remained in the shade of the tree. It was at least ten degrees hotter in Chikwawa than it is in Blantyre. I am so glad we do not live in those temperatures all the time; I don't know how I would cope. We were kept well supplied with water and drinks. They routinely put salt in their drinking water in order to replace the salts lost through sweating. I daresay Annie will tell me off for discussing toilet issues in the public medium of a blog, but I didn't need a wee all day, which is just as well as the only loo was a shared pit latrine which even Matthias said he would not recommend! The family has a small farm where they grow food and also cotton as a cash crop. Planting had not yet started as so far they have had no rain at all. Cecelia has an interest in traditional medicines and she told us all the uses of the tree we were sitting under and of other plants growing around us. I was fascinated. We met little Sylvester who is three years old. I was interested to hear about the village CBCC which he attends from 7.30am to 5.00pm each weekday to enable his young mum to go back to school. I rooted around in the depths of my hand bag and found him some balloons. Also a rubber ball made to look like like the earth as seen from outer space with clouds superimposed upon a globe of the world. This excited great interest and poor little Sylvester had to wait while it was passed around the whole family and admired. An older lad passed by on the road and Sylvester wanted to show him his new ball but his grandfather advised him not to as he feared the older lad would take it off him. I hope I have not caused trouble with this gift. After about three hours it was time for us to set off back to Blantyre. When we passed through the road block in the other direction we all had to get out of the car and walk on a pad soaked in disinfectant as there is foot and mouth in Malawi at the moment. At the top of the climb up the mountain we stopped to get our mushrooms and again at Fisherman's Rest for coffee and icecream (and a proper toilet!).

A week later

The opening of the children's centre is fast-approaching and a lot of the projects that have been on the go for some time seem to have come together this week. We actually have the beginnings of a register with the names of real children who will come to us for day care from 16 January. There are 13 who are the children of Beehive workers who have had subsidized places at a local nursery for some time. These are being transferred to our own Centre. We have a committee consisting of representatives from Chilomoni health centre, the local police, Social Services, the local Child Protection Officers and a couple of local churches, also Mary Kamwendo, Beehive's main HR person, Sarah as Day Care Manager, and David. These people have recommended children for the sponsored places. David and Sarah, with the CPOs have visited these families and made recommendations and then it is the job of the committee to decide how the places are allocated. I do not think it will be difficult to fill the hundred places as sponsorship gradually becomes available. The cost of each place is approximately 750 pounds a year. We have a marketing campaign raising sponsorship from local companies, the Beehive companies themselves are sponsoring ten places and a couple of individuals are each sponsoring a child. We hope that individuals, churches and other groups in UK, or indeed anywhere else, will also commit themselves to that sum to give a child the chance of a good pre-school education and thus a good start in life. This week has seen the appearance of our Mother Teresa Children's Centre chitenje fabric from which the children's uniform dresses and shirts will be made, and a decision has been made about uniform for staff. The Centre itself is still officially a building site but I have been assured that it really will be handed over to us to start moving in furniture, toys and equipment by the end of this week. This is just as well as the plan is to have an open morning for the prospective fee-paying children on Saturday 17 December. Unfortunately I will not be about as I set off for Lilongwe at about 6.00am on that day on the first leg of my journey home for Christmas. This trip was booked in June, when I still believed that the Children's Centre would be opening in September. I am very excited about coming home to see friends and family, but the timing is not good. I shall miss the move into the Children's Centre and a very busy period of preparation for the first day for the children.

This week also has seen the arrival back from the printers of the three booklets we have put together. First there is our annotated version of the Malawian ECD curriculum. Then there is a manual for the Practical Assessment tasks for the third part of the Beehive Child Care and Early Years Education Diploma. Thirdly there is an Answer Book for each student with all the paperwork they will need to accompany their practical tasks bound together. David and I have spent a lot of this week watching students leading activities in a little pilot of the practical tasks. So far we have not uncovered any serious or unpredictable problems, fortunately! Marks in the pilot vary between 44 and 88%. I have come up with a list of advice for the students following the pilot but it is the usual advice really starting with 'Read the question carefully, however good your activity is, if it does not answer the question you will not get any marks!' I have seen much to make me proud during this week. The group of students who have been supporting Marc in his work with Standard 1 in St James have developed into a good team. Their relationships with children were a joy to behold. I think I am going to have some difficulties assessing people working with little children in Chichewa, but it is not as difficult as one might imagine. It is easy enough to see whether children are relaxed, happy and interested.

Talking of speaking Chichewa I find that I shall be leading assembly again this Monday. This time it is the turn of the choir to lead and I was forced to agree to their request that I do the introduction and link bits. I think it amuses them to hear me struggle to do it in Chichewa, but they certainly appreciate the effort. Yohane has proved to be a star yet again and has helped me to put together the things I want to say. It s probably just as well that I have this role as they are keen to keep the songs we are practicing for the CD under wraps until it comes out, and have put together a programme of four Christmas songs for the assembly, all new to me, all in Chichewa, and I really cannot get my tongue around them in the short week we have had to practice. Now I have an excuse which allows me to contribute to the choir's assembly but not mess up the singing! Another disadvantage of the timing of my trip home is that the recording of voices for the CD will take place on the 19, 20 and 21 December, after the site is closed for the Christmas break. This makes sense of course, but nevertheless I am disappointed.

On Friday night most of the volunteers went to the Gala Night performance of the Blantyre Sports and Social Club Christmas Pantomime. Gala Night means the ticket costs twice as much but you get a buffet and Pimms beforehand. It proved to be a bargain. Rarely have I seen so much azungu food gathered together in one place since I have been here! There were all sorts of little savoury treats including several types of vol-au-vents, prawn rissoles, tiny quiches and, joy of joys, a cheese board! There were also custard tarts and mince pies. The pantomime was exactly what I expected. It reminded me of the amateur pantomimes we used to go to with Auntie Ver when we were children, which were always such a treat. Despite last week's carol concert and the pantomime it still doesn't really feel like Christmas, - too hot! Only a week to go and I shall be home. I heard on the radio that it's 2 degrees at home, so it will be a drop of about 30 degrees. I shall definitely need a hot water bottle!