Children in the Children’s Centre at last!

The official day upon which the Children’s Centre opens its doors to the public is Tuesday 17 January.  This week however we have had a bit of a trial run with just the children occupying the Beehive sponsored places coming in to nursery.  This had to be arranged as the construction site started up again after the Christmas break last Monday and so the lucky families whose nursery care was transferred from the previous provision to the Children’s Centre needed care whilst the parents were at work.  The pattern of attendance during this first week illustrates the insecurity of working in the construction industry in Malawi.  All the workers were laid off a week or so before Christmas and the site was idle for about three weeks.  Last Monday approximately half the end-of- year workers were reemployed.  I am not completely clear about all the reasons why fewer workers are required at this time of year, the rainy season is one of them.  On Monday we had only three children as the parents of the remaining ten we were expecting were not immediately taken on.  However the reemployment is obviously a slow process and by the end of the week we had eleven children in Diddy’s room.  Just for this week we put all the children in one room, but from next week we shall be opening three:  baby, toddler and 3-6 rooms.  At present we seem to have a disproportionately small number of older children.  It was such a joy to see and hear children in the Centre at last.  On two days I managed to find opportunities to go into that room and play for a little while.  I did not realize how much I had missed being with children.  Neither did I realize how sweaty it is to sit and read stories in these temperatures with three or four children vying to sit on your lap at the same time!  I spent an hour sitting with a three year old on her first day who had woken from sleep and been quite distressed and crying for her mum.  She snuggled in to me and determinedly stayed on my lap through stories, song time and playing with ‘My little ponies’!  Those of you who know me well will wonder how on earth those got into the nursery – not by my choice I assure you!  However they seem popular! 

The students who belong to other rooms kept trying to find excuses to visit Diddy’s room and get some interaction with the children.  This transitional period while we have so many staff and so few children is going to be really difficult.  There are jobs to do to set up the nursery.  There are a lot of toys and equipment; enough for three rooms, but not really enough for the five we hope to have full of children before too long.  If anyone has good quality toys and nursery equipment looking for a new home please contact George Furnival at Krizevac to get it put on a container and sent out to us.  Marketing the fee-paying places is a huge job.  This has been the responsibility of one of the students who previously worked in marketing for some time, but it has proved to be quite a challenge.  We have distributed leaflets at Shoprite and talked to many people who have appeared to be very interested, but until this week no one has actually parted with their money to confirm a place.  I guess it is important for parents to actually be able to see the nursery in action so that they can visualize what it will be like for their children.  Some other issues have also arisen.  Firstly location; many middle class parents work in the middle of Blantyre and Chilomoni is a township on the outskirts.  Secondly the quality of the road from the middle of Chilomoni to the Children’s Centre is poor, especially now that the rains have started in earnest.  There has been talk of providing a bus service from the middle of town or of starting the day with a song and dance session in the church hall where children could be dropped off at the end of the tarmac road and then transported all together to the Children’s Centre perhaps by ‘walking bus’.  Neither of these solutions is ideal.  I suppose these problems are the inevitable flip side of the ‘try it and see, and don’t waste any money on research’ approach favoured by Krizevac.  It seems that the better off parents see it as a high priority that their children should be totally immersed in an English-speaking environment.  They do not want their children to hear any Chichewa at all while they are at school.  David is in the process of writing a leaflet to go in the parents’ pack which describes our graduated approach to this, gradually using English more and more in each room as the children get older, alongside the Chichewa and avoiding the rote learning method.  We need to explain how important it is that the children understand the meaning of what they are saying in both languages.  There is also some misunderstanding about the difference between daycare and a school.  We have received feedback that the day starts too early at 6.30 am and we have realized that parents think that their children must be at ‘school’ for the whole time that it is open, whereas in UK we are used to parents dropping off and collecting their children from daycare at times to suit their own working arrangements within the opening hours.  Certainly we don’t expect small children to be at nursery for the entire eleven hours we are open, especially the babies.

The students seem to be settling down slowly into the new routine after their eventful and slightly grumbly first week.  It is exciting to be with children at last but we certainly do need more of them.  David and I have had individual interviews with each student this week and started to make individual plans to begin their practical tasks.  It is going to be difficult to give everyone the opportunity to be assessed with so few children.  David has been a star and is working out a programme involving setting up ‘Stay and Play’ groups, working in Standard 1 at St James’ and getting involved in marketing for those teams of students (who I suppose I should be calling Care Givers now) who do not yet have any children in their rooms.

We are going to miss Sarah so much when she goes home next Saturday.  In the absence of a Care Manager David and I have taken on many aspects of the role.  This is going to be quite a heavy responsibility on top of our commitment to completing the Diploma training, but not taking it on would have given us even greater problems!  Jennie and Joan, the new room leaders seem to be settling in really well.  Together with Diddy, they will make a strong team and lead practice in the 3-6, 0-2 and 2-3 rooms respectively.  Jennie’s room already looks an exciting and interesting place to be and Joan is working on making the baby room comfortable and fascinating for the little ones.  Diddy’s room is already on the go of course, this week with a mixed age group of children.  Highlights for me have been popping in to hear one of the students reading to the children with great energy and expression; playing with Rose, who is four and shares a name with my daughter; and being greeted by the little girl who had missed her mum so much on the next morning with a huge smile and her remembering my name.  I am trying hard to learn all the children’s names, but it is difficult when you are not in the room with them all the time.  At least 95% of the time I am either with the students or in the office.  Next week I shall shadow Sarah for most of the time trying to pick up everything she has done so far and learning what the priorities will need to be for the next few weeks.  I’d have liked a longer handover period, but unfortunately that is not going to happen! 

This weekend we have been away to the Lake for an away day training session for azungu volunteers and Beehive heads of department.  Some of us have a few reservations about spending the money on ‘jollys’ away, but apparently Peter got an incredibly good deal, and as volunteers we do work for nothing, so perhaps we do deserve it after all!  Anyway, we had a great time.  The morning session was spent getting to know each other better and sharing our vision for Beehive through a number of exercises such as writing imaginary postcards home from Chilomoni in the year 2032, introducing ourselves, and passing round pieces of paper upon which we had to write positive comments about each other.  This was a bit like a giant game of consequences, passing the papers round the table and folding it over so that the next person could not see or be influenced by what had been written before.  I cried when I opened mine; people had written such nice things! 

In the afternoon we had a visit from Dedza Pottery and painted tiles as we did in November 2010.  This time we also painted mugs.  Each person had to pick one of the ‘nice comments’ papers out of a bag and paint a mug for the person concerned.  I was lucky to pick Rita, who is a darling, and most of the comments were about her smile, her abilities as a good listener and how she brightens people up with her presence, so it was easy.  I painted her name in the middle of a big sun, and smiley faces and listening ears!  My mug was painted by Tapiwa who manages the Torrent Computer Rentals office in Lilongwe.  She took a lot of trouble over it and it looks very nice.

We had nice meals and the hotel was in a beautiful spot by the Lake.  It rained an awful lot of the time but we managed one short walk along the beach.  In the evening after dinner there was a dance display which I enjoyed.  I also sat on the jetty in the dark, watching the glow-worms and insects flying in and out of the light and the reflections on the water.  A light was flashing as regularly as a lighthouse across the other side of the Lake.  The water looked black and gleaming, almost like oil.  The gentle waves made swishing noises against the coarse sand of the beach and the music from the bar was far enough away to make a pleasant background of sound.  I reflected upon the reasons why I came to Malawi and how surprised I would have been to hear a couple of years ago that I would spend so much time in Africa.

Today is a Bank Holiday.  Seven of us got up relatively early for a holiday day and left for Michiru Nature Sanctuary at 8.00am.  We had a lovely walk.  The reserve is very green and lush at the moment.  The growth is so dense that it is difficult to spot animals.  I saw some waving long grass that probably screened an antelope from view, and a single monkey, probably a vervet a long way away in the trees, but loads of insects, bongalolo (millipedes), centipedes, spiders and a tiny creamy green frog!  There were fungi everywhere.  Last year at about the same time I encountered a whole troupe of yellow baboons foraging for mushrooms, but no such luck today!  The afternoon we have spent cooking and eating lunch, chatting, tidying, moving the furniture around to accommodate all the new people who we are expecting in the next few days (including my son Jack and Becky, his girlfriend – Hurrah!). Oh! And I’ve written a nappy changing procedure as well!