A snapshot view of the Children’s Centre.

Normally I would never write in my blog during working hours, but then at the moment it feels as though if I am awake I am working, at least during the week, so perhaps I may be excused! This morning I spent an hour working my way along the corridor from the 4-6 year old room, through the 2-4s and ended up with the baby room. It was an hour that made the hard work all worthwhile, and as I write I am feeling quite emotional! I began by assessing a student on a task about risk assessment of activities. She is one of our youngest students but she is bright and thoughtful and intuitive and it was the quality of her relationships with the children in her room that moved me. She had organized these children into a game of Phada, a Malawian street game a bit like Hopscotch. It's quite challenging for 4-6s, especially the younger ones and I watched with great respect as she adapted her approach and level of support to meet the needs of each individual child. Those children did everything for themselves, including drawing a rather wobbly chalk line court on the concrete floor of the room. The student was full of praise, suggestions and warmth. For those who were less well physically coordinated she was there, jumping alongside them, others more physically confident jumped alongside each other. The classrooms tend to be rather echoing, all that concrete and not enough soft furnishings to absorb much sound and often I have heard students raise their voices to be heard, then the children also speak loudly and the volume of sound escalates. Not today, she spoke softly, focusing her attention on the children and involving them in preparing the activity. Everyone was interested and kept quiet to hear her. It was lovely! Oh and she had made a sensible assessment of the hazards as well and put in appropriate measures to minimize the risks!

When I had finished there I popped next door to the toddlers. This is a room that has been a little slow to get enough good quality activities planned to keep the children productively occupied all the time, and this is the room where we have had a few problems with staff relationships with each other, and the apparent lack of ability to behave in a professional way in front of the children, so I was thrilled to see three interesting looking activities being prepared all at the same time by Care Givers who appeared to be working well as a team! There were clay balls, brightly painted with thick powder paint, drying on the side of the play sink. I wonder what they were for. There were painting trays on the floor ready to be used, each lined with a rectangle of newspaper cut with a zig-zag border. A Care Giver was cutting out cross-shaped pieces of paper for the children to decorate with patterns as she wanted to find out what degree of fine motor control each child has. It is so good to see activities getting more interesting and original as Care Givers gain in experience and confidence that their own ideas are going to be good ones.

Next I looked in on the baby room just as their morning welcome routine began. It was an absolute delight. I sat on a chair in the corner of the room and watched. The first songs welcomed the babies individually by name, first in Chichewa and then in English. Each song was paired so there were two days of the week songs, two about today's weather, two naming body parts etc, each time one in English and one in Chichewa. These children, all under-two and a half were obviously already familiar with these songs. They helped themselves to instruments and played along enthusiastically and in rhythm so much better than the average UK child in a baby room. Little Ireen is a music and dancing star, her small face lights up with pleasure as soon as a tape is turned on or a Care Giver begins to sing. She swings her hips in perfect rhythm and plays along with drum or tambourine. Today she had helped herself to a tambour (? I think that's what you call it when it has no bells) and a fluorescent green recorder. She beat the drum with the recorder with such enthusiasm and in perfect time. Already she is streets ahead of the likes of me in terms of musical ability! Little Blessings, our youngest, sat seriously in the middle of the group with a drum and played steadily and usually in time through every song. Chisomo was the most focused on the words and sang with gusto in both languages. Mona Lisa put in a few words here and there and watched the faces of the Care Givers as they sang. The whole session was well thought out and well executed. I was so proud and not far from tears as I came downstairs to get on with the paper work. Sometimes I have moments of terrible doubt that I have managed to pitch the training at the right level and in a way that is appropriate to Malawi. This little walk down the corridor this morning shows me that we have at least got some of it right!!

Later in the day

I actually finished on time today for the first time since the Children's Centre opened. I realized it will not be helpful to anyone if I tire myself out so much that I am unable to continue to do the job properly. So here I am sitting on the bed in my house with June Tabor playing and an hour or so before the other volunteers get home to have a quiet time and organize my thoughts a bit, and to blog. Since I wrote last weekend David and Kirren and I have put our heads together and divided out the work that has to be done between us. There is still a heavy load, but too my delight Kirren appears to be as little daunted as David by all the practical 'stuff' about which I procrastinate so badly, so I have been able to hand over things like ordering cleaning materials without feeling too guilty about it. I am holding on to the management of the staff team and last week I was challenged by a fairly major falling out of workers in the Toddler Room, and some rather unprofessional behaviour which we really cannot have happening in the Children's Centre. All seems to have been sorted out now and on Monday and Tuesday the room has been getting on with putting together stimulating activities for the children and I have had reports from both sides of the dispute that everything is much better than last week. Kirren has put some time into sorting out the last pair of classrooms which have still not quite been handed over to us by the construction team. We had used them as a bit of a dumping ground for everything that we didn't have an obvious place or immediate use for. Now we still have one room being used for storage but it is much better organized and we have found one or two useful things that had been mislaid, for example the A2 sugar paper that I had planned to use to make scrapbooks for the children's Learning Journeys but had been unable to locate. The other room will be used for Stay and Play and is beginning to look more like a play room and less like a municipal dump.

Unfortunately one of the Room Leaders has had to take a couple of weeks off for health reasons and as we have to work towards having floor supervisors rather than an experienced member of staff in each room from mid-April anyway we are practicing by putting Kirren in there for a couple of hours each morning only and assessing whether this is sufficient support for the Care Givers to ensure that the children's needs are met. So far, so good, but I know it is early days!

I put up a notice today telling the staff that we shall be looking to appoint 8 full time Trainee Room Leader posts from 1 April, and inviting them to apply. Beehive is funding a leadership training course for 25 Care Givers on 4 days during March. By the time I left at 3.30pm 20 people had signed up, so I am sure that we shall have to select the ones that show most promise of being ready for extra responsibility. In order to be fair to all the students who are working so hard to gain their Diplomas in the shortest possible time we shall have to continue to employ them all for 2 days a week, but without a room leader to provide continuity for the children we must have someone on each shift who is there every day. Eeeeee! Balancing the needs of children, families, Care Givers, volunteers, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all is a pretty tough task!

David, Kirren and Edna are still working hard on the marketing of the fee-paying places. The 'Get March Free' promotion is over, without significant success. We are having a 'Fun Day' on the 10 March, for which Kirren is full of bright, interesting ideas. The next promotion is "Introduce a friend and get a free bike.' I was not 100% sure about this at first but bikes are certainly a valuable commodity here, so we shall see. We didn't have much response to the radio adverts, so we won't be spending money on that again.

Life is not all work, we had a great weekend with ten of us going to Majete. We stayed at Thwale camp and went on two game drives. We were lucky and saw elephants on two occasions. Rita was thrilled to see zebras. I saw Eland and Buffalo for the first time, although the buffalo was a long way away and looked not unlike a grey rock in the distance! The birds were good too. We saw a brown snake eagle, various bee eaters including an olive bee eater which I'd not come across before, kingfishers, various flycatchers, including both male and female paradise fly catchers. It was a beautiful and peaceful camp with six sturdy tents set in a semicircle around a water hole. You could just sit on your khonde and see baboons, impala, and occasional other visitors without even putting down your drink! Francoise and I took a sneaky look at the luxury tent to see what distinguished it from our more basic accommodation. The main difference was a magnificent outdoor bathroom. You could sit enthroned and contemplate the beauty and silence of the bush, shower in the open air, and clean your teeth while watching the antics of the baboons!

Of work and leisure!

Time is passing quickly. We are working long days but they are whizzing past! For the first time I am conscious that it won't be long before my stint here will be finished and I shall hand over to Kirren and go home. We are making progress with getting the students through the practical part of their Diplomas. Some are working faster than others, but generally it is all going well. David and I have been trying to meet for a couple of weeks now, to offer each other some kind of co-supervision, and to compare notes about how the assessing is going to make sure we are working in as similar a way as possible, but we are like the proverbial ships passing in the night, only more like speed boats really! I have spent some time helping Kirren to get to know the CC and how it works this week, some time trying to sort out difficulties with the cleaning, some time planning for a new staff structure when the probationary 3-month contracts come to an end at the end of March, and at least half the working week assessing and mentoring students. I have also had to deal with another incident of theft by a student, which I have found extremely difficult. I am excited because we have been asked if we would take a child with quite complex special needs and I am to meet the family on Monday morning. They were referred by a Government peripatetic special needs teacher. I met her once as she just dropped in to the office at the end of last year to see what the CC was all about, and she remembered us when asked to recommend a pre-school for this child. Tony Smith is back with us in Chilomoni on a 10-day visit and will be visiting the CC on Monday afternoon. The children have been practicing songs and rhymes in his honour.

This morning I went on a Society of Malawi trip to the Greek Orthodox Church in Blantyre which I found fascinating. I don't think I have ever been in an Orthodox Church before. There were many beautiful icons. The priest was very friendly and went to a great deal of trouble to explain the faith and show us his church. Afterwards we were treated to a selection of cakes and cups of tea etc in the church hall and an informal chat with some of the Greek community which is currently about 200 strong. One cake was more like muesli really. It was a special cake for All Souls day, which apparently was today. It is made from wheat berries which symbolize life after death because they are dry and appear dead, and then grow into new plants. It contained the wheat, sugar, dried fruit, fresh pomegranate and cinnamon and cumin and was delicious. The first Greeks came to Malawi in about 1936 apparently and they have mostly been involved in farming, largely tobacco, and fishing. Malawi has been through all sorts of political changes in that time and our hosts were full of interesting anecdotes, including tales of lions on the verandah of a farm over towards the Mozambique border. Next month's trip will be to the Buddhist temple in Limbe, which apparently is pretty new. Last Tuesday was the Wildlife Society of Malawi's monthly talk which this time was about rhinos. The man who spoke illustrated his talk with photos and he was a wonderful photographer and must have had some terrific lenses, his bird pictures were beautiful. Wednesday night saw me at a Zumba class. It's just as well that Zoe and I were late; otherwise the effort would probably have killed me. I know I am no expert, but it was probably the most energetic exercise class I have ever seen and despite sitting out a couple of numbers I was shattered at the end of the hour and had certainly worked up a sweat! I went back to Zoe's for the evening. We showered and then sat about in our pyjamas, cooked up a vegetable curry and had a generally relaxing evening, Oh! And there was a drop or two of duty free whisky in there somewhere too!

The Children’s Centre team continues to grow and develop

We are having a quiet Sunday at Mitsidi. It is very hot today. Originally we planned to go for a walk today, maybe to show some of the new volunteers the Way of the Rosary, but we are all a bit tired. On Friday we had the usual after work drink in the Liquor Garden but somehow it developed into a full-blown evening out including a meal in the Gold Card Executive Lodge in Namiwawa and then returning to the Liquor for late night drinks as well, and rolling home well after midnight. Yesterday I went and met Zoe for a coffee at Shoprite and bought a lot of stuff for making playdough and other messy play activities for the Children's Centre before setting off to the airport to collect two new volunteers. One, Sadia , who prefers to be called by her middle name 'Kiran' is to be part of the training/management team for the children's centre with me and David; the other, Francoise, will be helping to support and streamline administration throughout Beehive. That will be quite a challenge I imagine. Yet again I was surprised by how little one needs to know about a person in order to be able to find them easily in a mass of people emerging from the arrivals door at Chileka Airport. All I knew was that they would be travelling together, their first names and that one was Asian and one European in origin. I watched a steady stream of people for about three-quarters of an hour without seeing anyone even possible. At last I spotted them and caught Francoise's eye, mouthing her name through the glass door. She nodded vigorously and that was that! Krizevac has introduced a new procedure for welcoming and supporting new volunteers. This is a good idea and involves each volunteer in having a buddy who has various duties to perform to make sure that vital information is passed on about things like telephones, internet connections, hospitals and so forth. I am to be Kiran's buddy and Rita is to do the honours for Francoise. In the afternoon we helped them settle into their accommodation and showed them Mitsidi. It was full of the delicious smells of baking as David had a 'Pudding Party' in the late afternoon/early evening. We each made a delicious dessert and took wine, and a thoroughly good time was had by all. We don't get much in the way of dessert in Malawi so it was quite a treat to get a tiny portion of about ten different desserts. Our Malawian friends seemed to really enjoy it and there was much asking of 'What is this?', 'How do you make this?' etc. Mary Kamwendo came and commented upon the 'Englishness' of it all. We worried about the vast numbers of calories we were consuming, but then we did the right thing by dancing with energy and enthusiasm. Then, surprise, surprise we ended up in the Liquor Garden again!

This morning I have caught up on my marking. Many of the students are very enthusiastic to get their Diplomas as soon as possible. David and I have been bombarded with piles of draft task plans for activities they want us to observe so we can assess their progress. In an ideal world we would want them to have a bit more time to settle in to the daily routine of working with children before rushing in to assessments, but I am only too aware of how little time there is to get through the assessment process for over 60 students doing 20 tasks each by the end of May when David and I will be going home. Kiran will off course still be here and will be able to complete the process for any stragglers but many of them want to complete before we go and it is good to have a time to aim for. There are just not enough hours in the day for all the things that need to be done to keep the Centre ticking over and to support mentees and carry out assessments but we are doing our best! I am feeling a bit bad that I have not given sufficient attention to the problems of setting up a good cleaning schedule for the Centre and a number of other fundamental, practical procedures, but I guess they will come bit by bit. I cannot help the fact that my heart lies with the training, which is the reason why I came here. Although I know that the other role is equally important and in some ways more urgent I am reluctant to let the training schedule slide. I am so glad that the responsibility is shared with David and the Room Leaders and now with Kiran too. I am sure we shall get there in the end!

I have enjoyed the hour I have spent in supervision with each of the Room Leaders and we have planned for more support to be offered to the students in modeling high quality activities with children, to give thought to record keeping procedures and to begin to sort out how a key-person system will operate in each room, so I have not been completely idle on the management side! It has been a bit of a week of meetings and David and I have experienced our first Krizevac/Beehive senior management meeting which was interesting. We are getting uniforms distributed to the children in supported places at the centre, and have looked at simplifying the process of getting the cash for buying resources etc, so it has been far from a week devoted only to teaching and assessing. We have got through quite a few assessments and mentoring sessions too, to the extent that I only made it to lunch once this week, mostly because I had my head down working and forgot the time!

How do I feel now that I am seeing the results of our training programme as our students settle into the caring and teaching roles of working with children? There are some frustrations but overwhelmingly I am proud of the students as I see them building positive relationships with the children, watching what is going on around them and drawing conclusions about how they can improve their practice and make things better for the children. I have seen some lovely activities, especially with paint and clay where children are exploring the materials and being creative. There is not always as strong a link as I would like between what they observe about the children and the activities that they plan, but that is down to lack of experience and it will come. Sometimes they plan the most obvious, simple activity and it could be made more relevant to the children concerned with only a little extra thought; sometimes, conversely they make their activities unnecessarily complicated. The Room Leaders are going to help by doing some written plans themselves and modelling good practice. I have to remember that the Children's Centre is itself in its infancy, that all the staff are new together and learning as they go along, and also that my brief was to create a course comparable in level to about NVQ 3. Sometimes I think I am not the best at remembering exactly what that level is! On Friday I watched Charles who is the tallest of our students, sitting on the mat at snack time with three babies and chatting with them about the fruit salad he had made for them, what was in it, what they liked, how it was good for them… He did it in a simple, straight forward way that was entirely appropriate even though they were all between 1 and 2 years only. I wish I had had the camera – Early years health education in action!

This morning I read carefully the first submission I have received for the 'Reflective Practice' task which involves keeping a reflective diary for at least 6 weeks. It came from a student who I know is a thoughtful woman and a strong student but I was so pleased and proud that I nearly cried when I read it. She has thought so hard about what has happened in the first six weeks of her employment with Beehive and drawn some positive and interesting conclusions. It has given me some useful feedback that I will be able to use if I ever plan another course like this! She said such nice things about her Room Leader in the Baby Room and what is happening in there that I got Joan to come and read it as a bit of positive feedback for her too. I really look forward to getting some more of these and hope to learn something new and useful from each one.

Three weeks on…

There has been a lot of rain in the last three weeks!  I am sitting in the doorway of my house, facing the unidentified big tree with the pods that the baboons like to pick, extract the seeds and throw the pods to the ground.  The rain this afternoon is persistent but not very heavy.  Malawi is so very green at the moment.  The dark green masses of leaves on the big tree let through glimpses of the brighter green of the maize planted in the little fields opposite.  The tassels of flowers are pushing up at the top of the plants now, adding a reddish tinge to the surface of the crop which is now anything up to eight feet tall.  ‘Lush’ is the word that comes to mind to describe the view from the doorway.  In front of the tree the grass is paler and despite the rain there must be a break in the clouds somewhere because where it is not in shadow there is a golden tinge about it.  The little Jacaranda Tree in Polly’s Garden has shot out a new branch in response to all this water, and the old brick kiln which was fired a couple of weeks after I arrived in October 2010 is almost covered by vegetation.

Rain affects us in so many different ways.  The soft soil on the surface of many roads either becomes liquid mud or is washed away altogether.  Driving becomes more difficult, but also sometimes more fun!  The footpath by which we walk to walk is more like the bed of a stream.  Indeed if it is actually raining it is indeed a fast-flowing stream that is carving itself a deeper gorge with each heavy shower.  All my shoes are muddy, and I never seem to have the right shoes with me to meet the weather conditions!  It’s the same with raincoats and umbrellas, I’m not good at judging what I will need to take each morning.  A chitenje continues to be the most useful thing.  It rolls up quite small in the bottom of my bag and can be an instant skirt, a wrap, a shopping bag, a baby sling or a makeshift umbrella depending upon how I hold or fold it.  White washing has ceased to be white.  There is so much mud that everything has a faint aspect of terracotta earth about it.  The children are beginning to become used to the drumming sound of rain on the iron roof of the Children’s Centre.  We have a plank across the boggiest bit of path to the door to our makeshift reception area, but unless you tread on it in exactly the right place it has a nasty habit of squirting water up your right leg.  Loveness and Lucy our two cleaners spend much of their time mopping muddy footprints off the floors and sweeping out puddles.

 I am trying hard to learn all the names of the children and am pretty confident now that I know all the babies and toddlers.  I am struggling a bit more with the older ones but probably know about half of them now.  Of course as Acting Manager I am not attached to any particular room, but I am getting quite a lot of opportunity to get into the rooms and even sometimes to play with the children!  For the time being David and I are sharing the responsibilities involved in managing the Children’s Centre as well as continuing the training of the students.  We are therefore doing at least three full time jobs between the two of us.  (Sarah we really miss you!)  However help is at hand as we expect an addition to the team next Saturday in the shape of Sadia who was originally coming as replacement Trainer to carry on the work David and I have started and get a small new cohort of students started.  This will still happen eventually but slightly later than planned and the three of us will share out the management and training responsibilities between us when she arrives.

The Children’s Centre has become a lively, bustling place full of colour, energy, interest and play.  Officially the building was handed over from construction to child care about 6 weeks ago, but in practice it still has many aspects of the building site.  It wouldn’t be allowed in England!  Upstairs it is mostly child care.  The class rooms are all occupied, although considerably below capacity, but there are all sorts of practical problems.  On top of the usual Malawian power and water cuts there are numerous other occasions upon which these services are absent.  Then there are the problems of toilet doors that don’t quite shut, kitchen fitters who are not as thorough as they might be, and puddles that have to be diagnosed as rain or plumbing and then eliminated!  Each room is busy creating a stimulating environment for the age group of children with which it works, so things like notice boards, mirrors, wall-mounted toys and so on are being fitted.  There are no hooks to hold doors open and they swing in the wind which is so prevalent here, and so each door currently has its own hydroform block to hold it open to facilitate free-flow play to the balcony which is at least semi-outdoors.  We thought the blocks would be too heavy for the average five year old to move about but these are strong kids!  They will just have to learn that the door stops are not for playing with I fear, until proper hooks can be fitted.  The baby room is painted a soft, purplish-pink and the floor is pale blue tiles.  There are mirrors on the walls and a cosy sleep-corner with comfy cushions and little sleep mats.  Joan has encouraged lots of singing in this room and we can often hear the babies and their care givers singing away.  One baby delighted me by singing a song in English just as her dad popped his head around the door.  He was so delighted and the baby looked so proud of herself!  The toddler room is a different pink and the floor tiles are pale blue.  There is a Care Giver in here who has a bit of artistic flair and she has made a couple of displays.  I shall have to tell her at some point that plainer lettering and upper and lower case characters would be better in terms of the little ones getting to recognize meaning in the writing, but she has tried so hard that I have postponed the negative comment for a few days!  We need more tactile experiences in here.  I shall have to go shopping for trays and containers big enough to hold sand and other messy activities.  This week they have introduced paint to the children and I have dropped in randomly to find story time and music sessions going on.  Diddy has been off sick for a few days and I was worried about leaving the room without a supervisor for too long but I should have had more faith in my students.  They have risen to the occasion magnificently and I was gratified to note that if they were not sure about something they sent me an enquiring message.  I asked Hellen to act as Room Leader for two of the days and at the end she sent me a note saying what she had done and which children she had observed.  To my delight one of them was the very child I had a little concern about myself and had been going to ask someone to watch carefully.  I look forward to finding out what Hellen has seen when I see her next week.  The pre-school room is a hive of activity.  Jennie is well organized and has already got well along in the process of forging her group of Care Givers into a team.  I have been pleased and proud to note as I pop in and out that even when she is out of the room it is mostly well supervised, children are busy and there are a lot of interesting activities going on.  It was however in this room that we had to talk to a Care Giver about going to sleep on duty!  Jennie has a lovely ‘birthday display’ of two children holding balloons with the months of the year in Chichewa and English.  The children really had fun drawing round each other and then ‘dressing’ the boy and girl they made with stuck on bits of cloth.

The two remaining students who will eventually be working with 4-5 and 5-6 year-olds are having a tougher time of it really.  David has worked hard to organize work experience in standard 1 at St James’ Primary school so that they can begin their practical tasks and we want to get the ‘Stay and Play’ groups going again but we are hampered by the amount of work that still needs to be done on the downstairs of the building.  We hoped to have it all happening by this coming week, but unfortunately there is no chance.

Most of the students are getting down to planning their assessed work for the practical part of the course.  We have one student who has already achieved seven of the required twenty practical tasks.  He is the front runner at the moment.  Of course it has not gone exactly as I had planned.  I had envisaged that most of the work would be done with children in their own rooms when I was writing the syllabus and as it is we have two rooms of Care Givers with no children, so we have had to be flexible.  I am so grateful to the Room Leaders for being adaptable and accommodating extra students even though they are over staffed to begin with.  I thoroughly approve Jennie’s recent insistence that Care Givers from other rooms who wish to do activities with her children must first come into the room and spend some time observing them.  I was a bit distressed to hear that David had been told he is perceived to be a harder marker than I am.  We have only had time to have a very cursory look at this issue, but the spread of marks we have awarded is very similar so I am hoping that it is an unfounded fear.  We have already built in a process designed to deal with any such bias as half way through the assessment period we swap groups so that he will begin to mentor the students that up to now he has been assessing and vice versa.  We reviewed the situation of the fifteen or so students who were employed on four week probationary contracts last week.  Three have not been attending, one was caught stealing and for one we had serious reservations about her attitude and ability to be a positive team member, so we are down to ten or so.  I am sad about some of the losses but have thought very carefully about it all and feel confident that we have made the right decisions.  Two of the ones who remain have made good progress and are now on the usual 3-month probationary contracts like the main group.  The rest, who are struggling a bit more academically, or who have not had the chance to show us  through successful practical tasks that their work with children is of a sufficiently high standard, have got a second 4-week contract.

My major concern is the quality of care in all the rooms.  Going in to assess individual students means that I get plenty of opportunity to sit in the corner of the room and watch what is going on.  I have made a small step towards getting a decent supervision and appraisal system going, beginning by arranging supervisions for the Room Leaders themselves.  It is my aim that each Care Giver will have a private meeting with their Room Leader by Easter.  Eventually this should be 6 times a year but ‘pangono, pangono’!  At the moment the mentoring sessions that are part of the training process fulfill some of the same objectives so one meeting each by Easter is sufficient unless there are quite serious problems.  I have a number of tasks to do, centred around getting the cleaning procedures right for the children and appropriate for Malawi, but I am working with Mary Kamwendo on this and I have every confidence that we shall get there in the end.  There have been practical domestic problems too around getting meals delivered to the children on time and according to the menu, but these also are steadily being dealt with.

David has transformed the marketing campaign and this week we have had a couple ore signings up of fee-paying children.  He and Edna are to be on Joy Radio on Monday morning and David and I are to visit Radio One, Malawi on Monday to discuss a feature programme, which is quite exciting!

Recommendations of children for subsidized places continue to come in.  We are to have another meeting of the allocations committee quite soon.  The next intake of children of Beehive workers will be after the Easter break.  We really do have a Children’s Centre, with real children in it!!

In terms of my social life, I have had a delightful, 5-day visit from Jack and Becky, including an overnight stay at Mukupula Lodge at Magete, complete with game drives, delicious meals, river views, sunken baths and plenty of luxury.  We can thoroughly recommend it!  There have been parties and evenings in the Liquor Garden.  It has been lovely to have George here for a couple of weeks and later to welcome Zoe back for another stint as Manager of Torrent Computer Rentals.  Mitsidi is pretty full.  For me it has been lovely to have more women here and Jennie, Joan and I have had a few evenings down at the main house talking, watching films and reviving the Mitsidi baking club!  I have been sick since Jack and Becky left, first with a nasty tummy bug, and secondly with an infected tooth which required a trip to a Malawian dentist.  I should have blogged about this in more detail, it was quite an experience, but perhaps as I have to go back the week after next I should do it then!  We have been walking at Michiru Nature Sanctuary again which, as ever, has been a delight.  Life continues to be full!