Sunday 29 April 2012

Six weeks to go

Only six weeks until David and I say 'Goodbye' to all our students and set off for home. So much has happened in the time we have been here. We have had the chance to get to know our students very well in some ways, although of course because of the professional nature of the relationships, in other ways we do not know them at all. We have seen some of them develop as professional Care Givers at a rate that has been quite surprising. The CC has been open for only four months and already we have appointed a couple of Trainee Managers, eight Room Leaders and a number of special needs support workers. At last these people have full time jobs with Beehive. They have been working towards this for a long time. One of the new room leaders told me that on the night he went home with the news that he had got a full time job his wife was on the phone all evening, telling all their relatives and friends how proud and excited she was that he had a full time job. It is humbling to see this enthusiasm for a job which pays MK22500 a month which is equivalent to less than eighty pounds. I will never get used to the difference in standard of living and expectations in Malawi from what I have been familiar with at home. Of course not everything is directly comparable between the two cultures but the odds are really stacked against ordinary Malawians. The standard of education is so different. The priorities of the culture are different. The expected modes of behaviour are different. Undoubtedly religion occupies different profiles in very different societies. School has such different educational goals and opportunities. The majority of our students are still working a two-day week so that everyone has a chance to complete their Diploma. We have had to part company with a few because of theft, and a few because they were not working well with the children or not making any effort to do the work to complete their qualification. This has been sad, but I suppose in any group of 70 odd people there will be a few who will not make it for these reasons. The remaining fifty or so are slogging away with various degrees of enthusiasm and dedication at getting through the requisite number of assessed activities before we go home. Kirren has joined us now in assessing every day, and of course she will still be here for four or five months after we leave so she will be able to finish the training for any stragglers. I fear there will be more of these than we anticipated in January because we have been running the Centre as well as doing the training, but we are only human!

Some days I am so encouraged as I walk through the centre from room to room as everywhere I go I see Care Givers interacting with children and providing interesting and educational activities. Children run up to me and smile, calling 'Marianie, Marianie!' and wrapping their arms round my knees! Babies and Toddlers put up their arms to be lifted and hugged, four and five year olds call me over to show me what they have made. They sing to me in English and in Chichewa. Ever since my birthday they have sung 'Happy Birthday to you, How old are you now?' on an almost daily basis as I walk down the balcony! Birthdays don't hold the same significance here as they do for children in the UK. There are several parents of children in the children's centre who really do not know exactly when their children were born. There are a few who know the day and month of birth but don't remember which year, so we have had to make a guess about which class to put them in. I hope we have got it right! On other days I walk from room to room and notice groups of Care Givers chatting to each other while children amuse themselves, or occasionally sit looking sad. David was tearing his hair out the other day because one morning he saw this in one room after another, but I suppose none of these people has been working with children for more than four months and despite the training, the place of children in Malawian society is a far cry from the place of the average middle class UK child in a nursery school! We correct, we encourage, we praise, we teach, we explain the same things over and over, and bit by bit we see practice change and improve. We miss the volunteer room leaders who went home a few weeks ago very much. George is working hard to find more people who are willing to give up a few months to come out here and lead practice in the CC. It's certainly a job that needs doing! I do fear that without examples of good practice constantly in front of them, standards will slip as we have not been working together long enough for good practice to become embedded. We have however made a good start. I would like to see it built upon.

I assessed some interesting activities this week. One Care Giver had spent a considerable amount of time preparing little clay figures to illustrate a couple of folk tales. She chose this activity to demonstrate teaching towards a Moral and Spiritual milestone of the Malawian ECD curriculum to do with teaching the children core values of honesty and obedience to parents. At first I was a bit concerned about her plan as I thought a tale of disobedient children leaving a baby by a tree, where it swallowed a snake, which had to be removed by bringing the frogs from the river to put them by the baby so the snake would come out of the baby's mouth to eat the frogs, would be rather scary! However the children loved it, and this rather quiet and reserved Care Giver turned out to be an expressive and animated story teller. The children carefully packed all the little clay characters back in their box and took them off back to the class room to add to their resources. One of the Room Leaders in the Baby Room had made a lovely display of recent activities in that room, and looked at it with a child's grandmother for her assessment about working with parents and families. The grandma was surprised by how much the babies do while they are playing and was fascinated by the explanations the Care Giver gave of why we do these things and what the children are learning. I was proud then of what we have taught and how well some of the Care Givers have taken on the lessons and are now passing them on. One Care Giver did the assessment on MTCC as part of the community in Chilomoni and rather to my surprise she invited one of the cleaners from the IT College in to tell the children what she does for her living. The cleaner proved to be a bit of a natural teacher and told the children how lucky they are to be at MTCC and how they must work hard and then when they grow up they can be whatever they want to be. She herself she said would have liked to be a doctor, but she didn't do well enough at school and now wishes she had worked harder. She asked the children about their aspirations. It was interesting to note the differences between their replies and those of children of a similar age in UK. Several of the girls wanted to work in construction as their parents do on the Beehive site. One boy wanted to be a driver, There were a sprinkling of doctors and nurses. Nobody wanted to be a teacher or a Care Giver! The visitor then asked the children what they thought she did as a cleaner and they sprang to their feet and mimed mopping and polishing, hand washing, cleaning windows and all the things the CC cleaners do every day. Little Sheila who is five did such an accurate mime of clearing up spilled water on the floor with a cloth that I felt she must have actually done the job herself many times. The chat finished with a discussion of why we need to clean, and hygiene. I am struggling a bit with Care Givers who are very keen to complete assessments but are not giving sufficient attention to the fact that the primary purpose of them being there and proving to me that they have learned what we have taught them is that they should be providing high quality, targeted care and education for the children which should be based on observation, related to the curriculum and to their knowledge of child development. I have had a few activities that although alright in themselves are not based on the needs of individual children, and seem more designed to pass assessments than to educate children. Of course these do not achieve the marks for observation and so forth and therefore do not always pass the assessment, which can come as a surprise to the Care Giver! This week I have had cause to speak seriously to a number of students, pointing out again these key points and asking them to pull their socks up! We shall see next week how much of what I have said has been taken on board.

Monday 23 April 2012

Some visits

It is interesting to note how different is each volunteer's experience of Malawi, depending upon their interests, what is happening at the time that they are here, and how dynamic and determined they are! I have really benefitted in recent weeks in this regard from having Joan here working on the project as Room Leader in the Baby Room. She is here for three and a half months only and is determined to pack in as much experience as possible. She has arranged a number of trips to various provisions for children and I have been able to tag along and see lots of things that are new to me despite the fact that I have been here so much longer. We began some weeks ago with a trip to a small orphanage called Yamikani which currently houses 16 children aged between 3 and about 14 years. We had trouble finding it and drove up and down the first part of the Zomba road for a while following impossibly vague instructions. Eventually we phoned one of the two gap-year volunteers who are living there at the moment and helping with the education and care of the children. There are Malawian house-mothers who live with the children and they go to the local schools. Accommodation was basic. The children share rooms with about six children in each room. There is one wardrobe in each room which seems to be plenty of space to house all the possessions of the children. We saw the communal dining/living room/kitchen, but while we were there all the children who were at home were out the back on the concrete khonde making and decorating bean-filled balls from a kit that had been sent by the mother of one of the volunteers. The project runs a nursery school for local children. The profits from this contribute towards the food bills for the orphanage children. The older children grow some maize and vegetables in the back garden and I understand the project also has a farm, some distance away where more crops are grown to feed the children. The nursery school had a few basic puzzles and bits of equipment, but very little by our standards.

Our next visit was to a well-established orphanage project in Blantyre for young orphans. This has been running for about 20 years and I was thrilled and encouraged to see a project which has been sustained over such a long period. On arrival we were ushered into an empty living room and through a door onto a khonde where there were between 20 and 30 under twos toddling and crawling about or just sitting on the floor looking around them. There were three staff, one sitting on the floor playing with the half-dozen or so children clustered around her. The other two were occupied distributing first bottles and beakers of milk to each child and then little peanut butter sandwiches for mid-morning snack. Joan and I sat on the floor and were immediately swamped by tiny children desperate to be the one to get to sit next to us, or better still on our laps, snuggling in to complete strangers. My heart lurched to my throat and I had to fight back the tears, but these children are the lucky ones, cared for by a project that sees that they are as well-fed and healthy as they possibly can manage. There are toys and a few books, a few plastic slides and the like. How can these care givers provide the love and affection and individual attention that these children deserve? All three carers were busy the whole time we were on the khonde just attending to the children's immediate physical needs. Joan and I started playing singing games with the children around us, hoping that keeping the children busy would be helpful to the carers. As they finished their snacks the children were taken off to the bedroom for their rest time. We were left completely alone with about eight two-year olds and we continued to play with them for about twenty minutes. It became obvious that they were familiar with several of the songs and games we played, so they must get such input on a regular basis. Eventually a carer came back and said she would show us around. Off we set with our eight little friends holding hands and clustering around us. The first call was the dormitory bedroom. The carer opened the door, encouraged the children to lead the way and then the minute they were all through the door she closed it and left them to put themselves to bed for a rest and led us off to see the rest of the orphanage. We could hear howls of distress from the other side of the door. We saw the house for the under twos and then went across the garden to the house for the three to four or fives. These were all playing with some of the neighbours children in the garden as this was not a school day. A few carers sat in the shade. Everyone was friendly but no one was interacting with the children. There was one of those swings that look like a horse and are made out of recycled rubber tyres hanging from a tree. I started pushing a little girl on this and all the others came running. Joan and I had to organize a rota system and give them all a turn! After the tour we met an azungu who is part of the management of the project. She was very helpful and took us into the office and showed us lots of photos of children, explaining that when they leave the orphanage some go back to their extended families as they are now old and strong enough to survive in the villages. For others who have no suitable family the project buys houses and the children live in small groups with house mothers until they are grown up and can be independent. The education and support the children receive is a far cry from what would be considered ideal in UK, but so much better than they would get without the project. So many would die without the nutritious food, and the care of the house mothers in the orphanage. We learned a lot from this place. They must have some sort of sponsorship arrangement from Johnson and Johnson as the bathrooms were full of their products. We could do with an arrangement like that with the CC. Joan took a photo of their baby bathroom with its clean, efficient and comfortable facilities for changing lots of babies. The manager said that one of the biggest challenges they face is staff training. Maybe there is an opening for Beehive here? The training is written now. I wonder if there would be a market for other NGOs etc to buy training places off Beehive when the next cohort of trainees gets going, possibly in September.

We spent a fascinating couple of hours being shown round the paediatric services at Queens Hospital by Dr Neil Kennedy who is head of this department. He gave us a lot of time and trouble and we were grateful for his attention. I could write so much about this visit, but it was several weeks ago and the detail fades a bit as time passes. Next time I am tempted to complain about the NHS I will remember this visit and be grateful! The wards were huge, the number of nurses was small. Each baby has to have a guardian staying with them. In one ward there were 110 cots and 3 nurses, but the nurses don't always all turn up. There is really only time for them to give out the medication. Personal and nursing care is done by the guardians, usually the mothers. Meals are available but you have to sit outside on the concrete floor to eat them. This is the largest and best public hospital in Malawi. The services are free at the point of delivery. I wish I had written this earlier as I cannot remember all the facts and figures Neil told us, but I remember that the number of babies delivered each month is more than the number per year in many UK General Hospitals. We visited the Special Care Baby Unit which has some babies cared for in incubators and some by the 'Kangaroo' method where they are held against the mother's body by strips of cloth. I was impressed and humbled by the dedication of Neil and his team. Women come from far away when the time to have their baby approaches, and camp out as close as they can to await the delivery. He has been here something like 16 years. There is a separate accident and emergency unit for children and many other projects concerned with the health of children.

Most recently we went to see a place where they make made-to measure seating and standing frames for children with disabilities. They are basic and old-fashioned to our eyes, but we have met one or two children with CP who have nothing but a particular shaped hole in the ground to support them in a comfortable seating position. I dare say we shall use this place as children with special needs come to the CC. For MK3500, about twelve pounds, you can get a made to measure, wooden, corner chair. To have rexine covered padding costs extra, so this is not ordered so frequently. We met the man who makes the chairs who himself has a physical disability. Like so many NGOs in Malawi this organization is not able to maintain all the services it has managed in the past, and much of its extensive building is under-used. They continue to do what they can with the money they have, but the lady who showed us round was keen to know whether we had any jobs with children with special needs available in the CC. We met some families with children who were waiting for operations as the orthopaedic hospital. When they arrive from the villages they often come in with infections and malaria and so on, and they stay here until they have a clean bill of health and are strong enough to tolerate the curative surgery.

Joan also visited a school for deaf children, but I was not able to accompany her on this occasion.

I began writing this piece about three weeks ago when Joan was still here, but have been so busy, and have also had a holiday so I have only just completed it. Joan has now returned to the UK and I miss her very much. Not only was it a delight to have someone here who I know from home, we are both from the Norwich area, but also her enthusiasm and energy have been an inspiration. I am determined that the research she has done will not be wasted and that her ideas about services for children with disabilities will be passed on to the new manager and the outreach manager who we expect next month.

Malawi is really not the country of choice to be born if you have a disability. Already the teacher who has responsibility for SEN support for all the 22 schools in Chilomoni, Government and private, has made herself known to us and we are able to help with some of the families she knows with pre-school children with disabilities in the area. This will be part of the outreach work of the CC and is not really part of my brief, but certainly there is a lot of work to be done. We will be starting two children with cerebral palsy and one who is profoundly deaf tomorrow. We have appointed four of the Care Givers as SN support workers to work with these children, so we have made a beginning…….

Saturday 21 April 2012

102 Signing church

Today I have had an extraordinary morning. I have known that one of my students, Memory, is a fluent signer for a long time, and I have recently appointed her as one of four special needs support workers for the children's centre, but I had never enquired where she learned her skills. It appears that she is a Jehovah's Witness and that she belongs to a signing church. This project has its origins in America. All the members of the congregation learn to sign and services are conducted in sign language. Apparently this attracts many members of the deaf community here in Blantyre. I suppose there must be such organizations across the world, but I have never been to any of them myself and I found the whole experience fascinating. We were a few minutes late and the service was already under way with about 20 people ' listening' attentively to the signing preacher. A video camera was fixed upon him and the image projected on the plain white wall at the front of the Kingdom Hall. There was some translation into Chichewa, but by no means was all of the signing translated. Memory's sister Elissa sat next to me and translated in a soft whisper a lot of what was happening. I was further helped to understand because the service, which was something between the sort of act of worship I am familiar with and a bible study, was based on an order of service in the local JW newsletter and contained references to the Bible and a number of JW publications which turned out to be all in English. Memory's large handbag seemed to be full of all these books and leaflets and the two of them kept me well supplied with literature that meant I was able to understand quite a bit of detail about what was going on. They both had extremely well-thumbed Bibles which they obviously knew very well as they found each reference very quickly and thrust it under my nose with a pointing finger showing exactly which verse I was supposed to take note of. More and more people trickled in as the service proceeded until there were about 50 altogether. We spent a lot of time considering relationships and marriage, things to consider when choosing a suitable spouse, and how to behave morally. Attention was given to the temptation to get so caught up in wedding arrangements that you give no attention to the marriage which will last for the rest of your life. Later the emphasis moved to the duty of children to honour their father and mother, including advice not to spare the rod for fear of spoiling the child which caused me some concern. The hymns were interesting. I am well used to signing along while singing songs with children, but this was signing without vocals or accompaniment. We were led by a video of enthusiastic and spirited white men signing expressively, and the congregation joined in with obvious enjoyment and great gusto. There was rustling of clothing, but otherwise the hall was quiet. Next came the 'study' part of the service. The newsletter had questions about the history of the JWs and there was a video with photos and dramatizations about various historical characters important to their development. All members of the congregation seemed very ready to participate and contribute from children of ten or eleven up to grandfathers. Both men and women 'spoke' from the floor, not only in the study time but also during the service part of the proceedings including Memory and her sister. However all those who actually got up and led from the front were men in smart suits. We finished with another 'song' and a prayer. The girls had taught me the sign for 'Amen' in the Land Rover on the way so I knew when we had reached the end! Everyone was friendly and welcoming. I think Memory got a fair amount of kudos for having brought an azungu to the congregation. I was introduced to Brother Ken who seemed to be the leader of the congregation and whose wife was wearing the same earrings that I bought for myself when I took Joan to the airport last week. It's shallow I know, but I notice things like that! Brother Ken was interested in the work of the CC and I asked him about the work the congregation is involved with for deaf children. It appears that the emphasis of this is to go into the homes of deaf children and tell them about the Bible. Brother Ken said he feels guilty about this as parents ask them for help with education as it is only the relatively wealthy parents of deaf children who are able to afford specialist education. I offered possible help for a few deaf children who live in Chilomoni through the CC and he is coming to have a look at the place next week. I asked him to request any business contacts he may have to consider sponsoring places for pre-schoolers at the CC.

As I left the Kingdom hall I phoned Francoise and Kirren who were busy buying up the second hand market in the middle of Blantyre! Kirren emerged with a nice pair of shoes, some designer trousers and three tops for not much more than a fiver altogether. We met up in the Mount Soche hotel for coffee. I was there first as shopping appears to take longer than church (!) and I amused myself with a copy of The Watchtower, which does not seem to have changed much in content or appearance in the thirty years since I last read it. Back at Mitsidi I changed out of my respectable clothes into cut-off jeans and a t-shirt and spent an hour or so starting this blog. We finished setting up a room for Alison (Children's Centre manager – Hoorah!) and Jason (Builder) who arrived later this evening. Then we decided that since the President was lying in state only about a mile away in his official Blantyre residence at the top of Sanjika mountain we really should take advantage of the opportunity offered and go and view the body. I put a chitenje over my jeans as I thought it would be more respectful, and we set off. We left the Land Rover at the side of the dirt road and followed a long line of people walking more or less in single file and at a cracking pace for Malawians, who apparently according to some study or other are the slowest walkers in the world, along the tarmacked road and through the gate into the usually private grounds of the presidential palace. The grounds were beautifully landscaped and the lower slopes put me in mind of a well kept deer park at some British mansion with manicured lawns and spreading trees. Different species of trees of course…. but that kind of atmosphere. The pavements were concrete covered in what looked to my inexperienced eye rather like chips of white marble. We climbed steadily for maybe a kilometer and passed through three majestic gates before coming upon the palace; a collection of imposing concrete buildings which looked more like a military establishment than a palace to me. The views were magnificent. What a beautiful country Malawi is! Kirren tried to take a photo of the mountains but apparently photography is not allowed. We followed the single file of people around the back of the central building and then back through it past the open coffin. We were instructed not to stop but to keep walking slowly past the body. My memory of the room is very blurry. We were there for such a short time. There were at least two women's choirs singing as walked through. Guards with guns and policemen were in evidence. I think he must have been quite a big man. We passed straight through and down the front steps but were stopped and asked to return and write in the book of condolence. I had not expected this and did not know what to write, but as the last three people had just put R.I.P. I did the same. It's a wish I can genuinely make for anyone who has died. Francoise encouraged us to go back around the building and sit for a while to listen to the choirs. We had a chat with several women who were singing. We even had our photo taken with one choir by an obliging guard, so the rules must be different around the back. One women linked her arm in mine, saying 'I will be photographed with Marian!' I have no idea how she knew me. I didn't recognize anyone in the choir. The garden is high up and although surrounded by trees there are beautiful views over Blantyre and several surrounding townships. I could see bits of Chilobwe, where we went to record the choir, on the lower slopes of Mount Soche. We caught a glimpse of a decaying Chinese-style pavilion in the further reaches of the garden. The only way out was to file past the body again and we walked by a slightly different route back down the mountain to the Land Rover. I was slightly disconcerted to be told by a guard 'There is a man, just down there, looking for you'. I wondered for a moment whether I had inadvertently committed some kind of misdemeanor and an official was going to pop out from around a corner and tell me off, but it turned out that Alan had followed us up on his bike and was looking for us. But we didn't catch up with him until later as he went home after actually being told off by yet another guard for loitering at the bottom of the hill whilst waiting for us to emerge.

We arrived back at Mitsidi just in time to welcome Alison and Jason, which was just as well as I had their door key in my handbag! The eight of us now resident at Mitsidi spent the evening variously settling in, cooking and eating supper and getting to know the new volunteers just a little. Kirren made an excellent orange and banana cake and we sat for a while over cups of tea. The cake disappeared!

I feel I owe some of my regular readers an apology. I have received several messages and comments upon the fact that it is a month since I last posted. I have in fact started one or two entries and these may eventually be completed and posted, so watch this space! I have been working such long hours, and conversely I have also taken two weeks of very necessary holiday. I have had the pleasure of the company of John and Joe for ten days and helped Joe with his university dissertation about charcoal use and the law in Malawi, which was fascinating and worthy of a blog entry in its own right. I wonder if I can persuade him to write it! I also owe you an update on the changes at the Children's Centre. Sponsorships are gradually coming in and we now have 53 children, which is great. If anyone wants to sponsor a child, either as an individual, a church, or a group get in touch with George of Krizevac via george.furnival@krizevac.org I think it costs just over 750 pounds a year for the whole package including uniform and three meals a day. Anyway it's 10.18pm which is very late for Malawi and I will turn into a pumpkin if I don't get my beauty sleep, so that's it for now. Only six weeks from today 'til I come home!