Another week flies by!

I don't really know where this week has gone, it has passed quickly, partly I suppose because Monday was a Bank Holiday. David and I are making the most of not being tied to the classroom and of having a car when it is not needed for the shopping for Mitsidi and so have been getting about a bit. The car is actually in a bit of a state so we took it upon ourselves to make a list of what is wrong with it and take it in to Torrent for a service. The thing I have found the most difficult is that the wipers don't work. It rains so hard that one is forced to stop and wait for the rain to ease off or risk hitting something or ending up in the ditch! This was one of the things that was fixed when David picked the car up, but by the time he got it home they had stopped again.

Vince came with me to Chilomoni Police Station to report the loss of my bag and it was quite an experience. It reminded me a bit of Heartbeat only not quite so warm and cosy! The Police Station is a basic brick building with concrete floors and chipped paintwork. The officer on reception sits behind a wooden counter with a flap that lifts up to let you through if he chooses to admit you. It took us a few minutes to explain that we wanted him to make a report of the loss so that if I am caught driving without a licence I can present the report as evidence that I did have one and am in the process of applying for another. I never did expect that they would do anything about trying to recover what I had lost. After a time of fruitless explanation Vince asked if Henry was in, and then we got some action! Henry is the Chief of Police in Chilomoni. Those of you who also read David's blog will have come across him before as he drinks in the Liquor Garden and was the cause of David being brought home in a police van at dead of night a little while ago, but that is another story! Beehive built a victim support unit for Chilomoni Police last year and apparently it is very well used and makes a significant difference to the conditions in which victims of violence and abuse have to talk about what has happened to them. There is a bedroom, where victims can stay safely if necessary and two small private interview rooms. Previously victims had to be interviewed in the same room as everyone else with no privacy at all. Vince and I went round the back to say 'Hello' to Henry, and while I was there I invited him to come and speak to my students about working cooperatively with the Police, particularly with respect to Child Protection issues. We had a little chat and caught up on how the Victim Support Centre is being used and then were shown to the Interview room where a smiling young policeman was waiting to fill in a form with me, and a woman detective was interviewing a lad who had been apprehended inside someone else's house, but was busy denying it! The room was very small. There was a table, a bench, shared by the lad and the policeman, and three chairs, occupied by Mabel, the detective, Vince and me. Any cat you tried to swing would have been well battered! I handed over K500 on request and the deed was done. I did well, when Claudie did the same thing it cost her K2000. The document clearly carries some clout because I have already produced it when they wanted my passport no. before they would give me my old phone no. back when I went to the Zain shop. I waved the police report and everything went smoothly, even though passport is not one of the listed documents. It might have been, but it was at the immigration office renewing my visa at the time!

On Wednesday morning we visited St Andrew's International School. It has probably the best Early Years provision in Malawi and I have arranged to go and spend a day with them in the near future to find out about their planning and record keeping and run my draft curriculum past the Head of Nursery to get another perspective on whether I have included the right things for Malawi. The school is fee paying and exclusive, but it was just the sort of place you'd want your children to go if you had the choice. The atmosphere was relaxed and happy. The Head Teacher knew every child and adult we encountered by name, everyone was cheerful and polite. There was a swimming pool and a farm with all sorts of animals including a baby camel. It was well resourced, bright, clean, spacious, well-cared for and generally delightful. The intake was perhaps 80% Malawian, maybe 15% Asian and a sprinkling of Azungus.

We have spent quite a lot of time this week planning for the Intermediate course and beginning to write the lecture input. I spent this morning producing a Powerpoint presentation on Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences, and this afternoon trying to summarise the work of people like Froebel, Montessori and Steiner in about three slides each. This is definitely not an easy task! David is working on Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner. On a lighter note David is preparing a story-telling workshop and I am gathering materials for the students to make their own books and story sacks. We have a real need to make our own books as very little is published in Chichewa and we feel it is important for the children to have stories in their own language as well as in English. So far I have found only one story in Chichewa, the story of Blessings Minibus, and his adventures transporting people around Blantyre.

Early in the week I dropped in on Dominic who is the most senior person in Social Services in Blantyre. I wanted to keep him in the loop about the progress of our courses because if we are to stand any chance of getting them accredited by the Malawian Government his office will have to come and inspect us. I emailed him some information a week or so ago, but when I dropped in he was wading through three weeks worth of emails and had not yet seen mine. I told him we are off to Lilongwe next week to see the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Affairs to find out the best way to get accreditation and he seemed a bit miffed. He feels that the right thing to do is to go through him, so I said I would come and see him on Friday bringing hard copies of the documents I had emailed and we parted on smiley terms, but when I went today he was at a meeting in Lunzu. I left the hard copies with a lady in his office. We are still going to Lilongwe, but at least now if the bigwigs from Lilongwe contact him he will have the information to hand. Poor Dominic, I don't envy him his job at all. He has to cover all social services issues in Greater Blantyre with a team of 12 Social Workers, talk about an impossible task! I wonder if he will come and inspect us himself, or send someone else to do it. I know he has got Gift, the Child Protection Officer who did the Introductory Course, to write a report about it, but unfortunately Gift did not pass the exam so I am not confident that his report will be as positive as it could be!

Jack's visit is getting nearer and nearer! I am more excited about it than I have been about anything for a long time! He arrives at Lilongwe on Tuesday at lunchtime. I shall actually be leaving Blantyre on Sunday afternoon and making visits to a nursery setting run by nuns in Ntcheu, UNICEF and the Ministry in Lilongwe on my way to the airport. Then we shall have five days holiday in Nkhotakota and Liwonde before returning to Mitsidi next Saturday evening.

The curriculum evolves, lost handbag, monkeys and walks.

I spent Thursday morning and the early part of the afternoon sitting in the admin office going over the curriculum and adding more ideas for activities and homework. I have decided to be more consistent about homework than I was for the Introductory Course, largely because the course structure is different. Instead of doing separate morning and afternoon sessions we are going to teach each of two groups of 35 students for two, longer, days per week; the first group on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the second on Thursdays and Fridays. Rather than have an hour and a half or so for preparation time each day, which is what we had between the morning and afternoon groups on the Introductory Course, David and I will have Wednesdays for preparation and visits, organizing outside speakers and so on. There are other advantages; the students who have to travel a long distance will have to do so only twice a week, so this will cut their fares to two fifths the cost it was before. Beehive have agreed to provide a subsidized lunch for our students and this too will be cheaper as we shall need 35 lunches on each of four days rather than 70 lunches for five days, a bargain! In addition each student will have three clear weekdays to try to find part-time work to help support themselves. Anyway with this structure, and the arrival of my box of child care books, so kindly donated by colleagues at UEA and Suffolk College, it seems to me that the students will have time for a weekly piece of preparation. There are 19 weeks available for the course. I have divided this into two 9-week terms and a revision week. Each week we shall look at a different subject area and the homework will usually be relevant to the subject for the next week. Some of it is practical, much of it will involve practice at observing children, and some will be preparation of brief presentations to the class. There are one or two pieces of written work as well.

David has been helping with Jan's interview schedule for staff for the IT Centre this week by taking groups of the candidates for tours of the building site to view the IT College building which is nearing completion. I went on one tour myself to see how things are progressing and certainly there has been progress since my last visit. The roof is on. The windows have glass. There are heaps of sparkling gravel in the library room, which I assume is for the Terrasso flooring. I'm not really sure what this is, but I know Jan is very pleased about it. The view from the library, which is on the third floor, is beautiful. I suspect that this may be the only three-storey building in Chilomoni at present, although the Children's Centre will join it soon.

After his interview duties were done and he had taken the first steps to locate lockable filing cabinets that arrived on the last container so that we can keep resources at the school without fear of losing them, David came and picked me up and we went to find the second Mzuzu coffee of the week! We went to a lodge run by a French couple in Namiwawa and drank coffee overlooking a panoramic view of Michiru Mountain in the pouring rain. When we got back to the admin office I did not have my handbag. To be honest I cannot definitely remember that I picked it up from my desk when we left to go for coffee, but certainly it was not there when we got back. We returned to the coffee place, but no luck there either. I did have hopes that someone had found it and locked it away safely for me, but unfortunately that proved not to be the case, so the next morning I telephoned my efficient and long-suffering older brother to sort out all the practical details of new bank cards and driving licences . Poor Dave, I forgot about the time difference and woke him up, but like a hero he was immediately on the case and preventing any financial loss. How much poorer the world would be without big brothers!! I was lucky really not to have lost more than I did, bank card and driving licence being the worst of it, but I shall miss my lovely purple leather wallet that was a bargain from TK Maxx, and I shall have to buy a new phone tomorrow. For the benefit of those of you who call me, I shall try to get the same number activated, but don't know if I will be able to. Watch this space for details of how to contact me.

On Friday I finished the draft curriculum and circulated it to a few people for comments and advice, but have not had any feedback yet.

This weekend is a national holiday which means that many shops were closed both Saturday and Monday, hence no new phone until tomorrow. On Saturday Jan and Lindy and I went into Blantyre and did bits of administration including booking a special trip to Mvuu Camp in Liwonde National Park for when Jack is here. It is a package deal and we get a luxury tent, a boat trip up the River Shire, two game drives, one in a land rover and one in a boat and all our meals for 24 hours, I can't wait! Especially want to see elephants!

Yesterday I took my courage in both hands and went for a walk at Michiru by myself. Since when I went with Malcolm we got lost and I did not relish the thought of being lost in a wilderness by myself I consider this to be quite brave! It was a beautiful morning and I was rewarded by seeing absolutely loads of monkeys. I also saw a snake, a tortoise, quite a few birds and an unidentified mammal that shot across the path, jumped into the stream, streaked across it and out the other side in a lot less time than it takes to write it. I guess it was more like a stoat than anything else I've seen, but it was so fast I didn't have time to focus properly!

Encouraged by my success, today I climbed the Way of the Cross again. No fear of getting lost here as it turned out there was a special service at the top, I suppose in honour of the bank holiday. As I neared the top I was passed by about a hundred worshippers on the way down, including a few people I know. I had a quiet few minutes by myself up there in the sun looking down on Chilomoni and drinking my bottle of water before I was joined by the next lot of pilgrims who had been slowly following me up, stopping at each station to pray and singing in between stations. I saw a lot of butterflies but hardly any birds and no animals, too many people I guess.

From the top I could see dark clouds gathering over the hills beyond Chilomoni so I packed away the camera and got out my raincoat and set off back down the mountain. I was lucky and reached the bottom just as it began to rain. I was greeted by Tony Madanitsa who pointed out that one of my tyres was a bit soft and very kindly changed the wheel for me.

When I got back to Mitsidi I sat and read for a while. For the last year since Karl died I have hardly read at all, but in the three months I have been here I have read about ten or twelve books. This is really a change and I am glad of it. I was beginning to think that I would never be able to concentrate on a story again, but I was wrong. I guess the lack of television has something to do with it. Surprisingly I have not missed the TV at all, not even Eastenders!

After a while I wandered down to the main house in search of food to find David and Tamara in the final stages of making a vegetable curry, so I joined them for lunch, which was very nice. This afternoon, reading, sleeping, writing and watching the rain. It's a good thing I went out this morning!

New year, new course

Despite beginning a day late because of the national holiday for New Year last week seemed very long and it was certainly very busy. I was glad to be back at work, the holiday period has been pretty lonely on the whole although it has certainly had some highlights in terms of time spent with Mary and her family and the visits to students that I have already written about. I look forward to the arrival of more residents at Mitsidi. The busy community I expected has been a shadow of its former self for this last month.

The first day when everyone was formally back at work began for me with a visit to the school to catch up with Alfred, the headteacher and have a look at the classroom to plan for the next term. In the afternoon I returned to a piece of work I had begun a few days before, comparing the Malawian Syllabus for Early Childhood Development with the UK Early Years Foundation Stage. I thought that this would be a useful place to start in terms of facilitating the decisions I have to make about what to put in to the syllabus for the Intermediate Course. It was a good day for writing. My ideas started to come together and I feel sure that what I need is the best of both, with a Malawian emphasis on issues of nutrition, health and sanitation and a UK emphasis on a broad and holistic look at development stressing creativity and problem-solving skills.

On Wednesday those of us involved in the Children's Centre project had a meeting of the Children's Centre Steering Group. It was good to catch up with Vince and Peter and Chaliza again after the Christmas break. During the meeting we heard the sad news that Mary's father had died early that morning. During the meeting we has quite a lively debate about the Catholic nature of the Children's Centre and what that actually means in terms of the approach towards selection of staff and admission of children. At the end of it all I think we agreed that although Beehive is clearly a Catholic organisation and like all Beehive buildings the Children's Centre is likely to show its foundation by displaying crosses and holy pictures on the wall, staff will be selected purely on the basis of their ability to do the job, and places will be allocated according to the admissions policy, as yet to be written, but with equality of opportunity being given to children from all sections of the community. I can happily live with that.

Mary's father's funeral took place on Thursday. Compared to the way things happen at home this is incredibly fast. I can think of advantages and disadvantages for grieving relatives, but my goodness, the family must have worked fast to get everything ready within 24 hours. I had been told to arrive at 9.00am. It was one of those days! I woke late and got ready in a rush. Then when I got to work I did the job I needed to be there at 8.00am for, in about ten minutes. Jan wanted a piece of equipment that was stored in my house and I thought I would have plenty of time to fetch it and be back by 9.00am but then lost the car keys. Lindy, Charles and I spent about 15 minutes looking for them until I finally spotted where I had dropped them and by the time I was back, had delivered the equipment, parked the car and walked to the church it was ten past nine. Much to my amazement the church was empty save for a couple of people arranging flowers and polishing pews. I asked where the funeral was and they said the service was at 10.00am and I should go to Mary's house which is practically next door. As I walked down the drive the house seemed fairly deserted too, but Charles was sitting on the wall and actually there were quite a lot of women sitting on matting in the front room. Charles explained that Mary and the family had gone to the hospital to fetch her father's body and settled me in a chair on the khonde to wait for their return. Bempo and another young lad were playing, running in and out of the house and balancing along the garden wall. After a while Catherine arrived with a couple of other young women and with baby Uchi and sat on the khonde. About 9.30am the women in the front room started to sing and Catherine said to me that they were going indoors for the songs, so I went with them. All the furniture had been removed from Mary's front room apart from the dresser and the whatnot which were draped with sheets. The only pictures that remained on the walls were the holy ones. The floor was covered with matting and the room was full of women, some of whom were wearing bright white shirts and purple head scarves and zitenge of all colours. The singing was led by three women, all of whom were wearing the white and purple. At first I thought they might be a choir, but I later learned that purple is the colour for funerals. It was fortuitous that I was wearing a purple dress, more by luck than judgment though. Apparently the women play a very important role at funerals. Certainly they all seemed to know the words and join in the songs. I sat between Catherine and a girl aged about ten years. At one point one of the older ladies indicated that I should uncurl my legs and sit with them straight out in front of me, which I did. The hearse and a procession of cars pulled up outside and four men came in with another large piece of matting and folded it into four and put it in the middle of the room. Then male members of the family carried in the coffin and placed it on the folded mat. Mary and other women relatives came in and the men left. Mary was hugged by various women and then she came and put her arms round me and through her tears she said 'My father is gone!' and I hugged her and murmured how sorry I was. All the women settled on the floor again and Mary sat next to the coffin and sat with her hand resting on it. The priest and a couple of others came in and there were brief prayers and then the bearers came in and carried the coffin back to the hearse. Everyone got up and a procession gradually formed itself behind the hearse and we walked the hundred yards or so to the church. I was reminded of my parents' funerals when the family walked behind the coffin from their home to the church which was similarly only a short distance away. Outside the church there was more singing by the women and then we followed the coffin into the church. I noticed that for the service, although a few couples and families sat together, mostly people sat in groups of men or groups of women. I looked around for people I knew and saw Vince near the front with Peter, and Jan over the other side with staff from his office, but I stayed with the women alongside whom I had walked from Mary's house. The service and Mass were in Chichewa, so I understood very little. The main words I picked out where bwino, which means good, and chifundo, which is grace. After the service the family went back to Mary's. I suppose that always at a funeral one is reminded of one's own loss of those we have loved. I do not think that I have been to a funeral since Karl's and although this was a very different occasion I shed a few tears for him again. After the crowd had dispersed I met up with Vince and Jan and we went back to work, which for me involved a visit to Bee Books to go through the shelves in the children's section and select the best for the child care training and for us to give as gifts to the projects we visit during January when we shall not be teaching, but preparing for the next course.

Friday was taken up with more reading and writing, trying to list the subjects that must be covered by our syllabus and looking at the UK's Key Elements of Effective Practice and more Malawian government guidance published in association with UNICEF. In the afternoon Lindy and I spent a couple of hours sorting out the resources, new and second hand, that arrived on the containers. My spare bedroom has temporarily become a resource room and the chest of drawers is full of stationary and the floor crowded with baskets of toys and other resources. While some soft toys were beautifully clean and smelling of fabric conditioner, others were sadly in need of a wash, so we filled up the washing machine with dogs, cats, bears and rabbits. Poor Charles, on Friday morning he came in to find the machine full of parachute and the next morning it was fluffy animals. He must wonder what on earth we will need to wash next!

On Saturday Vince and Emma kindly invited us to coffee in the morning and to meet Neil and Sarah Kennedy and their family. Neil is a paediatrician who works at Queen's, the hospital where we took Gloria with the snakebite. He was interested in the training and I asked him if he would be willing to look at the health sections of the Malawian ECD training manual and let me know what he thinks of the treatment recommendations. Some of them are different from what I might expect from home, but there may well be good reasons for this and I want to be confident that I am teaching the right thing for the Malawian situation. I had to leave after an hour or so to pick up David from the airport. It was a delight to see him again. He is so open, friendly, chatty and accepting of people. There is so much to catch up on; we talked all the way home to Mitsidi.

Sunday was a quiet day. I spent a lot of the day sorting books and resources and rearranging the house with a view to getting organized for when Jack comes to stay in a couple of weeks. At the moment there is not room for him and his stuff in the spare bedroom, but by the time he arrives we should have a couple of filing cabinets in the classroom so we can lock stuff away when we are not there, so we can move stuff to the school. Also by then the number of books should be reduced as we should have made a few visits, so I expect I'll be able to fit him in. I am getting very excited about the visit now, I can hardly wait!

David and I spent a lot of time talking on Monday, catching him up on the progress of courses 3 and 4, looking at who has gained a place on the intermediate course, sharing regrets about some of the students we must lose and looking forward to teaching again. I shared some of my thinking about what should go into the next course. It has been very stimulating to have him back, to bounce new ideas off him and create a new course together with someone who understands the field and is enthusiastic. On Tuesday we treated ourselves to lunch in Ryalls. I had a very ladylike goat's cheese salad which was delicious, and David the gourmet burger which he said was the best burger he had ever had and which made me think I should take Jack there when he is here. David has produced a colour-coded timetable which takes account of public holidays and term dates and shows exactly which course has to be where on which day. I have started to transfer my list of things which ought to be part of the syllabus of the intermediate course into a draft programme divided into the weeks available and so the Intermediate Course is gradually taking shape. We have discussed a programme of visits to settings and David is busy contacting people and making arrangements. I think it will be an interesting month. We have agreed to take advantage of our relative freedom during this period when we are not teaching and treat ourselves to the odd meal and indulge our mutual liking for Mzuzu coffee! This afternoon we spent a happy hour 'working on the syllabus' in the Mount Soche hotel over coffee and angel cake!

Belated Christmas

It has been another quiet day at Mitsidi. I have been working at home this morning going over my notes of all the visits to nurseries and officials that we made at the very beginning of our time here and making plans for the period between now and when the Intermediate course starts on 7 Feb. About one o'clock I felt peckish and went down to the kitchen in the main house to make soup. It may seem odd to fancy soup with the temperature in the 80's, but I guess soup tastes of home! Anyway an hour or so later I was sitting on the khonde finishing off a bowlful, when Charles came up with a brown envelope stuffed with letters. There was one for Jan and Lindy, two for David and six for me. Lucky me! Some of them carried Blantyre Post Office stamps for the 21 and 22 December, so goodness knows where they have been since then, but anyway I was very pleased to get them and opened mine immediately. It was good to receive news from Karl's mum and dad, and some lovely earrings, thanks very much. There was a card from Jack which made me laugh and cry at the same time, and cards from Christine, Mags, John, and John's brother and his family. Thank you all so much. It is lovely to get letters, especially hand written ones full of news and affection, and I enjoyed them very much. I will answer them all individually one by one, but it may take me a little while! The post is very unreliable. I still have not received any of Margaret's letters and I know Rose has sent me a parcel of which there is no sign.

Lunch and a wedding

I decided to make Mary a chocolate cake to thank her for giving me lunch so I spent a happy morning pottering about Mitsidi baking, making icing, checking emails and looking idly at the garden. I set off at half past eleven as she had told me to come for quarter to twelve. I had my phone with me, but didn't hear it bleep, so missed Mary's message that she was running late so come at twelve thirty. It didn't seem to matter though, I just sat in a comfy chair and looked about me and found plenty to keep myself occupied. The TV was on and I watched three programmes, one about various church choirs, one magazine programme aimed at young people and one social news thing that seemed to be mostly pictures of the President's wife singing at a New Year Celebration of some kind. It was a good ten minutes before I realized that the sound was off on the TV and the Chichewa commentary that I heard was the radio tuned to a completely different channel, it was only when the radio changed to a phone in that I worked it out! Mary's house always seems to be busy. As soon as I arrived the maid took the cake out of my hands and put it on the sideboard, Christina came out from the kitchen to say hello and then disappeared again. There were the unmistakable smells and sounds of frying chicken coming from the kitchen. A small, round woman in a blue patterned dress with a chitenge over it in rich blues and greens, was introduced as Fanny. Like Christina she is one of the cooks who makes the lunches for Beehive staff in the church hall. I looked again at all Mary's pictures and ornaments. You could not miss the fact that this is a Catholic household, above the window on top of the wooden pelmet were three portraits of Jesus, one of Mary ( the Virgin, that is, not the householder), one of the last supper and one of the Pope. The other side of the room the Virgin smiled down on me from a cupboard door in the dresser, and from the top of the dresser three large photos of Mary Kamwendo looked out benevolently across the room. One showed her by the fence outside the White House in Washington where she once went as a delegate on a conference for a project she was involved in. The back wall over the table was covered with pictures and texts and crucifixes. The gilt and lacquer piece of furniture that I described last time is surmounted by a gilded plastic clock with dramatic curlicues and three plastic jewels in red, green and blue at the top and at each sideways extremity of the gilding. The armchairs are certainly the most comfortable chairs I have sat in since I arrived in Malawi, generously upholstered and curvaceous but not too big for me. I could sit with my bottom in the back of the chair, good back support and my feet flat on the ground all at the same time. Now that is not usual!

As I was waiting Tony Madanitsa arrived. Tony works for Torrent Rentals, one of the Beehive companies. He is responsible for renting out cars and Land Rovers. He said he was on his way to Mitsidi to pick up the blue Hilux to fetch Vince and his family from the airport and spotted it in the road outside where I had left it. He wanted the keys. I said he would need to talk to Mary as we were going to a wedding after lunch and she had asked me to drive it, but he insisted that Vince's need was greater, so I gave him the keys. I'm sure he was right as Jan and Lindy have taken Vince and Emma's car to the Lake and as they have four children and a corresponding amount of luggage, nothing else is big enough to fit them all in. Rather to my surprise Mary raised no objection, she said we could go in the half ton. I didn't know what this was. But if Mary was happy so was I. We had an excellent lunch of soup followed by the fried chicken, some beef stew, courgettes cooked with peppers and tomatoes and potatoes chopped into tiny pieces and fried with onions. Mary told me all about the best places to go to buy different types of food. Mary and Christina then changed into smart dresses and off we set to the wedding. As lunch had taken so long they decided only to go to one wedding and picked the one that was nearest and where they knew the people best.. The half ton turned out to be the little Torrent pick-up truck, so poor Christina was relegated to the back again, I drove and Mary sat in the front and told me where to go. The wedding was held in a large hall which was part of a complex of shops and what looked like conference facilities just off the dual carriageway before you get to the football stadium. The hall was vast and there were several hundred people there. Mary told me that the church wedding would have been this morning and followed by a lunch for family and close friends. The event we were at was a bit like the speeches at a British wedding but interspersed with dancing by different segments of the audience, if that is the right word, during which money was thrown into big maize baskets in front of the bride and groom. Someone would give a speech e.g. the bride's dad or bride groom's dad and then everyone who was invited by that person would get up out of their seat and dance to the front and throw low denomination kwacha notes into the baskets. Since K20 is worth less than 10p it looked like a lot more money than it really was. There was a money changing table off to the side of the room where you could change a K500 note for ten K50 notes. At one point the whole of the groom's family went to the front at the same time to welcome the bride into their family. There were an awful lot of them, all dancing in the aisles and across the front of the hall. Most of the speeches were in Chichewa so a lot of the time I wasn't entirely clear what was going on, but it was good fun. We went up twice, once when all those invited by the groom's father went, and again at the end when each row of seats was invited to dance past again. Towards the end everyone was given a soft drink and a Styrofoam box of snacks, such as samosas and cake. It was certainly a large scale event with literally hundreds of people. I recognized Tony Madanitsa and Peter Nkarta. I didn't see any other white people there at all.