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!