Welcome to Malawi in the rainy season! I am sitting on the khonde of my room at the Dedza Pottery Lodge. The sky is cloudy but before that there was bright sunshine and before that as I was driving back towards Blantyre from dropping Jack at Lilongwe airport, it was absolutely chucking it down to the extent that I almost pulled in to the side of the road to wait for it to stop despite functional 3-speed windscreen wipers. Since I was following a vivid yellow car driven very sedately, I contented myself with keeping it a respectable distance in front, but it was at that time that I decided that I would stay at Dedza tonight according to my original plan rather than drive all the way home in one go as I had thought about doing when my appointment at UNICEF lasted only five minutes as they had failed to get copies of the documents promised a fortnight ago. They asked when I would next be in Lilongwe, but I don't expect to come again until Rose and Joe come to visit me in April, so we have agreed that someone will bring them to me in Blantyre when they arrive from the printer.
I think it is good that I have this afternoon as a sort of transitional period between being an mzungu on holiday with Jack and a volunteer teaching in Chilomoni. Between the two of us I think Jack and I have spent almost as much money as I have got through in the four months I have been in Malawi, during the last two weeks, but we have certainly had a great holiday. I will not record it in too much detail as I know he is going to write about it himself, but we have stayed in a lodge on the beach at Nkhotakota, had an astonishing 24 hours in Liwonde National Park on safari, swum in a pool 68 metres deep at the foot of a waterfall at Mulange, seen a colourful slice of life in the Liquor Garden in Chilomoni and walked, talked, explored, pottered, swum in Mitsidi pool and generally enjoyed each other's company. Of course I am sad today that he has gone but I know that despite a good holiday he is ready to go back to his real life at home. I guess that life in Malawi is real life to me at the moment, but it does not always feel like it and there is a part of me that wanted to check in with him and his fragile luggage, (no doubt he will tell you about that!) and go back to family and friends. However this visit has taught me that it really is true that my family members are only 24 hours away, and it is only two months until Rose and Joe are scheduled to come and see me, so I do not feel isolated in the way that I did at Christmas. This visit has also reinforced my awareness that what David and I are doing here is useful, as so many people have explained to Jack what we are doing and how much they appreciate it, that I cannot help but feel positive about the project. It also helps that on Monday morning before we left to start Jack's long journey home, I taught the first session of our Intermediate Child Care course. It was so good to see the students again and be reminded of their enthusiasm and hope for the future. As everyone arrived we recalled how quiet they had been at the beginning of the Introductory Course when no one knew each other, it was very much like that again as we have classes that are made up of students from all four of the original groups of thirty who took the Introductory courses. I threw all my carefully laid plans to the wind temporarily and got them to make name cards again, partly to remind myself who everyone is, but mostly to give them a task that would involve them getting up and moving around the room to collect materials and get them chatting to each other. It helped a bit, but they were still on the quiet side, I suppose that is to be expected. We have responded to their request for more handouts and agreed a budget with Peter and Vince. The first handout was a brief course outline with the main subjects to be covered each week and the homework to prepare for the following week, so there can be no excuses for not knowing what the homework is, they have all had it in print!! I went through the course outline and explained why we have put it together in the way that we have. Then we went outside and played a lot of name games, so that by the end of the session I really did feel that I knew the name of every student in the group again. I daresay I shall still make a few mistakes, and as David said, 'It is OK until the girls change their hairstyles or come in wearing their wigs!'
We got the class to divide themselves into five groups and then spent nearly an hour and a half reviewing the introductory course under the headings, 'Memories', 'Gains', and 'Difficulties'. We had planned that the memories would be fairly light hearted, David's abiding memory will be of Ruth and Gilbert struggling to pass a balloon between their knees in a team game, and I will not forget the laughter provoked by a session exploring children's books for those which taught early key concepts, I have no idea what set the group to laughing but my photo shows shared pleasure that is a joy to see. However the students' responses to the question, 'What are your strongest memories?' tended towards the serious and included; games, artwork, child development lectures, and most surprisingly to me 'Bowlby's Theory of Attachment'! This last especially in view of the fact that some of the answers in the exam revealed that some students had very little understanding of what I thought I had taught! David remarked that probably those were the ones who are no longer on the course, I certainly hope so!! The 'Gains' were encouraging and included quite a few stories of how applying the theory we had taught to their dealings with children in their own families had led to improved relationships and less discord, which was good to hear. 'Difficulties' were of course harder to deal with and I was a bit shocked to hear one person say that there had been some feeling that tutors had shown preferences to 'favourites' in the class and that this had led to some people failing to try their best. I would like to follow this up because of course I do not want this kind of misunderstanding to happen. I wish I had some idea of who was involved here, but I really cannot think. I have encouraged the class to come and talk to us if similar situations occur in the future. David wondered if this could be due in some way to cultural differences, but I am not sure how. Looking back I guess I should have got them to consider 'Difficulties' before 'Gains' and thus ended on a higher note than we did. This is rather a classic error that I should have avoided, but upon the whole the first session went well and I am actually very pleased that the students felt able to raise such a problem. Other difficulties included more predictable subjects such as minibus fares, hours for the course, and the length of time given for the exam. It is never possible to please all the people all of the time and over these issues I am confident that we have done the best that we can. I am afraid that we may lose one or two people over the bus fares problem, but we really do not have access to any funds to help with this through Beehive. The only way is to arrange individual sponsors for individual students who are struggling, so if anyone would be interested in helping in this way it will cost about K720 a week for 19 weeks for those who take two minibuses in each direction, a total of about £56. This does not seem a lot, but if you put it in the context of the wages here, it is a lot of money. The laborers on our building site get about K5000 a month and a primary school teacher about K15000.
It is over an hour since I began to write and the weather has changed again, there is a steady gentle rain and the temperature has dropped by several degrees. I love that smell you get when rain falls on hot ground, it is the same in Malawi as it is in England, but somehow more intense. In all the weeks I have been here the only times I have felt chilly have been when I have been in Dedza. I think that it must have its own microclimate. It is quite high here I am sure, there are mountains all around, but in Blantyre where I live we are at about 1000m above sea level which is comparable to living on the top of Snowden, so I do not imagine it is much higher here. Thank Goodness I do not live at sea level where it is perhaps ten degrees hotter!
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