Results day

Today we met the students immediately after assembly and gave out slips with their results. Today was not really a pass/fail situation as the final result of the Diploma will be influenced by the third, practical part of the course that will not begin until the Children's Centre opens its doors to children. Current thinking would suggest that this is not likely to be before 1 November. If the students maintain the scores that they achieved on the intermediate course we shall end up with four with distinctions, ten merits, forty passes, ten who are a bit borderline, and four below 40%. I find it fascinating that group 2, the noisy class, who ask so many awkward questions, include three of the four distinctions and all of those with less than 40%. Group 1, who I have described previously as occasionally requiring a bomb beneath them in order to provoke a reaction, include only two of the borderline group, one distinction and less than half the merits, but 21 of the comfortable passes...

It seems a bit anticlimactic. We have been working towards today for a while, and when we had given out the results and made an appointment for an interview with each student to take place in a couple of weeks time, the class dispersed and we were left feeling a bit suspended between two phases! It is not that there isn't any work to do. First we have to devise an NVQ-style practical assessment programme for the third and final part of the course. We must also plan an induction course for the UK volunteer room leaders who will be out here shortly, and then there is the small matter of our attempts to expand and annotate the Malawian ECD Curriculum as an aid to support our students to develop creative, problem-solving children following a curriculum that will pass any Malawian Government Inspection process that we may chance to encounter. Perhaps there is a plus side to the likely delay to the opening of the Children's Centre. Certainly we can keep ourselves busy for the intervening weeks.

Politically things seem to have settled down since the troubles of last week. Over the weekend we have been into Blantyre several times and visited a Lodge outside Blantyre on the Chikwawa Road and have not encountered any problems. Apart from a few burned patches and broken windows there is little trace of last weeks' unrest. It is lovely to have my brother Dave and his wife Fiona here and we have managed to fit in a few touristy things over the weekend as well as introducing them to local people and the way that Beehive works. They have helped to unpack a container full of bikes and toilets (odd combination, but there you are!). They have changed currency, explored the craft market, been shopping, had a few nice cups of coffee, walked in a conservation area, a small private reserve and up the Way of the Cross. This morning they were introduced to the assembled Beehive personnel at the Monday Assembly, so now a couple of hundred people in Chilomoni know who they are, even if they cannot return the complement! Oh yes, they have also eaten two meals of beef, pumpkin leaves and nsima, and learned how not to siphon diesel out of the tank of one car and into another. Such are the necessities of life when you must deal with shortages!

    

Civil Unrest

We live in exciting times! Rather too exciting actually. But let me begin at the beginning... Yesterday I went to the airport to meet my brother and his wife who have come for three weeks holiday, to see me, to get a proper idea about what it is that I am doing in Malawi, and to have a holiday. The trip has been planned for several months, so there was no way they could have known that the 20^th July would be chosen as a day of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. Back in April you will probably have read in the British papers that the British High Commissioner was recalled to England following remarks concerning Malawian foreign policy and I think the way in which UK aid money was being used. Anyway Bingu Mutharika was not happy about it and a diplomatic dispute has been rumbling along ever since. UK aid has been withdrawn and I understand that several other countries have followed suit. Malawi is a very poor country and the withdrawal of foreign aid makes for a serious budget deficit. For some weeks we have noticed an increase in the frequency of interruptions to the power supply and imported commodities such as petrol, diesel and cement have been harder to obtain. Ordinary Malawians do not have Kwacha to spare, and gradually rising prices will cause difficulty to everyone. July 20^th was chosen as a date for anti-government demonstrations protesting about the situation and also on that day pro-government solidarity demonstrations were arranged. As azungu volunteers we were advised to keep well out of the way, which meant not going into Blantyre. Dave and Fiona were arriving at Chileka Airport, just outside Blantyre at lunch time. I consulted Peter about whether he felt it would be OK to drive to fetch them. As the march was not planned to go through the part of Blantyre I needed to cross we decided that it should be safe enough for me to go. I took David with me for moral support, and off we set. David took the precaution of asking his mates in the Liquor Garden whether there was a way to cut through to the Chileka Road without going into central Blantyre and they explained that there was, but it involved dirt roads. He memorised the directions but we decided to go towards town and see whether we could get through the usual way. All was well. The streets were very quiet, very few cars were on the road and on our side of town walkers were also much less apparent than on a normal day. We sailed through without problems and continued to the airport. On a normal day the road is lined with markets and trading areas. You can buy anything along that road: building materials, furniture, clothes, coffins, fruit and veg, blankets, pots and pans, rocket stoves and charcoal, anything you need to help Malawian life run smoothly. The sides of the road normally throng with people and bicycles, and there are many cars and trucks about, pausing to buy and load up with all kinds of commodity. Yesterday it was very quiet. There were a few cars on the road and a few people walking along, but not nearly the number you would expect on a normal day. We made it to the airport in record time even though I was careful to keep to all the speed limits and not draw any attention towards us. We parked the car and went into the bar by the viewing gallery in time to take our drinks out onto the balcony and watch the plane from Johannesburg as it came into land. After half an hour or so Dave and Fiona emerged through the arrivals door. It was lovely to see their familiar faces. We packed ourselves and the luggage all inside the car, not wanting to leave temptation in the way of exposed suitcases in the back of the pick-up in case we did encounter the demonstrators, and turned back towards Blantyre. The road remained under-populated, calm and clear almost all the way back to the city, but a few hundred yards from the right turn which would have taken us back down Glyn Jones Road, past the Mount Soche Hotel and back to Chilomoni there were men waving their arms in the middle of the road and urging us to turn and go back the way we had come. I glanced to my right across an open patch of ground and a couple of hundred yards away could see marchers in red t-shirts spilling out over the whole width of the parallel road, so I made a hasty u-turn. David then had to cudgel his brain to follow the cross country instructions in reverse. It took us a while to find the end of the right dirt track; at first we passed it and had to stop and ask for directions. As we reached it, several other cars that had been turned back after us diverted from the main road, so we tagged on the end of the line, and a small convoy wended its way up the narrow, twisty track. We emerged safely in Namiwawa and from there were able to find our way safely back to Chilomoni where we dropped David off at his house on the high street and then made our way back to Mitsidi for a well deserved cup of tea! This was followed by a lot of introductions and an impromptu gathering on the khonde with gin and tonic and several Greens, before eating Charles excellent dinner and then retiring early for Dave and 'Ona to sleep off the jet lag.

I have to say that I did not expect the demonstrations to continue on the next day, and to be strictly accurate they have not. What has happened is that protestors are not satisfied with Mutharika's response to the demonstrations, hoping for clear strategies to apologise to the UK, reinstate aid, solve the shortages and stop the expected increases to the cost of living in Malawi. Unfortunately he was not able to reassure them and the result has been widespread looting. Our intention was to have a quiet day in Chilomoni introducing Dave and 'Ona to all the Beehive people and organisations and possibly going for a walk up 'The Way of the Cross'. I think that in order to understand what Beehive is all about it is necessary to go up the mountain to the Cross, and it is beautiful up there, commanding beautiful views across Chilomoni and Blantyre. After the introductions we wished to go into Blantyre to change some money and have a look around. We paid a visit to Bee Books and Bee Bikes on the way, and while we were there I received a phone call from Maureen asking for some advice about what information to put on the graduation certificates for the children who are moving up from her nursery class in to Standard 1 so we took a diversion and went to visit her school. She is really trying hard to put into practice what she has learned on the course, and each time I visit the school has a little more equipment, a little more displayed on the wall, more colour, and more occupied children. I am so proud of her. It is an uphill battle and I wish her success. There were two groups of children in the school today, the under-4s and the over 4s. It is school holidays, so classes are more relaxed. The older ones were sitting in the shade in a circle of little chairs. Each child had a book and Maureen asked them to choose a picture from their book and tell us what they could see. Then she read them a story, involving the children in conversation about the pictures. The younger group were sitting with their teacher on the floor of their classroom. They each stood to tell us their names with various degrees of confidence and then one self-assured little chap took a wooden pointer and went around the pictures on the walls pointing at the letters of the alphabet, at colours and numbers leading the little tots in chanting their lessons. Maureen has a new display in that room, with various cuddly toys pinned to the wall, many by their ears poor things! The child pointed at each one in turn and asked his classmates to name them. They all shouted out the names in chorus. It was hard sometimes to work out exactly what they were saying. There are a couple of new story sacks hanging on the wall since my last visit, and in one room there is a display that Maureen has rescued from my classroom of a huge caterpillar that I made out of their marble paintings. Rather touchingly she has repeated the activity with the children and made a similar caterpillar with their artwork and the whole lot is proudly labelled 'Our Blow Paintings', which they are not! Dave took a lot of pictures and we asked a lot of questions and gave her a few second-hand story books to supplement her collection.

Eventually we set off towards Blantyre but halfway round Chilomoni Ring Road we again encountered men in the road wildly gesticulating that we should turn round. I swung to the right into a driveway entrance but could not turn properly before a whole stream of cars and minibuses came down the road at a rate of knots rarely encountered in Chilomoni. We waited for a big enough gap in the traffic to slip into the column of vehicles and went back into Chilomoni and hence to the Beehive site to join the others. We could hear the sounds of a large crowd coming down the hill. Back at the site everything appeared as normal but we kept receiving phone calls telling us first that the local Metro supermarket was being looted, and later that the looters had moved on to Bee Bikes. The news from Bee Bikes was inconsistent. We heard that all he bikes had been taken, and then that the building was still locked up but Mike and the guards were on the roof, then that windows were being broken, then that all the staff were safely out. Who knows what the truth of it all was! There were rumours that the looters were on the way to the Beehive site, and at one point we heard teargas being released and saw a truckload of armed police drive by to make sure we were OK. Eventually it was judged to be best that all the azungus return to Mitsidi so we all piled in the cars and drove by the quiet back road past Maureen's school, avoiding the High Street, and so to Mitsidi and relative peace. We have been here ever since, reading, blogging, bird watching, facebooking, worrying, chatting: each according to inclination and temperament! We are fine, and now it is ten to six and tea time, so I will close. I wonder what's for tea? EEEEE! the power just went off! Oh well I suppose that is just situation normal for a Thursday night!

Temporary managers for the Children’s Centre, marking and a party.

The last week has been very busy. It has been great to have David back. I need his laid-back attitude to prevent me from becoming too intense about things and working myself up into an anxiety state! We have actually done really well in terms of getting the exams marked. There are only 20 Paper 2's left to mark. The rest are all done. The first paper went fairly well. There is a good spread of marks from one or two who managed over 80%, down to about seven or eight with less than 40%. I was justified in having some anxieties about the second paper. Many students did not read the question properly and just did what they thought it said, rather than what I really intended. David pointed out that they had tried to make the exercise identical to something that I had done with them in class, rather than applying what they had learned to a slightly different situation. I guess that this is just further proof that the Malawian Education system does not encourage students to become creative problem-solvers, but rather rewards the regurgitation of facts learned parrot-fashion. Of course I know this; it is why we are here; why the Children's Centre was thought necessary in the first place. Nevertheless I still have a tendency to expect my students to be more like the UK students I am used to. I have been teaching post graduates in UK and here I am working at an earlier level. They all have their Malawian Certificate of Secondary Education, which I originally assumed was more or less equivalent to UK A-levels, but now I think it is probably more like GCSEs. Anyway, with a little judicious adjustment of the marking scheme we have managed to come up with a situation in which the marks seem roughly comparable on the two papers. Of course there are some who have done better on one or the other, but upon the whole the two marks are within five or ten percent of each other. We still have to decide how to weight the two papers. My original intention was to give 60% to the first, more factual paper and 40% to the planning exercise but when I first saw the second paper I though 70/30 might be a better split. David is currently in favour of 50/50, and actually if they are getting similar marks in the two papers it won't make much difference anyway!

I have done rather more than my fair share of marking, but David has worked really hard this week at planning the end of Intermediate Course party. This was absolutely the right division of labour as I am a bit driven about getting the marking done, and David has both the practical skills and the contacts to organise a good party! It was a splendid event with excellent food, plenty to drink, good music and great company. David thought of all sorts of things that would simply not have crossed my mind, including organising a generator so that when the power was cut, shortly after dark we were able after a brief interval to continue blasting the music into the darkness. There were times when I really wasn't sure which of the students I was dancing with, it was so dark! I have never been a great dancer but I received many compliments from my partners, which just goes to show that Malawian men are just as full of blarney as men from anywhere else, if not more so!!

Our other task for this week has been to help Sue and Brian with a bit of market research for the Children's Centre. We visited a few local nurseries and found out how much they charge, and what you get for the money. Are nappies and food included? What sort of resources do they have? What are the staff/child ratios like etc? It has been really encouraging to have Sue and Brian here. I have been anxious about whether the policies will get written, children recruited, staff employed etc etc, but I must say that considering they have only been here for about ten days they have moved the proverbial mountains. I am so glad I am here as a teacher and not as a manager. My skills definitely lie in other directions, but all these things need doing so badly and Sue and Brian are balls of fire! I think we are lucky to have them, I only wish they were able to stay for more than a couple of months.

This is the second weekend running when I haven't done any work!! Yesterday was entirely taken up with the party and preparation for it. I spent the morning baking and David made salads etc. Zoe drove around everywhere in her customary role of provider of stuff, fetching hired chairs, collecting the musical equipment and taking people wherever they needed to go. From one o'clock until about eight it was 'party, party, party', at which point I retired gracefully, but the young ones went on to the Liquor Garden and finished up clubbing. I fear I am definitely getting too old to be able to stand the pace! Not that I've ever been the clubbing type really.

Today has been a nice day too in an entirely different way. I got up on the late side, about 8.00am and upon discovering a rather soft avocado in the kitchen I made guacamole on toast for breakfast and ate it on the khonde of my own house while reading my book, Charlotte Bronte's 'The Professor'. Then Giacomo and I went to Michuri Conservation Area for a walk and were rewarded with several troupes of Vervet monkeys and a single unidentified small antelope. It was very peaceful. It is not often, even in Malawi, that one gets completely out of earshot as far as traffic noise is concerned. We were standing watching a family of monkeys swinging from tree to tree and suddenly a male voice choir began to sing. It felt a bit surreal as we were apparently in the middle of nowhere, but it turned out that a church group, all men, were meeting at the conservation area picnic site. I wonder what the monkeys made of it.

Upon our return to Mitsidi I kept myself amused by finishing the book, having a nice chat with Brian and Sue over a glass of wine, and cooking chicken casserole and passion fruit muffins for supper. A glut of passion fruit is a new experience for me! Does anyone have any ideas about how to use them?

Exam Day

Oh dear me! The weather has been chilly for the last few days! I suppose it is mid-winter but I did not really expect to be cold in Africa! Unfortunately the windows in the library at JPIILITA do not close fully, and it was like doing exams sitting in a refrigerator! Many of the students had anoraks and fleeces with woolly hats pulled down over their ears. I wore a double thickness fleece over my dress and linen jacket. As invigilators David and I were able to walk about, and at one point Jan very kindly brought us a cup of tea, but we were still frozen. I felt very sorry for the students. The first exam comprised eight questions, in answer to which we expected about half a page of A4 I suppose. We decided that they should have to answer all the questions as we want to be able to make as fair a comparison between them all as we can, and if they have all answered the same questions this provides a baseline. We have not started reading and marking yet, but my feeling is that probably this went fairly well. The first person to finish laid down her pen after an hour and a half of the two hour exam, only a few others finished significantly before the end, and most people seemed to be busy writing throughout. I didn't hear too many moans and grumbles after the exam, and after the introductory exam there were many complaints about how much there was to do in the time. I guess this time we pitched it better. The second exam was a bit more experimental. The first question involved reading an observation of a couple of children playing with dolls and then filling in a PLOD chart to suggest activities to support their learning in each of the four domains of the Malawian ECD curriculum, building on their emerging skills. The second question asked students to choose an age group of children i.e. 0-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5 or 5-6 years, choose a theme for a month's activities and then fill in a room plan suggesting three activities for each domain of the Malawian Curriculum suitable for that age group and linked to that theme. Two of these activities, which should be from different domains, were then to be planned in further detail. After the exam there were far more complaints! Giacomo reported back that the students he spoke to after the second exam all said that the exam was really hard. I think we may have underrated how difficult it is for our students to apply what they have learned to new situations. Although some of the planning charts we gave them they have seen before, one of them was completely new. However, we shall see!

Independence day

Yesterday was Independence Day in Malawi, and therefore a National Holiday. It feels strange to have a Bank Holiday on a Wednesday; in England they are mostly on Mondays. For the first time for absolutely ages I did absolutely no work at all, all day. Neither did I leave the area immediately around Mitsidi. I got up late, after a leisurely breakfast in bed with a book. Then I made myself some popcorn (with olive oil and salt, mmmmm) and a pot of coffee and sat on the khonde of my house with the binoculars and the bird book, ready to try to identify anything that flew along. I had not been there very long before I was rewarded by the arrival of the black sparrowhawk who occasionally helps himself to one of our chicks or ducklings. We disapprove of this of course, and the gardeners are quick to throw rocks and stones to dissuade him from his intentions, but I confess I am rather disappointed that I have not yet actually seen him in the act. He is a big, strong and beautiful bird however. After a few minutes Melvin happened to pass by and tell me that I just missed a small group of turacos. I was disappointed about this as they are brightly coloured birds, predominantly green, but with vivid scarlet feathers under the wings which really stand out when they are in flight, but hardly show when they are perched in the trees. It is not uncommon to see them in the garden, but always rewarding when you do. Melvin joined me and the coffee pot on the khonde, and we shared the popcorn. While we were there we saw the African wagtails, which are always about, sparrows, swallows, a couple of shy, slightly fluffy, brown mouse birds with their long narrow tails, and a flock of unidentified LBJs. After a while Melvin wandered off to see if he could get an internet connection, and I decided to go for a walk. To my shame, despite having been here for nine months, I have never continued on down the road past our own collection of houses, but the road, although narrow and rough does go on past the next door neighbour's property, from where you can often hear his cows bellowing, into Mitsidi proper. The track soon divides and neither path seems wide enough for a vehicle, but the way to walk is clear. Lindy had told me that the left track leads across a field to the church which she attends on a Sunday Morning. My intention was to walk that way, but it was very quiet, and the man who had been walking slowly in front of me stopped and hung about for a while and I felt it prudent to take the other path at a rather smarter pace and so strayed in to territory completely new to me. There were a few small houses, some sturdy and well-built, but others that did not look as though they would keep the weather out in the rainy season. There was a well kept building which had a sign saying 'Youth Mission' and rather to my surprise there was a mini-market of a few stalls selling second hand clothes apparently in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps some event was shortly to take place in the Youth Mission, otherwise I fear that the stall holders will not have had a very successful trading day. I followed the path as it curved around to the left and eventually rejoined the road that leads by the back way to Chileka Airport; the road I explored with Malcolm in an earlier entry to this blog. I passed the other end of the road with the 'moochy man', identified by a signpost to the aforementioned church, but I continued down the road and back into the Beehive houses through the back gate. Next I spent a happy hour in the kitchen baking bread and making soup for lunch. I wanted to be sure that when Sue and Brian and Zoe arrived there was something nice for them to eat if they were tired and hungry after the long journey from England. In the event they did not turn up until mid afternoon. Having ascertained that they had eaten on the plane, Vince took them to have a look at the progress of the Children's Centre on the way to Mitsidi. I had a swim, very cold, but the sun was hot, so getting out was nice! Then it was lunch, followed by an hour or so of doing a crossword with Jan and Lindy. Then Lindy and I decided to go for another exploratory walk and try to find the field where a friend of Lindy's keeps a few horses. We thought we had followed the lady's instructions but we found neither horses nor signpost to 'Stonehaven', so we shall have to have another attempt sometime soon. We walked through part of Sigregge, which is the next village as you continue out of Blantyre though Chilomoni and keep going. We met a couple of people Lindy knows from the church and a child who attends Maureen's school. We managed to find our way back to the main road, this time by making a loop to the other side of it, and in the other direction and ended up walking down the other end of the rocky, bumpy road to the front entrance to Mitsidi. As we walked along we were passed by Vince and the others in a Land Rover.

Back at Mitsidi we all collected on the khonde for tea and drop scones. It was good to see Zoe again and to meet Sue and Brian who have come, alas for a short time only, to help with setting up the Children's Centre. They are positive and enthusiastic and they have an awful lot to do in the next two months. They will be recruiting children for the Children's Centre, writing Policies and Procedures, interviewing staff from amongst our students and working on resourcing the Centre. They also have to set fees and work out how many free places we can sustain from the income from some of the other Beehive businesses that make a profit.

Today was the last revision day for our students. Tomorrow will be exam day. This morning we looked again at working with babies, at Physical Development and at Creativity. These were the subjects that they wanted me to revise with them. I had a tussle with the A3 printer when I was trying to print out the blank charts needed for the second exam which has to do with planning. Fortunately Giacomo rescued me and everything was ready in time. Chrissie has worked hard to find enough tables and chairs for seventy students to take their exams simultaneously in the big library room in the IT training college. I have thought about paper to write on and rough paper for planning answers, I have arranged to borrow Jan and Lindy's sitting room clock to time the exams. David will be back tomorrow in time to help me with the invigilation. I shall be pleased to see him. Then we shall have a couple of weeks of marking before we plunge into writing the next section of the course and helping Sue and Brian with the selection of staff. Before we know where we are the Room Leaders will be here and the first children will enter the Children's Centre and the next phase of the training will begin!

64 Revision week

Today has been the first day of revision. It has been quite hard work. I did not really know how many students to expect. I told both groups that I would be in the classroom from 8.30 until 4.00pm, ready to answer any questions about the course content or exam, help them with revision on any subject we have covered, go over sample exam questions, return marked work and so on. I must have had at least two thirds of each class today, which was more than I expected. After assembly this morning I was told in a rather offhand sort of way that the school would be closed today for the funeral of an old man who used to be the school guard. I assumed that this meant it was a guard from some time ago. It was not until mid day that I discovered that it was the guard who has been working there every day since before I first arrived, Mr Gesari (don't know whether I have spelled that right). Vince said at the Open Day, when he saw a photo of Gesari sitting on a huge sheet of paper and having his feet painted scarlet by David so that he could have a go at foot-painting, 'Mr Gesari was always rather an unhappy character before you all started having your classes at the school. You lot have really livened him up!' Maybe we did a bit! I hope so. He was always very kind to me in a curmudgeonly sort of a way! Provided that I locked up the room to his satisfaction he grunted approvingly and bade me goodbye until tomorrow in Chichewa. He made me reply in his own language and it is because of him that I know some of the days of the week, for on a Tuesday he would not let me say 'Goodbye until tomorrow', I had to say 'Goodbye until Thursday' as we had no classes on a Wednesday! One of the teachers was acting as guard whilst the Headteacher and many others were at the funeral this morning. I should have gone myself had I known about it in time. I sat with the teacher for a brief while and during this time a man came and asked whether the school was looking for a new guard, such is the shortage of jobs. I guess sudden death is always a shock even if we do not know the victim very well and I have felt more upset than I would have expected today.

I had to leave the class to their own devices for about an hour this morning while I went on a fruitless trip to try and print out some documents I needed. We have been plagued by problems of lack of power in the last week or so. The dry season, evening power cuts at Mitsidi are back to the three times a week pattern of last September and October, and added to that there have been power failures at the site all last week, and a shortage of diesel has meant that the generator has not always been able to make up the shortfall. When I returned I was very proud of all the students because despite the large class size the only noise was a healthy buzz of controlled debate, not the riotous assembly that I half expected. I had left them with three practice exam questions which they had written on the board and MacCloud was at the front of the class leading a discussion about possible answers. A number of students made very sensible answers and I slipped in and sat at the back and listened for nearly a quarter of an hour before I felt moved to make any kind of contribution to the discussion myself. They had asked me to talk to them a bit more about planning and I had prepared a very brief summary of all the types of planning we have mentioned throughout the course over the weekend. After lunch (still no power at site) I went over some of the input on PSRN and then the students gradually departed, some lingering to ask individual questions or for more details about my comments on their reflective diaries, or to borrow library books, until at last I was left alone to continue the task of marking the final assignment of this part of the course. The question was: 'Write a short paper, saying what you think are the most important things you have learned on this course. For your own professional development, what aspect of child care and development would you like to study next and why?' The purpose was two-fold. To try to get some idea of what they have learned and to find out their aspirations, ambitions and interests in order to make sure we get the right people into the different kinds of jobs in the Children's Centre, and to begin to plan the ongoing training programme for the first six months of their working lives in the Centre. I think I wrote about this a bit yesterday, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. I have started to put together a couple of Excel spreadsheets to collate the results. It is amazing how many different 'Most important things' there are!

The last week of formal teaching on the Beehive Intermediate Child Care Course

This week is something of a milestone. It marks the completion of my ninth month in Malawi and therefore I have been here for half the period I agreed to stay. Despite a few miserable moments the time has passed very quickly. I suppose it always does when one has plenty to do! I have enjoyed so many things. It has been a privilege to get to know my 70- odd students. They come from many different walks of life and range in age from about 18 to I guess early 40s. Although we started with 50/50 men and women there are now significantly more women than men, but the men are an energetic and vociferous minority! I guess most of those who remain are really committed to the idea of working with children. A few students are local to Chilomoni but many travel by minibus from Blantyre, and quite a few use one or two buses in order to catch the local bus. It must have been so hard for some of them to raise the money for the fares whilst working on the course. Some have part time jobs. A few have more full time jobs and juggle their hours to attend as many sessions of the course as possible. I have tried to be as accommodating as I can to this group, but there are one or two who have attended infrequently enough to cause me some concern about the likelihood of them passing the exam. Many students have their fares paid by more fortunate parents, brothers and sisters and cousins who are in full time work. In Africa it is much more common for families to help each other out in this way than it is at home. Indeed it is an expectation, and I am sure it is sometimes a burden for those in work to be expected to hand over their hard-earned cash to support family members.

The topic this week has been Management and Supervision. We began with a consideration of what it might be that a Children's Centre Manager does all day! They came up with a lot of good ideas. Then we looked at Policies and Procedures, what is the difference between the two? What sort of issues should be covered by each? How the number should be kept to a reasonable level as there is no earthly reason to have policies that the staff are not familiar with. We then went on to a consideration of supervision and appraisal. I want them to feel positive about a supervision system and not view it as a chance for line managers to tell them off about what has gone wrong but to work together with them on their own career development as well as to constantly refine and improve the services that the children and families are receiving. I also put together a presentation on applying for a job, discussing CVs and covering letters, and gave them the benefit of my advice on preparing for interviews. We gave over the best part of the second day for each class to interview practice. On Tuesday Vince, Peter and I took one third of the class each. We asked the same 5 questions over about ten minutes, and then spent a few minutes giving each student feedback on how the interview had gone and the impression they had given. On Friday Peter was busy elsewhere, but Lindy stepped into the breach and we managed to give everyone a chance to practice. My interviews were immensely varied. I was relieved to find that most acquitted themselves fairly creditably, a few were impressive. Unfortunately there were three about whom I have grave doubts as to their ability to work with children in the way in which I think (hope) I have trained them to do! I guess we shall see!

So, we have completed the input for the Intermediate part of the course. Those who get through will get jobs in the Children's Centre and embark upon the third, practical stage of their training. I do hope that the Children's Centre will open on time, but I fear there may be delays. This is not an easy time for Malawi, there have been shortages of imported commodities such as diesel and cement in recent weeks and this may take its toll on the schedule. The one compensation that I can think of is that it may give me and David just a little more time to devise the NVQ-style assessment programme for the third and final section of the diploma. Any delay will be tough on the students who have already invested seven months of their time in the training. However it has been a free training course of good quality which is most unusual in Malawi.

The coming week will be made up of revision classes. I have told both groups that I shall be in the classroom on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of next week from 8.30am to 4.30pm to answer their questions, go through presentations, give them practice exam questions, loan books and generally support their revision in any way I can. David and I drafted most of the exams before he left and 80 copies of the papers have joined the piles of documents that litter my living room floor. When Ged was here he said that you could tell I was a teacher from standing in the doorway! This is just a polite way of saying how untidy I am! Currently I have piles of students' reflective diaries with entries about the Open Day and the sessions on working with children with SEN. Most of these are now marked and will be returned to the students tomorrow; there is a pile for each class of an assignment which asked them to consider which are the most important things they have learned on the Intermediate part of the course, to think about their own professional development and to say what subjects they would like to study next. I have only just begun to look at these and have marked perhaps 8 of 70 but already they are proving to be full of useful information, suggesting who might be interested in which of the different roles that will be needed in the Children's Centre. Together with things students said in their interviews and my own observations I am beginning to pick up who might like to work with babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers, who has an interest in outreach, one or two who would like to work towards being trainers themselves, and a couple with an interest in health education. It's a good spread of interests. I hope it all works out well! I've even identified one or two who have management potential. As far as marking is concerned, hurry back David, I miss you! Actually I miss him in all sorts of ways!

Next week will be a turning point in other ways. Two people are arriving to act as Centre Managers for a couple of months to get the place ready to Open In September. There is so much to do, sort out admissions, recruit children and families, write policies and procedures, resource the whole centre, sort out the staff structure, interview all the students and allocate them to appropriate jobs. There is certainly plenty to keep Sue and Brian busy! David and I will no longer be the only volunteers in the child care team. Indeed this is the beginning of big expansion. We are expecting four room leaders, all women, to arrive in mid-August, and this will provide a welcome shift in the gender balance at Mitsidi. As I have often remarked before it will be good to have a few more women around. I know I am not the only volunteer to think this. I understand we are also to welcome both Zoe and Jonathan back to Chilomoni for a while, and this also will help to make Mitsidi a livelier and more varied place to live!

Special Educational Needs and Assembly Planning

This week our theme has been working with children with special educational needs. It was good to start teaching again on such familiar territory. Obviously there are many differences between the situations of children with disabilities in UK and in Malawi, but nevertheless this is an area that I am confident I know something about and thus it was easy to start teaching properly again. Melvin, Yohane and I put David and his father on the bus to Lilongwe on Sunday. David will be away from Blantyre for almost three weeks returning for the exam on July 8. Thus I am facing the class alone for the next three weeks. I began by looking at the Malawian ECD training manual and borrowed from there, lists of the types of disability commonly encountered in Malawi. The curriculum considers also the causes of disability and ways of preventing disability and it seemed to me sensible to follow this line. It is interesting that in the UK it has never occurred to me to teach the prevention of disability, but here it is so obvious that many disabilities can be prevented through good nutrition, immunisation programmes, high quality antenatal care, accident prevention methods and so on. We take all these for granted at home. I sandwiched this section between a discussion of various definitions of disability and a consideration of what the word 'inclusion' means in the context of disability and early years education

I devised an exercise which included descriptions of five children, one from each of the five types of disability described in the Malawian curriculum. Then I described five activities that the class of three to five year-olds might be offered and asked the class to consider what the learning targets of each activity were. Each group of students thought about one of the children in detail and worked out which activities the child could manage and which might be difficult for them. My idea was that they could practice filling in Individual Education Plans. Actually it is very difficult to do this exercise from a brief description. In real life you would know the child well, and there is no substitute for that! Students of both groups found it really difficult to devise learning goals that were SMART targets, preferring to suggest things such as for a child with a learning difficulty who could only speak in single words to 'learn to speak properly'.

A session looking at 'A toy library for Chilomoni' was more successful. The students had clear ideas about the toys and materials they wished to stock, who the borrowers would be, whether there should be a charge to borrow toys and how much that should be. They did not all have the same clear idea however, and that led to some lively discussion!

I played a few games with both groups, remembered from 'New Games UK' days. We played 'People to people', where the players start off in pairs, the leader calls out two body parts and the partners have to put those two parts together. For example, hand to head, back to back, little finger to eyelash etc. On the call people to people you change partners. Clearly this game is a bit more risqué here in Malawi than it would be in UK! The students entered into it with great enthusiasm and much laughter. I had to be a bit careful about which parts of the body I asked them to apply together! We also played the 'Sightless sculptor' game where the students worked in groups of three. The 'sculptor' moulds a' lump of clay' into the same pose that the 'model' has taken up. Both the 'sculptor' and 'clay' have their eyes closed. I could never have played this game with them at the beginning of the course but now that they know each other well it was well received although with one group I considered it prudent not to have mixed-gender groups of three. I am sure that in England I should never have found this precaution necessary! I should not like to offend anyone. We returned to the classroom in a long line playing 'Follow my leader'. Since we have been working this week in a classroom at JPIILITA as there is no power at the school at the moment, I am not sure what the rather more serious IT students made of the cavorting column of child care students led by a crazy azungu who went waving, bouncing, spinning, skipping and hopping from the library on the top floor down the stairs to our borrowed classroom! I am afraid that the Thursday and Friday group of students are in for a bit of trouble from Jan, Principal of JPIILITA, for making too much noise during their break time, and disturbing other classes. Apparently there is no problem with the Monday and Tuesday group, but the others have definitely over-stepped the mark! I cannot say I am surprised. It is not for want of being asked! They are very well-meaning, but there is a significant minority who seem unable to keep their voices down out of consideration for other learners, whether of their own class or another.

Monday morning's assembly next week is to be led by the child care training group. We have adapted some of the items we developed for Open Day and the Monday/Tuesday group whose dance did not pass muster for the Open Day, have redeemed themselves by developing an excellent song/dance routine illustrating all the things children will learn if they attend the Children's Centre. Our theme will be making the most of opportunities and the Bible reading will be the parable of the talents. We have dispensed with a reflection in favour of several musical items. I have agreed to drive a Land Rover in to Blantyre at an ungodly hour in the morning to pick up some of the Thursday/Friday group who would not normally be travelling in to Chilomoni on a Monday. I hope I wake up in time! Last time we led assembly I split the row of chairs for departmental heads who usually sat facing the rest of us into two shorter, angled rows so that we could use the stage for our drama and choir. It is interesting to note that the Hall has been laid out like this ever since and other departments have followed our example.