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!