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?
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