The rest of the week, apart from Namitembo!

I am sitting in an Italian Ice Cream Parlour in Blantyre to write this blog entry because we have had no power for 24 hours now at Mitsidi. It went off following a very loud thunderclap yesterday afternoon. We had organized a party for the joint birthday celebrations of Sarah and Diddy and to say farewell to Giacomo. The rains chose party time to assert themselves and establish that the rainy season is well and truly here. We have had some short sharp showers in the last couple of weeks, but yesterday the heavens truly opened and the Malawian drainage systems were tested! The outdoor barbeque was almost washed away and we had to transfer the party to the khonde of the main house where the barbeque is under cover. Attendance was restricted as many people did not fancy a wet walk, but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless, with plenty of food and drink and swimming in the rain. We had a good time but it was disappointing not to see everyone we expected and there was a low point when Diddy's mobile phone was stolen. It feels bad when something is stolen by one of your guests.

Last Monday I returned to work following my week off sick. David and I have launched a pilot programme for the practical part of the course, testing out a few tasks on the students who are helping in the primary school or with the Stay and Play group. I helped Diddy with the Stay and Play again this week. It's good to spend some time with children. My favourite part was sitting outside with five children who were too old for a toddler group but who turned up, without adults, on the offchance we would let them in to play. We didn't, but I took paper and crayons outside and tried to chat with them. My Chichewa is not really up to it and their English was about the same level, but we drew a few pictures and learned a little about each other that way. Later one of my students came outside and I asked her to ask the children why they were not in school. Four of them could say which school they were enrolled in and which standard they were in, but one boy, the one with a burn on his hand and bald patches in his hair, had never been to school. Perhaps I should not have encouraged them, as they gained in confidence and we had to chase them out of the hall for attempting to steal the toys.

I attended choir practice on Monday, but because of my visit to Namitembo that was the only practice I was able to get to this week. I do hope that I will not be slung out of the choir for non-attendance! In the next couple of weeks Martin, Mavuto and two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses are to go to the studio to make a recording as a sort of dummy run for our CD. I am hoping to be able to go along for the ride. It will be really interesting to see the process.

On Tuesday I went home with Zoe in order to be the right side of town to set off early in the morning for Namitembo. Zoe cooked toad in the hole in her tiny oven. The dish with its four sausages took up all the available space, but the Yorkshire pudding rose beautifully, crispy on the outside, soft within it was a very British delight!! Later we sat on the khonde with Mary and her visitors and the evening passed very pleasantly. We were not in bed until eleven, which is pretty late by our standards!

On Friday night and Saturday morning Mitsidi baking club swung into action again to prepare goodies for the party. We actually managed to get brown bread flour in Shoprite, which was a treat. I especially enjoyed making a carrot cake for the birthday cake.

A visit to Namitembo

Ubwino wa amayi is a small charity run by two women who have lived in Malawi for many years. One English and one Irish, both nurses and with an interest in education, about six years ago they decided they wanted to do something to support Malawian young women to be able to improve the quality of their own lives. Mary, the Irish woman, whom I have got to know both as Zoe's landlady, and as the owner of a couple of Montessori nursery schools in Blantyre, has a home in Ireland in the same parish as a priest who spent 15 years of his life developing services to improve the lives of rural people in Namitembo in the Zomba area of Malawi. He has recently moved on to another parish, but Namitembo is full of evidence of his influence. Apparently a lot of the work has been supported by a wealthy parish in Seattle, USA as well as the village in Ireland. Anyway, Namitembo boasts a secondary school, with a library of second hand books imported from Seattle, a purpose built science lab, the like of which I have not come across elsewhere; a solidly built residence for the parish priests with associated chalets, where we stayed the night, and a trade school where students can learn carpentry, bricklaying, tailoring or computer skills. You can see that there are a lot of parallels between this project and the work of Beehive in Chilomoni. Chilomoni is an urban township setting, and Namitembo is about as rural as you can get, set at the bottom of Zomba mountain on the valley floor where it is HOT, about an hour's walk to the nearest village served by any kind of public transport and about 45 minutes drive from Zomba town. That is 45 minutes on a good day in the dry season when the dirt road has been recently graded! Both projects are Catholic, both are concerned with raising the standard of living of residents in a specified region, both are concerned to encourage independence and self development through education and learning a trade. Beehive supports a primary school, and Namitembo a secondary school. Namitembo has a flourishing Montessori nursery with Malawian staff, and Beehive is soon to open a Children's Centre with Malawian staff trained to work according to the UK Children's Centre model, adapted for local need…… Mary and Diane talked with Father Owen about their aspirations to support young women and gradually the Ubwino wa amayi project developed. The dropout rate for girls from secondary school is much higher than that for boys. The reasons for this are multi factorial, of which more later. Secondary education in Malawi is not expensive, but it is certainly not free and many families struggle to find fees for their children. For cultural reasons boys tend to be prioritized. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Diane and Mary decided to fund raise to provide school fees for girls who had been forced to drop out of secondary school for whatever reason, financial, because of pregnancy, family responsibilities, gender inequality, poverty etc. The plan was to support 75 girls. I am not sure how this figure was chosen, but think it may have been the number necessary to bring the proportion of girls in Namitembo secondary school back to 50%. There are currently 32 girls on the programme. School fees, uniform costs, school trips and essential equipment such as calculators are paid for. About a quarter of the funded girls have at least one child and their ages range from about 14 up to about 28. The older ones tend to attend night school, but whether day or night pupils they are working towards their Malawi Certificate of Secondary Education. About three years ago Mary and Diane became aware that there was a need for good quality early years education and daycare for all sorts of reasons, not least that some of 'their girls' were not attending school regularly because of the need for affordable daycare for their babies. Mary knows about nursery schools and with the cooperation of her parish in Ireland raised money to build a school and brought Irish builders, who funded themselves, over to Namitembo to build a nursery school in record time!

I was thrilled to be invited to join Mary and Diane on their monthly visit to Namitembo. We piled into Diane's car with a boot filled with luggage and goodies and accompanied by Maddie, a nineteen year old British girl who is here to see a bit of the world and get some teaching experience. The journey was filled by Mary's account of the history of the project which I have summarized above. It was a hot clear day. There is plenty of colour in the landscape at present. Although the rainy season is far from in full flood, there has been sufficient rain for everything to look pretty green. The new year's leaves have filled out on the trees and are bright and fresh. Maize planting is in full swing. In Blantyre the little plants are barely six inches high but as we drove along the Zomba road the fields became greener and the individual seedlings taller. The red of the soil deepens in colour as one gets closer to Zomba, and the moisture in the earth makes the colour still more intense. The purple of the Jacaranda has been replaced by the strident orange-red of the Flame Trees in full flower. The sky was bright blue. A few miles from Zomba we took a turn to the left and began to circumnavigate the mountain. Diane says that the road becomes dangerous in the rainy season, but it was scary enough now as we began the descent down a series of tight hairpin bends into the valley. It took about three quarters of an hour to reach Namitembo from the Zomba road. At first the dirt road was well-graded, but it got steeper, narrower and more rocky as we approached our destination. We arrived at the priests' house at lunchtime to discover that the emails confirming our visit has not been received, so we were a surprise! However we were welcomed by Lloyd, the house keeper who hurried off to make up beds for us. In true British style we were gasping for a cup of tea, but unfortunately the power had been off since eight in the morning so we had to be content with Sobo and the picnic lunch we had brought with us. Thus fortified we set off to the nursery school where the 'Ubwino girls' had been asked to stay after school for a 'focus group' session so that Mary and Diane could update themselves with the progress of the project. To begin with we were a little disappointed to find that only 17 of the 32 beneficiaries were present, but as the meeting went on the number gradually increased to 23. A register was taken, Diane took photos of the girls to help them to remember who is on the project from year to year, snacks and drinks were distributed and as the meeting went on the girls, who had been rather unnaturally quiet at first, gradually relaxed and gained the courage to contribute to discussion. Mary encouraged the girls to rearrange themselves so that all those in Form 1 were together, and so on. Then the night school girls grouped themselves separately from the day girls and hey presto, everyone was sitting with girls that she knew. Mary gave them time to discuss the answers to questions in small groups before they had to feedback to the azungus and this approach worked well, giving the girls support and boosting their confidence. Mary got them to tell what they think the project is all about and we cleared up a couple of misconceptions, for example a few people have thought that it is only for girls with babies, but this is not the case. There are all too many other barriers to access to secondary education for girls. Diane had set the girls an essay question. 'What are the barriers to accessing secondary education for girls in your local area?' The competition was open to all 'Ubwino girls' and to all pupils, both boys and girls, in Standard 1. The focus group discussed the barriers and came up with quite a comprehensive list. Mary also asked them if they had any questions about the project. The first question was to Mary and Diane, 'Why do you two women want to pay our school fees?' What a good question! Mary talked about her own experience of education and the effect it had had on her life, how she and Diane had both become nurses. She introduced me as a doctor, slight misconception here, but never mind, and Maddie as a potential teacher. She talked about independence and being an example to our children, and said that she wanted them to have similar opportunities. This met with enthusiastic applause and a cheer! Their other questions were mostly to clarify exactly what Ubwino will and will not pay for. Yes to school fees, exam fees, ID fees (I never did find out exactly what these are), one set of uniform a year and the cost of school trips, mathematical instruments and calculators. Also there are possible bursaries for higher education if good enough grades are obtained at MSCE; maybe at the local Trade School and maybe further afield. As yet no one has achieved these, but as time goes on it will certainly happen. No to school shoes, but Diane did make a promise to see if it would be possible to obtain good quality second-hand school shoes from donors in Blantyre.

The next subject on the agenda was toilets. I learned a lot about toilets in the last couple of days. One reason for absenteeism amongst girl pupils is that toilet facilities are not adequate. Especially during their period girls tend to stay at home. Upon inspection of the toilets later in the day I could absolutely understand. For 350 pupils there are two pit latrines. They are housed in a single straw hut. Two cubicles next to each other have no doors, so there is no privacy. Boys and girls use the same latrines. The toilets were basic, but are obviously maintained and kept as clean as possible. A solid concrete slab with a six-inch diameter hole covers a long drop of about 25 feet to the bottom of the pit. They were much more salubrious than the flush toilets at the Trade School next door which were filthy, smelly and without water. Mary and Diane asked the girls what sort of toilets they would prefer and there was not a single vote for flush toilets. After some discussion we decided upon four toilets for girls and four for boys. Pit latrines of the Blair ??? ventori type which have a spiral entrance judiciously placed to use the prevailing wind to take the smell up and out of the roof. These also include a mechanism which discourages flies from coming out of the pit back into the toilet by painting the roof black (flies are attracted to the light), and including an open pipe, covered with a net which attracts the flies away from the toilet but does not allow them to escape so they eventually die and drop back into the pit. Clever eh? I never thought toilet technology would be so interesting!

After the meeting we retired to the Priest's house to mark the essays and select three winners. The prizes were generous and attractive. The idea was to encourage the girls to take part in the competition and really push themselves to do well. I don't imagine that I will ever forget those essays. They were well thought out, honest and in some cases frankly shocking. Poverty was probably the number one barrier, but all the other reasons I listed at the beginning of this entry were described several times. Rape, sexual abuse of other kinds, initiation ceremonies and cultural practices came up again and again. I was shocked to note that one boy thought that one could deal with the issue of unwanted pregnancy by imprisoning 'guilty' girls for 20 years! Evidence of gender inequality in this community was obvious in every single essay whether it was written by a boy or by a girl. There had obviously been class discussion about the issues covered. Many of the essays were similar in structure and in the choice of issues covered. However it was not particularly difficult to choose the winners as only a few stood out as different or really well written. The top three prizes were won by girls in Standards 4 and 3. They received MK3000, 2000 and 1000 respectively and a large hamper of foods. The lucky three also get a trip to Blantyre to see the Sports and Social club's pantomime version of Pinocchio in a couple of week's time. I already have my ticket for the Gala Night and am looking forward to it myself. We also awarded a consolation prize of MK500 to a boy who had made an excellent start to his essay, but who had not reached any conclusions or suggested solutions to the barriers. The results were announced in assembly this morning to tumultuous applause.

Following assembly we visited the nursery school. Mary and Diane were occupied in talking to the staff and some staff training. Maddie and I visited every class, taking part in whatever lesson happened to be taking place at the time. We arrived at assembly time. The whole school, maybe 60 children, was in the courtyard garden, singing songs, marching and greeting each other. We followed one class to their room, where they settled on the bamboo mats laid out in the middle of the classroom. The lesson of the day appeared to be the days of the week. They sang and recited their way through many repetitions of rhymes using the days of the week in English. We stood in the doorway and watched for a while and then moved on to the baby room. The babies were mostly at least two years of age I would guess. Here the main lesson of the day was numbers up to 5. The teacher interrupted what she was doing to lead the children in an enthusiastic and tuneful welcome song. They also sang the 'vowel song', the one that David says he will scream if he hears it sung by pre-school children ever again! This time Maddie and I went right into the room and sat on the mat with the children. I am now used to the fact that a few more timid children will shrink away from the unfamiliar azungus, but this was not a particular issue here. I joined in with every song, rhyme and repetition that I could which seemed to draw approval from the teachers as well as some amusement. After a while it was toilet time and the whole class went off together to use the facilities. Maddie and I remained on the mat and chatted with the children as they returned one by one. We played 'Round and round the garden' and I tried out the 'Roly poly' rhyme which the children watched with some attention and laughter at the 'Ever so fast' bit, but none of them joined in with the actions. I think it was entirely new to them. Next the teacher got out some wooden tiles with sand paper numbers on them. These are classic Montessori teaching equipment, used here in a very Malawian way. The tiny tots were asked in turn whether they could pick out 'Number one', 'Number two' and so on, but there was no attempt to teach the concept of number. At least one little chap recognized each number with ease, but whether he understood what numbers mean, I have no idea.

The classrooms were all stocked similarly. There were many toys given by donors, mostly from America. There was a lot of Montessori equipment. I saw the pink tower, the knobbed cylinders, dressing frames with buttons and zips, trays with jugs and cups, the broad stair, measuring rods and so on, I am by no means a Montessori expert. Each room had a big pile of soft toys. There were musical instruments, construction sets, puzzles and many sets of wooden tiles, with numbers and letters, painted and in sand paper, culturally appropriate pictures for example of fruits, baobab trees, mud nuts, African animals and so on. I had an interesting chat with Mary about the commercial possibilities of producing similar sets of tiles for different cultures, shamrocks for Ireland, London buses and telephone boxes for England, the Taj Mahal for India, and so on. They were a good local resource, I would love a set for the Children's Centre. Each room had a large number of locally made small, low tables which were stacked around the edge of the room. I asked the teachers in the baby room if they ever used them to set out activities for the children, but was told that they are always in the same place and used for storing the children's bags etc. I can't help feeling there is a missed opportunity here. Low tables like these placed on a mat to define the work area and be comfortable for children to sit on the floor, could be used to make all sorts of activities available for children to access and explore independently. After a while we went next door to join the older children who were learning shapes, pointing at the chalked shapes on the board and identifying circle, square, triangle, rectangle and kite. The lesson moved on to the months of the year, taught through frequent repetition and song. The children seemed to thoroughly enjoy repeating the songs and rhymes. I am constantly struck by the fluidity with which African children move their bodies to dance as they sing, moving so differently from the average British child.

Around ten thirty the children received a meal of rice, with a little sugar. Often they have likuni phala (a fortified porridge) but this is difficult to get at the moment. The children sat on the floor to eat with spoons from plastic cups or plates. They managed their meals very tidily compared with their UK peers and ate the plain food with obvious enjoyment. Meals are prepared by a rota of parent helpers. Daily records are kept of exactly what the children have been given to eat, who the cooks were, whether the children enjoyed the meal etc.

I also had a look at the daily records kept by the teachers. One book for each class records the main lesson of the day, learning targets and a comment about how the lesson went. The other book contains a line for each child. Sometimes the comment is about what they know, sometimes it is about behaviour, sometimes about how the child was feeling on that particular day. I have asked many of the nurseries I have visited what records they keep about children's progress and this is the most detailed I have come across. The Head Teacher had commented to Mary that a fairly new child in the baby room seemed to be particularly bright, and when this was mentioned to me I immediately knew who they meant from my own observations this morning. Mary and I followed through every comment written about this boy since he started at the beginning of this term and it was a helpful place to begin to build up a picture of his capabilities.

I wondered when the children had the opportunity to play with all the toys and equipment displayed on the open shelves at child height in every room. We had only seen lessons where the whole class looked at the same subject together. Mary and I discussed this over coffee and upon our return I asked the head teacher. She said that the children chose toys to play with on a Friday. We went into a classroom and Mary asked the teacher to ask the children to choose a toy each and take it back to the mat. They seemed hesitant at first as if they did not know quite what to do, but soon gained confidence and returned to the mat with their choices. Some did not seem quite to know what to do with what they had chosen, One little boy with a box of Duplo soon became quite deeply absorbed in exploring what he could do with the bricks. Mary and I then moved on to the baby room to be met with the charming sight of 16 little ones each with a soft toy tied to their back with a piece of fabric, just like Mum carries them in a chitenje on her back. I took a lot of very sweet photos, but many of the children were wandering about a bit aimlessly. I guess the play value is a bit limited when your toy is tied to your back. The teacher had a big rabbit tied to her own back and a teddy under her arm. I said to her, 'You had better start breast-feeding that teddy!' Much to my amazement she immediately sat on the floor and put the teddy to her breast. The children immediately recognized what she was doing and one or two of them followed suit. A few cups, spoons and bowls, blankets, mats and so on, offered with the soft toys and zitenge and how much richer would the play experiences be? Mary took advantage of the opportunity offered to encourage her staff to offer the children more chances to choose their own activities. She told them not to worry if visitors thought that the children were not learning as they were playing but to explain that in this way they were finding out things for themselves and not simply repeating a lesson without necessarily understanding it.

Mary gave her untrained staff an intensive three-week course before the nursery opened, including many aspects of the Montessori approach. The staff members were carefully selected and they have done an excellent job, but nevertheless there are lessons here for me about the need for constant reinforcement of how to put theoretical learning into practice. Mary is only able to be at her nursery for a day or two each month but David and I will be luckier in this respect and will see our students on a daily basis and be able to support them to remember and put into practice what we have taught them.

It was lovely to spend even this very short period of time with real children. Perhaps we have been in the classroom for too long. The delay to the opening of our children's centre, although not avoidable, has been frustrating. I look forward to the opening in January.

What a pleasure it has been to get out of Blantyre and see another project, and especially one that has so many parallels with the work of Beehive. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Diane and Mary a little better and to sharing ideas and thoughts. I look forward to showing them around the Children's Centre very soon and continuing to have an interest in each other's projects.

A week off sick

I have been off work sick for most of this week, with an unidentified virus. Symptoms included fever, diarrhea and general pathetic-ness, so I took myself off to the doctor's for a professional diagnosis. I had my first malaria test, but fortunately it was negative and I was sent home with instructions to rest for 48 hours. Actually it was necessary to stay at home for longer than that and I spent four days doing little but sleeping and reading. Now, six days and four novels later I am more or less fully recovered but have lost almost a week. Monday was my only working day last week. David and I spent much of it preparing a short course on Circle Time for the students to be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday, but unfortunately I was not able to be there on either day. Sarah stepped into the breach and helped David out, but I was very sorry to miss seeing the students. The previous week they were sent two letters, one from Vince confirming the opening date of the Children's Centre among other points, and one from David and me explaining how the third phase of the course, the practical assessments, will work. Sarah reported back to me that they asked a lot of questions. I should have been glad to be there to understand properly their reactions and to answer questions, but I am sure that David did an excellent job and at the time I was not well enough to be much use to anyone!

On Friday night Zoe and Lindsey combined to persuade me I was sufficiently recovered to be able to withstand an evening in the Liquor Garden. It is about half an hour's walk from Mitsidi and by the time I arrived I felt like a wet rag, but an hour and two bottles of water later I felt much better and was very glad to have begun to be sociable again. Zoe, with my welfare at heart, persuaded me to allow her to slip a sachet of Malawian brandy into my last bottle of water and I think that marked my return to the land of the healthy!

On Saturday I took the minibus into Blantyre for no better reason than that I needed to get out of Mitsidi. I pottered about the city centre for a bit and then met Chris and Rita for a coffee. Rita and I then did a bit of desultory shopping and then went to the market bus station to catch the minibus back to Sigregge. We piled in to the most dilapidated looking bus in the bus station together with twelve other passengers, an extra child, two sacks of maize, several cans of cooking oil and about four bales of sugar. I never did identify who it all belonged to. Minibus fares have been rising rapidly since the supply of diesel has been reduced. After a long period of being steady at MK80, they went up to MK90, then MK100, and last week Chris was charged MK110. I watched carefully as other passengers handed over their fares and concluded that the going rate was MK100 so handed over a MK200 note for the two of us. It is always prudent to offer the exact money, sometimes as an azungu it is difficult to get change. The bus rattled and banged its way out of Blantyre. The catch on the side door was faulty and only latched after about one attempt in four, so at each stop there was a lot of crashing and banging. All the way along the untarmacked, Chilomoni ring road the bus coasted downhill, presumably to conserve precious diesel. The driver appeared to know his route very well and managed to get all the way to our stop at the bottom of the Mitsidi drive without using any fuel at all. Rita and I were squeezed into the back seat with a couple of others and I was glad to ease my way out, over the bales of sugar and into the relative comfort of a light breeze to walk home. We made a salad lunch and the afternoon disappeared into reading, making Christmas cards and I don't really know what else, it just melted away! Hugh, Linda, Chris and I went for a curry at the Bombay Palace in the evening.

Today is Sunday and it is pretty hot again. I fancied a walk until I realized that with no access to transport it would be necessary to go a kilometer or so at least to the beginning of most walks and in the heat it seems a bit intimidating, so I am still here.

I continue to be concerned about the joint impact of the diesel shortage and Krizevac's new vehicle policy. When I first came here there was a clear understanding between volunteers that all of us had a need for transport and that it should be shared out as equally as possible. Of course there were occasional disagreements about priorities but on the whole it worked well. Now individual key holders are held personally responsible, and financially liable, for the cars allocated to them. Under the circumstances one cannot blame them for keeping them to themselves but unfortunately it seems to be leading to a situation where some volunteers have complete freedom to go where they like at weekends and others are quite restricted. The diesel shortage means that this difference is not too pronounced at the moment, but if things improve it could lead to a situation where there is a significant difference in quality of life between those who have access to transport and those who do not. There are lots of problems with the vehicles at present. One or two seem to be out of action altogether, and a few have been in and out of Torrent for attention. I suppose that is just the way of things when you use old cars. Charles does not always have a car to shop for the volunteers' food and although there is always plenty to eat, key ingredients such as eggs and margarine or butter are sometimes absent altogether.

All is quiet with the hammerkops, although Chris reported that father-hammerkop was still adding to the nest following the storm that brought lots of strips of blue gum bark to the ground a few days ago. I suspect that the turacos also are nesting as they are repeatedly flying in and out of the same dense growth, flashing their scarlet flight feathers as they do so. I have been trying to get a photo of them, but no luck so far, they move so quickly and my khonde is just too far away for them to be much more than a black and red dot on a photograph. The brown-hooded kingfisher seems to have taken up permanent residency in the trees near the river in direct view of the khonde at the main house. A flash of kingfisher blue is a common accompaniment to our meals. This morning as Chris and I shared a pot of coffee a tiny blue waxbill settled on the path only about three feet from our chairs.

Thoughts

I woke early this morning, soon after half-past four, and lay, drifting in and out of sleep, and listening to the sounds of a Malawian morning. Birdsong from the bushes behind my house, a child crying, the breeze moving the leaves of the blue gum trees in their characteristic billowing waves, and the patter of dry leaves falling on to my tin roof. The steady intermittent call of the 'squeaky-wheelbarrow-bird' reminded me that still I do not know its proper name! I could hear the low voices of men as they walked down our lane, greeting each other and chatting together, perhaps as they set out to walk to work, even at this very early hour on a Saturday. The footsteps of one of the Mitsidi guards passed my bedroom window. A dog barked.

Around five, I realized that I was not going to sleep any longer and sat up to read my book for an hour. I made breakfast and took it back to bed, reading on almost until the end of the book. About seven o'clock I heard sounds of those volunteers who are working today leaving for the Beehive building site, and got up and wandered down to the main house in search of coffee. Three hours had passed and still not yet eight o'clock! It struck me how different my life is here from the way it is at home in so many ways. For the last hour I have been sitting on my khonde drinking my way through a pot of coffee, finishing the book and observing the activity of Saturday morning at Mitsidi. Mike, the gardener has been busy caring for the swimming pool; Charles the House Manager, is putting new fly screens on Sarah's house, the previous ones having been slashed by whoever broke in a few days ago. It is a bright day with a clear blue sky and already it is hot. Mercifully the early morning breeze is still blowing and my khonde is still in shade so I am cool here. The movement of the trees provides a soft, comforting, background sound. The African pied wagtails have been busily catching flies. They are used to me now, and peck in the cracks between the paving stones on the path, only three or four feet from my toes! I have seen the scarlet flash of the flight feathers of turacos several times as they glide from tree to tree at the river side of the garden. There has been no movement from the hammerkops' nest. I have seen them only occasionally in the last couple of weeks. I hope this means they are safely inside their shaggy, dome of a home, sitting on eggs.

The story I have been reading, although set in the glasshouses of rural France at the turn of the nineteenth century, was really about families and relationships and as I reached the end where all the loves, tensions, difficulties and separations were sorted out, or not, it made me cry as it reminded me of my own relationships with family and friends who are so far away. Despite the fact that I have been here now for well over a year, and have of course gradually got to know a lot of people, I am missing you all a lot at the moment. I think it was having my sister, Annie, here for a month, actually living in the house with me that highlighted just how much I miss the quality of relationship and depth of understanding that you get from folk who you have known all your life, or even simply known well for a number of years. There are fine people here, both locals and volunteers living at Mitsidi, but building relationships takes time and commitment….. I am so looking forward to coming home for Christmas. I am sure that two weeks will pass in a flash!

OK, enough of the introspection! What have I been doing for the last two weeks? I am constantly astonished by how quickly the weeks pass. There is so much to do to prepare for the opening of the Children's Centre in January. About three o'clock on Friday afternoon I finished printing out the final (?) version of the practical assessment tasks I have written for the third and final part of our child care diploma course. I have said before that they are NVQ-style, but this is not really true, at least not in all aspects, no cross referencing of standards for one! When Sue was here she gave me some assessment tasks she has written to give me some ideas, but I only read a couple, they seemed very English and not appropriate somehow. I toyed for a while with the idea of basing them on the four domains of the Malawian ECD Curriculum, but that didn't work either; then one day David said, 'We've already put a lot of energy into designing the taught part of the course, why don't you just write one task for each subject we covered?' and 'Bingo!' everything fell into place. I did add one or two extra subject areas, 'Moral and Spiritual milestones' for example. I have written 25 tasks. They fall into two groups. Eight are compulsory tasks, covering essential areas such as Child Protection, Risk Assessment and Reflective Practice. Then there are seventeen other tasks, of which each student must complete twelve. Most of them have a similar format, two written questions designed to draw out the key theory behind the subject area, followed by an activity to design to use with the children. A list of possible questions that the assessor may ask to check the student's knowledge, follow each task. There are a few variations in form. Risk Assessment requires the student to fill in risk assessment forms. Reflective practice requires the student to bring their reflective diary to the assessment. Record keeping requires the student to bring a child's 'Learning Journey'. There are times when I am confident that the scheme is going to work well, and times when I am afraid that unforeseen difficulties will arise. At the moment I am keeping my fingers crossed. A dozen or so students are working with children, either supporting Marc in his work with Standard 1 in St James' Primary School, or with the 'Stay and Play' group that Lyndsey has started this week as the beginning of outreach work for the Children's Centre. David and I have decided to pilot a few of the practical assessments on these students in order to identify and iron out any problems before we start on all 68 of them in January. I have made a Practical Manual containing all the questions and also an Answer Book for each student containing pages and planning forms for all the questions and activities within each task. It has been quite a marathon project. If the Children's Centre had opened on time in September there is no way I could have been so thorough.

The opening of the 'Stay and Play' group in St James' Church Hall has been a delight. It is so nice finally to be working with real children. We have had a few problems, stay and play is a bit of an alien concept here. Quite a few parents assumed that we were providing free child care and tried to leave their children. Indeed, one lady managed to leave a 4-year old and despite several phone calls did not return for her, simply sending a young girl, the child's cousin to collect her at closing time. We ran two sessions last week and during the mornings I saw much to be proud of in the work of the student volunteers. Despite regular lessons my Chichewa is still pretty poor and without the students to translate Lyndsey and I would have been in trouble I fear! Some of the children have never got that near to an azungu before, and a few were anxious, or even cried at first, but we seem to have got over that problem fairly quickly. The first week we had the problem, common with Parent and Toddler sessions the world over I daresay, that the parents all sat on chairs around the edge of the room rather than getting down on the floor to play with the children, but Lyndsey, who is made of sterner stuff than I am, got over that one by hiding all the chairs! A few extra zitenje on the floor and most mums and one or two dads were down on the children's level and exploring the toys. Many of the toys are completely outside the experience of most of the parents, never mind the children. One mum told me, to my astonishment, that she had never seen a black baby doll before. Dolls are too expensive for working people to buy for their children and are all imported and apparently all white! I checked this out in Shoprite, the South African supermarket, and certainly there it was true. Thanks to the generosity of fundraisers in the UK we have four black baby dolls, twin boys about 9 inches high and a boy and a girl of about 16 inches. I remember writing about the girl when she arrived some months ago, and how impressed the students were with her. Unfortunately when we moved classrooms she was packed in a box which has disappeared into a container with a lot of other equipment to await the opening of the Children's Centre, but all three boys have been objects of wonder both to the children and to the staff of the IT college where we have our classroom. When I first casually carried the larger one dangling by the leg across the car park to the classroom several people gave shocked gasps at my ill treatment of the 'baby'! There was horror too that he was naked. I was told more than once that I should get him some clothes as soon as possible. By the time I reached the entrance to the building I was obliged to think of a name for him. Rather hastily, without due consideration I called him 'Mavuto' which means problem. This is unfortunate because this is a name which the Malawian ECD Staff Training Manual cites in the Child Protection section as being an abusive name to give a child! Now I cannot change it! Every day someone asks me 'How is Mavuto?', and there is much hilarity as I answer 'He is in the filing cabinet' or 'I have locked him in the office!' Rachel, who runs the tailoring project, has made him some dark brown shorts and a satin shirt in golden yellow! He is very smart. The twin babies who were I think donated by a friend of Sarah's were christened by the man who cleans our office and keeps us supplied with flasks of hot water to make tea. His name is Cosmos and his brother is called Abby, so the dolls were named after them. They too have tailor made clothes, but in their case the shorts are navy and the satin pale blue. Children as young as 18 months have been seen in 'Stay and Play' with Mavuto, Cosmos or Abby strapped to their backs with scraps of chitenje cloth. They are regularly breast fed, and given imaginary nsima to eat!

The fuel shortage continues so we have not been out of Blantyre at the weekend for some weeks now. There have been a number of barbeques. Since the weather has been very hot we are swimming most days at the moment. Last weekend Sarah and I went up the Way of the Rosary and rather adventurously left the way-marked track and found our way straight down the side of the mountain to emerge opposite the Beehive site next to the secondary school. This week all the female volunteers had an evening at Zoe's flat where she cooked us chicken and pasta and we consumed considerable quantities of wine! We read magazines, watched TV and all had our hair restyled with Zoe's GHDs! Mitsidi baking club is still alive and well. This week we made Granny Boyd's biscuits, a sort of chocolate shortbread, and bread. The choir continues to practice on four lunchtimes each week. I am still having trouble getting my tongue around the Chichewa words. David will be away next Thursday for our Chichewa lesson so I have arranged with Paul, our teacher that he will go through the songs and tell me what they mean. I hope that if I understand them, I will remember them better! It is just as well that it is a CD we are making, not a DVD, at least no one will know that I am reading the words! There is a choir festival this weekend and I was looking forward to going despite the walk of four km each way, but unfortunately not enough people were able to go, largely for financial reasons as it apparently costs a couple of hundred kwacha each to go (roughly a days' wages) and most members are saving their spare cash to go to the studio to make the CD.

Oh! And the rains have come. Actually it is about a week since it rained during the day, but when it did it really poured. Proper rainy season rain! It has rained steadily through the night on two occasions. The local people are busy with their hoes, digging ridges to plant maize. It is still hot, but now it is humid as well. I am beginning to understand wht one of the phrases from my Chichewa lessons is 'You have a sweaty head'! I certainly have a sweaty head quite frequently. I have had my hair cut really short so that it sticks up in spikes on the top of my head. It took a bit of getting used to. Every time I looked in the mirror I wondered if it was really me, but now that it has been done for about six weeks I have got used to it and I like it! I had it done again this morning. It is certainly a bit cooler, which has to be a good thing.