Back in Chilomoni

Saturday afternoon and on the khonde of my house again, writing my blog. Today I have had to push my chair right to the back of the khonde in order to keep my feet dry as there is a gentle drizzling rain. It is warm and the rain is intermittent and soft, but yesterday it was cold, heavy and persistent. I do not remember days like that in the rainy season last year. The common pattern was hot, humid days with an hour or two of heavy rain after lunch. David and I had to plan teaching days with practical sessions in the afternoons rather than lectures as the drumming of the rain on the corrugated iron roof was too loud for us to make ourselves understood.

These are exciting times for the Children's Centre. On Monday morning we shall open our doors to the first ten or so children. These are the children of workers at Beehive whose children previously had sponsored places at Tivwarane, a small local nursery. They have all been transferred to the Children's Centre and as their parents start work on Monday we are opening one room a week ahead of schedule. Diddy is going to lead this first, mixed age group class for the first week. Today is arrival day for two more room leaders. Hugh and I went off to the airport at lunchtime to collect Joan who travelled with George, the Krizevac employee who is responsible for recruiting the volunteers. Joan hails from the Norwich area and I have worked with her before on special needs playschemes. It is great to have someone familiar coming to work with me on the project. She is going to lead the baby room at least to begin with. This evening we shall be off to the bus station to meet Jennie who is going to work with the 3-6s. She is flying in via Lilongwe, being met at the airport and transferred to the bus station by someone from the Torrent Lilongwe office.

My first day back was the second day the Children's Centre was open for the staff. The opening has been a long time coming and there is some grumpiness and dissatisfaction amongst the students/care givers following the delay. Their first day was Wednesday and I think that David and Sarah had a hard time of it. Apparently there was quite a bit of grumbling. It is going to be important to work to keep them motivated. There will be problems as we are training enough workers to staff a 232 place nursery and on day one there will be ten children, but the following week there will be ten more and we hope that as potential fee paying parents see the nursery in action they will start to book their children in. Meantime we have to find work to keep all 68 trainee care givers busy. We hope that we shall be able to build on the good work done by David and Marc and some of the students at St James' primary school last term, and by Diddy and another team of students at the Stay and Play. There is also much to be done in terms of marketing the child care places and raising sponsorship for the free places. The students have had a full programme of activities and training during their induction week. David and Sarah went through the employment conditions and some of the more important Policies and Procedures of the Centre very thoroughly, including repeating the 'no tolerance of theft' policy that operates throughout Beehive. This is not news to the students of course as we have explained it to them on many occasions during the last year. Sarah had arranged for a visit from two people from Chilomoni Health Clinic to talk about infection control, and there was a demonstration of how to use the cleaning products from a man from the company we buy them from. I don't think he can have done this before because he was rather confused about the amount of product to be mixed with water and produced an awful lot of bubbles and used loads of the products. We shall be bankrupt in a few weeks if we follow his advice!! Each team of students went to the room they shall be working in and had a good look at some of the toys and materials they will be using with the children. Unfortunately a couple of students must have slipped a pencil case each into their bags during this time as when it was time to go home the guards spotted them and queried whether they were from the Children's Centre. Another student was stopped with a book from the child care library but I was able to confirm that this was properly signed out and therefore permissible. The two 'pencil case students' have since been dismissed. I am very sad about this. I cannot imagine how it can be worth the risk of throwing away a whole year's work for the sake of a pencil case. Sarah visited each group to sort out changes to the rotas, David made a mentoring appointment for each student either with me or with himself, and I went round and went over again how the practical assessment programme will work, and answered their questions. I continue to be amazed by how many questions they ask which show that they have simply not read the information they have been given, but perhaps I do not allow for the fact that it is not written in their first language.

On Friday we had arranged with tutors from the Malawian Red Cross to come and give a four-hour First Aid briefing. This has been a nightmare to arrange, but it has happened at last and although they did not really provide a course designed for those working with children as I had requested, they certainly knew their stuff and delivered the course competently and with humour.