Three weeks on…

There has been a lot of rain in the last three weeks!  I am sitting in the doorway of my house, facing the unidentified big tree with the pods that the baboons like to pick, extract the seeds and throw the pods to the ground.  The rain this afternoon is persistent but not very heavy.  Malawi is so very green at the moment.  The dark green masses of leaves on the big tree let through glimpses of the brighter green of the maize planted in the little fields opposite.  The tassels of flowers are pushing up at the top of the plants now, adding a reddish tinge to the surface of the crop which is now anything up to eight feet tall.  ‘Lush’ is the word that comes to mind to describe the view from the doorway.  In front of the tree the grass is paler and despite the rain there must be a break in the clouds somewhere because where it is not in shadow there is a golden tinge about it.  The little Jacaranda Tree in Polly’s Garden has shot out a new branch in response to all this water, and the old brick kiln which was fired a couple of weeks after I arrived in October 2010 is almost covered by vegetation.

Rain affects us in so many different ways.  The soft soil on the surface of many roads either becomes liquid mud or is washed away altogether.  Driving becomes more difficult, but also sometimes more fun!  The footpath by which we walk to walk is more like the bed of a stream.  Indeed if it is actually raining it is indeed a fast-flowing stream that is carving itself a deeper gorge with each heavy shower.  All my shoes are muddy, and I never seem to have the right shoes with me to meet the weather conditions!  It’s the same with raincoats and umbrellas, I’m not good at judging what I will need to take each morning.  A chitenje continues to be the most useful thing.  It rolls up quite small in the bottom of my bag and can be an instant skirt, a wrap, a shopping bag, a baby sling or a makeshift umbrella depending upon how I hold or fold it.  White washing has ceased to be white.  There is so much mud that everything has a faint aspect of terracotta earth about it.  The children are beginning to become used to the drumming sound of rain on the iron roof of the Children’s Centre.  We have a plank across the boggiest bit of path to the door to our makeshift reception area, but unless you tread on it in exactly the right place it has a nasty habit of squirting water up your right leg.  Loveness and Lucy our two cleaners spend much of their time mopping muddy footprints off the floors and sweeping out puddles.

 I am trying hard to learn all the names of the children and am pretty confident now that I know all the babies and toddlers.  I am struggling a bit more with the older ones but probably know about half of them now.  Of course as Acting Manager I am not attached to any particular room, but I am getting quite a lot of opportunity to get into the rooms and even sometimes to play with the children!  For the time being David and I are sharing the responsibilities involved in managing the Children’s Centre as well as continuing the training of the students.  We are therefore doing at least three full time jobs between the two of us.  (Sarah we really miss you!)  However help is at hand as we expect an addition to the team next Saturday in the shape of Sadia who was originally coming as replacement Trainer to carry on the work David and I have started and get a small new cohort of students started.  This will still happen eventually but slightly later than planned and the three of us will share out the management and training responsibilities between us when she arrives.

The Children’s Centre has become a lively, bustling place full of colour, energy, interest and play.  Officially the building was handed over from construction to child care about 6 weeks ago, but in practice it still has many aspects of the building site.  It wouldn’t be allowed in England!  Upstairs it is mostly child care.  The class rooms are all occupied, although considerably below capacity, but there are all sorts of practical problems.  On top of the usual Malawian power and water cuts there are numerous other occasions upon which these services are absent.  Then there are the problems of toilet doors that don’t quite shut, kitchen fitters who are not as thorough as they might be, and puddles that have to be diagnosed as rain or plumbing and then eliminated!  Each room is busy creating a stimulating environment for the age group of children with which it works, so things like notice boards, mirrors, wall-mounted toys and so on are being fitted.  There are no hooks to hold doors open and they swing in the wind which is so prevalent here, and so each door currently has its own hydroform block to hold it open to facilitate free-flow play to the balcony which is at least semi-outdoors.  We thought the blocks would be too heavy for the average five year old to move about but these are strong kids!  They will just have to learn that the door stops are not for playing with I fear, until proper hooks can be fitted.  The baby room is painted a soft, purplish-pink and the floor is pale blue tiles.  There are mirrors on the walls and a cosy sleep-corner with comfy cushions and little sleep mats.  Joan has encouraged lots of singing in this room and we can often hear the babies and their care givers singing away.  One baby delighted me by singing a song in English just as her dad popped his head around the door.  He was so delighted and the baby looked so proud of herself!  The toddler room is a different pink and the floor tiles are pale blue.  There is a Care Giver in here who has a bit of artistic flair and she has made a couple of displays.  I shall have to tell her at some point that plainer lettering and upper and lower case characters would be better in terms of the little ones getting to recognize meaning in the writing, but she has tried so hard that I have postponed the negative comment for a few days!  We need more tactile experiences in here.  I shall have to go shopping for trays and containers big enough to hold sand and other messy activities.  This week they have introduced paint to the children and I have dropped in randomly to find story time and music sessions going on.  Diddy has been off sick for a few days and I was worried about leaving the room without a supervisor for too long but I should have had more faith in my students.  They have risen to the occasion magnificently and I was gratified to note that if they were not sure about something they sent me an enquiring message.  I asked Hellen to act as Room Leader for two of the days and at the end she sent me a note saying what she had done and which children she had observed.  To my delight one of them was the very child I had a little concern about myself and had been going to ask someone to watch carefully.  I look forward to finding out what Hellen has seen when I see her next week.  The pre-school room is a hive of activity.  Jennie is well organized and has already got well along in the process of forging her group of Care Givers into a team.  I have been pleased and proud to note as I pop in and out that even when she is out of the room it is mostly well supervised, children are busy and there are a lot of interesting activities going on.  It was however in this room that we had to talk to a Care Giver about going to sleep on duty!  Jennie has a lovely ‘birthday display’ of two children holding balloons with the months of the year in Chichewa and English.  The children really had fun drawing round each other and then ‘dressing’ the boy and girl they made with stuck on bits of cloth.

The two remaining students who will eventually be working with 4-5 and 5-6 year-olds are having a tougher time of it really.  David has worked hard to organize work experience in standard 1 at St James’ Primary school so that they can begin their practical tasks and we want to get the ‘Stay and Play’ groups going again but we are hampered by the amount of work that still needs to be done on the downstairs of the building.  We hoped to have it all happening by this coming week, but unfortunately there is no chance.

Most of the students are getting down to planning their assessed work for the practical part of the course.  We have one student who has already achieved seven of the required twenty practical tasks.  He is the front runner at the moment.  Of course it has not gone exactly as I had planned.  I had envisaged that most of the work would be done with children in their own rooms when I was writing the syllabus and as it is we have two rooms of Care Givers with no children, so we have had to be flexible.  I am so grateful to the Room Leaders for being adaptable and accommodating extra students even though they are over staffed to begin with.  I thoroughly approve Jennie’s recent insistence that Care Givers from other rooms who wish to do activities with her children must first come into the room and spend some time observing them.  I was a bit distressed to hear that David had been told he is perceived to be a harder marker than I am.  We have only had time to have a very cursory look at this issue, but the spread of marks we have awarded is very similar so I am hoping that it is an unfounded fear.  We have already built in a process designed to deal with any such bias as half way through the assessment period we swap groups so that he will begin to mentor the students that up to now he has been assessing and vice versa.  We reviewed the situation of the fifteen or so students who were employed on four week probationary contracts last week.  Three have not been attending, one was caught stealing and for one we had serious reservations about her attitude and ability to be a positive team member, so we are down to ten or so.  I am sad about some of the losses but have thought very carefully about it all and feel confident that we have made the right decisions.  Two of the ones who remain have made good progress and are now on the usual 3-month probationary contracts like the main group.  The rest, who are struggling a bit more academically, or who have not had the chance to show us  through successful practical tasks that their work with children is of a sufficiently high standard, have got a second 4-week contract.

My major concern is the quality of care in all the rooms.  Going in to assess individual students means that I get plenty of opportunity to sit in the corner of the room and watch what is going on.  I have made a small step towards getting a decent supervision and appraisal system going, beginning by arranging supervisions for the Room Leaders themselves.  It is my aim that each Care Giver will have a private meeting with their Room Leader by Easter.  Eventually this should be 6 times a year but ‘pangono, pangono’!  At the moment the mentoring sessions that are part of the training process fulfill some of the same objectives so one meeting each by Easter is sufficient unless there are quite serious problems.  I have a number of tasks to do, centred around getting the cleaning procedures right for the children and appropriate for Malawi, but I am working with Mary Kamwendo on this and I have every confidence that we shall get there in the end.  There have been practical domestic problems too around getting meals delivered to the children on time and according to the menu, but these also are steadily being dealt with.

David has transformed the marketing campaign and this week we have had a couple ore signings up of fee-paying children.  He and Edna are to be on Joy Radio on Monday morning and David and I are to visit Radio One, Malawi on Monday to discuss a feature programme, which is quite exciting!

Recommendations of children for subsidized places continue to come in.  We are to have another meeting of the allocations committee quite soon.  The next intake of children of Beehive workers will be after the Easter break.  We really do have a Children’s Centre, with real children in it!!

In terms of my social life, I have had a delightful, 5-day visit from Jack and Becky, including an overnight stay at Mukupula Lodge at Magete, complete with game drives, delicious meals, river views, sunken baths and plenty of luxury.  We can thoroughly recommend it!  There have been parties and evenings in the Liquor Garden.  It has been lovely to have George here for a couple of weeks and later to welcome Zoe back for another stint as Manager of Torrent Computer Rentals.  Mitsidi is pretty full.  For me it has been lovely to have more women here and Jennie, Joan and I have had a few evenings down at the main house talking, watching films and reviving the Mitsidi baking club!  I have been sick since Jack and Becky left, first with a nasty tummy bug, and secondly with an infected tooth which required a trip to a Malawian dentist.  I should have blogged about this in more detail, it was quite an experience, but perhaps as I have to go back the week after next I should do it then!  We have been walking at Michiru Nature Sanctuary again which, as ever, has been a delight.  Life continues to be full!