A pleasure and a privilege

I spent the weekend with Mary in the village where she was brought up. Krizevac has recently changed its induction package for volunteers to include a weekend in a rural village location. Some of us old stagers expressed an interest in doing something similar and Peter is happy to oblige us all, however he will not allow my trip with Mary to count as he says it is too luxurious for a true village experience! Mary is the first born in a family of fourteen children. In Malawi to be the first born is a huge responsibility. Mary was the first in her family to go to Secondary School and she did very well, but unfortunately she was sick during the time of the final exams and was not able to take them all. Her teachers recommended that she return the following year and retake the exams. As it turned out, that year both her parents were sick and it was necessary for her to get a job so that her next three siblings could stay at school. She ended up with a good job in a bank where she stayed for 25 years supporting her brothers and sisters and later her own three children through school and in some cases university education as well. Mary fills a very important position in her family. Her brothers and sisters are aware of and grateful for the sacrifices that she made and she is respected for this.

Mary had arranged with me to be ready at 9.00am to be picked up from Mitsidi, but the best laid plans have a way of going wrong and this is Malawi where time does not have quite the same meaning as it has in the UK, so it was half past ten before the little Beehive pick-up arrived to take me to Mary's home in Chilomoni. Here we paused just long enough to load a mountain of food, beer, coolboxes, boxes of crockery, bags of goodness knows what, the biggest suitcase I have ever seen, my modest rucksack, Mary's younger sister and her small son, me and Mary before we set off for the village. I drove, Caleb sat on Mary's knee in the passenger seat and her sister settled on the sofa cushions wedged in the back between the suitcase, a huge blue bucket and a purple tub which later became my bath tub but during the journey provided a haven for a couple of dozen eggs. There appeared to be enough food to withstand a moderate siege but we stopped on the way for tomatoes and when we arrived we discovered 2 chickens and a pound of pork sausages had been left in the fridge in Chilomoni! We drove along the Zomba road with which I have become quite familiar during the 18 months I have been here, as far as Namadzi and then turned off up a narrow dirt road through a tobacco estate that is apparently owned by Greeks. The road was surprisingly well-maintained, presumably by the estate and I was interested in the crops we passed on the four or five kilometer drive to the village. I saw my first coffee plantation, there was the usual maize and vegetables, the tobacco of course, sweet potatoes and several fields of what looked like rosemary. I asked Mary what it was, but she didn't know, only that her relatives said that it smelled nice. We took several turns and the road got narrower and narrower until the plants we touching either side of the car and the grass in the middle of the road was scraping the underneath. We just hoped that there were no significant rocks hiding in the long grass. Eventually when I was beginning to think that we would soon have to get out and walk we turned sharply to the right and within a hundred yards we had arrived. Four or five houses were grouped in an approximate circle in an area with mature mango and avocado trees. All these houses were owned by members of Mary's family although one was rented to a local health surveillance worker and his family and a couple of them were empty. Mary's half brother, his wife and baby son live in Mary's father's old home and this is where we stayed. Across the way is a house where Mary's grandparents lived when she was a child but it is now occupied by her mother's younger sister who is only a few years older than Mary herself. We climbed out of, or down from, the vehicle and everyone came out to welcome us. I was very grateful to sit down in the shade as the day was very hot and for a bottle of water. We shook every one's hand and were welcomed in traditional fashion. Everyone seemed very interested to meet me and wanted to know how Mary and I had come to know each other. Throughout the whole of the two days people kept coming to the house and popping in just for a few moments to greet Mary and have a look at me. During the whole weekend I did not see another azungu until we got right back into Blantyre.

After a bit of a rest and a lunch of rice, vegetables and beef that Mary had cooked at home and brought with her we set off on a walk to see the primary school where Mary had started her education. She said she wanted me to see it because it was here that she began to learn English and if she had not she would not be able to talk to me today! It was not far, maybe half a kilometer, down a grassy path and over a bridge with a bit of a hole in it. Mary said that she used to drive into the village this way but some time last year the tyre of the car had got stuck in the hole in the bridge and so she now thought it prudent to come the long way round through the tobacco estate to avoid the bridge. I am sure she is right! One of Mary's sisters is the local MP and she apparently is looking in to the possibility of getting the bridge repaired. Just the other side of the bridge the track joins a reasonable looking dirt road and there are a few stalls which Mary described as 'Our local market'. There was a small shop selling a few items and doubling as a cinema, where people were watching a video. I didn't see any cars at all while we were there but there were many bicycles and a lot of people on foot. We turned right and wandered up the hill, past a modern convent and an older church, to the primary school. It is now a secondary a well as a primary and they were in the process of building more class rooms. Mary pointed out the graveyard where her parents are buried and explained to me how important it is that people are returned to the place where they belong to be buried. She expects to be buried there herself when the time comes. On the way back we dropped in to the convent to meet he Carmelite sisters. There are only two sisters and two postulants at the moment, as the convent is very new. We were offered fizzy drinks and lemon biscuits which we ate in a sitting room in which every piece of furniture was covered with a cloth or an antimacassar decorated with an embroidered zebra. The sisters were very welcoming and wanted to know how long I had been in Malawi and what I was doing here. Mary chatted about the church and the altar linen, and no doubt lots of other things I did not understand as most of the conversation was in Chichewa.

When we reached the house again my bath water was heated so I repaired to the concrete cubicle out the back and made my ablutions under the sky. Pumpkin plants were climbing all over the walls of the bathroom and there were many beautiful yellow flowers and a few long pumpkins dangling from the adjacent trees which were also covered by the trailing pumpkins. I negotiated the long drop toilet without mishap! I played with the children for a little while with a few balloons I discovered at the bottom of my hand bag, and then we got out felt pens and paper and drew pictures. I made Caleb a little paper boat just like the ones that my mum used to make for me, and a string of paper dolls for the little daughter of the HSA. Mary's aunt runs a little nursery school and she was fascinated and had a go herself so we made snapping monsters together, but it was too dark to see properly so they were not the greatest success! However she seemed happy and told Mary she had learned a lot!

We were indoors and eating supper by seven o'clock and in bed by eight.

Next morning we got up to find more bath water heated, so we washed and then set off for church. A two-hour Mass before breakfast is outside my usual experience! The church was packed by the end of the service but when we arrived, only a few minutes late, the service was under way. Mary had warned me, 'This priest' she said 'is a little crazy, he starts the service on time even if there are only two people there!' There were a lot more than two, but the church was only about half full. Men sat to the left and women to the right. The children were all sent down to the front apart from the babies who stayed with their mums. People were very orderly about filling up the pews from the front. Everyone was obviously in their best clothes. There were traditional African outfits in bold patterns and in broderie anglaise, there were bright dresses and skirts and blouses from the second hand markets and bridesmaid's dresses in abundance. I was glad I had taken a dress with me! At the end of the service I had to go to the front and be welcomed formally, giving the usual short address about who I was , what I had come to do, how long I had been here and what I thought of Malawi! Because the priest had to go on to do another service in one of the satellite parishes the offertory was postponed to the end of the service to save him some time. I was fascinated. About twenty members of the congregation went to the front with labeled wooden boxes which were firmly padlocked. Mary nudged me, 'When we go to the front stay with me and watch where I throw' she said, so I dutifully put my contribution in the same box that she did. Apparently it is intensely competitive, the individual amount from each box being read out in the service the next week. I never did find out if the boxes represented different areas of the parish, or different families, or what?

We wandered home for breakfast, harvested lots of avocados and then had lunch! After that we had to pack our things and set off for home. I felt delighted and privileged to have been invited to Mary's home. We were certainly welcomed and spoiled, and I was sent home with pumpkins, avocados and maize. The family were very generous. I had a lovely time!

100th entry

Wow!

I've actually reached one hundred entries on this blog! I don't think I ever thought I would write so much when I started it.

Today has been a long and exhausting day. It began when the alarm went off at about ten past five and I shrank down under the sheet and closed my eyes again! I have never been at my best in the mornings and the days start so early here. The CC opens at 6.30am and since I am completely incapable of functioning without a morning shower and a decent breakfast I have to get up at least an hour before I am due at work. Today it was a rush as 'just closing my eyes for five minutes' became twenty five, after which I woke with a start, staggered out of bed and started the day. I managed to make eggy bread and still be in the Land Rover by ten past six! Kirren came with me with peanut butter sandwich in hand. We distributed keys for the Care Givers to unlock their own rooms and I pottered along the corridor going in and out of rooms and seeing what was planned for the day. I like walking along the balcony and pausing to watch what is happening in each room, but this morning I was a bit too early and there were no children yet. Care Givers were sweeping and setting out activities, greeting each other and planning the day. Then it was downstairs for an informal meeting with Kirren, comparing notes about what needed to be done. I typed a notice explaining that David was off sick and rearranging his appointments, and another about the opportunity to apply for two trainee Children's Centre Manager jobs, found a few bits of paper that had gone missing yesterday, had a chat with a student who needed to go to a clinic as she had been diagnosed as having Malaria, and as she is pregnant she needs to get treatment urgently and wanted time off to go to a second clinic as the first did not have the necessary drugs. I accepted a piece of work for assessment from another student. As I had to be in Blantyre by 8.00am for a dental appointment I took the lady with malaria to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital which has a specialist malaria clinic, and then back across town to the dentist at the Seventh Day Adventist private hospital. This trip should have taken about 8 minutes but I got involved with a queue for petrol and couldn't get out of it so it took me about 28! Following the treatment and still numb from the anesthetic it was back across town to drop off something to a colleague who had left it behind. I was about to pick up from the Malaria clinic when I got a call saying the patient had been sent home for bed rest, so I turned round again and set off back to Chilomoni. A quick whizz round the CC to check everything was fine and then it was off to the Senior Management Meeting, and it was still before 10.00am! Then it was back to the Children's Centre and a steady stream of appointments to assess students on their practical tasks for their Diploma. When we planned this David and I worked out we would need to do six practical assessments per day each in order to get all 66 students through the Diploma in five months. We thought this would be tough enough as each takes about an hour to watch the activity, mark the background questions and then give the student some feedback on how it went. Today I did four or five and then a supervision meeting before picking up a pile of draft tasks to check for my mentees over a nice cup of tea on the khonde of my house after walking home to Mitsidi. Just as I put my pen down after an hour of marking, and a bowl of popcorn, Hugh came round to say that there was a crisis in the CC. A child had not been picked up, it was 15 minutes after closing time, the parent was unobtainable and the man on the end of the emergency contact number had never heard of the family! I had managed to leave my phone in the CC and the Room Leaders had been trying to contact me. It was back in the Land Rover and off to the rescue! I managed to find by digging out the child's registration form that the emergency contact no had been wrongly transcribed on to the child's contact card, so we rang the original number only to find that the person the other end was in Lilongwe and also had never heard of the family! In Malawi, addresses are much less specific that we are used to in the UK, probably because there are no postal deliveries. All post goes to Private Bags or PO Boxes. The child's address on the form was 'Behind the Chief's house close to St James' church'. We rang David who was the most likely member of staff to have done a home visit and, hallelujah, he knew roughly where it was. By this time it was pitch dark, so two Room Leaders, a Care Giver, the child and I all piled into the Land Rover, left a message with the guard in case someone arrived for the child, and drove to the church, where we met David. He set off down a narrow dirt road and I drove cautiously after him. The little boy who was about two and a half was thoroughly enjoying himself. He sat on the Care Giver's lap in the car, full of excitement at getting a ride in a galimoto! We came to a stop and David pointed at a gap between two houses and said 'I think it's about 50 yards down there', so David, the Care Giver and the little lad set off into the blackness and the rest of us waited in the car. Apparently the child knew exactly where he was going despite the darkness and they arrived at the house to find that his mother had set off to the CC to fetch him! Poor woman, she had arranged for his big sister to collect him but she had forgotten and gone off to play somewhere, only returning home when it got dark! David left the child with the next door neighbour and then it remained only to give the Care Giver a lift home and the Room Leaders and I could go back to Mitsidi for our, now cold, tea! We got in at 7.30pm. Our plan had been to go to the Wild Life Society talk on the birds of Malawi, but as it started at 7.00 pm and was several miles away we accepted our fate and settled down to enjoy Charles dhal and rice, which was most welcome. Only in Malawi……

Open day

Yesterday was the second Mother Teresa Children's Centre Open Day. I missed the first as it happened when I was at home in the UK for Christmas. The primary purpose was as a marketing event to try to sell fee-paying places, and as such it was not a great success. No one actually signed up on the day but there is one family who may come back and sign on on Monday, so there is still some hope! It is difficult to know whether the Krizevac vision of a mixed Centre with both fee-paying and free places for children in need is going to be successful here. There are so many possible contributory factors that it is hard to sort them out. We have certainly observed that several parents who have come for a look round, like the centre and what we do, but are not prepared for their children to mix with those from township Chilomoni. The dirt road from the centre of Chilomoni into our site is also a problem for the smart cars driven by the middle classes who can afford the full fees. Beehive is working on Blantyre City Council about this and there is now an agreement that it will be tarmacked within the next year, but can we wait that long? I am concerned that the more sponsored places we allocate the more difficult the problem will become, but I don't want a situation where we are not helping children for whom we have funds because we are waiting to recruit an equal number of fee-payers. I suppose the worst case scenario is that we become a centre for sponsored children only, which is certainly not all bad, but it is not the original vision, and I believe that both groups of children will benefit from being educated together in the long run, if we do it right.

On the other hand the opportunity to bring children to the CC to play games and have a good look round was taken up with enthusiasm by the local community. The local peripatetic special needs teacher brought three families with children with quite complex problems to have a good look at the Centre. Much of my time was occupied with them, but I found time to go around with my camera and take lots of pictures too. The theme of the day was 'Teddy Bears Picnic'. About 15 Care Givers volunteered to work on Saturday and run teddy-based activities. We had a tea-party in Jennie's room. There were homemade, laminated, put-the-teddy-together puzzles, a fabulous teddy bears cave with bells and sensory toys hanging from the ceiling and torches to shine in the dark. There was a relay race for the older children to move the bears' honey spoonful by spoonful to a bucket at the other end of the garden! This was another demonstration to me of how much more quickly physical control and coordination seem to develop in African children than in European. Little Sheila, who is 5, astonished me with the speed at which she was able to run while balancing a heap of popcorn in a spoon in her outstretched hand, without spilling any at all. All the classrooms were open to visitors. Lots of our children came with their parents and enjoyed having a good look in all the other classrooms as well as taking pride in showing family members their own classroom. Some of the Care Givers rose to the occasion very well and worked hard on consolidation of good relationships with parents and with other local professionals who work with children. The two Child Protection Officers for Chilomoni were there. We raffled a children's bicycle which went to one of the fee-paying families, a chitenje which was won by Zoe, and a voucher for 10 free books from Bee Books. I'd like some of the poorer families to have won really, my heart was with the son of one of the Care Givers, aged about five, whose mother had bought him a ticket to try and win the bike. Clearly the concept of a raffle was completely beyond him and when he saw the bike going off with the family of a child who was obviously far too young for it he cried as though his little heart would break! On the other hand, I had 25 tickets and I didn't win anything!

It was lovely to see the CC buzzing with colour and energy. Many of our children wore their bright turquoise uniforms with pride even though it was not a school day. There were decorations, bright interesting wall displays of children's work, a good choice of activities to keep the children busy and lots of mums and a few dads, relaxing in the garden. It was definitely worth doing, even if we didn't get any more fee-payers. I'll let you know if we do.

We had arranged with one of the girls who work in the office in JPII and who has a sideline business selling snacks to provide the food, and to our disappointment she never turned up and didn't answer her phone all day. That's the last time she will get any business from the CC.

I was grateful to the volunteers and staff members from other parts of Beehive who came to see what we are up to in the CC. Our weekends are precious free time and it was good of them to give some up to come and support us in what we are doing.

In the afternoon I went to visit a very interesting woman who I met on the visit to the Greek Orthodox church a few weeks ago. She is visiting her daughter who lives in Blantyre but is based in Derbyshire. She is a psychologist and is writing a book on the spirituality of living spaces. I found it all fascinating and we whiled away a very pleasant few hours over tea and homemade-biscuits in her daughter's back garden.

I went straight from there to a pizza-party in David's back garden, and then on to the Mibawa Café, a music club in Blantyre which was excellent, but I was too tired to enjoy it properly and was glad to get home at about 1.30am this morning. Today has been a quiet day. I have shifted an enormous pile of marking, blogged, and been very sedentary. I think tonight should be an early night!

I was amused to note in a student's remarks about the value of an early years centre having a good relationship with its local primary school; 'This will help a lot working together with them to provide a better service for the children using children's centre because in the centre there are high quality qualified care givers which will provide high quality care and education which the children will not find it difficult to start in the primary school, and the teachers will not find difficulties to teach because the children already know everything'. I know we've done a good job, but I didn't know it was that good!

Extract from a letter to George

Extract from a letter to George Furnival at Krizevac

I'm repeating this here rather than writing something new as it tells last week's news pretty thoroughly.

As you can probably imagine we are working very hard to get the Children's Centre off the ground and running properly. There is lots of good news. Firstly our target no. of children for the end of February according to the budget was 30 and although on Feb 29^th we had 29 children we do now have 30! The next step is to bring it up to 48 by the end of March and that will be more of a challenge. We have a Fun Day/Open Day planned for next Saturday and David and Kirren have been untiring in their efforts to spread the word about it. I do hope it all pays off. We are all looking forward to seeing lots of potential fee-paying parents with their children in tow, bringing their dollies and teddies for lots of jolly activities!

It is such a joy to see the children every day and to observe how quickly they are learning things. It is the case all over the centre but probably shows most in the 4-6s room. Children who had never made any attempt to write or recognize any letters were to be seen last week chalking their names on the concrete floor of the balcony! There are some great displays on the walls and much of the work is named by the children themselves, some with clearly recognizable names and others with a clear initial and final letter but a bit less well formed in between. This class has been particularly fascinated by the building site and the children were allowed to go on a visit and sit on the little digger. They were so excited and Jennie has covered a big notice board with their drawings and the comments they made. They have also drawn some great self-portraits and their pictures of some of the staff are a joy to behold!

The 2-4s are the biggest class at the moment and probably also the biggest challenge, but I have been so pleased at the way they have settled in. For the first couple of weeks a few of them were rather unsettled. It made me sad to see their little faces as their mums disappeared down the balcony to go to work. In the UK we would have had a settling in routine with visits of varying length, but here there is little regard for such luxuries, 'They will get used' Is the phrase that pops up all the time, and it is true, eventually they do! I have enjoyed seeing the toddlers get used to working with paint, glue, crayons etc. The first time they painted they had never seen anything like it before, but now, after two months they have gained in confidence and have painted hands, feet, rolled marbles in paint, spread it all over the table, and so on.

The baby room is a lovely place to visit. There are only 5 or 6 children in here at the moment so it has a tranquility that it probably won't keep as the numbers go up. These little people seem to be busy every moment that they are awake. Their theme for the last few weeks has been 'All about me', and they have done such lovely things. They have drawn round each other and have cut-outs of the whole class on the wall. On the window is a display of little painted footprints showing how tall each child is. For Thando's second birthday they had a party for which they made jelly and iced biscuits. They have had such fun in the home corner making meals with dried pasta, and on one memorable morning they had flour, water and shredded pumpkin leaves and immersed themselves in making nsima and vegetables for all the dolls and the Care Givers. What a delight!

David and I are on the move every minute! There is so much to be done. The practical part of the course is more or less on schedule and the students generally seem very keen to get the tasks out of the way. They want those Diplomas after waiting so long. It has been a great help to have Kirren here and we definitely made the right decision to postpone the second cohort until at least September. I have been focusing on the people management and hope I have put a fairly robust supervision and appraisal system in place. We have had our fair share of little misunderstandings and personality clashes to sort out, and there have been a few thefts, and a few people who want to be paid for being there but don't seem to want to do much work, but there have been so many more lovely things happening. The students mostly love having children to practice on. It is a delight to see the confidence of the students growing, and one or two of them are doing excellently. I don't know if you read my last blog entry, but I describe one morning when I went into each playroom one after the other and something lovely was happening in each one. Sometimes we tear our hair out a bit at the frustration of encouraging people who have been through an education system in which putting your head above the parapet is definitely discouraged, to think creatively and originally, but when it happens I either want to hug them, or to cry with pride!

This week we put up a notice inviting applications for 8 full time 'Trainee Room Leader' posts. The requests for application packs have been overwhelming. It would not surprise me if we got an application from every single Care Giver. We are also offering 25 places on a JPII Leadership course. So far we have 38 people signed up so we shall have to select those who show the most leadership promise.

I cannot believe that there are only 5 weeks left until Diddy, Joan and Jennie fly home, all on the same day. We shall miss them so much. I was very pleased that Vince agreed in a recent meeting that we could have two 'Practice Leaders' one for under 4s and one for over 4s in their stead. I have a horrible feeling that it was me that was supposed to let you know so that you could start the recruitment process. I do hope you've heard from another source, but if you haven't then I apologise for the delay and urge you to do your best, as you always do, and get us some good people. The students are doing well but there is no substitute for demonstration of good practice if you want Care Givers to learn to do the job well and we shall miss the Room Leaders a lot. I am really looking forward to handing all the management stuff over to Alison and going back to being a teacher full time. I like the people-based side of things, but am not very good at 'stuff', fortunately David and now Kirren have fewer inhibitions about getting on the phone and sorting things out. I have done my best, and David and Kirren have been amazing, but none of us can keep up this pace of work for ever, and without the Room Leaders….

So tell Alison how thrilled we are that she is coming out so much earlier than we first thought.

Vince has given his permission for the Annotated Malawian ECD Curriculum that David and I have produced to be made available as a free download from the Krizevac website, so Chris has made it into a pdf file for me and it is attached. It would be great if you could sort it out for me. I have already had two requests for it from other NGOs working with children in Malawi. I'll just email it to them.