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!