Wednesday, Thursday and Friday seem to have run into each other rather. I cannot really remember exactly what I did on each day but I have been working on the following projects: 1. Working with the ECD trainer to finalise the ECD Diploma course and get it accredited. This a bit tricky because she will tell me when she is free and then either change her mind and cancel when I have spent time preparing my half of the job, or just go off and do something else so that I turn up and she’s not there. The one meeting we have managed to have was pretty productive though so at least I still have hope! 2. Tackle the horrors of the storage and care of resources. Finally on Friday I managed to get the Practice Leader into the resources cupboard and start the process of sorting the toys and other resources into those we want and those we don’t, those we can sell, those that need cleaning or mending, (an awful lot), and a heap of absolute rubbish. We did about a quarter of the contents of the room I should think but it was hard work. At lunchtime I was glad that I had promised to work elsewhere in the afternoon because I was reminded of the American railway song we used to sing on car journeys when I was a child, ‘In eighteen-hundred and ninety-four my back was bent and my hands were sore, My back was bent and my hands were sore, through working on the railway!’ For ‘railway’ please read ‘resource room’!! 3. Spent a bit more time in the Eagles Room observing practice because they did not get a full day because I was sick. Unfortunately I was called away to deal with stage no. 948 in the saga of trying to get the broken window replaced in the baby room. 4. Tried to get the broken window in the baby room replaced. Apparently there are a number of broken windows in the CC but the baby room one is a high priority in anyone’s opinion. The system appears to be this; you see a broken window, you report it to senior staff. The manager sends a request to the guy who is in charge of maintenance in all the Mary Queen of Peace buildings. He comes to the Children’s Centre and measures up, then he goes into Blantyre and gets three quotes for each item he needs. The quotes come back to the person who requested the repair. They agree which is the best one to go for. The person who requested the repair then scans the estimate and sends it to finance, copying it to the wonderful lady in admin, the head of Mary Queen of Peace and at least one person in Finance. According to my staff in the CC, the most usual outcome is that the response comes back that there is no money. By the time there is money the quotations are out of date , inflation is rampant here. So the poor old head of maintenance has to go into Blantyre again and get more quotes. No wonder the CC staff get dispirited and give up. Hence, ten broken windows in the CC. But the one in the baby room, just at baby height, I, who have been brought up on UK Nursery Health and Safety guidelines, cannot allow to remain any longer in the state it is in because I come from a world where if I see a hazard and do nothing about it, it is my responsibility if a baby gets hurt. So I have had a series of wobblies of increasing degree of intensity, and we have bypassed finance, created a complex arrangement of loans between departments, and sent the poor guy to Blantyre for the third time to actually buy the glass and fit it tomorrow, which is a Saturday so it will probably cost me overtime. But I don’t care because there will no longer be a nasty accident waiting to happen in the baby room. And if you thought that was a rant, don’t start me on nappies!!!! 5. Write a CPD presentation on children’s sleep. This was not too bad because I could use all the Sleep East Workshop material and just rebrand it for MTCC. All I have to do now is plough through the Malawian Early Years Curriculum and see if it says anything at all about sleep and if so what? 6. Write a whole presentation on play especially targeted to help the CC staff understand the importance of the free play sessions in their daily timetable and how they can help to foster true free flow play as described by Tina Bruce in her twelve features of free flow play. This one was more of a challenge. Not only did I have to start from first principles, but also i have a clear agenda to raise practice in the rooms, so I have to get it right. I miss David! We used to share ideas about such things and divide the work between us, and this time I have to do it all myself. Not only that but the poor Daycare Manager has been off with malaria all week. We have been working together on a lot of things and I have missed her too. However life is not all frustrating as Vince, Bhavna and I have decided to give ourselves a proper day out tomorrow and we are going to Majete Wild Life Reserve. So don’t be too sorry for me, tomorrow i have a good chance of seeing Zebra and Giraffe in the wild. Hoorah! I say ‘Goodnight’ and am off to get my binoculars out of my lock box.

Tuesday evening. On Sunday I spent most of the day working. I had arranged a meeting with the Centre Manager and Practice Leader on Monday so that I could report back to them what I had seen in the rooms on my four day-long visits and what i thought were the training issues I had noticed. Therefore I had to get my notes in order so that I could sound at least partly on top of the problems in the rooms. Actually I went to the most needy room first and was rather concerned after the first day, but as you have probably picked up as I moved up the school the organisation and play opportunities got better and better so by the end of the visits I was a lot more optimistic. Anyway I have come up with five lists of action points, one for each room and a longer list of issues that require a bit more action and support across the whole centre. Some things we will approach via formal training sessions like last week’s challenging behaviour, and others through supporting Room Leaders and Care Givers to make changes to their practice in the rooms to provide more learning opportunities and child-initiated activities. There is, I fear, a huge issue about resource management which I have to tackle with the Practice Manager as it is her responsibility to distribute the resources we have, and there are more of those than I feared on the day I wrote about being in the baby room. Anyway I had spent about 6 hours making these lists and was just writing the last few lines when the phone rang and it was the Centre Manager reporting that she has Malaria. She sounded dreadful, poor lady and I was quite worried about her, but she has been to the hospital and now she is beginning to feel better , thank goodness. She is an extremely hard worker. I do hope she doesn’t come back until she has made a full recovery. My Monday therefore had to be rearranged as I did not want to give out my lists until I have discussed them with her. Actually the Practice Manager and I spent the whole afternoon in a series of cupboards and containers! We were just about to start this process at about 8.30am when the receptionist came to the Practice Manager and said that there were 6-8 teachers and 60 children in the reception area and that they had come to spend the morning in the daycare classes. Neither the Practice Manager nor I had heard anything about this visit. It must have been arranged by the Centre Manager whose fevered state must have caused her to forget to ask anyone to cover for her. The Practice Manager stepped into the breach magnificently and took the whole group into the garden and divided them into four groups of 15 children and a couple of adults, gave them a little talk about expected behaviour, toilets etc and sent them off, one group to each room. She wanted to make a video record of the visit but the person who has the camera was not to be found so I leant her my phone and off she went. This piqued my curiosity so I followed her and was pleased and proud to see how well each room had adapted to receiving 15 more children with no notice. Also I was pleased to note that my comments to the Room Leaders on my day visits had not gone unnoticed and the quality of activities across the centre was better than it had been on the visit days. Everyone was very keen to learn and no-one had taken offence at the changes I had suggested verbally. By the time they get my lists each room will already have addressed at least one or two of the issues. This visiting school is all charitable, run by Chinese people and takes only orphans.   Many of the children seemed to integrate well with our children and there was a lot of nice play going on but a few of the children seemed very quiet and withdrawn which was rather worrying. Their Care Givers were all Malawian and I was able to ask them a few questions about the school and how it worked. Their Chinese leader’s English was only a little better than my non-existent Mandarin but she introduced me to one of the Malawian staff and I was able to ask a few questions. The children only get to visit their families once a year for the summer holidays, they are taught Chinese and brought up as Buddhists, and fed a vegetarian diet, which is not very Malawian.  One of their staff did an ECD Cert at our John Paul II college and had a placement at Mother Teresa. This was the link that had made them visit.I was able to ask him why they had chosen to come and he said that he had suggested they come to get more ideas about what to do with the children, especially the younger ones. I don’t know if the Centre Manager has arranged a return visit but I think it would be a good idea, not for the children but for a few staff. Back to resources and storage. There are toys and resources all over the place. A very crowded resource room, a container at Mitsidi, another container of things waiting to be mended at the construction site where the carpenters are based, some decking for repairing a wooden structure at the CC in a lean-to shed, and apparently a large basement full of stuff as well, which I haven’t seen yet. The stuff we have falls into three categories: fit to use, broken but mendable, fit only for throwing away. Oh no, four categories there is also perfectly good but not suitable. There is so much stuff waiting to be mended! There are clearly issues with getting access to the right person to do each job and of course there are financial implications as well. This will take a lot of working out I am sure! The other element to this muddle is that there is nothing remotely related to our wonderful weekly refuse collection and I’m not sure about the ability to take stuff to a local dump or recycling centre, but somehow I doubt it. There is a weekly collection of some kind from the CC but I haven’t yet discovered what exactly they will take or not take, or indeed whether you have to pay for it. I bet you do. My feeling is that the rubbish problem is not quite so bad as it was 12 years ago, but that does not mean that there is not a rubbish problem. The river that runs by the market in Blantyre is a sight to behold, full of plastic and all sorts. It doesn’t seem to smell as bad as it used to, but maybe that is because the weather continues to be cool. Anyway our lovely admin lady, don’t know what her job title is but it is much more important than that sounds, tells me the way to get rid of things is have a sale, price everything at under k1000 and watch the staff take it all away to try and mend it for their own use. We can’t sell anything without her casting her eye over it first. So that is what we are going to do. Watch this space! Today I have had a bit of a different day. I took the morning off and met Mary, a friend from last time I was here, for coffee in a great cafe in Blantyre and we sat for 2 hours catching up and reminiscing. She is wonderfully extrovert and Irish and burst into the cafe in a striking zebra print trouser suit and enveloped me in an enormous hug. She used to run three Montessori nursery schools and was able to help me by recommending someone who can do a bit of introductory Montessori training for CC staff. Apparently she knows just the person. I hoped she might. She has invited me to go and stay with her and her new husband on his tobacco farm about an hour up the Zomba road. I think that will be fun. This afternoon I had a meeting planned with the ECD trainer to discuss curriculum content and accreditation, but sadly I arrived to find that she was in Zomba. Later I messaged her and she was contrite. Something came up and she forgot me! However this gave me an unexpected free afternoon and I managed to do all sorts of fiddly tasks that I had been putting off. I arranged for certificates to be made for the CPD trainings we are doing. I wrote a paper to prepare for a meeting to discuss exactly what is going into the CPD training programme for the next year. I got contact details for a person at the Catholic University of Malawi to try and arrange a visit for me, the Centre Manager and the ECD trainer, and I said to Father Felix, who is head of the whole Mary Queen of Peace complex that I would like also to visit Chancellor College in Zomba where they are already running ECD degree courses, and he said he’d like to do that too and he’d fix it up for us, so that was a result. Since then I’ve had a cosmopolitan tea consisting of pizza, roast potatoes, guacamole, tomato and mozzarella salad and potato salad. How’s that for a combination! Also I’ve written this screed! Hope you enjoy it.

Saturday is shopping day

Friday was not the best day I have had because I really didn’t feel great. I think it is a combination of tiredness and Malawi belly. My diet is quite different from what I eat at home, generally probably much healthier but perhaps my body is taking a while to get used to it. I spent the morning in the Eagles room, for 4-6 year olds and the only one led by someone I trained twelve years ago. I was pleased and proud to find not only how organised he is but also that he has remembered much of what David and I taught about play.This room is crowded. It is a big room but there are 62 children in the class with 7 Care Givers and the Room Leader. There is a covered terrace along the back of the building. The routine was the same as in the other rooms but interpreted a bit more flexibly. The free play times had a greater emphasis here, each area was carefully laid out to encourage child initiated play and the Care Givers were present in the area to observe and support and were much less likely to lead play than in the other rooms and I didn’t hear nearly as much cross questioning of the children about tick box learning targets such as colours and numbers. I wanted to stay for the afternoon but my tummy would not allow it , so I went home and slept for an hour, did a bit of desultory work, had some tea and went to bed early. Alas not to sleep, probably due to the after lunch nap. My greatest comfort in the chilly evenings is my hot water bottle. I don’t remember ever feeling this cold when I was here before. When the sun shines the days are warm enough for a dress and a cardigan, but as soon as the sun drops below the horizon the temperature plummets and on the cool, tiled floors my feet become like ice-blocks. Today has been a day off. We have few domestic tasks but we do have to wash our own underwear and I have not trusted my two wool jumpers to anyone else incase they should wash them too hot and shrink them, so I pottered about vaguely tidying my room and doing the washing after an interesting breakfast of chapatis flavoured with fresh fenugreek with sweet mango chutney, prepared by Bhavna. We ventured into Blantyre much earlier in the day this weekend. Again we had a list things for the house and other bits of Beehive so our first purchase was a circular saw, two more basic handsaws and four wheels, two with brakes to screw to the laundry trolley/ironing board that is supposed to be movable from place to place. This shop was run by an Indian businessman who claimed that he recognised me from twelve years ago, but I can’t have been in the shop more than a couple of times in two years, so I have my doubts. Anyway he plied us with bottles of water and a bowl of chopped fresh coconut while we waited and promised to take Bhavna out to lunch next time. He generously said I could come too. We went to a supermarket and then got on with the real business of the day and drove to Limbe to buy fabric. I got a nice piece of heavy blue cotton to make a cloth for my kitchen table, a couple of zitenge with zebras on and one with African women with baskets on their heads to make dresses and shirts for my grandchildren and a beautiful piece of cotton in various shades of blue with bright orange splodges to get a dress made for myself. Limbe runs into Blantyre but it feels like a much bigger and busier place. There is a huge market some of which is covered. It’s like being inside a series of small concrete boxes piled on top of one another with concrete stairways connecting the layers. The little box-shops are lit, but the corridors are not so it’s a bit gloomy but brightened by lurid dresses and fabrics hung on the balustrades. I wouldn’t dare go in on my own, but Bhavna is intrepid and it seems to be infectious. I was delighted with my purchases. We had a few moments of doubt when we thought we might never find the car again but then Bhavna spotted to top of the mosque through the other buildings and orientated herself and we found it. The streets were wall to wall with cars, motorbikes, pick-ups and trucks and progress was very slow but we made our way back to Blantyre for a second attempt at the fruit and veg market, this time in daylight, thank goodness. Unfortunately we had used up all our shopping bags on other things so we were reliant upon the flimsy plastic bags of the market which we try not to use. Bhava bargained away and we were soon staggering under about four bags each. The quality of the fruit and veg is generally very good. We bought scarlet tomatoes, peppers red, yellow and green, purple aubergines, papaya, tiny bananas, coriander, lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, satsumas and i don’t know what else. We certainly shouldn’t have too much trouble reaching our thirty plants a week, this week! Then Bhavna bought a laundry basket for the one bedroom at Mitsidi that doesn’t have one, and we put all the fruit and veg in it and acquired a charming young stall holder who obligingly carried it to the car for us. Being an Azungu Madam has it’s advantages! And so home again to Mitsidi and my turn to cook. I made an Indian moong bean soup I have been making since I lived in Salisbury in about 1978, which went down well, and some bread rolls from the last of the bread flour in the kitchen. Replacing that will have to wait until next Saturday. We wound up the meal with papaya coated with the insides of about 3 passion fruit. A delicious combination. I must remember it. And so to bed with the laptop balanced on my knees and my feet on the trusty hot water bottle.

First CPD Training Day Completed

Yesterday was Managing Challenging Behaviour Training Day. I put together a training that was designed to help Care Givers to understand that children’s behaviour that challenges is best considered as a form of communication and if we are to understand where it comes from, and what we should do to help the children to find a better way to behave, it helps to think about what they are trying to communicate. Also we looked at how behaviour escalates and what are the best times in the development of the behaviour to intervene when children are not too distressed, and therefore able to learn from the experience. I shamelessly cribbed some of the slides from a presentation I used to use when I was working for a children’s charity in the UK and added some from my own experience, and some from my observations of what is happening at Mother Teresa. Anyway we had some fun and a few laughs on the way and the people who I have bumped into and asked about it since seem to have enjoyed it and learned something. The trouble is that Malawians tend to be so polite that I am never really sure if they mean what they say! For me the day was extremely tiring. I was on my feet and talking for 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon and I had to think as well to come up with appropriate examples and answer questions thoughtfully. By the time I got home, in a vehicle full of children from the Secondary School who live further away than most of the others, via Ntukwa and Sigregge, I was absolutely shattered. I did nothing but eat my tea and fall into bed and was probably asleep by eight o’clock! I woke this morning feeling much better and today I have spent the day in Guinea Fowl room with children aged 3-4 years. The Room Leader here is very organised and I felt that the children in the room were more settled because of this. The routine was similar to that in Doves and Ducks, where I have been before. I think this is largely dictated by the arrival of breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack. In between were fitted Circle time, Key group time, various Free Flow Play sessions which offered less freedom and less flow than I would like but did allow for some child initiated play, and two outdoor play sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Resources were limited but not nearly as limited as in the Doves and were well looked after and stored in labelled boxes on labelled shelves. Hoorah! Well done the Room Leader. Staff duties were clearly distributed through rotas which were clearly working. There was a rota also for Care Givers to have time to work on their Learning Journeys but I got the feeling these were not working quite so well. However during free play staff were usually in the areas they were supposed to be and were engaged with the children, and clearly enjoying their company. Tick lists of milestones achieved are updated every three months. I need to find out how much the adult-led activities are based simply on the curriculum and how much on the children’s emerging skills, but the care Givers made an effort to make them fun and engage all the children despite larger group sizes than I am accustomed to. Currently blogging in the garden with a packet of biscuits, (strangely they are sweet but potato flavoured; not bad though!) and a cup of mint tea.

Preparation for the "Managing Challenging Behaviour' Training

Finally the weather has remembered it is supposed to be warm in Africa and the sky has been a clear blue all day. It was cold when I woke up so I put on a long-sleeved dress and tights but by about 9.00am it was about 20 degrees and now at half past three it is 27 degrees outside. However it is cool in the house and the views of the mountains were beautiful on the way home. I had to leave the CC a bit early as two drivers were off today and so I ended up with a whole bus to myself, leaving in time for the driver to get back to drive the children who live a long distance away, to their home villages. Tomorrow I have to deliver the first full training day since I arrived. I have spent the day getting handouts together and making sure I have the right leads to connect my laptop to the screen. I'm still not convinced but the IT guy seems to think it will be fine. Since we start at 8.00am I have to be there at 7.30 to set up. I hope it will be long enough. I have to deliver the same training twice to two groups of CC staff so it happens all over again at 1.30-4.00pm. I am a bit nervous about it all, so fingers crossed it goes well. Raising the standard of practice in the Children's Centre is going to be quite a tricky job and I do not have a lot of time to do it. I think the best way to do it is to work with the CC Manager and the Practice Leader so that they can confidently continue the job after I have gone home. The garden here is quite large and there are a number of quite big trees providing good shade. There used to be a pool where Tony once tried to farm fish for the volunteers to eat but it never really worked out, so now it is drained and Charles the Cook/Housekeeper/Handyman/Gardener is growing vegetables at the bottom of a pit where the pond used to be. There are many fruit trees, bananas, guavas, passion fruit, lemons and papayas. Bhavna grows flowers both in pots on the khonde and in the garden so it is very nice to sit out there. Yesterday there were quite a few children about as it was a public holiday so there were pleasant sounds of children playing, and also a troupe of vervet monkeys paid us a visit. It was fun to watch them swinging through the trees. No sign of them yet today!

Looking Back on the Last Week

Already it feels like I have been here a long time. I have met a surprising number of people who remember me despite the fact that of the 70 students I trained only 5 are still working in the CC. One is Daycare Manager, one is Practice Leader, one is SENCO in the Outreach Team, one is Room Leader in the Eagles, and the other is a Senior Care Giver. Many of the others are still working with children and are spread across Malawi. Around Beehive there are many more people who were working here twelve years ago and are still here. This includes a few people from tailoring,and notably the cleaners from the CC, a few of whom worked at Mitsidi when I was here before. These last have welcomed me with open arms quite literally. On Tuesday one of them was wearing a dress I gave her before I came home. I think she wore it just to show me that she still had it. It was in beautiful condition and she said that she loves it. As far as work is concerned the key people for me are the Director of the entire Educational side of Beehive, the daycare manager, the manager of the Outreach Team, the ECD Trainer who is part of John Paul 11 College, the Practice Leader in the CC and the Registrar of the College who is chairing the committee looking in to accreditation of the ECD courses. I have already had at least brief meetings with all of these but there still is so much I need to know, so I will have to schedule more once I have worked out exactly what I need to ask. I spent the last two days of the week in the two younger rooms of the CC and will spend next Thursday and Friday in the 3-4s and 4-6s. These observation days are to inform my assessment of the training needs of the CC. The rest of this week will be taken up with the preparation and delivery of a training about the management of challenging behaviour for the first session of the CPD programme we are putting together for the whole CC. Fortunately this is a subject i have taught before so I am not starting preparation from the beginning! I actually completed planning and writing the presentation this morning, which leaves tomorrow for ironing out any IT presentation problems and getting my handouts printed ready for presenting to two groups of CC staff morning and afternoon on Wednesday. How did I decide what subject to start with, I hear you ask? Well, a few weeks ago at home I devised a questionnaire for all CC staff about what training they would be interested in. I intended to distribute this when I arrived but I told the Daycare manager about it and she was keen to distribute and collect it in so that I would have the results on my arrival and she was as good as her word. I spent a long afternoon and evening last week putting all the information on a spreadsheet and analysing what the staff think they need. I came up with a list of the subjects that were mentioned the most. This list is of course not necessarily the same as the list of what Senior Managers feel that their staff need and it is undoubtedly true that our schedule of CPD for the next year or so will end up including some of each. Of the potential CPD short courses offered the top scoring 9 were: 1. Positive Management of Challenging Behaviour 28 Expressions of interest 2. Long, Medium and Short Term Planning for Children’s Learning 25 3. Creativity 24 4. Getting What you Need Out of Interviews and Meetings 22 5. Building Self-Confidence in Young Children. 22 6. Working with Children with Special Needs 20 7. Making Mathematical and Numerical Learning fun 18 8. Learning through Storytime 15 9. Children’s Sleep 14 On Sunday I spent the day with the ECD Diploma class at JP11. This was a delight. I was happy to see both the ECD trainer and the Daycare Manager teach, with very different styles, and the students joined in with songs and games with enthusiasm and hilarity. I was given five minutes notice that I had 20 minutes to introduce myself to the students which was a little alarming without any prep time, but it went off quite well. We played 'I sit in the grass with my friend' as an attempt for me to learn and remember some of their names. Competing for the empty chair with enthusiasm led to a couple of prople ending up on the floor, although noone was hurt, but this proved to be a useful example for the afternoon, when we were considering Health and Safety and Risk Assessment! The morning session was a series of student presentations of ECD theorists which were of varying quality and entertainment value! Enough of work, what about about fun and relaxation? It gets light here about 5.30am and dark soon after 6.00pm. Our working day starts at 7.30am and ends at 4.30pm. There is not much daylight left at the end of the day for getting out and about. I set my alarm for 6.00am and there is time for a shower and a leisurely breakfast before setting out for the CC. Being in the classrooms with the children can be enormous fun and watching the children and Care Givers dance and sing is always a delight. Once back again in the evening there is usually an hour or so to review and sometimes write up the day's work before I have forgotten important details. Supper is at 6.30pm. By the time we have eaten, lingered over the dinner table reviewing the day and putting the world to rights, and cleared up the kitchen, there is not a lot of time for anything else if we are to be properly rested before rising at 6.00am next day. Nonetheless I have been out for two meals since I have been here, one with Bhavna the first weekend, to Veg Delight an Indian, vegetarian cafe where we enjoyed dhosa, pani puri and chai. David and I used to run away here occasionally and do our lecture prep over a large pot of Mzuzu coffee, and finish the visit with dhosa for lunch, so this was a pleasant trip down memory lane. This Saturday night we went to Hosteria and had pasta and icecream, and a couple of Greens, to the accompaniment of an excellent band. We had a quiet morning on Saturday doing domestic tasks and enjoying the garden at Mitsidi. I have particularly enjoyed the vervet monkeys who sit on the backs of the chairs on the khonde as if they owned the place! There was a kingfisher in a tree a little while ago while I have been writing this. After lunch Bhavna and I went on a massive shopping trip. It has been cold recently and she has been here for sometime and has no warm clothes, so we went to PEP (second-hand shop) to buy her a winter wardrobe. We went to various chinese hardware shops in the search for bins, towels and other odd items for Mitsidi; to Shoprite for cheese, and another supermarket whose name I forget for other groceries that were cheaper there, and then on to the market in the middle of Blantyre for fruit and vegetables. We arrived at dusk with quite a long shopping list and made our way into the tightly packed lanes of stalls with almost every fruit and vegetable you can think of laid out for us to choose from, some on mats on the ground and some on makeshift counters. It turned into quite an adventure as the light fell very quickly and we had to resort to using the torch on Bhavna's phone to light the way so that we did not fall over on the rough ground. Everyone was very friendly and keen to make a last end-of-the-day sale, although Bhava does drive a hard bargain! We made it safely out and back to the car with our loot and set off back to Chilomoni and Mitsidi. We just about had time to unpack everything before it was time to leave again for Hosteria and the pasta with prawns and creamy tomato sauce. Today is a public holiday for the funeral of the Vice President. After completing my presentation prep I went for a walk to Sigregge with Vince. This is the next village down the road past Mitsidi but since I was here last they seem to have run into each other. There is an extensive street market here also, fruit and veg, fish, fabrics, clothes and so on. We came back over a back way, away from the tarmacked road where we were waved at and greeted in the usual way, everyone friendly and cheerful. We were approached by only one person asking for money and one guy who invited us back to his house but we politely declined. We might have accepted if he hadn't so obviously been drinking! Home for lunch and an afternoon on the khonde writing this. So there we are. I have at last caught up with my blog. Hoorah!

First week

I arrived in Malawi on Saturday at lunchtime. Already it seems a long time ago. There are a lot of things to do and a a lot of changes to get used to. The journey was long but uneventful. It started with a farewell at Norwich bus station where Keith dropped me off with my two heavy suitcases (one was entirely occupied by books and teaching materials). Once my bags were stowed and we had had a last goodbye hug I got on the bus. When I looked around he had disappeared! Eventually I spotted him in his dark red trousers leaning on a traffic light post and peering at the tinted windows of the bus. I was tucked in behind the driver and he couldn’t see me but I was waving madly. ‘Is that your fella?’ said an African voice? We got into conversation which lasted all the way up the Newmarket Road. He was very interested to find I was bound for Malawi and wanted to know all about the project and why I was going. The journey to Heathrow took over 5 hours and stopped to pick up passengers at many points on the way. Anyway , eventually I arrived and still in plenty of time to catch the plane. I was disappointed that on neither plane did i have a window seat so I was able to see very little, so no watching the sun rise or set, and no wonderful views of the Sahara or Kilimanjaro! My goodness! How Addis Ababa Airport has changed! I remember it as very small with only one terminal. We arrived at Terminal 2 and it took me about ten minutes to walk to the right departure gate. The Blantyre plane was a 737 which seemed very small in comparison to the other. I didn’t get a lot of sleep on either. At Blantyre I filled in a health declaration amongst a gaggle of visitors yawning and borrowing pens off each other, got my passport stamped and was allowed through. I found my luggage easily, fought off a gaggle of people jostling to push my trolley and emerged into rather watery sunshine. Bhavna was waiting outside to greet me and we were into the car and off towards Chilomoni. We stopped to buy plants for the garden on the way and I was reminded that I will need to brush up my bargaining skills! I spent the rest of the day settling in to Mitsidi again. It has changed a lot but it is still a fine old house with a garden with many trees including lemon, guava and avocado. 7 days later. How time flies! What a busy week I have had! I have had no time to blog if I wanted to keep up to date with notes and reports concerning what I have been up to. Eight weeks is such a short time to get everything done, or even everything started I fear! I am supposed to: Conduct a Training needs assessment for the Children’s Centre. Discuss with senior staff how these needs might be met. Support them to make short, medium and long term plans to meet those needs. Review the curriculum for the Diploma in ECD being taught at John Paul II College in Chilomoni. Make sure all requirements of the Malawian curriculum are met. Fortunately I think the ECD Lecturer, who has a strong background in Community Development, which I lack, has already done this. Include all those aspects of the UK curriculum which encourage creativity, open mindedness, curiosity, persistence, encouragement to question and to explore. Get the curriculum accredited with an appropriate body so that the qualification will be recognised throughout Malawi. This also is in progress. There is an existing committee to explore this, and they have already decided to go for accreditation with The Catholic University of Malawi. Apparently they have been given a list of things to do and criteria that must be met. I was promised to be sent this by email but as yet nothing! This will be a week ago tomorrow. I must chase it up. I have had several meetings, met many people and spent two fascinating days on the floor of the Children’s Centre (CC) one in the baby room, Doves, and one in the Toddlers (Ducks). Mother Teresa Daycare is an excellent nursery by Malawian standards and is gaining good reputation , not only in Chilomoni, but also across Blantyre. Parents are very keen for their little ones to come to a centre which has such high staff ratios and where they hope their babies will learn English very quickly. When I talk to staff about the help and training they need there is usually an instant response that they do not have sufficient resources. In the baby room this was immediately apparent. When I arrived children were at Free Play while other children were still arriving. At the puzzle table there was not one complete puzzle. There were base boards and there were pieces, but very few seemed to fit together. Care Givers were chatting positively to the children, one followed a child’s interest in a monkey piece and started a monkey song to the child’s delight. Further exploration showed that no construction toy had more than about a dozen pieces, there were a few battered vehicles, the home corner had dolls but few clothes and not many kitchen bits and pieces. ‘Oh dear, what is going on here?’ I thought. The next day I went to Ducks, for 2-3 year olds. In this room there were more toys and they were better stored, on the whole like was stored with like and there were a lot of pieces in most sets. A conversation with the Centre Manager revealed that when new resources arrive, or are purchased, they are distributed evenly between all the rooms. Why therefore are there such big differences between the two rooms now? I wonder what I shall find in Guinea Fowl and Eagles Rooms next week? Do babies break more toys than Toddlers? Not likely, but possible. Is one less likely to lose pieces of sets and puzzles if Care Givers are encouraged to put them away like with like. Probably. Is there something else going on? Do we need to make an appeal for more good quality resources? Maybe, but over the years many have been sent. Where are they? Who is in charge of resources across the whole Centre? The Practice Leader. What does she think about all this. I shall have to find answers to all of these questions and more?

Take 2 Return to Malawi after twelve years

Well, that was a surprise! Five or six months ago I had an unexpected phone call from Krizevac Head Office in Longton asking if I would be interested in returning to Malawi to help with review, updating, rewriting and accreditation of the ECD Diploma course for Care Givers working at Mother Teresa Children’s Centre in Chilomoni, Blantyre. It is now almost exactly twelve years since I returned from 20 months in Chilomoni researching, writing and delivering the first version of that course alongside my colleague David Meechan who is now Senior Lecturer in the Education Department at University of Northampton, married and father of two. How things change! Well done David! As for me I have filled the intervening years with working with children, in nurseries, as a nanny and most notably as a Sleep Counsellor with Sleep East, a CIC based in Norfolk, offering sleep counselling and support to families with children who struggle to sleep well. I did this with the lovely Joy Bishop who has become a very important friend, colleague and co-walker in the Norfolk countryside. We retired and closed the CIC at the end of 2022 and since then I have been enjoying a largely leisured life with my partner; keeping in close touch with my children in London, Bristol and Paris; adoring my grandchildren and visiting them whenever I can; doing a bit of gardening, drawing, making things and painting (not very well!); and getting a little older every year!! The project described to me six months ago has grown and evolved a bit in the intervening weeks. Now I am going to conduct an assessment of training needs for Mother Teresa Children’s Centre including training for new staff, continuous professional development for existing staff and anything else that may emerge. While I am there I will deliver a few CPD training sessions myself. I will support local staff in seeking accreditation of the Beehive ECD Diploma course by the Government of Malawi so that the qualification will be recognised formally across the country. Put together this is a huge amount of work and I am going for only 8 weeks. I am sure it will pass in a flash! I am looking forward to my return to the warm heart of Africa, to working with the Early Years Trainer at Mary Queen of Peace College and the manager and staff of Mother Teresa children’s Centre, to getting to know the children of Chilomoni again, to seeing more of that beautiful country, and especially to walking or driving home each evening as the sun falls in the sky and watching the surrounding mountains turn gradually from green to blue. So, my blog begins again after a long break. I fly from Heathrow to Blantyre on Friday. Encourage me with your comments. I’ll post again soon.