On the way home

Nearly a whole week since I wrote anything. Mainly it has been a week of goodbye’s. I cannot believe how being in Chilomoni for only eight weeks can have made me feel as though I belong here in the way that it has. At the moment it is about 6.00pm on Friday and I am in the air somewhere over central Africa on the way home. We stopped at Beira for about an hour and are due at Addis Ababa shortly before 9.00pm. Then it’s a four hour wait for the connection to Heathrow. We had a meal at 4.00pm and now all the lights have been dimmed and windows covered. We are expected to be asleep, but it’s 5.45pm. I don’t understand aircraft routines! Last Sunday we had a visit to Game Haven, a lodge attached to a small game park, as a final trip out of Blantyre for me. We had a fairly ordinary meal at an outdoor table in the shade of a khonde. The place was packed with well-to-do Malawians enjoying the first weekend of the school holidays with a Sunday dinner, a few drinks, a swim in the pool and, for a few, a trip round the Game Park. The game trips were more of a tourist thing. We planned to drive ourselves around the park but unfortunately discovered we had a puncture and so were told our car was not in a fit condition. It proved to be just as well that we transferred to a safari truck as the track was nearly as steep, rough and stony as last week’s Zomba plateau roads and the car probably wouldn’t have made it even without the puncture. Our vehicle had me and Bhavna, our 3 engineers, a large German family, a couple of Americans and a few others. I was delighted to be ordered to the front seat by the driver. I was fairly obviously the oldest person present and therefore was offered the best view. We saw many zebra, wildebeest, eland, impala, a single giraffe, weaver bird’s nests but no weaver birds, heron, an unidentified bird of prey and a mongoose. On our return the boys changed the wheel and we returned to Blantyre getting back just before dark. Monday was a day of tidying up odds and ends, I wrote a list of games for my last training event on Wednesday, I put together a list of Action Points for the Practice Leader which needed a bit of careful planning as basically she needs to completely change the priorities she gives to the different parts of her job. Basically I wanted to kick start her into actually leading practice by appearing in the rooms about ten times as often as she has done up to now. I had a long conversation with the Daycare Manager and fixed to have another one with the Outreach Manager on Wednesday. I dropped in on the Director of the whole of Mary Queen of Peace and reminded him that he had said he would write me a few notes about his visit to the daycare last week. I have drifted into the habit of sticking my head around his office door about once a week to update him about what I have been up to. On Tuesday I went with the Extended Schools team to observe their work during the school holidays. This was over the road from the CC in St James’ Catholic Primary School which was where David and I had our classroom fourteen years ago, so it was a trip down memory lane. The door to the library where we taught was locked and the curtains were drawn but I found a few windows where there were gaps between the drapes and the room looked exactly the same as the day we first arrived in 2010. I doubt it has been decorated during that time, the tall wooden library shelves are still there with probably the same books on them, it was a bit dismal and sad. It doesn’t look like the school use it much. The Extended Schools team are providing top up lessons for children during the school holidays for Standards 1-4 of primary school in the mornings and Standards 5-8 in the afternoons. They are open to any children in the surrounding area whatever primary school they normally attend. I saw English, Chichewa, Maths and Health classes. Standard 1 were writing the letter Aa and the part of the class I saw was a bit unimaginative but I thoroughly enjoyed the health class which was about how to look after your body and was greatly enlivened by a game based on the old game of ‘O’Grady says do this’ where you are supposed to do what the leader does, not what he says. The mimes of tooth brushing, bathing, hair brushing etc were a joy to behold. These classes are intended to help those who are struggling with classes, stop children forgetting what they have learned in the eight-week holidays and give a bit of structure to the day for the children who do not get taken away to visit relatives or have a holiday. Wednesday began with the meeting with the Outreach Team. I continue to be astonished by the breadth of work that the Outreach Team do. I learned of even more activities than those i have previously seen and described. When I get home and start to write about it all I may well blog again to let you know more. I did two classes of games for Care Givers to use with children. This time the classes were in the garden. I tried to offer alternatives relevant to all the Domains of the 2017 ECD curriculum. We laughed, we sang, we played ball games, we danced, we celebrated the fun we have had together over the last eight weeks and we said goodbye. I fought back the tears! This day I also had my meeting with the Practice Leader and rather to my surprise she seemed receptive to the suggestions I had made for her to help her to support the Room Leaders and Care Givers to meet their own tasks that I distributed a few weeks ago. That was supposed to be my last day in the CC but I had not found the time to go and observe a child with special needs who had caught my eye so I said I would drop in for an hour at some point during Thursday. As it turned out I was treated to a surprise lunch party so I ended up being at the centre for four hours, but it was never going to take me a whole day to pack anyway!