Assembly, shopping, Maureen’s school

I do not think one can truly understand Beehive without attending at least one assembly. These take place at 7.45 every Monday morning and are attended by representatives of all the branches of Beehive. This includes, construction workers, admin workers, those who are engaged in small enterprises, tailoring students, IT college staff and students, catering staff, those who work in the Torrent Rental companies and last but not least Beehive Childcare Training. There is a non-denominational religious service usually comprised of prayer, Bible reading and reflection, followed by notices and concluding with the national anthem. The different branches of Beehive take turns to lead the assembly; I think I have written about the first Child Care Assembly a month or so ago. Today it was the turn of Bee Bikes, a very small group of people, so they enlisted the help of the Construction Choir and Drama Groups. Both of these are certainly worth listening to. Even though I did not understand the sketches which were in Chichewa, still I laughed at the antics of their comedian and enjoyed the costumes and characterization. It is the habit of the Managing Director to introduce visitors from abroad to the assembled company, so Rose and Joe had to go up to the front and say who they are and why they are here. There were a couple of hundred people there and I think they found it a bit of an ordeal, but they rose to the occasion. At the end of the assembly Tony Smith got up and introduced us all to a 'Beehive song' written by a Franciscan Father who visited last year and asked us all to learn it in preparation for his visit in a couple of months time. All this added up to the longest assembly in living memory, but still, we had emerged by 9.15am and were soon on a minibus into Blantyre to look at the markets and do a bit of shopping.

We were azungus doing souvenir shopping, and visited Pamet's handmade paper project, the craft market and had a good wander round Blantyre market. Joe filmed some of our walk round the market which excited some interest, but we could not understand enough Chichewa to understand exactly what! As usual I particularly enjoyed the fruit and veg market with all its bright colours and fresh produce: loads of different kinds of green leafy vegetables, avocados bigger than I have seen anywhere else, custard apples, jack fruit, beans in all sorts of shades. There was a man busily podding peas with a big maize basket full of them in front of him, he must have been podding for hours. There was a whole section filled with people selling only potatoes, there were scarlet heaps of tomatoes, red and white onions, golden bananas. Eventually tired and hot we repaired to Ryall's Hotel for lunch. This was a real treat, being perhaps the poshest place in Blantyre to go for a meal, but Rose reminded us that Uncle Derek had given her money for us all to go out for a meal while they were here in Malawi, so we did it in style. Ryall's is an old colonial hotel building set in a beautiful garden. The restaurant is cool and spacious and at the beginning we had it to ourselves although it gradually filled up as we ate. Joe followed the example of his brother when I went there with him, and had an enormous burger with all the trimmings, and Rose and I went for pasta dishes, hers was butternut squash and spinach cannelloni and mine, (chosen for maximum cheese content!), was tagliatelle in gorgonzola and parmesan cream sauce! Yum! Unfortunately we were all too full to try the Certain Death by Chocolate dessert, so we rounded off the meal with Mzuzu coffee before a gentle stroll around the corner to the minibus stop where we packed ourselves like sardines in tin with 11 Malawians in the first minibus back to Chilomoni.

Joe wanted to return to some of the bits of Beehive we visited earlier in the week with his camera, so we walked past the Liquor Garden and Bee Books to the church and then through the back streets to find the school run by Maureen, one of my students. As always Maureen welcomed us with open arms. We went in to see the children and I was pleased to notice a few changes since I originally visited her school six months ago. She has taken much of the furniture out of the classroom and the children have room to move around. There was a large treasure basket filled with a mixture of soft toys and domestic items, in process of construction on the office table. On the classroom walls alongside the alphabet and posters we saw last time, there were pictures and posters she has made herself, and two story sacks were hanging up for the children to use. She read a story while we were there and it was a delight to hear her. She got the children into four groups miming playing the four instruments that were mentioned in the story and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was a delicious blend of some of the ideas David and I have introduced and the more traditional Malawian approach. We all have so much to learn from each other. Maureen took us into the house and gave us a Fanta each to drink and we met her husband. Then she called Israel, her twelve year old and issued him with a plastic bag and we all went off to see her garden. Israel filled the bag with large avocados with which we were presented to take home and leave to ripen. Israel seemed to enjoy the job, which involved climbing the tree and tossing the fruits down to his friend and his mother who put them in the bag.

Maureen and her youngest son, Neil escorted us through a shortcut, down narrow back paths to the construction site where Joe took photos of the Children's Centre. On the way he filmed a group of children who were calling, 'Azungu, azungu' after us, but as soon as he started to film they started to call something else, which Maureen translated as 'They are taking photographs of us.' Suddenly more children were running towards us from every doorway and down every narrow path, and Joe was surrounded by a small crowd clamouring to see themselves on the little screen of the camcorder. The sight seemed to amuse them greatly and they shrieked with laughter and pushed each other aside to get a better view.

When our paths divided for Maureen and Neil to go home and us to return to Mitsidi, Neil cried because he did not want to leave us, but Maureen swung him onto her back and set off down the hill and we went on our way.

Back at Midsidi we filled the time until supper with swimming, reading, Joe played the guitar. There are only a couple of days of their holiday left. It has gone so very quickly. I shall miss them when they go!

Back in Chilomoni

We arrived back in Chilomoni on Thursday evening just in time for a meal with all the others at Mitsidi. Tony Smith (founder of Krizevac) was there. It was good to meet him at last, although I haven't had the chance to speak to him properly yet. I look forward to that. Jan and Lindy's children, Luke and Rosie, and their spouses Anneli and John, are also visiting at the moment so it was full house for dinner, 16 people including all the volunteers. For the first time since I have been here the big dining room table was not big enough to accommodate everyone at once and two people had to eat off their laps in the comfy chairs. We fell into bed after supper exhausted after our slow drive back from Liwonde and all were sleeping by about 8.30pm.

The next day I set out to show Rose and Joe Chilomoni. We visited the site where the Children's Centre showed some progress during the last week while I have been away. The concrete supports for the first floor of the south building are in, together with a lot of wooden scaffolding and work will begin to lay the concrete slab for the floor very soon. The scaffolding has been removed from the IT college too while I have been away and that makes a huge visual difference. The building is to be blessed by the Archbishop on May 1 and we are expecting up to 2000 people at a mass in the grounds. To my astonishment Malcolm says that Vince wants me to be the official photographer for the event! I am not sure that I am up to the job, but I shall enjoy having a go! We stopped over for lunch on the site. It was beans, pumpkin leaves and nsima day, so Rose and Joe had a genuine Malawian workman's lunch.

We went to see our classroom in St James' primary school and met Wilson the guard and a few of the teachers, but Alfred the Headmaster was out on a visit. Then we walked through the township to the admin building where I hoped to introduce them to Mary, who has been so kind to me while I have been here. Unfortunately Mary was at the Immigration Office sorting out people's visas. It is part of her job as sort of head of personnel at Beehive to make sure that we are all legal as far as being in the country is concerned. We had a bit of a chat with Peter, Managing Director, and he said some nice things to Rose and Joe about how useful their mother has been whilst in Malawi. That sort of thing is always nice to hear! Then we went in to Bee Bikes and had a good chat with Mike the Bike who runs that part of the project and we visited Bee Books and Joe and I bought a few volumes to make sure we don't run out of things to read. We dropped in to the Liquor Garden for a swift drink and ended up staying long enough for Joe to have a lesson in how to play Bawo from Patrick, the guy who clears away the bottles and generally keeps the place clean and tidy. I was pleased to note that Patrick and Charles, who owns the place, threw out a guy who came in and tried to hassle Rose, because he didn't buy a drink. We wandered slowly back to Mitsidi in time to flop about and read a bit before dinner. On the way we brought freshly roasted peanuts on the street. How much nicer they are than the kind you get in vacuum sealed packets in the UK!

On Saturday we took advantage of the chance to share Malcolm's car and went off to Mulange. We climbed up to the waterfall and had a picnic lunch with cheese and tomato sandwiches courtesy of my birthday parcel from Jack which included four types of cheese! We were fortunate enough to have the waterfall to ourselves for about an hour before we were joined by a party of mixed Malawians and Chinese, who apparently worked together, but I never did find out what it was that they did. Malcolm and Joe swam in the 68ft deep pool under the waterfall, but Rose and I contented ourselves with paddling, contemplating the view and taking photographs. It was beautiful, tranquil and very peaceful. On the way back down the mountain I managed to slip on the rocks and gained a grazed knee, such that I have not had since I was a little girl. I had forgotten just how much it hurts when you actually do the damage, and also how quickly the pain fades and becomes just a soreness that is unpleasant, but not difficult to put up with. We stopped at the entrance to the park where you pay the fees to walk up to the waterfall, and looked at the stalls selling crafts, such as carved boxes of Mulange Cedar. We all bought a gift or two for the folks at home. I had promised Joe that I would buy him a Bawo board for his birthday and we found a lovely little table with a reversible top with Bawo on one side and carved elephants and rhinos on the other so I bought him that. He has spent quite a bit of time since looking up the finer points of the rules on the internet and practicing playing against himself. He even persuaded me to play this morning.

This afternoon we climbed the Way of the Cross and looked down on Chilomoni Township, and indeed a large proportion of Greater Blantyre. It was a fairly clear, sunny day and quite humid. By the time we got to the top I was hot, sweaty and tired, but the view was worth it.

The holiday begins

Thursday morning brought the repeat of my SEMS lecture and then I was FREE!! David rounded off the term with an attempt at getting the students to link activities to Physical and Mental and Cognitive milestones and I walked back through the streets of Chilomoni to Mitsidi to collect my belongings and the hired Land Rover, and set off on the first leg of my journey to Kamuzu airport, north of Lilongwe to meet Rose and Joe for their two weeks' holiday in the warm heart of Africa. At first all went well and I finished my packing with time to spare. But, and so often there is a 'but' in Malawi, no Land Rover appeared. Eventually I rang the Torrent Office to find out where it was and was assured that it was on its way, but as it was then another whole hour before it showed up I can only conclude that they came on a very scenic route and not the 15 minute, direct drive I was expecting. I've not driven this Land Rover before and some of them are pretty hard work, but fortunately this one started off pretty amenably and I was on the way to Ntcheu to spend a night with my new friend Amanda who is a nurse working in health education in the villages around Ntcheu. What a beautiful country Malawi is! The sun was shining and the air was clear. There were lovely mountain views all along the way. There has been an unseasonable amount of rain lately and everything is brilliantly green. Indeed in some instances too green. The maize should be drying out on the plant and leaves turning brown now, but it has rained so much that some of the crop is rotting on the plants. Peter told me, when I described the kernels spread out to dry on maize flour sacks in the sun, that this is not usually necessary, but is a desperate attempt to save the maize and have sufficient nsima flour for the next year. I hadn't realized when I wrote about what I had seen that this is not standard practice each year.

By the time I reached Ntcheu I was an hour and a half behind schedule and it was only 20 mins short of nightfall. Amanda was beginning to wonder whether something dreadful had befallen me, but it was a combination of late Land Rover and miscalculation of the time it takes to drive from Blantyre to Ntcheu. We met in the hospital car park and then trundled my suitcase on its little plastic wheels down the road and along a very muddy track to her house. By Malawian standards it is a very good house, set behind a brick wall, in a pleasant garden, but it made me realize how lucky we are to live at Mitsidi, where we have a beautiful setting, swimming pool and luxuries such as company, hot water and meals prepared for us. Amanda's is a three-bedroom, three-shower room house, but it is a bit damp and dismal with bats in the loft, which can be a bit smelly and only a little two-ring electric hot plate just like the one I have in my own house. The sitting room is furnished comfortably with enormous sofas and arm chairs and she made me very welcome. We were very British and had tea! As she is normally confined to the house after dark, feeling it is not safe to be an azungu woman alone on the streets at night, we decided to make the trip to a local restaurant for our supper. As we left she said to me, 'We shall have to hold hands, we can't risk losing each other in the dark.' I thought she was exaggerating, but she was not. It was a cloudy night, so no moon or stars; very little light came from the other houses. There was a light drizzle. I stepped straight in a deep puddle, but fortunately was wearing crocs with no socks, so dried out quickly. We retraced our steps to the main road, which is the M1, therefore the best kept road in Malawi. Suddenly we found ourselves walking on tarmac, rather than mud and realized that we were in the middle of the road. I suppose that had any traffic been approaching it would have had lights and therefore we should have seen it, but it was worrying nonetheless! We crossed over and then plunged down a dark alley between a couple of shops, then into a dim courtyard and hence to the restaurant. It was deserted apart from a friendly waiter who seemed very pleased to see us and presented us with a typical Malawian menu, chicken, meat or fish, with nsima, rice or chicken. We ordered chicken and a couple of passion fruit Fanta's. Amanda then looked upwards through her eyelashes at the waiter and enquired whether it would be OK with him if we added to our Fanta's the contents of a bottle which I had in my handbag (Malawi Gin!). He had no objection so we poured a generous measure and continued a delightful, getting to know you conversation, by the end of which I certainly felt I had gained a friend. I hope she did too! She is off for a holiday in South Africa with her daughter, and I have two weeks to look forward to with Joe and Rose, but after that we shall certainly meet up again.

The next morning I was up at 5.30 am and on the road by 6.30 am. Again I thought this was plenty of time to reach my destination in time for the flight but I didn't reckon on such appalling weather. The rain was torrential, I was well up in the level of the clouds and to cap it all, the windscreen wipers of the Land Rover were not working. I persevered, preferring to continue at a reduced, but steady pace rather than stop and hope the rain would cease. I made the right decision. I was two thirds of the way to Lilongwe before the sun struggled out and I missed all the lovely views towards the Lake from the mountains around Dedza. As usual I managed to get lost in Lilongwe, but with the help of a charming lady, with excellent English, I managed to find the airport road and arrived with about two minutes to spare, despite allowing an hour for the unexpected in my schedule! It was so exciting to see Rose and Joe more or less first through the barriers. Six months is such a long time. I think the longest I have gone without seeing Rose since she left home 7 years ago is about four months, and of course for Joe it is much less than that, probably not much more than a couple of weeks.

With Joe reading the map we found our way back through Lilongwe without getting lost again. As usual there was a petrol shortage in Lilongwe and there were queues of cars and minibuses everywhere, but we managed to get diesel at the same scruffy looking garage where I was lucky last time, and it was not long before we arrived at Dedza Pottery where we stayed for a couple of nights. We spent the intervening day visiting the Rock Art sites in the locality. As Joe said, 'If you are impressed by the fact that they are 2000 years old, they are worth seeing, but if you're not they are just scratches on rocks!' They were however in beautiful countryside, with splendid views. Indeed the first site was the best place for wild flowers that I have been since I arrived in Malawi. I took loads of photos. I really must get myself a wild flower book and identify some of them.

The next day we moved on to Cape Maclear on Lake Malawi. Our Lodge was right on the Lake shore, the weather was fabulous, the Lake was warm and blue. The first day we walked in the National Park, climbed on the rocks at Otter Point, saw lots of baboons and vervet monkeys, and the second we went on a boat trip involving snorkeling, feeding the Fish Eagles, bird watching, eating an excellent lunch of barbequed chambo, cooked for us by the boatmen, and generally had a sun-soaked and enjoyable time. Yesterday we moved on again to Liwonde National Park for 24 hours of safaris. We saw loads of birds and animals including an exciting and slightly worrying encounter with elephants in the dark, for photos see Facebook in the next couple of days.

Today, after our return to Liwonde town, where we had left the Land Rover we had a somewhat too exciting trip home, due to trouble with the Land Rover. Fortunately we were able to get it going following advice from Derrick, the valiant chief mechanic from Torrent, and a mercy mission by Malcolm who drove towards us as we limped back to Blantyre, prepared to pick up the pieces if we didn't make it all the way. So now begins phase two of Rose and Joe's Malawian Trip. We've done the exotic African holiday bit, now begins a week of 'Find out what Mum's life in Malawi is really like!'

The end of term is approaching fast. We said goodbye to our first group of students for three weeks Easter break today and term finishes for the others on Friday. This week we are looking at working with children aged 3 to 6 years. As I set off for Lilongwe on Thursday at lunchtime to pick up Rose and Joe from the airport on Friday morning, I have got off lightly this week as far as lecture preparation is concerned. David on the other hand has a demanding week! This is not as unfair as it sounds as he had visitors last week and I covered for him. I began on Monday morning with a closer look at the Social, Emotional, Moral and Spiritual milestones of the Malawian ECD curriculum for children aged between 3 and 5 years. I began by asking the students what aspects of life they think are affected by Social, Emotional, Moral and Spiritual (SEMS) development and why this is important. Then I talked about it from the six main headings of the EYFS in the Social and Emotional Area of Learning. Well, I had to start somewhere! We went back over the milestones that we looked at for babies and toddlers and then I asked them to work together in small groups to write a description of a typical three year old from a SEMS perspective. I was hoping that the students would be able to paint a picture of a 3 year old in their own words but they found it difficult. In the UK most child care training, whatever the level, has practical experience as an integral part of the course from the beginning and I am sure that this is the best approach, but as I have explained previously there are good arguments for not doing that here at the moment. It is hard for our students to imagine what children of different ages will be like just from learning the theoretical development so we got a lot of quotes from the milestones in the descriptions. For example:

'A three year-old is noticeable due to his/her eagerness and unpredictability of his exploring and his assertiveness. He/she imitates whatever is seen around his/her environment. Is able to recognize family members as well as strangers. He observes and absorbs more and more what is acceptable behaviour from family members. He/she plays side by side with other kids and communicates freely. He/she will be attracted to moral and spiritual stories and songs. The child will be able to mention his or her own name.'

 

Hmmmm? There were a few cultural differences from what you might expect in answer to a similar question from UK students too, e.g:

A typical three year old child likes playing together with peers (Cooperative), and able to use toilet, they imitate what adults do like kneeling down when greeting visitors and talking to adults. They are able to memorise verses and spiritual songs.

 

Next I got them to think about what a child is like from this point of view when they start school at five and consider which skills we need to encourage to help them get to that point. Then we looked at the milestones of the Malawian curriculum for 3-5 years and tried to devise activities to support the children to achieve the milestones. It sort of worked! We had a few songs and a couple of name games. Nevertheless I was left feeling slightly dispirited, and not for the first time wondering if I have pitched this course at the right level!

 

Today I have spent most of the day marking last week's homework, which was to observe a child aged between 3 and 6 years playing, and then look at the Malawian curriculum and see if they could identify milestones the child had achieved and think about how they could encourage the child to achieve the next milestone. It all gets a bit box-ticky if you're not careful. They are all getting better at writing observations and most of them are recording only what they see or hear and not what they assume at last, but it has been a bit of an uphill battle. Some of them are making sensible links to what they have learned in our lectures, but almost none of them managed to link what they observed to the Malawian curriculum and only a few suggested really good activities to help the children move on. I suppose it is complicated but sometimes I wonder whether we are expecting too much. I guess we will be able to consolidate the learning when the Children's Centre opens and they are working with children every day, but at the moment when they are observing the children of neighbours and relatives it is difficult for us to know what they have seen and offer appropriate advice.

 

David spent today encouraging them to link activities to Physical and Mental and Cognitive milestones, but again it was hard work and I think he was more frustrated than I have ever seen him this afternoon. We talked about it on the way home and concluded yet again that we have trouble because they are experiencing all sorts of activities, such as the marble and blow painting we did this afternoon, that they have never seen before and they are so excited about having a go themselves they are not able to think about the learning implications for the children. Perhaps they will get there in the end? Perhaps we all need this holiday, not least David and me!

.We repeat these sessions on Thursday and Friday for the second group and then it is holiday time, Hurrah! I cannot wait to see rose and joe and am getting excited already.

Circumnavigation of Mulange Mountain

Yesterday Malcolm and I went on his last exploration of the dirt roads of Malawi as he will be off back to the UK in about ten days. Malcolm seems determined to travel as many different roads as possible before he returns home and the rest of us are beginning to feel that he deliberately seeks out the most bumpy and uncomfortable route possible to wherever it is we wish to go! You have already read about the back route to Zomba. Well, this trip attempted to be the back way from Blantyre to Mulange. On the map there is a direct road from Limbe to Phalombe, a dirt road, but one reputed to be wide and well maintained. We got some directions and set off. I brought two guidebooks, but unfortunately neither of us had the foresight to bring a map! We wanted to drive all the way around Mulange Mountain, including going up the Fort Lister Pass which goes between Mulange and Mchesi Mountains. The road is very rough and very narrow, but we had heard that the views are very beautiful so we set off early to allow plenty of time to get up there and down again before dark. All began well. We found the right place to turn off the Zomba road, just the other side of Limbe onto a tarmacked road signposted to a hospital. Our instructions were to turn right onto a dirt road leaving the tarmac going straight on to the hospital. We must have turned off too soon because we had been told to expect a wide, well-maintained road, and indeed our turning started off like that, but gradually it became narrower and more and more rough. It was not the first time that we wished one of us had thought of bringing a compass to Malawi. Our guts told us that we were heading in more or less the right direction, but unfortunately we were actually running more or less parallel to the road we were aiming for, but several miles to the right of it! I think azungus were pretty unusual visitors in those parts, for we excited even more than the usual interest from children and passer- by. When we stopped to ask directions I was forced to put my Chichewa lessons to good use as Malcolm's polite, English request for directions was met with a blank stare, followed by a stream of Chichewa. Eventually we hit the main M4 road to Mulange, having taken maybe an hour to get to a point we could have reached in twenty minutes if we had travelled the usual way! However we had seen many villages and fields that are not on the usual tourist track. There are many wild flowers at the moment. Each time we go on a trip there appears to be more colour than there was on the last one. I guess it is because everything is so well watered. It is still the rainy season, and there is at least some rain most days. Usually I notice at least one wild flower growing in profusion that I have not noticed before. Mostly I do not know what they are. I really must invest in a good book on the wild flowers of Southern Africa. Yesterday there were many brilliantly orange, tissue-like five-petalled flowers growing along the grassy verges between the road and the maize fields. It is harvest time and we saw a few families in the fields cutting their crops. Outside many houses were groups of women stripping the kernels from the cobs and spreading them to dry on large sheets which appeared to be made from opened out flour sacks joined together. I wonder how long it takes for the kernels to dry in the sun sufficiently for them to be ground into flour for making nsima. One must have to be vigilant to ensure that they are covered or brought it before it rains as I am sure a good soaking does not help the drying process! We also saw women walking down the road from the maize mills with buckets, baskets and sacks of flour on their heads taking the finished product home to be stored for food for the rest of the year.

We sped down the M4 hoping to make up for lost time, following the route we took last time we went to Mulange, when we located the road from Phalombe up into the mountains but found it too late in the day to think it wise to go up on that occasion. Before we reached Mulange Town however Malcolm spotted another narrow dirt road with a signpost for Phalombe and screeched to a halt, reversing back down the hard shoulder to turn off to the left again. At least this time we could see the very recognizable mountain that we were heading for and so could be fairly confident that we were on the right track! I began to feel that my insides were being thoroughly rearranged by the jolting and bouncing as we sped along the track. The Malawian road numbering system starts with M roads, which are tarmacked and although they are often potholed and have raggedy edges they are easily recognizable and easy to follow. Then there are S roads which are often very narrow, then there are T roads, (T for track?) and finally there are unclassified roads which can be anything from fairly respectable, if untarmacked, to little more than paths where the maize or long grass meets over your head as you walk along. This was a T road, T134 according to the signpost. The road was pretty straight and led through a number of villages ever nearer to the Mountain. There were a number of dodgy bridges over rivers and streams and one stretch of water with spectacular white and purple water lilies. There were two or three unsignposted junctions where we had to use our initiative to decide which way to go, or exercise my dubious Chichewa again, but eventually we did arrive in Phalombe, 3 hours after leaving Blantyre and certainly by a different route. We pulled up outside People's Supermarket and Malcolm went in and bought Fantas, which were very welcome, while I consulted the guidebook, and then it was off up the Fort Lister Pass, along which the slave traders apparently used to walk groups of captives on the way to ports in Mozambique from which they were shipped to America. It must have been a steep and exhausting climb for the poor captives. Even up in the mountains we were rarely very far from human habitation. Once we stopped to investigate a faint track which reputedly led to the Fort after which the pass is named, once we stopped because we got a wheel stuck in a ditch, and once to admire the view, and each time people materialized out of nowhere to chat, offer advice, or offer themselves as guides. We branched off a brief distance up a side track and stopped for lunch with a view of Mulange Mountain in front of us and Mchesi behind. There was a lot of swirling iron grey cloud which sometimes obscured the mountain tops, but there was sunshine as well. Everything is so green at the moment, and there are so many shades of green. After 14Km of very rough driving and only the one encounter with a ditch, we came down the other side of the pass and turned right back towards Mulange town along another narrow dirt road. This one seemed to be one continuous village that went on for miles and miles. There were hundreds of people walking, biking and running along the road, but very few other vehicles. I have written before about the flourishing secondhand clothes markets in Blantyre. I did not expect to see the same so far out in the country, but beside the road, intermingled with stalls selling sugar cane, vegetables, dried fish and bloody carcasses there were many stalls with clothes in various states of repair varying from crumpled heaps of grubby fabric to freshly laundered and ironed clothes on hangers. I saw a girl of perhaps ten years holding a green satin and black lace bridesmaids dress up against her holed T shirt and simple cotton skirt. She obviously thought it was the most beautiful dress she had ever seen. Melvin has been looking for lightweight, light coloured trousers in the clothes shops of Blantyre without success, but I reckon he could have found what he wanted out here in the sticks, there were plenty of beige and fawn trousers hanging up to choose from. We had a few slightly hairy moments sliding about on a very wet and greasy muddy road surface but managed not to end up in the deep drains on either side of the road. Many helpful Malawians shouted instructions to Malcolm, such as 'Keep going straight!' as if he were deliberately making the Land Rover glide sideways for his own strange private amusement. Fortunately disaster was avoided! There were chickens and goats everywhere. There were a lot of turkeys gobbling around the houses and making stately progress across the road. I saw my first pigs since I have been in Malawi too. Three little black piglets with pink faces and feet. They appeared to have a death wish and rushed out into the road in front of us, but we managed to avoid hitting them.

On our way we drove around the Lucheri tea estate, where it is possible to stay in a comfortable Lodge for a 'relaxing weekend away from it all'. It looked delightful. We stopped in Mulange Town for a reviving cup of coffee at the somewhat anachronistic Pizzeria Basilico and now that we were safely back on tarmac I drove home!

Progress of our intermediate child care course

We are moving towards the end of the first of two 9-week terms of the Beehive Intermediate Child Care Diploma course. It has been hard work for the students and also for me and for David. Every lecture, discussion and activity is new material that has to be planned carefully as we are aware of the need to make sure that the input is suitable for Malawi and not just regurgitation of input we may have used for similar situations at home in the UK. We will be much better qualified to do the job by the time we reach the end of it than we were when we arrived nearly six months ago. Sometimes it feels as though we have only just started the task of teaching our students and sometimes I feel as though I have known them for years. I just start to get complacent and then something occurs that shows me I know next to nothing! For example the time when we got the students to look at all the milestones of the Malawian ECD syllabus in the Social and Emotional, and Moral and Spiritual Domains and group them into 'Social', 'Emotional', 'Moral' and 'Spiritual' milestones. It had never occurred to me that anyone would think that gender identity with respect to little children was a moral issue, but to my astonishment when I applied my own criterion that if more than half the class agreed a particular milestone went into a particular group it would have to go there, that is where gender identity went. There were other issues where the class was unable to reach a majority view, but not this one. I was definitely overruled and women felt as strongly about it as men.

For the last four weeks the students have been taking it in turns to start sessions by presenting their story sacks. The whole project has been of rather mixed success. Firstly they seemed to choose what I considered to be rather odd and sometimes dull books. There are far too many reading scheme books among the second hand selections that we receive regularly from donors in the UK. I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but if I may generalize, reading schemes are not the best stories I have ever read! The students seem to like them however, perhaps it is because they are designed for children whose reading is in the early stages and thus the language is simpler and Chichewa speakers find it more easily comprehensible. Some of these 'easy readers' use traditional English stories such as 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' and 'The Little Red Hen'. These I found better. The students have really excelled at making the bags to hold the items to help the children to understand and enjoy the story. I bought some cheap, bright, traditional, African printed cotton and also collected some second hand material and tailor's scraps. Some of the bags are beautiful with homemade strings and fringing made out of odds and ends of wool that I begged from the knitting project. They took seriously my suggestion that children should be able immediately to identify which bag was for which story by what was on the outside of the bag and we have had some interesting appliqués. The local material met with a mixed reception. One girl was absolutely horrified that we were going to cut up decent chitenje lengths and use them for toys for children. She gave me quite a hard time about it. She felt it was definitely not right when there were many people who needed such things to wear. I asked her if the children did not deserve also to have good quality materials from which to learn, but she did not seem very impressed with that as an argument! I put together a presentation about making story sacks and had a go at making one myself as a demonstration model, but in retrospect I do not think I made enough or gave it as much thought as I should have. I talked about collecting relevant household items and I provided a lot of soft toys to be used as characters from the stories. I also drew a few things and characters that I could not find suitable items to represent and then laminated them to make them more durable. I think the technology involved appealed to the students because almost all used laminated characters and props. Many simply reproduced the pictures in the book, rather than providing additional items for the children to use imaginatively to play with and to develop the ideas in the story. I tried to explain about the play value of having a little character that you could use to reenact the story, rather than having pictures where the character is only seen doing one thing, but I am not at all sure that everyone understood. Some of the presentations were a bit labored, instead of simply telling the story and illustrating it with the props they had collected together many groups spent ages telling us what the story was going to be about and then told the story, simply holding up the items, but not really using them in an imaginative way. I often think they would be much better presenting this kind of work in Chichewa, and indeed sometimes we do encourage them to tell stories in Chichewa, but the disadvantage is that we do not understand more than the odd word. Even those with very good English tend to sound a bit stilted in English, but in Chichewa, they are more animated and the words are more fluid and expressive. I am sure that this is the way to go. Malawian children are more or less brought up to be bilingual. All secondary and a good proportion of primary education is in English, but with little ones there is great value in telling stories and rhymes in the first language so I don't think that we should encourage the children to speak English all the time but make use of the fact that all the staff are bilingual. In the baby room most of the communication should be in Chichewa and the amount of English gradually increased as the children move up through the age groups.

We have had a week looking at working with Babies, a week on Toddlers and next week we shall be looking at children aged 3-6 years. We are trying to familiarize our students (and ourselves) with the Malawian ECD (Early Childhood Development) Curriculum. You would think this would be easy, order 70 copies, hand them out and encourage them to read it; job done! Ha! In Malawi nothing is so simple. I began by approaching the local Social Services department, part of whose brief is to inspect early years provision, presumably ensuring that they are teaching the right things. It took three visits and several phone calls before eventually I received one copy. I have been to Lilongwe (four hours drive away) and visited both the Ministry of Gender and Unicef, who worked together to produce the document, but it is out of print and unobtainable. Eventually I decided that it would be quicker to retype the whole thing, so David and I have done this between us. It was a good way of getting to grips with the content but was rather laborious. David was a star, and did the two largest Domains, Physical Development and Mental and Cognitive Development. Every time I saw him for about two weeks he seemed to be madly typing and alternately tearing out his hair in frustration and laughing hysterically at the explanation column which attempts to tell the care giver the reasons behind the choice of the milestones but does not always quite make it. The phrase 'this is a wonderful way to…' appears many times. If I ever write a book about Early Years Education in Malawi I think I shall have to call it 'The Wonderful Way'! Even though I had the two smaller domains, Social and Emotional, and Moral and Spiritual, I finished my typing considerably after David did, largely because I tried to supplement it with extra ideas of activities and far more extensive resources lists than appear in the original. I did my usual trick of using a different colour type for the Pearson additions, so that the original document is the black type and my embellishments are purple. I still need to do the Social and Emotional purple bits and eventually also the other two Domains as well, but it is a bit of a long term project and perhaps my dissertation should take priority!

We have also had a week on nutrition, and a week on hygiene, sanitation, water and infection control. I brought in Chaliza to help with nutrition Malawi-style and one of our students who has worked as a Health Education Field Worker to talk about food hygiene and hand-washing. People are cooking and eating in such different ways here from the ways we do in the UK that it would have been difficult for me and David to present these subjects with any credibility. I have certainly learned a lot about Malawian fruits and vegetables and a whole new way of classifying food into six groups that works really well to help people make a properly balanced diet out of locally available foods. The groups are: Staple Foods, Animal Foods, Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes and Nuts, and Fats and Oils. It works well. As a little aside, some of you may be interested to know the effect that a transfer to a more or less Malawian diet had had on me. I have not been restricting my food intake at all, but in the six-months I have been here have lost 3 stone. I suppose my lifestyle is a bit more active here than it was at home, but not hugely so. I am not exactly sylph-like yet, but am nearer to it than I was!

At home discussion of infection control focuses on other diseases, our Health Worker concentrated upon cholera, typhoid and dysentery. I have learned the two-cup technique for drinking water, which involves using one cup to dip into the water bucket and pour into a second cup to drink from, to avoid redipping a cup that has been used for drinking and thus contaminating the water store. We have also practiced a thorough handwashing technique that uses very little water and avoids sharing the water and thus acquiring infection from previous washers, all very clever, and not things we need to think about in England with piped water in every home and plenty of rainfall all year round.

And so we are approaching the Easter holiday. Almost half way through the theoretical part of the course already! Time seems to have gone so fast since we began the course. The Children's Centre is continuing to grow. We watch it getting bigger from our vantage point on the steps of the classroom which is further up the hill. The building schedule has slipped in true Malawian style and it will definitely not be finished in July as per the original plan, but if we are lucky the south, day care building will be done by September in time for the start of the next academic year. George is working hard to recruit room leaders to work in the Children's Centre and manage teams of our students working as care givers and gaining practical experience to complete their Diploma training. Anyone who fancies six months in Malawi with a bunch of enthusiastic but inexperienced staff launching the Beehive Children's Centre in to the community in Chilomoni should talk to George. I can't promise it will be easy, but it will certainly be interesting and a challenge. Also I can promise fun, at least some of the time, and the weather is good! Just fancy, by the time I come home I shall have missed two British winters!

A trip to Zomba and an explanation

Last Sunday we decided to go and have a look at Chingwe's Hole, an apparently bottomless pit, which is actually about 60 metres deep, up in the mountains of Zomba Plateau. As the roads are notoriously bad on the plateau we decided to take the Land Rover despite the fact that travelers in the back were likely to be well shaken up by the time we arrived. Malcolm had been studying the map, not a great map as it turned out, but then I have yet to find a good detailed map of Malawi! We reckon that the best thing to do is to install a computer in the Land Rover and use Google Earth, but as yet we have not developed the technology! Malcolm identified a road on the map, which claimed to be a main road, which would provide an alternative route to Zomba that was not a great deal further than the usual way. The obvious road is narrow and bumpy, but is at least tarmacked, and it takes about an hour and twenty minutes to get to Zomba. David, who has been on such trips before, arrived at the Land Rover with the cushions from the easy chairs in his house and settled himself on top of the spare wheel with cushions underneath and behind him. Malcolm drove, Philip and Sharon perched on the bench seats in the back and I had first shift in the comfort of the front seat! On the way we passed an extraordinary, football shaped house on the main road out of Blantyre towards Lilongwe. Philip explained that when he was in Malawi twenty years ago he had known the guy who owns this house and that he had tried to contact him recently but been unable to.

The first challenge was to identify the turn off for the back way to Zomba. The map showed a turn to the right in a village called xxxx. We found xxxx alright and there were two potential candidates for the right road. There was a police barrier close to one of them and after a brief debate on the wisdom of initiating contact with the police in case they found something wrong with the Land Rover and fined us, we asked the way and were directed down a narrow dirt track that would have been more like the approach to a run-down hill farm in England than anything else! The trip was reminiscent of the drive down the right hand turn from the bottom of the drive that ended up at the airport, in that the road got narrower and less smooth as we went along. On the map it was a firm brown line with only two turns marked, but there were several turns to left and right and at some unknown point we must have taken the wrong one. The drive was beautiful and fascinating. The mountains grew gradually nearer so we knew we were not going in completely the wrong direction, but something was not right, we knew from the map that we should be approaching Chingale, but although we passed many collections of houses we did not encounter anywhere that was large enough to merit a mention on our map. It was surprising how the condition of the maize growing in fields quite close to one another varied, it looked as though some had had enough water and other patches, not enough at all. Harvest time is only a couple of weeks away. There has not been a great deal of rain in recent weeks, some steady drizzle occasionally, but no real downpours. Apparently this is unusual and the crops are missing the water. We saw many plots of cotton in flower, some tobacco, endless maize interspersed with vegetables, pumpkins which are grown for their leaves as well as the fruits. There were bridges and culverts over rivers and streams, but some of the beds were dry. The mountains were beautiful, misty blue in the distance and vivid and lush green as we approached, the higher we got, the more water and the better looking the crops. Eventually we asked a series of people where we were and at last found someone who was able to tell us not only that we were on the Liwonde road, which was not at all the direction in which we wanted to go, but also that we needed to retrace our steps a couple of kilometres and turn left for Chingale. So now we were on a road that did not appear anywhere on the map and in places the maize touched both sides of the Land Rover. David complained to Malcolm that he had been promised views and all he could see was foliage! A couple of hours after turning off we finally arrived at a trading centre with signs that indicated we were in Chingale. Hoorah! -Two thirds of the way along the brown line on the map. It was not long before we lost the way again and soon Sharon was exercising her rusty Chichewa of twenty years ago to try to get us on the Zomba road. Eventually we found it, more by luck than judgment I fear, and climbed, higher and higher. We stopped at one point to look at the view. It was a bright sunny day, with just a little haze softening the focus of the view, but we could see for miles, a vast panorama of flat plain with the silver ribbon of the Shire river rippling across the middle and Lake Malombe clearly visible just below the blend of blue and grey where distant mountains met the sky the other side of the plain. When we got properly into the mountains there were uncultivated areas with wild flowers in abundance and I saw several butterflies in various sizes and colours, and many birds including the vermillion and flame flashes of Yellow and Red Bishops. Also a black bird with a long trailing tail that Sharon thought was a bee-eater, but I can't find it in the book. Some kind of widow perhaps? It was in silhouette and I couldn't tell if it was all black or not. The Zomba end of the brown line on the map is probably the most beautiful road along which I have driven since I arrived in Malawi. By this time I was in the back of the Land Rover and could look out of the back window over the way we had come. Our first stop in Zomba was the supermarket for cold drinks and then we turned the Land Rover's bonnet so it was pointing upwards again and started up to the plateau. We turned to the left at the track which forms a wriggly ring road round the plateau.

 

I wrote the beginning of this entry about a month ago, and because it was not finished I did not publish it. Why have I not written for a month following being such a regular blogger? I am not sure. I think there is not a single important reason, but more a series of small reasons that have added up to inaction. I have certainly been very busy. I think George's original estimate that the development of the course would need three trainers was probably pretty accurate. David and I are doing a pretty good job but we are preparing new material for every session and actually teaching for 26 hours a week, so this adds up to a lot of time spent over a hot computer putting new Power Point presentations together. Certainly my knowledge of the technology has improved no end in the five months I have been here! Spending my evenings at the computer as well has become a less attractive option of late. This is partly because there are more folk at Mitsidi and consequently social life is more varied and I have spent more time just being at Mitsidi in the company of others. We play quite a bit of Scrabble and the standard suits me! I am able to win some of the time, but there are others who can beat me frequently, so there is enough challenge to keep me interested. Karl and I used to play a lot of Scrabble while he was in hospital and I think I only beat him on three occasions, certainly not often enough to prevent me from becoming discouraged! We all go to the Liquor Garden now and then and this is good because it means socializing with Malawians, although respectable Malawian women are not seen there. I seem to get away with it as an azungu. We have been out for a few meals including a memorable evening at an Ethiopian café where we ate a selection of dishes with Ethiopian, rolled flatbread, which was different and interesting. The couple who ran the place made a selection of dishes for us to try and really went out of their way to make us welcome. Next week it is my birthday and I get to choose where we go. I can't make up my mind. We have finally managed to sort out how to use the big screen in the living room at Mitsidi in conjunction with a laptop to show films and for the last two Fridays have had sociable cinema evenings. Most weekends we go somewhere on at least one of the days, although I find that if I am to get through the week's work without too much panic I have to spend at least part of the other day in preparation for teaching. Last weekend I went to the Mount Soche with Vince and his children, Amanda, who is a nurse working with VSO in Ntcheu, and a couple of medical friends of hers who work in Blantyre at Queen's Hospital. It was good to meet Amanda, with whom I have exchanged the odd email. I liked her very much and it was good to have a like-minded woman of about my own age to talk to. I hope to visit her in Ntcheu on my way to Lilongwe to collect Rose and Joe in a couple of week's time. I am getting very excited about their visit. Already it seems a long time since Jack was here and it will be lovely to have my children with me. When they return home it will only be about six weeks to my own trip to UK on 25 May. So much to do before then! I have hardly touched my dissertation since Christmas and Plan A is to have a draft done to discuss with my supervisor by then….

 

 

 

Perhaps I should briefly finish the tale of the trip to Chingwe's Hole. It seems a long time ago now! We did find it, and it was impressive. What at first appears to be a small clump of trees adjacent to the most amazing misty blue view of the Shire valley, turns out to be a deep hole maybe three metres across, with trees and vegetation clinging to the almost vertical sides and deep darkness in the middle with no prospect of seeing the bottom. The guides at the top told us that it is about 60 metres deep and that there must be some way out although they were not clear about exactly what. Apparently lepers used to be thrown down there. I understand that Chingwe means something like rope and that it got its name because no one wanted to touch the lepers to throw them down so they used to twist ropes around them and throw them in touching the ropes only. Apparently there is a place near the bottom called 'Dead body village' where bodies and bits of bodies used to turn up with great regularity. Most unpleasant!

While we were inspecting the hole we saw that there was a couple sitting on a bench quietly enjoying the magnificent view; a white man of maybe 60 and a younger Malawian woman. The guide took us down a steep twisty path a few hundred metres to see what he described as 'the gorge', a spectacular rock formation which you could easily miss if you did not know it was there. I realized that the couple from the bench had joined our party and were talking animatedly to Phillip. It turned out that this was the man that he had been talking about earlier who owned the 'football' house. Talk about a coincidence!

Where else have I been since I last wrote up the blog? I have been up the 'Way of the Rosary' again one Sunday afternoon. I think this is definitely the most beautiful local walk, and another weekend I went with Malcolm to Michuri Nature Reserve again, but we didn't see much in the way of wild-life. We have had shopping trips to Blantyre. I have continued to develop a relationship with Joseph, a street vendor who sells souvenirs and craft items to azungus. He now knows that if I say I am not buying today I really mean it, and leaves me alone. When I do want to buy I fondly imagine that he charges me a reasonable price! A couple of weeks ago I treated myself to a lovely malachite necklace. Now what I need (?) is earrings to match! We spend an hour or so most Saturdays in the garden of the Mount Soche hotel over mzuzu coffee and cake. Last weekend Malcolm, Melvin (the new engineer) and I went to Mulange and climbed up to the waterfall again, the same walk that I did with Jack and Mary a couple of months ago. We set off in the Land Rover to find the Fort Lister Pass but unfortunately did not find it until about 4.00pm which was too late to ensure getting down again before dark, so that remains a trip for a future occasion. Maybe later this weekend I shall get around to bringing you up to date on the development of the course, maybe you will have to wait longer! This afternoon we are off to the Kamuzu stadium to watch Malawi play Togo. International football at K200 a ticket! (less than a pound!).

I'll try not to take a whole month 'til my next entry! If you want to encourage me, comment!