The rest of the week, apart from Namitembo!

I am sitting in an Italian Ice Cream Parlour in Blantyre to write this blog entry because we have had no power for 24 hours now at Mitsidi. It went off following a very loud thunderclap yesterday afternoon. We had organized a party for the joint birthday celebrations of Sarah and Diddy and to say farewell to Giacomo. The rains chose party time to assert themselves and establish that the rainy season is well and truly here. We have had some short sharp showers in the last couple of weeks, but yesterday the heavens truly opened and the Malawian drainage systems were tested! The outdoor barbeque was almost washed away and we had to transfer the party to the khonde of the main house where the barbeque is under cover. Attendance was restricted as many people did not fancy a wet walk, but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless, with plenty of food and drink and swimming in the rain. We had a good time but it was disappointing not to see everyone we expected and there was a low point when Diddy's mobile phone was stolen. It feels bad when something is stolen by one of your guests.

Last Monday I returned to work following my week off sick. David and I have launched a pilot programme for the practical part of the course, testing out a few tasks on the students who are helping in the primary school or with the Stay and Play group. I helped Diddy with the Stay and Play again this week. It's good to spend some time with children. My favourite part was sitting outside with five children who were too old for a toddler group but who turned up, without adults, on the offchance we would let them in to play. We didn't, but I took paper and crayons outside and tried to chat with them. My Chichewa is not really up to it and their English was about the same level, but we drew a few pictures and learned a little about each other that way. Later one of my students came outside and I asked her to ask the children why they were not in school. Four of them could say which school they were enrolled in and which standard they were in, but one boy, the one with a burn on his hand and bald patches in his hair, had never been to school. Perhaps I should not have encouraged them, as they gained in confidence and we had to chase them out of the hall for attempting to steal the toys.

I attended choir practice on Monday, but because of my visit to Namitembo that was the only practice I was able to get to this week. I do hope that I will not be slung out of the choir for non-attendance! In the next couple of weeks Martin, Mavuto and two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses are to go to the studio to make a recording as a sort of dummy run for our CD. I am hoping to be able to go along for the ride. It will be really interesting to see the process.

On Tuesday I went home with Zoe in order to be the right side of town to set off early in the morning for Namitembo. Zoe cooked toad in the hole in her tiny oven. The dish with its four sausages took up all the available space, but the Yorkshire pudding rose beautifully, crispy on the outside, soft within it was a very British delight!! Later we sat on the khonde with Mary and her visitors and the evening passed very pleasantly. We were not in bed until eleven, which is pretty late by our standards!

On Friday night and Saturday morning Mitsidi baking club swung into action again to prepare goodies for the party. We actually managed to get brown bread flour in Shoprite, which was a treat. I especially enjoyed making a carrot cake for the birthday cake.

A visit to Namitembo

Ubwino wa amayi is a small charity run by two women who have lived in Malawi for many years. One English and one Irish, both nurses and with an interest in education, about six years ago they decided they wanted to do something to support Malawian young women to be able to improve the quality of their own lives. Mary, the Irish woman, whom I have got to know both as Zoe's landlady, and as the owner of a couple of Montessori nursery schools in Blantyre, has a home in Ireland in the same parish as a priest who spent 15 years of his life developing services to improve the lives of rural people in Namitembo in the Zomba area of Malawi. He has recently moved on to another parish, but Namitembo is full of evidence of his influence. Apparently a lot of the work has been supported by a wealthy parish in Seattle, USA as well as the village in Ireland. Anyway, Namitembo boasts a secondary school, with a library of second hand books imported from Seattle, a purpose built science lab, the like of which I have not come across elsewhere; a solidly built residence for the parish priests with associated chalets, where we stayed the night, and a trade school where students can learn carpentry, bricklaying, tailoring or computer skills. You can see that there are a lot of parallels between this project and the work of Beehive in Chilomoni. Chilomoni is an urban township setting, and Namitembo is about as rural as you can get, set at the bottom of Zomba mountain on the valley floor where it is HOT, about an hour's walk to the nearest village served by any kind of public transport and about 45 minutes drive from Zomba town. That is 45 minutes on a good day in the dry season when the dirt road has been recently graded! Both projects are Catholic, both are concerned with raising the standard of living of residents in a specified region, both are concerned to encourage independence and self development through education and learning a trade. Beehive supports a primary school, and Namitembo a secondary school. Namitembo has a flourishing Montessori nursery with Malawian staff, and Beehive is soon to open a Children's Centre with Malawian staff trained to work according to the UK Children's Centre model, adapted for local need…… Mary and Diane talked with Father Owen about their aspirations to support young women and gradually the Ubwino wa amayi project developed. The dropout rate for girls from secondary school is much higher than that for boys. The reasons for this are multi factorial, of which more later. Secondary education in Malawi is not expensive, but it is certainly not free and many families struggle to find fees for their children. For cultural reasons boys tend to be prioritized. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Diane and Mary decided to fund raise to provide school fees for girls who had been forced to drop out of secondary school for whatever reason, financial, because of pregnancy, family responsibilities, gender inequality, poverty etc. The plan was to support 75 girls. I am not sure how this figure was chosen, but think it may have been the number necessary to bring the proportion of girls in Namitembo secondary school back to 50%. There are currently 32 girls on the programme. School fees, uniform costs, school trips and essential equipment such as calculators are paid for. About a quarter of the funded girls have at least one child and their ages range from about 14 up to about 28. The older ones tend to attend night school, but whether day or night pupils they are working towards their Malawi Certificate of Secondary Education. About three years ago Mary and Diane became aware that there was a need for good quality early years education and daycare for all sorts of reasons, not least that some of 'their girls' were not attending school regularly because of the need for affordable daycare for their babies. Mary knows about nursery schools and with the cooperation of her parish in Ireland raised money to build a school and brought Irish builders, who funded themselves, over to Namitembo to build a nursery school in record time!

I was thrilled to be invited to join Mary and Diane on their monthly visit to Namitembo. We piled into Diane's car with a boot filled with luggage and goodies and accompanied by Maddie, a nineteen year old British girl who is here to see a bit of the world and get some teaching experience. The journey was filled by Mary's account of the history of the project which I have summarized above. It was a hot clear day. There is plenty of colour in the landscape at present. Although the rainy season is far from in full flood, there has been sufficient rain for everything to look pretty green. The new year's leaves have filled out on the trees and are bright and fresh. Maize planting is in full swing. In Blantyre the little plants are barely six inches high but as we drove along the Zomba road the fields became greener and the individual seedlings taller. The red of the soil deepens in colour as one gets closer to Zomba, and the moisture in the earth makes the colour still more intense. The purple of the Jacaranda has been replaced by the strident orange-red of the Flame Trees in full flower. The sky was bright blue. A few miles from Zomba we took a turn to the left and began to circumnavigate the mountain. Diane says that the road becomes dangerous in the rainy season, but it was scary enough now as we began the descent down a series of tight hairpin bends into the valley. It took about three quarters of an hour to reach Namitembo from the Zomba road. At first the dirt road was well-graded, but it got steeper, narrower and more rocky as we approached our destination. We arrived at the priests' house at lunchtime to discover that the emails confirming our visit has not been received, so we were a surprise! However we were welcomed by Lloyd, the house keeper who hurried off to make up beds for us. In true British style we were gasping for a cup of tea, but unfortunately the power had been off since eight in the morning so we had to be content with Sobo and the picnic lunch we had brought with us. Thus fortified we set off to the nursery school where the 'Ubwino girls' had been asked to stay after school for a 'focus group' session so that Mary and Diane could update themselves with the progress of the project. To begin with we were a little disappointed to find that only 17 of the 32 beneficiaries were present, but as the meeting went on the number gradually increased to 23. A register was taken, Diane took photos of the girls to help them to remember who is on the project from year to year, snacks and drinks were distributed and as the meeting went on the girls, who had been rather unnaturally quiet at first, gradually relaxed and gained the courage to contribute to discussion. Mary encouraged the girls to rearrange themselves so that all those in Form 1 were together, and so on. Then the night school girls grouped themselves separately from the day girls and hey presto, everyone was sitting with girls that she knew. Mary gave them time to discuss the answers to questions in small groups before they had to feedback to the azungus and this approach worked well, giving the girls support and boosting their confidence. Mary got them to tell what they think the project is all about and we cleared up a couple of misconceptions, for example a few people have thought that it is only for girls with babies, but this is not the case. There are all too many other barriers to access to secondary education for girls. Diane had set the girls an essay question. 'What are the barriers to accessing secondary education for girls in your local area?' The competition was open to all 'Ubwino girls' and to all pupils, both boys and girls, in Standard 1. The focus group discussed the barriers and came up with quite a comprehensive list. Mary also asked them if they had any questions about the project. The first question was to Mary and Diane, 'Why do you two women want to pay our school fees?' What a good question! Mary talked about her own experience of education and the effect it had had on her life, how she and Diane had both become nurses. She introduced me as a doctor, slight misconception here, but never mind, and Maddie as a potential teacher. She talked about independence and being an example to our children, and said that she wanted them to have similar opportunities. This met with enthusiastic applause and a cheer! Their other questions were mostly to clarify exactly what Ubwino will and will not pay for. Yes to school fees, exam fees, ID fees (I never did find out exactly what these are), one set of uniform a year and the cost of school trips, mathematical instruments and calculators. Also there are possible bursaries for higher education if good enough grades are obtained at MSCE; maybe at the local Trade School and maybe further afield. As yet no one has achieved these, but as time goes on it will certainly happen. No to school shoes, but Diane did make a promise to see if it would be possible to obtain good quality second-hand school shoes from donors in Blantyre.

The next subject on the agenda was toilets. I learned a lot about toilets in the last couple of days. One reason for absenteeism amongst girl pupils is that toilet facilities are not adequate. Especially during their period girls tend to stay at home. Upon inspection of the toilets later in the day I could absolutely understand. For 350 pupils there are two pit latrines. They are housed in a single straw hut. Two cubicles next to each other have no doors, so there is no privacy. Boys and girls use the same latrines. The toilets were basic, but are obviously maintained and kept as clean as possible. A solid concrete slab with a six-inch diameter hole covers a long drop of about 25 feet to the bottom of the pit. They were much more salubrious than the flush toilets at the Trade School next door which were filthy, smelly and without water. Mary and Diane asked the girls what sort of toilets they would prefer and there was not a single vote for flush toilets. After some discussion we decided upon four toilets for girls and four for boys. Pit latrines of the Blair ??? ventori type which have a spiral entrance judiciously placed to use the prevailing wind to take the smell up and out of the roof. These also include a mechanism which discourages flies from coming out of the pit back into the toilet by painting the roof black (flies are attracted to the light), and including an open pipe, covered with a net which attracts the flies away from the toilet but does not allow them to escape so they eventually die and drop back into the pit. Clever eh? I never thought toilet technology would be so interesting!

After the meeting we retired to the Priest's house to mark the essays and select three winners. The prizes were generous and attractive. The idea was to encourage the girls to take part in the competition and really push themselves to do well. I don't imagine that I will ever forget those essays. They were well thought out, honest and in some cases frankly shocking. Poverty was probably the number one barrier, but all the other reasons I listed at the beginning of this entry were described several times. Rape, sexual abuse of other kinds, initiation ceremonies and cultural practices came up again and again. I was shocked to note that one boy thought that one could deal with the issue of unwanted pregnancy by imprisoning 'guilty' girls for 20 years! Evidence of gender inequality in this community was obvious in every single essay whether it was written by a boy or by a girl. There had obviously been class discussion about the issues covered. Many of the essays were similar in structure and in the choice of issues covered. However it was not particularly difficult to choose the winners as only a few stood out as different or really well written. The top three prizes were won by girls in Standards 4 and 3. They received MK3000, 2000 and 1000 respectively and a large hamper of foods. The lucky three also get a trip to Blantyre to see the Sports and Social club's pantomime version of Pinocchio in a couple of week's time. I already have my ticket for the Gala Night and am looking forward to it myself. We also awarded a consolation prize of MK500 to a boy who had made an excellent start to his essay, but who had not reached any conclusions or suggested solutions to the barriers. The results were announced in assembly this morning to tumultuous applause.

Following assembly we visited the nursery school. Mary and Diane were occupied in talking to the staff and some staff training. Maddie and I visited every class, taking part in whatever lesson happened to be taking place at the time. We arrived at assembly time. The whole school, maybe 60 children, was in the courtyard garden, singing songs, marching and greeting each other. We followed one class to their room, where they settled on the bamboo mats laid out in the middle of the classroom. The lesson of the day appeared to be the days of the week. They sang and recited their way through many repetitions of rhymes using the days of the week in English. We stood in the doorway and watched for a while and then moved on to the baby room. The babies were mostly at least two years of age I would guess. Here the main lesson of the day was numbers up to 5. The teacher interrupted what she was doing to lead the children in an enthusiastic and tuneful welcome song. They also sang the 'vowel song', the one that David says he will scream if he hears it sung by pre-school children ever again! This time Maddie and I went right into the room and sat on the mat with the children. I am now used to the fact that a few more timid children will shrink away from the unfamiliar azungus, but this was not a particular issue here. I joined in with every song, rhyme and repetition that I could which seemed to draw approval from the teachers as well as some amusement. After a while it was toilet time and the whole class went off together to use the facilities. Maddie and I remained on the mat and chatted with the children as they returned one by one. We played 'Round and round the garden' and I tried out the 'Roly poly' rhyme which the children watched with some attention and laughter at the 'Ever so fast' bit, but none of them joined in with the actions. I think it was entirely new to them. Next the teacher got out some wooden tiles with sand paper numbers on them. These are classic Montessori teaching equipment, used here in a very Malawian way. The tiny tots were asked in turn whether they could pick out 'Number one', 'Number two' and so on, but there was no attempt to teach the concept of number. At least one little chap recognized each number with ease, but whether he understood what numbers mean, I have no idea.

The classrooms were all stocked similarly. There were many toys given by donors, mostly from America. There was a lot of Montessori equipment. I saw the pink tower, the knobbed cylinders, dressing frames with buttons and zips, trays with jugs and cups, the broad stair, measuring rods and so on, I am by no means a Montessori expert. Each room had a big pile of soft toys. There were musical instruments, construction sets, puzzles and many sets of wooden tiles, with numbers and letters, painted and in sand paper, culturally appropriate pictures for example of fruits, baobab trees, mud nuts, African animals and so on. I had an interesting chat with Mary about the commercial possibilities of producing similar sets of tiles for different cultures, shamrocks for Ireland, London buses and telephone boxes for England, the Taj Mahal for India, and so on. They were a good local resource, I would love a set for the Children's Centre. Each room had a large number of locally made small, low tables which were stacked around the edge of the room. I asked the teachers in the baby room if they ever used them to set out activities for the children, but was told that they are always in the same place and used for storing the children's bags etc. I can't help feeling there is a missed opportunity here. Low tables like these placed on a mat to define the work area and be comfortable for children to sit on the floor, could be used to make all sorts of activities available for children to access and explore independently. After a while we went next door to join the older children who were learning shapes, pointing at the chalked shapes on the board and identifying circle, square, triangle, rectangle and kite. The lesson moved on to the months of the year, taught through frequent repetition and song. The children seemed to thoroughly enjoy repeating the songs and rhymes. I am constantly struck by the fluidity with which African children move their bodies to dance as they sing, moving so differently from the average British child.

Around ten thirty the children received a meal of rice, with a little sugar. Often they have likuni phala (a fortified porridge) but this is difficult to get at the moment. The children sat on the floor to eat with spoons from plastic cups or plates. They managed their meals very tidily compared with their UK peers and ate the plain food with obvious enjoyment. Meals are prepared by a rota of parent helpers. Daily records are kept of exactly what the children have been given to eat, who the cooks were, whether the children enjoyed the meal etc.

I also had a look at the daily records kept by the teachers. One book for each class records the main lesson of the day, learning targets and a comment about how the lesson went. The other book contains a line for each child. Sometimes the comment is about what they know, sometimes it is about behaviour, sometimes about how the child was feeling on that particular day. I have asked many of the nurseries I have visited what records they keep about children's progress and this is the most detailed I have come across. The Head Teacher had commented to Mary that a fairly new child in the baby room seemed to be particularly bright, and when this was mentioned to me I immediately knew who they meant from my own observations this morning. Mary and I followed through every comment written about this boy since he started at the beginning of this term and it was a helpful place to begin to build up a picture of his capabilities.

I wondered when the children had the opportunity to play with all the toys and equipment displayed on the open shelves at child height in every room. We had only seen lessons where the whole class looked at the same subject together. Mary and I discussed this over coffee and upon our return I asked the head teacher. She said that the children chose toys to play with on a Friday. We went into a classroom and Mary asked the teacher to ask the children to choose a toy each and take it back to the mat. They seemed hesitant at first as if they did not know quite what to do, but soon gained confidence and returned to the mat with their choices. Some did not seem quite to know what to do with what they had chosen, One little boy with a box of Duplo soon became quite deeply absorbed in exploring what he could do with the bricks. Mary and I then moved on to the baby room to be met with the charming sight of 16 little ones each with a soft toy tied to their back with a piece of fabric, just like Mum carries them in a chitenje on her back. I took a lot of very sweet photos, but many of the children were wandering about a bit aimlessly. I guess the play value is a bit limited when your toy is tied to your back. The teacher had a big rabbit tied to her own back and a teddy under her arm. I said to her, 'You had better start breast-feeding that teddy!' Much to my amazement she immediately sat on the floor and put the teddy to her breast. The children immediately recognized what she was doing and one or two of them followed suit. A few cups, spoons and bowls, blankets, mats and so on, offered with the soft toys and zitenge and how much richer would the play experiences be? Mary took advantage of the opportunity offered to encourage her staff to offer the children more chances to choose their own activities. She told them not to worry if visitors thought that the children were not learning as they were playing but to explain that in this way they were finding out things for themselves and not simply repeating a lesson without necessarily understanding it.

Mary gave her untrained staff an intensive three-week course before the nursery opened, including many aspects of the Montessori approach. The staff members were carefully selected and they have done an excellent job, but nevertheless there are lessons here for me about the need for constant reinforcement of how to put theoretical learning into practice. Mary is only able to be at her nursery for a day or two each month but David and I will be luckier in this respect and will see our students on a daily basis and be able to support them to remember and put into practice what we have taught them.

It was lovely to spend even this very short period of time with real children. Perhaps we have been in the classroom for too long. The delay to the opening of our children's centre, although not avoidable, has been frustrating. I look forward to the opening in January.

What a pleasure it has been to get out of Blantyre and see another project, and especially one that has so many parallels with the work of Beehive. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Diane and Mary a little better and to sharing ideas and thoughts. I look forward to showing them around the Children's Centre very soon and continuing to have an interest in each other's projects.

A week off sick

I have been off work sick for most of this week, with an unidentified virus. Symptoms included fever, diarrhea and general pathetic-ness, so I took myself off to the doctor's for a professional diagnosis. I had my first malaria test, but fortunately it was negative and I was sent home with instructions to rest for 48 hours. Actually it was necessary to stay at home for longer than that and I spent four days doing little but sleeping and reading. Now, six days and four novels later I am more or less fully recovered but have lost almost a week. Monday was my only working day last week. David and I spent much of it preparing a short course on Circle Time for the students to be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday, but unfortunately I was not able to be there on either day. Sarah stepped into the breach and helped David out, but I was very sorry to miss seeing the students. The previous week they were sent two letters, one from Vince confirming the opening date of the Children's Centre among other points, and one from David and me explaining how the third phase of the course, the practical assessments, will work. Sarah reported back to me that they asked a lot of questions. I should have been glad to be there to understand properly their reactions and to answer questions, but I am sure that David did an excellent job and at the time I was not well enough to be much use to anyone!

On Friday night Zoe and Lindsey combined to persuade me I was sufficiently recovered to be able to withstand an evening in the Liquor Garden. It is about half an hour's walk from Mitsidi and by the time I arrived I felt like a wet rag, but an hour and two bottles of water later I felt much better and was very glad to have begun to be sociable again. Zoe, with my welfare at heart, persuaded me to allow her to slip a sachet of Malawian brandy into my last bottle of water and I think that marked my return to the land of the healthy!

On Saturday I took the minibus into Blantyre for no better reason than that I needed to get out of Mitsidi. I pottered about the city centre for a bit and then met Chris and Rita for a coffee. Rita and I then did a bit of desultory shopping and then went to the market bus station to catch the minibus back to Sigregge. We piled in to the most dilapidated looking bus in the bus station together with twelve other passengers, an extra child, two sacks of maize, several cans of cooking oil and about four bales of sugar. I never did identify who it all belonged to. Minibus fares have been rising rapidly since the supply of diesel has been reduced. After a long period of being steady at MK80, they went up to MK90, then MK100, and last week Chris was charged MK110. I watched carefully as other passengers handed over their fares and concluded that the going rate was MK100 so handed over a MK200 note for the two of us. It is always prudent to offer the exact money, sometimes as an azungu it is difficult to get change. The bus rattled and banged its way out of Blantyre. The catch on the side door was faulty and only latched after about one attempt in four, so at each stop there was a lot of crashing and banging. All the way along the untarmacked, Chilomoni ring road the bus coasted downhill, presumably to conserve precious diesel. The driver appeared to know his route very well and managed to get all the way to our stop at the bottom of the Mitsidi drive without using any fuel at all. Rita and I were squeezed into the back seat with a couple of others and I was glad to ease my way out, over the bales of sugar and into the relative comfort of a light breeze to walk home. We made a salad lunch and the afternoon disappeared into reading, making Christmas cards and I don't really know what else, it just melted away! Hugh, Linda, Chris and I went for a curry at the Bombay Palace in the evening.

Today is Sunday and it is pretty hot again. I fancied a walk until I realized that with no access to transport it would be necessary to go a kilometer or so at least to the beginning of most walks and in the heat it seems a bit intimidating, so I am still here.

I continue to be concerned about the joint impact of the diesel shortage and Krizevac's new vehicle policy. When I first came here there was a clear understanding between volunteers that all of us had a need for transport and that it should be shared out as equally as possible. Of course there were occasional disagreements about priorities but on the whole it worked well. Now individual key holders are held personally responsible, and financially liable, for the cars allocated to them. Under the circumstances one cannot blame them for keeping them to themselves but unfortunately it seems to be leading to a situation where some volunteers have complete freedom to go where they like at weekends and others are quite restricted. The diesel shortage means that this difference is not too pronounced at the moment, but if things improve it could lead to a situation where there is a significant difference in quality of life between those who have access to transport and those who do not. There are lots of problems with the vehicles at present. One or two seem to be out of action altogether, and a few have been in and out of Torrent for attention. I suppose that is just the way of things when you use old cars. Charles does not always have a car to shop for the volunteers' food and although there is always plenty to eat, key ingredients such as eggs and margarine or butter are sometimes absent altogether.

All is quiet with the hammerkops, although Chris reported that father-hammerkop was still adding to the nest following the storm that brought lots of strips of blue gum bark to the ground a few days ago. I suspect that the turacos also are nesting as they are repeatedly flying in and out of the same dense growth, flashing their scarlet flight feathers as they do so. I have been trying to get a photo of them, but no luck so far, they move so quickly and my khonde is just too far away for them to be much more than a black and red dot on a photograph. The brown-hooded kingfisher seems to have taken up permanent residency in the trees near the river in direct view of the khonde at the main house. A flash of kingfisher blue is a common accompaniment to our meals. This morning as Chris and I shared a pot of coffee a tiny blue waxbill settled on the path only about three feet from our chairs.

Thoughts

I woke early this morning, soon after half-past four, and lay, drifting in and out of sleep, and listening to the sounds of a Malawian morning. Birdsong from the bushes behind my house, a child crying, the breeze moving the leaves of the blue gum trees in their characteristic billowing waves, and the patter of dry leaves falling on to my tin roof. The steady intermittent call of the 'squeaky-wheelbarrow-bird' reminded me that still I do not know its proper name! I could hear the low voices of men as they walked down our lane, greeting each other and chatting together, perhaps as they set out to walk to work, even at this very early hour on a Saturday. The footsteps of one of the Mitsidi guards passed my bedroom window. A dog barked.

Around five, I realized that I was not going to sleep any longer and sat up to read my book for an hour. I made breakfast and took it back to bed, reading on almost until the end of the book. About seven o'clock I heard sounds of those volunteers who are working today leaving for the Beehive building site, and got up and wandered down to the main house in search of coffee. Three hours had passed and still not yet eight o'clock! It struck me how different my life is here from the way it is at home in so many ways. For the last hour I have been sitting on my khonde drinking my way through a pot of coffee, finishing the book and observing the activity of Saturday morning at Mitsidi. Mike, the gardener has been busy caring for the swimming pool; Charles the House Manager, is putting new fly screens on Sarah's house, the previous ones having been slashed by whoever broke in a few days ago. It is a bright day with a clear blue sky and already it is hot. Mercifully the early morning breeze is still blowing and my khonde is still in shade so I am cool here. The movement of the trees provides a soft, comforting, background sound. The African pied wagtails have been busily catching flies. They are used to me now, and peck in the cracks between the paving stones on the path, only three or four feet from my toes! I have seen the scarlet flash of the flight feathers of turacos several times as they glide from tree to tree at the river side of the garden. There has been no movement from the hammerkops' nest. I have seen them only occasionally in the last couple of weeks. I hope this means they are safely inside their shaggy, dome of a home, sitting on eggs.

The story I have been reading, although set in the glasshouses of rural France at the turn of the nineteenth century, was really about families and relationships and as I reached the end where all the loves, tensions, difficulties and separations were sorted out, or not, it made me cry as it reminded me of my own relationships with family and friends who are so far away. Despite the fact that I have been here now for well over a year, and have of course gradually got to know a lot of people, I am missing you all a lot at the moment. I think it was having my sister, Annie, here for a month, actually living in the house with me that highlighted just how much I miss the quality of relationship and depth of understanding that you get from folk who you have known all your life, or even simply known well for a number of years. There are fine people here, both locals and volunteers living at Mitsidi, but building relationships takes time and commitment….. I am so looking forward to coming home for Christmas. I am sure that two weeks will pass in a flash!

OK, enough of the introspection! What have I been doing for the last two weeks? I am constantly astonished by how quickly the weeks pass. There is so much to do to prepare for the opening of the Children's Centre in January. About three o'clock on Friday afternoon I finished printing out the final (?) version of the practical assessment tasks I have written for the third and final part of our child care diploma course. I have said before that they are NVQ-style, but this is not really true, at least not in all aspects, no cross referencing of standards for one! When Sue was here she gave me some assessment tasks she has written to give me some ideas, but I only read a couple, they seemed very English and not appropriate somehow. I toyed for a while with the idea of basing them on the four domains of the Malawian ECD Curriculum, but that didn't work either; then one day David said, 'We've already put a lot of energy into designing the taught part of the course, why don't you just write one task for each subject we covered?' and 'Bingo!' everything fell into place. I did add one or two extra subject areas, 'Moral and Spiritual milestones' for example. I have written 25 tasks. They fall into two groups. Eight are compulsory tasks, covering essential areas such as Child Protection, Risk Assessment and Reflective Practice. Then there are seventeen other tasks, of which each student must complete twelve. Most of them have a similar format, two written questions designed to draw out the key theory behind the subject area, followed by an activity to design to use with the children. A list of possible questions that the assessor may ask to check the student's knowledge, follow each task. There are a few variations in form. Risk Assessment requires the student to fill in risk assessment forms. Reflective practice requires the student to bring their reflective diary to the assessment. Record keeping requires the student to bring a child's 'Learning Journey'. There are times when I am confident that the scheme is going to work well, and times when I am afraid that unforeseen difficulties will arise. At the moment I am keeping my fingers crossed. A dozen or so students are working with children, either supporting Marc in his work with Standard 1 in St James' Primary School, or with the 'Stay and Play' group that Lyndsey has started this week as the beginning of outreach work for the Children's Centre. David and I have decided to pilot a few of the practical assessments on these students in order to identify and iron out any problems before we start on all 68 of them in January. I have made a Practical Manual containing all the questions and also an Answer Book for each student containing pages and planning forms for all the questions and activities within each task. It has been quite a marathon project. If the Children's Centre had opened on time in September there is no way I could have been so thorough.

The opening of the 'Stay and Play' group in St James' Church Hall has been a delight. It is so nice finally to be working with real children. We have had a few problems, stay and play is a bit of an alien concept here. Quite a few parents assumed that we were providing free child care and tried to leave their children. Indeed, one lady managed to leave a 4-year old and despite several phone calls did not return for her, simply sending a young girl, the child's cousin to collect her at closing time. We ran two sessions last week and during the mornings I saw much to be proud of in the work of the student volunteers. Despite regular lessons my Chichewa is still pretty poor and without the students to translate Lyndsey and I would have been in trouble I fear! Some of the children have never got that near to an azungu before, and a few were anxious, or even cried at first, but we seem to have got over that problem fairly quickly. The first week we had the problem, common with Parent and Toddler sessions the world over I daresay, that the parents all sat on chairs around the edge of the room rather than getting down on the floor to play with the children, but Lyndsey, who is made of sterner stuff than I am, got over that one by hiding all the chairs! A few extra zitenje on the floor and most mums and one or two dads were down on the children's level and exploring the toys. Many of the toys are completely outside the experience of most of the parents, never mind the children. One mum told me, to my astonishment, that she had never seen a black baby doll before. Dolls are too expensive for working people to buy for their children and are all imported and apparently all white! I checked this out in Shoprite, the South African supermarket, and certainly there it was true. Thanks to the generosity of fundraisers in the UK we have four black baby dolls, twin boys about 9 inches high and a boy and a girl of about 16 inches. I remember writing about the girl when she arrived some months ago, and how impressed the students were with her. Unfortunately when we moved classrooms she was packed in a box which has disappeared into a container with a lot of other equipment to await the opening of the Children's Centre, but all three boys have been objects of wonder both to the children and to the staff of the IT college where we have our classroom. When I first casually carried the larger one dangling by the leg across the car park to the classroom several people gave shocked gasps at my ill treatment of the 'baby'! There was horror too that he was naked. I was told more than once that I should get him some clothes as soon as possible. By the time I reached the entrance to the building I was obliged to think of a name for him. Rather hastily, without due consideration I called him 'Mavuto' which means problem. This is unfortunate because this is a name which the Malawian ECD Staff Training Manual cites in the Child Protection section as being an abusive name to give a child! Now I cannot change it! Every day someone asks me 'How is Mavuto?', and there is much hilarity as I answer 'He is in the filing cabinet' or 'I have locked him in the office!' Rachel, who runs the tailoring project, has made him some dark brown shorts and a satin shirt in golden yellow! He is very smart. The twin babies who were I think donated by a friend of Sarah's were christened by the man who cleans our office and keeps us supplied with flasks of hot water to make tea. His name is Cosmos and his brother is called Abby, so the dolls were named after them. They too have tailor made clothes, but in their case the shorts are navy and the satin pale blue. Children as young as 18 months have been seen in 'Stay and Play' with Mavuto, Cosmos or Abby strapped to their backs with scraps of chitenje cloth. They are regularly breast fed, and given imaginary nsima to eat!

The fuel shortage continues so we have not been out of Blantyre at the weekend for some weeks now. There have been a number of barbeques. Since the weather has been very hot we are swimming most days at the moment. Last weekend Sarah and I went up the Way of the Rosary and rather adventurously left the way-marked track and found our way straight down the side of the mountain to emerge opposite the Beehive site next to the secondary school. This week all the female volunteers had an evening at Zoe's flat where she cooked us chicken and pasta and we consumed considerable quantities of wine! We read magazines, watched TV and all had our hair restyled with Zoe's GHDs! Mitsidi baking club is still alive and well. This week we made Granny Boyd's biscuits, a sort of chocolate shortbread, and bread. The choir continues to practice on four lunchtimes each week. I am still having trouble getting my tongue around the Chichewa words. David will be away next Thursday for our Chichewa lesson so I have arranged with Paul, our teacher that he will go through the songs and tell me what they mean. I hope that if I understand them, I will remember them better! It is just as well that it is a CD we are making, not a DVD, at least no one will know that I am reading the words! There is a choir festival this weekend and I was looking forward to going despite the walk of four km each way, but unfortunately not enough people were able to go, largely for financial reasons as it apparently costs a couple of hundred kwacha each to go (roughly a days' wages) and most members are saving their spare cash to go to the studio to make the CD.

Oh! And the rains have come. Actually it is about a week since it rained during the day, but when it did it really poured. Proper rainy season rain! It has rained steadily through the night on two occasions. The local people are busy with their hoes, digging ridges to plant maize. It is still hot, but now it is humid as well. I am beginning to understand wht one of the phrases from my Chichewa lessons is 'You have a sweaty head'! I certainly have a sweaty head quite frequently. I have had my hair cut really short so that it sticks up in spikes on the top of my head. It took a bit of getting used to. Every time I looked in the mirror I wondered if it was really me, but now that it has been done for about six weeks I have got used to it and I like it! I had it done again this morning. It is certainly a bit cooler, which has to be a good thing.

Getting hotter every day

As we hear of the weather getting cooler in the UK, the temperature here is rising steadily. Today, and indeed for the last week or so I feel that I must be gradually melting away. I am running the fan all night at the moment, at least when there is power I am, and most of the time I am still too hot. I can feel the under sheet getting gradually damper as I shuffle about in the bed trying to get comfortable. Some people are predicting that the weather will break this week and the first rains will come. Others say we shall not see rain until near the end of November. We shall have to wait and see. During the day too I have been suffering a bit from the heat. I really hate it when the sweat runs down my face and into my eyes because the salt stings. I don't think I've ever experienced that at home. We are walking to work every day at the moment, mostly because petrol and diesel are in very short supply. By the time I arrive I can feel streams of water trickling down my back and in the area under my rucksack the fabric of my dress is soaking and sticks to my skin.

David and his Dad went off for a few days' break at the Lake last week. My task was to get my head down and finish the annotation of the Malawian ECD curriculum. On Friday I finally completed it and have printed out one copy. Soon we shall take it into town and get six copies photocopied and bound. Then David and I shall have one each and there will be one copy for each zone in the children's centre. David took the practical tasks for the third part of the Diploma on holiday to check over and comment upon. Rather to my surprise he actually did do more than half the checking, not really my idea of a holiday activity! So in a few days we should be able to produce a prototype Practical Assessment manual, NVQ – style but much more sensibly put together of course!!!

Tomorrow, and again on Thursday, we are running a short course on the use of displays in the Children's Centre. David has put together a presentation and I have dreamed up six display projects for small groups of students to put together. Saran and I will be up at 5.00am tomorrow so that we can get all the materials we need out of the storage container before 6.00am. We think this will be the best time because in the heat of the day it is utterly unbearable in the container, like being in an oven. We are quite worried about how well some of the stuff in the containers will survive. We imagine, melting plastic, bacteria multiplying rapidly in the warm paint and glue, toys and resources steadily cooking by day and cooling slightly by night, just to be heated up again the next day.

The choir has been practicing on four lunchtimes each week. The programme for our cd is gradually coming together with a mixture of English and Chichewa songs. Construction did assembly this week so the choir had to polish up a couple of pieces for public performance. I am still struggling with the Chichewa words but am making some progress. When Brian and Sue were here they made the choir a gift of uniform t-shirts, but there are a few members who do not have them so I have been charged with the task of finding out how to get some more. I discovered today that the company is called 'Glorious t-shirts!' The only contact is a mobile phone no. so I sent them a text, but no reply as yet! I had to cobble together an approximation to the uniform for the assembly of a pale yellow t-shirt and a black skirt. I possess neither item, so I had to ask around and borrow them. Zoe kindly came up with both items. To my utter amazement I was able to fit into them. Whoever would have imagined a year ago that I would have been able to borrow Zoe's clothes!! Indeed I got so many compliments I wore them all day!

We had a lovely relaxed weekend. On Friday night we watched a film together in the living room at Mitsidi. This was quietly companionable. Very pleasant! Nothing startling happened but we had a few invitations so I managed to go out for lunch with a Malawian family on Saturday and then move on to a barbeque party at David's in the High St in honour of the birthdays of two of our Malawian friends. We made them cards and birthday cakes. It was the first birthday cake Hellen had ever had! On Sunday four of us women went with Mary Kamwendo to a bridal shower for Chrissy who is an administrator at JPII. It was quite a grand affair with much dancing and throwing of money, and older women giving Chrissy useful advice on such themes as Grooming, Home Management and Ettiquette. In the evening Zoe and I were invited to supper with her landlady who runs a couple of nursery schools in Blantyre. Several other guests were also involved in Early Years work so we shared a lot of ideas and experience and I now have several other projects lined up to go and visit. I hope also to show some of them around the Children's Centre.

Shortages

Our most recent course was a look at planning early years provision using themes. The reason why David and I chose this as a subject for a short course is because as part of the exam, back in July, we set a planning task which involved suggesting a theme suitable for a group of under-5s of a particular age and then planning activities designed to support the children to gain the skills required to meet the milestones of the Malawian ECD curriculum in each of the four domains (Physical, Mental and Cognitive, Social and Emotional, and Moral and Spiritual). The whole exercise was threatened because about 85% of the students had no understanding of what we meant by the word theme. In fact we had to make radical changes to the marking scheme in order to be able to assess what the students knew and make sensible use of the results to that paper! I guess this is how you learn, neither of us has much experience of setting exams. Anyway we realized that although we knew that very few of the students had actually worked in nurseries before we had not taken into account what you pick up when you are on a placement in an Early Years setting. In UK all Early Years courses include periods of practical work with children, so it just would not have happened at home that we would have missed the fact that our students lacked this basic knowledge, add to this the fact that English is their second language and you have the explanation for why the situation arose.

I had an easy time for this course as David volunteered to put together a presentation so I was just there in the background helping the small groups of students to think about what a theme might be, and later to put together lists of suitable themes for various teaching purposes. I know it is not fashionable at home to teach in this way, but we are not looking at it as an alternative to basing activities on observed needs of individual children, but rather as complementary to it. When they finally start in the Children's Centre in January our students will all be new and inexperienced together and they must set up play spaces that are attractive and stimulating for babies, toddlers and young children. As products of the Malawian education system and its rote learning approach they are not the best at using their initiative and so we know that they need systems to help them to get to the right place at least at first. It is to be hoped that as they gain experience and see more ways of doing things they will gain in confidence and be able to take a more creative and original approach to planning.

In the afternoon we lightened the atmosphere and I used a grid technique that I learned thirty years ago with New Games UK, to show the students how to make up new games for themselves to support particular desired learning outcomes and themes. We had a few good ideas, but again it was more of a struggle than I expected. Again I blame the Malawian education system, originality is definitely not encouraged and students are afraid to make suggestions for fear of being ridiculed, or castigated for being 'wrong'. 'You have failed…' is all too common a phrase in Malawi. I would like to use the same technique with the EYPS students at home. I think it would be a way of developing quite exciting new games and activities.

Two weekends have passed since I last wrote. There is little option to get out of Blantyre at the moment as the fuel crisis is ever-deepening! When there is a rumour of fuel at a particular garage queues develop rapidly in both directions. Men bearing bright yellow jerry cans converge on the garage from around every corner and jump off every minibus. Adam, the volunteer whose job includes keeping all the trucks and JCBs, concrete mixers etc that Torrent hires out to other businesses on the road, sends the vehicles with the biggest tanks to join the local queues, but also looks at the possibility of obtaining fuel from wherever he can. Thus we have been making our own entertainment. Sarah and I went into Blantyre on the minibus on Saturday morning, sat in the garden of the Mount Soche Hotel with bottles of pop and then met up with Rita and Lyndsey to go shopping. We ended up in Lambats, the fabric shop, where we each bought cheap, lightweight cotton to get dresses made by the tailoring project. Then it was back to the Soche where we met David, Ged and Marc for lunch and frittered away the afternoon in idle chat, Greens and Mzuzu coffee. On Saturday Sarah, Lyndsey and I put together a good spread and invited all the volunteers and several other friends for a barbeque at Mitsidi. Despite the colour of the swimming pool being a deep bottle green, similar in shade to the water of the fish ponds, most of the younger volunteers jumped in and ensured that those of us who remained on the edge got as wet as they did by repeated bombing into the water. A few locals must have heard the splashing and came to join in and a good time was had by all.

The weather has finally settled into a steady succession of still, hot days. I am so grateful for the new classroom in JPIILITA which is so much cooler than the tin roofed library at St James' Primary school where David and I were based this time last year. Marc, who is teaching in Standard 1 up there at the moment arrives in our room at the end of the teaching day almost literally melting after being cooped up in a concrete box with about 80 children in the heat of the day.

The hammerkops have been working hard. The nest is now at least a couple of feet tall. It is a shaggy mound of sticks, leaves and grasses, browned by the sun. The entrance hole is towards the trunk of the tree over half way down the side so that the nesting place is completely enclosed and protected from the wind and weather. During the barbeque we observed Mr and Mrs Hammerkop getting intimate on more than one occasion, so we are hoping for eggs very soon. Unfortunately though, I shall not be able to see them from my vantage point at the top of the garden as the nest is so completely enclosed.

The turn of the Children's Centre to lead the Monday morning assembly rolled around again this week. I was a little anxious about it as when I asked for student volunteers I did not get even one. However I am sympathetic to them at the moment as for some at least it is very difficult for them during the wait for the Children's Centre to open, so I decided not to press the point and tackle the assembly in another way. Unfortunately David is on holiday and Marc is thoroughly committed at the time of the assembly to his teaching of Standard 1 at St James', so that left me, Sarah and Lyndsey. During the Children's Centre meeting last week we put our heads together and with David's help came up with a programme. Sarah gallantly agreed to find and read an appropriate Bible passage and fixed on Mark 10 13-16, the 'Suffer the little children' passage. Father John leant her a 'Study Bible' and we all liked the commentary for that passage which seemed to have something to say that was relevant to the way we are planning to teach in the Children's Centre, so she read that too. Lyndsey offered to find a suitable secular reading or poem and with a stroke of genius came up with 'Anyway' a verse which can apparently be found on the wall of the orphanage in Calcutta where Mother Teresa worked. David suggested that we illustrate how we are trying to teach Moral and Social issues such as cooperation and teamwork through games and fun, and get a few volunteers to take part in 'The Balloon Game' during the assembly. We needed someone to lead a prayer and, as our line manager, Vince was happy to be drawn in to the proceedings. That left only the introductions and links for me to do. I made a Trojan effort, with the help of Paul, my Chichewa teacher, and Yohane, and did these in Chichewa, which proved to be a popular decision and earned lots of applause on the day! Father John Dimba rounded everything off with a passionate reflection in Chichewa. He is such a good speaker but although I understood not a word, I thoroughly enjoyed the address, full of expression and gesture, and also the response of the congregation as they showed their approval of his message. The poem went down extremely well and was picked up by the MD in what amounted to a second reflection tacked on to the end of the assembly. Put all together this produced one of the longest assemblies in living memory, which I would not normally consider to be a good thing, but the feedback so far has all been appreciative, so I think we got away with it!

It is a fortnight since my last entry. The long gap is largely because I have been having further trouble with my laptop, getting repeated messages that a problem with the hard disk has been detected and to immediately back up everything. Yohane has been a star, but yet again he has had to back everything up, wipe the disk clean and start again. I am sick of having to hang about and I am sure he has better things to do. Unfortunately the period between him returning it to me and the next message was approximately 20 minutes, so I fear the damage may be terminal. I have now taken the precaution of copying the latest back up onto the office desktop. I must be disciplined about keeping it up to date! On top of this lie the usual Malawi troubles of intermittent internet services and slow download speeds.

During the last two weeks we have run two short courses, 'Outdoor Play' and 'Creative activities for babies, toddlers and young children'. David, Sarah and I have enjoyed seeing the students a bit more frequently. We have courses on three consecutive weeks during October. Sarah has welcomed the chance to contribute to the courses and thus begin to get to know the students, who will be her Care Givers in the Children's Centre. We divided the six hours available for the outdoor play course into three hours for babies and toddlers, led by Sarah and me, and three for 3-6s, led by David and Marc. We began our session by revising the types and stages of play, and the domains of the Malawian ECD curriculum. Sarah's lecturing debut comprised a short session looking at assessment of risk and we introduced the students to the 'Mother Teresa Children's Centre Activity Risk Assessment Form'. Then it was out into the bottom level of the Beehive Site for some practical play training. Oh the joys of teaching in a building site! We had taken a lot of trouble to discuss with Hugh (the engineer who coordinates the work of the building site) where the best location would be to do our outdoor play training. Of course in England no one would let a bunch of crazy early years' people anywhere near a building site, but this is Malawi! It certainly gave us plenty of opportunities for a practical look at risk assessment! There are only two open spaces on the site large enough to accommodate a couple of tutors and twenty or so students. Right down the bottom of the site on level 5, which when we looked at it with Hugh was a level, dusty plot of land containing virtually nothing, further up the hill on level 3 is a paved area in front of the admin building which accommodated all sorts of workmen involved in making and assembling vital parts of the construction and a couple of containers due to be removed to level 5; also this area is a busy route between admin and the rest of the site. We decided that although it was further from the classroom and messy from the point of view of dusty soil, level 5 would be much the more suitable area, and Hugh kindly helped us to collect together all sorts of potentially useful materials to encourage challenging learning opportunities out of doors. We piled up off cuts of wood including lengths of old scaffolding poles, tyres, hydroform blocks, planks, bricks, buckets, plastic trays and pipes, wood shavings… indeed anything we could glean, beg, borrow or steal from others on the site. Then Sarah and I made a raid on the container in which we keep materials donated for the Children's Centre and selected toys, paper, paints, writing materials, paddling pool, baskets, table cloths etc. A quick dash to the fabric shop to buy a few zitenje and we were well-equipped. On the day we divided the students into five groups and gave each group a task specifying the age of the children we wished them to provide outdoor play experiences for and the type of play we were looking for. We had baby play, heuristic play, an obstacle course, hide and seek play and a creativity day for toddlers. Sarah said she was pleasantly surprised by the activities the students put together considering that most of them, despite their theoretical knowledge, have never actually worked with children. I was proud of their efforts. Nothing stands still for long though, and between our discussion with Hugh and the day of the training, about 5 days, four or five containers had been moved to level 5 and the previously deserted area had become a route for trucks and dumpers moving equipment between containers, so we were contending with dust and traffic, not a great combination! On the Wednesday between the two training days we had unexpected heavy rain, so on the Thurday at least the dust was laid, but then we had mud…

We are in the midst of rather uexpected weather conditions. When I arrived in Malawi, this time last year, it was HOT! A few weeks ago while Annie was here the weather got steadily warmer and I thought we had seen the last of rain at least until November. We even had the fan on at night for a few days, but now it is back to needing not only a sheet, but a light quilt at night, and astonishingly according to the locals, we have had at least three periods of heavy rain. The locals assume me this is most uncharacteristic. This has caused Hugh and his team all sorts of headaches on the site and he has been kept awake at nights worrying about holes filling up with water! The landscape is still pretty brown, but the tones have deepened. Wet soil is darker and redder than dry. The new leaves are coming through now on many trees and I do not think it is my imagination that in the last few days they have visibly swelled and become more intensely green after the rain. To a European the seasons here are confusing. The last set of leaves has fallen during the last couple of months. Some of the big trees in the garden were bare of leaves for maybe a couple of weeks and then the first green blush of new leaves emerged. We had about a month of clear visibility of the birds, but now their cover is back, fresher and lusher, and getting better and better each day. A pair of hammerkops has built a huge, scruffy, straggly nest halfway up a tree at the end of Jacaranda Terrace. I can sit on my khonde and watch them as they fly assiduously back and forward all day collecting materials and weaving them into the nest. Last week I became very concerned as I saw nothing of them for two whole days and I feared that they had abandoned the nest, but they are back and working hard once again. I wonder where they went? Because the tree is rooted at the bottom of the bank by the stream which marks the boundary of Mitsidi, and because Jacaranda Terrace is at the top of the high bank the nest is not so very much higher than the houses and it is possible to look across directly into the nest and see the hammerkops at work. I am hoping I shall soon be able to see eggs and chicks. On the site the landscape gardeners have been at work and around the IT college there are flower beds and even a small lawn. At the same time Father John, as the new college Principal, has been smartening up the college with hangings made of the bright green chitenje material that was commissioned for the college opening and many potted plants in hanging baskets and planters. All these plants have loved the rain, and the weather has saved the gardeners from hours of watering! The lawn in front of the building is finer grass than is usually used here in Malawi and it was really struggling to become established, but now it has taken well and its feathery fronds are almost completely covering the plot.

To get back to teaching, the second course since I last wrote was about creative play opportunities for babies, toddlers and young children and we ran three parallel workshops, Sarah looking at babies, me at toddlers and David at 3-6 year olds. This approach had advantages and disadvantages as by the end of two days we had each run our own workshop six times and were beginning to lose the will to live! Sarah brought in her hotplate from Mitsidi and supervised the making of cooked playdough and Gloop! I put together a brief revision presentation combining what I thought they ought to know about Toddlers with what I thought they ought to know about creative play and then sent them off to play with seven different activities and answer a couple of lists of questions about safety and risk assessment, and play value and learning targets. It was fascinating to see the different ways in which each group of seven or eight students approached the task. Some groups all stuck together and discussed each question earnestly. Others split up into small groups and just played! I let them get on with it, and when it came to the feedback at the end there was not a noticeable difference in the general quality of the answers to my questions between the two approaches. Some groups easily identified which was the activity that was not really suitable for toddlers in the form in which it was presented, and some found it more difficult and I had to scaffold their thinking and help them work it out! We had some interesting discussions about the ethics of playing with food in the culture in which we are working, but for most people the reassurance that children were playing with substances that were completely safe if they put them in their mouths was more important than the idea of wasting foodstuffs. I was quite surprised about this as we have several students at the moment who are really struggling to find the money to buy food enough for themselves and their families. A friend sent me twenty pounds this week to spend as I saw fit amongst the students for whom the delay to the opening of the Children's Centre has caused real financial hardship, and I have paid a few minibus fares for students to get to training and bought some basic foodstuffs. It is impossible to be at all fair about this process, and after all twenty pounds does not go very far, but I suppose I must just hope that these small contributions go a short way towards making the waiting easier for those in the most difficult situations. Of course some students are more vocal than others, and some more truthful than others. There is no way of telling, and we must rely on instinct and the little information we have. I am sure I shall make mistakes, but if I do not try the money will lie in the drawer and be no use at all! David concentrated on the older end of his age range of 3-6 years and had the class making horses out of aluminium foil and building bridges out of newspaper and selotape. That is, he was much more focused on product than were Sarah and I. With little ones, process is everything!

This weekend it is Mother's Day here in Malawi so we have an extra day off on Monday. Next week we are going to work with the students to improve their planning skills, particularly considering the use of themes or topics to improve the quality of learning. This is not a fashionable approach in UK at the moment, but we feel that in the early stages it will help the students to provide a broad spectrum of high quality play activities while they are gaining experience with working with children, and while all the staff and children are new together. It is bound to take a while for everyone to get used to each other and settle down into good teaching and learning patterns. Again I shall look at this course as an opportunity for revision, consolidating previous work we have done on planning provision based on observations of children.

Socially, what have I been up to since Annie left? I have continued to attend choir practices whenever I can. Because of the dvd project with Father John Dimba we have stepped up our practice routine and now meet for half an hour at lunchtime on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The first four songs have been selected and we are working on the next four. I am acting as go-between between the choir and Father John, as he is my next door neighbour. Next Wednesday he will be coming to practice to teach us one of the songs he wants to suggest for the dvd. I am really struggling with the songs in Chichewa, which is most of them. It is fine when I can read the words, but memorizing them is really difficult. One or two of the ladies have sort of adopted me and treat me a bit like a child with a learning delay, standing next to me and pointing at each word throughout the whole song. This is kind, but not entirely necessary; it is when I don't have the words that I am in trouble. This is all further complicated by the fact that one keen helper is a very strong soprano and I am a weak alto. I feel like a fraud being in the choir at all, but is fun, and I have been made welcome.

Since we returned from the Lake of Stars trip we seem to have been passing a bacterial stomach upset between us. We know it is bacterial because poor Lindsey, who arrived only a couple of weeks ago managed to get dehydrated and was briefly hospitalized while they sorted out what the problem was…This has meant that we have been feeling a bit rough for mush serious socialization! Also because the volunteer's car is out of action following the Lake trip and also the fuel shortage continues we are less mobile than usual. We have been steadily getting to know new volunteers. Linda and Hugh have made lots of contacts with other expats and this week, rather to our surprise, Chris and I found ourselves members of a quiz team at the meeting of the Wild Life Society of Malawi. There were 17 teams and we were 11^th! Since there were 10 prizes this was particularly galling, but at least we didn't completely disgrace ourselves even though we didn't exactly shine either!

This weekend was to have been a bit lively with invitations to a meal at Vishal's (one of our suppliers) this evening, a barbeque at Zoe's new flat tomorrow, and Mother's Day lunch at Mary's on Monday. Unfortunately the Malawian casual approach to planning means that Vishal has cancelled because he has gone to Lilongwe and Mary has changed the date of her party to Sunday so that it clashes with Zoe's with which I have promised to help, so my wild social whirl is reduced from three events to one! Boo Hoo!