Of work and leisure!

Time is passing quickly. We are working long days but they are whizzing past! For the first time I am conscious that it won't be long before my stint here will be finished and I shall hand over to Kirren and go home. We are making progress with getting the students through the practical part of their Diplomas. Some are working faster than others, but generally it is all going well. David and I have been trying to meet for a couple of weeks now, to offer each other some kind of co-supervision, and to compare notes about how the assessing is going to make sure we are working in as similar a way as possible, but we are like the proverbial ships passing in the night, only more like speed boats really! I have spent some time helping Kirren to get to know the CC and how it works this week, some time trying to sort out difficulties with the cleaning, some time planning for a new staff structure when the probationary 3-month contracts come to an end at the end of March, and at least half the working week assessing and mentoring students. I have also had to deal with another incident of theft by a student, which I have found extremely difficult. I am excited because we have been asked if we would take a child with quite complex special needs and I am to meet the family on Monday morning. They were referred by a Government peripatetic special needs teacher. I met her once as she just dropped in to the office at the end of last year to see what the CC was all about, and she remembered us when asked to recommend a pre-school for this child. Tony Smith is back with us in Chilomoni on a 10-day visit and will be visiting the CC on Monday afternoon. The children have been practicing songs and rhymes in his honour.

This morning I went on a Society of Malawi trip to the Greek Orthodox Church in Blantyre which I found fascinating. I don't think I have ever been in an Orthodox Church before. There were many beautiful icons. The priest was very friendly and went to a great deal of trouble to explain the faith and show us his church. Afterwards we were treated to a selection of cakes and cups of tea etc in the church hall and an informal chat with some of the Greek community which is currently about 200 strong. One cake was more like muesli really. It was a special cake for All Souls day, which apparently was today. It is made from wheat berries which symbolize life after death because they are dry and appear dead, and then grow into new plants. It contained the wheat, sugar, dried fruit, fresh pomegranate and cinnamon and cumin and was delicious. The first Greeks came to Malawi in about 1936 apparently and they have mostly been involved in farming, largely tobacco, and fishing. Malawi has been through all sorts of political changes in that time and our hosts were full of interesting anecdotes, including tales of lions on the verandah of a farm over towards the Mozambique border. Next month's trip will be to the Buddhist temple in Limbe, which apparently is pretty new. Last Tuesday was the Wildlife Society of Malawi's monthly talk which this time was about rhinos. The man who spoke illustrated his talk with photos and he was a wonderful photographer and must have had some terrific lenses, his bird pictures were beautiful. Wednesday night saw me at a Zumba class. It's just as well that Zoe and I were late; otherwise the effort would probably have killed me. I know I am no expert, but it was probably the most energetic exercise class I have ever seen and despite sitting out a couple of numbers I was shattered at the end of the hour and had certainly worked up a sweat! I went back to Zoe's for the evening. We showered and then sat about in our pyjamas, cooked up a vegetable curry and had a generally relaxing evening, Oh! And there was a drop or two of duty free whisky in there somewhere too!

The Children’s Centre team continues to grow and develop

We are having a quiet Sunday at Mitsidi. It is very hot today. Originally we planned to go for a walk today, maybe to show some of the new volunteers the Way of the Rosary, but we are all a bit tired. On Friday we had the usual after work drink in the Liquor Garden but somehow it developed into a full-blown evening out including a meal in the Gold Card Executive Lodge in Namiwawa and then returning to the Liquor for late night drinks as well, and rolling home well after midnight. Yesterday I went and met Zoe for a coffee at Shoprite and bought a lot of stuff for making playdough and other messy play activities for the Children's Centre before setting off to the airport to collect two new volunteers. One, Sadia , who prefers to be called by her middle name 'Kiran' is to be part of the training/management team for the children's centre with me and David; the other, Francoise, will be helping to support and streamline administration throughout Beehive. That will be quite a challenge I imagine. Yet again I was surprised by how little one needs to know about a person in order to be able to find them easily in a mass of people emerging from the arrivals door at Chileka Airport. All I knew was that they would be travelling together, their first names and that one was Asian and one European in origin. I watched a steady stream of people for about three-quarters of an hour without seeing anyone even possible. At last I spotted them and caught Francoise's eye, mouthing her name through the glass door. She nodded vigorously and that was that! Krizevac has introduced a new procedure for welcoming and supporting new volunteers. This is a good idea and involves each volunteer in having a buddy who has various duties to perform to make sure that vital information is passed on about things like telephones, internet connections, hospitals and so forth. I am to be Kiran's buddy and Rita is to do the honours for Francoise. In the afternoon we helped them settle into their accommodation and showed them Mitsidi. It was full of the delicious smells of baking as David had a 'Pudding Party' in the late afternoon/early evening. We each made a delicious dessert and took wine, and a thoroughly good time was had by all. We don't get much in the way of dessert in Malawi so it was quite a treat to get a tiny portion of about ten different desserts. Our Malawian friends seemed to really enjoy it and there was much asking of 'What is this?', 'How do you make this?' etc. Mary Kamwendo came and commented upon the 'Englishness' of it all. We worried about the vast numbers of calories we were consuming, but then we did the right thing by dancing with energy and enthusiasm. Then, surprise, surprise we ended up in the Liquor Garden again!

This morning I have caught up on my marking. Many of the students are very enthusiastic to get their Diplomas as soon as possible. David and I have been bombarded with piles of draft task plans for activities they want us to observe so we can assess their progress. In an ideal world we would want them to have a bit more time to settle in to the daily routine of working with children before rushing in to assessments, but I am only too aware of how little time there is to get through the assessment process for over 60 students doing 20 tasks each by the end of May when David and I will be going home. Kiran will off course still be here and will be able to complete the process for any stragglers but many of them want to complete before we go and it is good to have a time to aim for. There are just not enough hours in the day for all the things that need to be done to keep the Centre ticking over and to support mentees and carry out assessments but we are doing our best! I am feeling a bit bad that I have not given sufficient attention to the problems of setting up a good cleaning schedule for the Centre and a number of other fundamental, practical procedures, but I guess they will come bit by bit. I cannot help the fact that my heart lies with the training, which is the reason why I came here. Although I know that the other role is equally important and in some ways more urgent I am reluctant to let the training schedule slide. I am so glad that the responsibility is shared with David and the Room Leaders and now with Kiran too. I am sure we shall get there in the end!

I have enjoyed the hour I have spent in supervision with each of the Room Leaders and we have planned for more support to be offered to the students in modeling high quality activities with children, to give thought to record keeping procedures and to begin to sort out how a key-person system will operate in each room, so I have not been completely idle on the management side! It has been a bit of a week of meetings and David and I have experienced our first Krizevac/Beehive senior management meeting which was interesting. We are getting uniforms distributed to the children in supported places at the centre, and have looked at simplifying the process of getting the cash for buying resources etc, so it has been far from a week devoted only to teaching and assessing. We have got through quite a few assessments and mentoring sessions too, to the extent that I only made it to lunch once this week, mostly because I had my head down working and forgot the time!

How do I feel now that I am seeing the results of our training programme as our students settle into the caring and teaching roles of working with children? There are some frustrations but overwhelmingly I am proud of the students as I see them building positive relationships with the children, watching what is going on around them and drawing conclusions about how they can improve their practice and make things better for the children. I have seen some lovely activities, especially with paint and clay where children are exploring the materials and being creative. There is not always as strong a link as I would like between what they observe about the children and the activities that they plan, but that is down to lack of experience and it will come. Sometimes they plan the most obvious, simple activity and it could be made more relevant to the children concerned with only a little extra thought; sometimes, conversely they make their activities unnecessarily complicated. The Room Leaders are going to help by doing some written plans themselves and modelling good practice. I have to remember that the Children's Centre is itself in its infancy, that all the staff are new together and learning as they go along, and also that my brief was to create a course comparable in level to about NVQ 3. Sometimes I think I am not the best at remembering exactly what that level is! On Friday I watched Charles who is the tallest of our students, sitting on the mat at snack time with three babies and chatting with them about the fruit salad he had made for them, what was in it, what they liked, how it was good for them… He did it in a simple, straight forward way that was entirely appropriate even though they were all between 1 and 2 years only. I wish I had had the camera – Early years health education in action!

This morning I read carefully the first submission I have received for the 'Reflective Practice' task which involves keeping a reflective diary for at least 6 weeks. It came from a student who I know is a thoughtful woman and a strong student but I was so pleased and proud that I nearly cried when I read it. She has thought so hard about what has happened in the first six weeks of her employment with Beehive and drawn some positive and interesting conclusions. It has given me some useful feedback that I will be able to use if I ever plan another course like this! She said such nice things about her Room Leader in the Baby Room and what is happening in there that I got Joan to come and read it as a bit of positive feedback for her too. I really look forward to getting some more of these and hope to learn something new and useful from each one.

Three weeks on…

There has been a lot of rain in the last three weeks!  I am sitting in the doorway of my house, facing the unidentified big tree with the pods that the baboons like to pick, extract the seeds and throw the pods to the ground.  The rain this afternoon is persistent but not very heavy.  Malawi is so very green at the moment.  The dark green masses of leaves on the big tree let through glimpses of the brighter green of the maize planted in the little fields opposite.  The tassels of flowers are pushing up at the top of the plants now, adding a reddish tinge to the surface of the crop which is now anything up to eight feet tall.  ‘Lush’ is the word that comes to mind to describe the view from the doorway.  In front of the tree the grass is paler and despite the rain there must be a break in the clouds somewhere because where it is not in shadow there is a golden tinge about it.  The little Jacaranda Tree in Polly’s Garden has shot out a new branch in response to all this water, and the old brick kiln which was fired a couple of weeks after I arrived in October 2010 is almost covered by vegetation.

Rain affects us in so many different ways.  The soft soil on the surface of many roads either becomes liquid mud or is washed away altogether.  Driving becomes more difficult, but also sometimes more fun!  The footpath by which we walk to walk is more like the bed of a stream.  Indeed if it is actually raining it is indeed a fast-flowing stream that is carving itself a deeper gorge with each heavy shower.  All my shoes are muddy, and I never seem to have the right shoes with me to meet the weather conditions!  It’s the same with raincoats and umbrellas, I’m not good at judging what I will need to take each morning.  A chitenje continues to be the most useful thing.  It rolls up quite small in the bottom of my bag and can be an instant skirt, a wrap, a shopping bag, a baby sling or a makeshift umbrella depending upon how I hold or fold it.  White washing has ceased to be white.  There is so much mud that everything has a faint aspect of terracotta earth about it.  The children are beginning to become used to the drumming sound of rain on the iron roof of the Children’s Centre.  We have a plank across the boggiest bit of path to the door to our makeshift reception area, but unless you tread on it in exactly the right place it has a nasty habit of squirting water up your right leg.  Loveness and Lucy our two cleaners spend much of their time mopping muddy footprints off the floors and sweeping out puddles.

 I am trying hard to learn all the names of the children and am pretty confident now that I know all the babies and toddlers.  I am struggling a bit more with the older ones but probably know about half of them now.  Of course as Acting Manager I am not attached to any particular room, but I am getting quite a lot of opportunity to get into the rooms and even sometimes to play with the children!  For the time being David and I are sharing the responsibilities involved in managing the Children’s Centre as well as continuing the training of the students.  We are therefore doing at least three full time jobs between the two of us.  (Sarah we really miss you!)  However help is at hand as we expect an addition to the team next Saturday in the shape of Sadia who was originally coming as replacement Trainer to carry on the work David and I have started and get a small new cohort of students started.  This will still happen eventually but slightly later than planned and the three of us will share out the management and training responsibilities between us when she arrives.

The Children’s Centre has become a lively, bustling place full of colour, energy, interest and play.  Officially the building was handed over from construction to child care about 6 weeks ago, but in practice it still has many aspects of the building site.  It wouldn’t be allowed in England!  Upstairs it is mostly child care.  The class rooms are all occupied, although considerably below capacity, but there are all sorts of practical problems.  On top of the usual Malawian power and water cuts there are numerous other occasions upon which these services are absent.  Then there are the problems of toilet doors that don’t quite shut, kitchen fitters who are not as thorough as they might be, and puddles that have to be diagnosed as rain or plumbing and then eliminated!  Each room is busy creating a stimulating environment for the age group of children with which it works, so things like notice boards, mirrors, wall-mounted toys and so on are being fitted.  There are no hooks to hold doors open and they swing in the wind which is so prevalent here, and so each door currently has its own hydroform block to hold it open to facilitate free-flow play to the balcony which is at least semi-outdoors.  We thought the blocks would be too heavy for the average five year old to move about but these are strong kids!  They will just have to learn that the door stops are not for playing with I fear, until proper hooks can be fitted.  The baby room is painted a soft, purplish-pink and the floor is pale blue tiles.  There are mirrors on the walls and a cosy sleep-corner with comfy cushions and little sleep mats.  Joan has encouraged lots of singing in this room and we can often hear the babies and their care givers singing away.  One baby delighted me by singing a song in English just as her dad popped his head around the door.  He was so delighted and the baby looked so proud of herself!  The toddler room is a different pink and the floor tiles are pale blue.  There is a Care Giver in here who has a bit of artistic flair and she has made a couple of displays.  I shall have to tell her at some point that plainer lettering and upper and lower case characters would be better in terms of the little ones getting to recognize meaning in the writing, but she has tried so hard that I have postponed the negative comment for a few days!  We need more tactile experiences in here.  I shall have to go shopping for trays and containers big enough to hold sand and other messy activities.  This week they have introduced paint to the children and I have dropped in randomly to find story time and music sessions going on.  Diddy has been off sick for a few days and I was worried about leaving the room without a supervisor for too long but I should have had more faith in my students.  They have risen to the occasion magnificently and I was gratified to note that if they were not sure about something they sent me an enquiring message.  I asked Hellen to act as Room Leader for two of the days and at the end she sent me a note saying what she had done and which children she had observed.  To my delight one of them was the very child I had a little concern about myself and had been going to ask someone to watch carefully.  I look forward to finding out what Hellen has seen when I see her next week.  The pre-school room is a hive of activity.  Jennie is well organized and has already got well along in the process of forging her group of Care Givers into a team.  I have been pleased and proud to note as I pop in and out that even when she is out of the room it is mostly well supervised, children are busy and there are a lot of interesting activities going on.  It was however in this room that we had to talk to a Care Giver about going to sleep on duty!  Jennie has a lovely ‘birthday display’ of two children holding balloons with the months of the year in Chichewa and English.  The children really had fun drawing round each other and then ‘dressing’ the boy and girl they made with stuck on bits of cloth.

The two remaining students who will eventually be working with 4-5 and 5-6 year-olds are having a tougher time of it really.  David has worked hard to organize work experience in standard 1 at St James’ Primary school so that they can begin their practical tasks and we want to get the ‘Stay and Play’ groups going again but we are hampered by the amount of work that still needs to be done on the downstairs of the building.  We hoped to have it all happening by this coming week, but unfortunately there is no chance.

Most of the students are getting down to planning their assessed work for the practical part of the course.  We have one student who has already achieved seven of the required twenty practical tasks.  He is the front runner at the moment.  Of course it has not gone exactly as I had planned.  I had envisaged that most of the work would be done with children in their own rooms when I was writing the syllabus and as it is we have two rooms of Care Givers with no children, so we have had to be flexible.  I am so grateful to the Room Leaders for being adaptable and accommodating extra students even though they are over staffed to begin with.  I thoroughly approve Jennie’s recent insistence that Care Givers from other rooms who wish to do activities with her children must first come into the room and spend some time observing them.  I was a bit distressed to hear that David had been told he is perceived to be a harder marker than I am.  We have only had time to have a very cursory look at this issue, but the spread of marks we have awarded is very similar so I am hoping that it is an unfounded fear.  We have already built in a process designed to deal with any such bias as half way through the assessment period we swap groups so that he will begin to mentor the students that up to now he has been assessing and vice versa.  We reviewed the situation of the fifteen or so students who were employed on four week probationary contracts last week.  Three have not been attending, one was caught stealing and for one we had serious reservations about her attitude and ability to be a positive team member, so we are down to ten or so.  I am sad about some of the losses but have thought very carefully about it all and feel confident that we have made the right decisions.  Two of the ones who remain have made good progress and are now on the usual 3-month probationary contracts like the main group.  The rest, who are struggling a bit more academically, or who have not had the chance to show us  through successful practical tasks that their work with children is of a sufficiently high standard, have got a second 4-week contract.

My major concern is the quality of care in all the rooms.  Going in to assess individual students means that I get plenty of opportunity to sit in the corner of the room and watch what is going on.  I have made a small step towards getting a decent supervision and appraisal system going, beginning by arranging supervisions for the Room Leaders themselves.  It is my aim that each Care Giver will have a private meeting with their Room Leader by Easter.  Eventually this should be 6 times a year but ‘pangono, pangono’!  At the moment the mentoring sessions that are part of the training process fulfill some of the same objectives so one meeting each by Easter is sufficient unless there are quite serious problems.  I have a number of tasks to do, centred around getting the cleaning procedures right for the children and appropriate for Malawi, but I am working with Mary Kamwendo on this and I have every confidence that we shall get there in the end.  There have been practical domestic problems too around getting meals delivered to the children on time and according to the menu, but these also are steadily being dealt with.

David has transformed the marketing campaign and this week we have had a couple ore signings up of fee-paying children.  He and Edna are to be on Joy Radio on Monday morning and David and I are to visit Radio One, Malawi on Monday to discuss a feature programme, which is quite exciting!

Recommendations of children for subsidized places continue to come in.  We are to have another meeting of the allocations committee quite soon.  The next intake of children of Beehive workers will be after the Easter break.  We really do have a Children’s Centre, with real children in it!!

In terms of my social life, I have had a delightful, 5-day visit from Jack and Becky, including an overnight stay at Mukupula Lodge at Magete, complete with game drives, delicious meals, river views, sunken baths and plenty of luxury.  We can thoroughly recommend it!  There have been parties and evenings in the Liquor Garden.  It has been lovely to have George here for a couple of weeks and later to welcome Zoe back for another stint as Manager of Torrent Computer Rentals.  Mitsidi is pretty full.  For me it has been lovely to have more women here and Jennie, Joan and I have had a few evenings down at the main house talking, watching films and reviving the Mitsidi baking club!  I have been sick since Jack and Becky left, first with a nasty tummy bug, and secondly with an infected tooth which required a trip to a Malawian dentist.  I should have blogged about this in more detail, it was quite an experience, but perhaps as I have to go back the week after next I should do it then!  We have been walking at Michiru Nature Sanctuary again which, as ever, has been a delight.  Life continues to be full!

Children in the Children’s Centre at last!

The official day upon which the Children’s Centre opens its doors to the public is Tuesday 17 January.  This week however we have had a bit of a trial run with just the children occupying the Beehive sponsored places coming in to nursery.  This had to be arranged as the construction site started up again after the Christmas break last Monday and so the lucky families whose nursery care was transferred from the previous provision to the Children’s Centre needed care whilst the parents were at work.  The pattern of attendance during this first week illustrates the insecurity of working in the construction industry in Malawi.  All the workers were laid off a week or so before Christmas and the site was idle for about three weeks.  Last Monday approximately half the end-of- year workers were reemployed.  I am not completely clear about all the reasons why fewer workers are required at this time of year, the rainy season is one of them.  On Monday we had only three children as the parents of the remaining ten we were expecting were not immediately taken on.  However the reemployment is obviously a slow process and by the end of the week we had eleven children in Diddy’s room.  Just for this week we put all the children in one room, but from next week we shall be opening three:  baby, toddler and 3-6 rooms.  At present we seem to have a disproportionately small number of older children.  It was such a joy to see and hear children in the Centre at last.  On two days I managed to find opportunities to go into that room and play for a little while.  I did not realize how much I had missed being with children.  Neither did I realize how sweaty it is to sit and read stories in these temperatures with three or four children vying to sit on your lap at the same time!  I spent an hour sitting with a three year old on her first day who had woken from sleep and been quite distressed and crying for her mum.  She snuggled in to me and determinedly stayed on my lap through stories, song time and playing with ‘My little ponies’!  Those of you who know me well will wonder how on earth those got into the nursery – not by my choice I assure you!  However they seem popular! 

The students who belong to other rooms kept trying to find excuses to visit Diddy’s room and get some interaction with the children.  This transitional period while we have so many staff and so few children is going to be really difficult.  There are jobs to do to set up the nursery.  There are a lot of toys and equipment; enough for three rooms, but not really enough for the five we hope to have full of children before too long.  If anyone has good quality toys and nursery equipment looking for a new home please contact George Furnival at Krizevac to get it put on a container and sent out to us.  Marketing the fee-paying places is a huge job.  This has been the responsibility of one of the students who previously worked in marketing for some time, but it has proved to be quite a challenge.  We have distributed leaflets at Shoprite and talked to many people who have appeared to be very interested, but until this week no one has actually parted with their money to confirm a place.  I guess it is important for parents to actually be able to see the nursery in action so that they can visualize what it will be like for their children.  Some other issues have also arisen.  Firstly location; many middle class parents work in the middle of Blantyre and Chilomoni is a township on the outskirts.  Secondly the quality of the road from the middle of Chilomoni to the Children’s Centre is poor, especially now that the rains have started in earnest.  There has been talk of providing a bus service from the middle of town or of starting the day with a song and dance session in the church hall where children could be dropped off at the end of the tarmac road and then transported all together to the Children’s Centre perhaps by ‘walking bus’.  Neither of these solutions is ideal.  I suppose these problems are the inevitable flip side of the ‘try it and see, and don’t waste any money on research’ approach favoured by Krizevac.  It seems that the better off parents see it as a high priority that their children should be totally immersed in an English-speaking environment.  They do not want their children to hear any Chichewa at all while they are at school.  David is in the process of writing a leaflet to go in the parents’ pack which describes our graduated approach to this, gradually using English more and more in each room as the children get older, alongside the Chichewa and avoiding the rote learning method.  We need to explain how important it is that the children understand the meaning of what they are saying in both languages.  There is also some misunderstanding about the difference between daycare and a school.  We have received feedback that the day starts too early at 6.30 am and we have realized that parents think that their children must be at ‘school’ for the whole time that it is open, whereas in UK we are used to parents dropping off and collecting their children from daycare at times to suit their own working arrangements within the opening hours.  Certainly we don’t expect small children to be at nursery for the entire eleven hours we are open, especially the babies.

The students seem to be settling down slowly into the new routine after their eventful and slightly grumbly first week.  It is exciting to be with children at last but we certainly do need more of them.  David and I have had individual interviews with each student this week and started to make individual plans to begin their practical tasks.  It is going to be difficult to give everyone the opportunity to be assessed with so few children.  David has been a star and is working out a programme involving setting up ‘Stay and Play’ groups, working in Standard 1 at St James’ and getting involved in marketing for those teams of students (who I suppose I should be calling Care Givers now) who do not yet have any children in their rooms.

We are going to miss Sarah so much when she goes home next Saturday.  In the absence of a Care Manager David and I have taken on many aspects of the role.  This is going to be quite a heavy responsibility on top of our commitment to completing the Diploma training, but not taking it on would have given us even greater problems!  Jennie and Joan, the new room leaders seem to be settling in really well.  Together with Diddy, they will make a strong team and lead practice in the 3-6, 0-2 and 2-3 rooms respectively.  Jennie’s room already looks an exciting and interesting place to be and Joan is working on making the baby room comfortable and fascinating for the little ones.  Diddy’s room is already on the go of course, this week with a mixed age group of children.  Highlights for me have been popping in to hear one of the students reading to the children with great energy and expression; playing with Rose, who is four and shares a name with my daughter; and being greeted by the little girl who had missed her mum so much on the next morning with a huge smile and her remembering my name.  I am trying hard to learn all the children’s names, but it is difficult when you are not in the room with them all the time.  At least 95% of the time I am either with the students or in the office.  Next week I shall shadow Sarah for most of the time trying to pick up everything she has done so far and learning what the priorities will need to be for the next few weeks.  I’d have liked a longer handover period, but unfortunately that is not going to happen! 

This weekend we have been away to the Lake for an away day training session for azungu volunteers and Beehive heads of department.  Some of us have a few reservations about spending the money on ‘jollys’ away, but apparently Peter got an incredibly good deal, and as volunteers we do work for nothing, so perhaps we do deserve it after all!  Anyway, we had a great time.  The morning session was spent getting to know each other better and sharing our vision for Beehive through a number of exercises such as writing imaginary postcards home from Chilomoni in the year 2032, introducing ourselves, and passing round pieces of paper upon which we had to write positive comments about each other.  This was a bit like a giant game of consequences, passing the papers round the table and folding it over so that the next person could not see or be influenced by what had been written before.  I cried when I opened mine; people had written such nice things! 

In the afternoon we had a visit from Dedza Pottery and painted tiles as we did in November 2010.  This time we also painted mugs.  Each person had to pick one of the ‘nice comments’ papers out of a bag and paint a mug for the person concerned.  I was lucky to pick Rita, who is a darling, and most of the comments were about her smile, her abilities as a good listener and how she brightens people up with her presence, so it was easy.  I painted her name in the middle of a big sun, and smiley faces and listening ears!  My mug was painted by Tapiwa who manages the Torrent Computer Rentals office in Lilongwe.  She took a lot of trouble over it and it looks very nice.

We had nice meals and the hotel was in a beautiful spot by the Lake.  It rained an awful lot of the time but we managed one short walk along the beach.  In the evening after dinner there was a dance display which I enjoyed.  I also sat on the jetty in the dark, watching the glow-worms and insects flying in and out of the light and the reflections on the water.  A light was flashing as regularly as a lighthouse across the other side of the Lake.  The water looked black and gleaming, almost like oil.  The gentle waves made swishing noises against the coarse sand of the beach and the music from the bar was far enough away to make a pleasant background of sound.  I reflected upon the reasons why I came to Malawi and how surprised I would have been to hear a couple of years ago that I would spend so much time in Africa.

Today is a Bank Holiday.  Seven of us got up relatively early for a holiday day and left for Michiru Nature Sanctuary at 8.00am.  We had a lovely walk.  The reserve is very green and lush at the moment.  The growth is so dense that it is difficult to spot animals.  I saw some waving long grass that probably screened an antelope from view, and a single monkey, probably a vervet a long way away in the trees, but loads of insects, bongalolo (millipedes), centipedes, spiders and a tiny creamy green frog!  There were fungi everywhere.  Last year at about the same time I encountered a whole troupe of yellow baboons foraging for mushrooms, but no such luck today!  The afternoon we have spent cooking and eating lunch, chatting, tidying, moving the furniture around to accommodate all the new people who we are expecting in the next few days (including my son Jack and Becky, his girlfriend – Hurrah!). Oh! And I’ve written a nappy changing procedure as well!

Back in Chilomoni

Saturday afternoon and on the khonde of my house again, writing my blog. Today I have had to push my chair right to the back of the khonde in order to keep my feet dry as there is a gentle drizzling rain. It is warm and the rain is intermittent and soft, but yesterday it was cold, heavy and persistent. I do not remember days like that in the rainy season last year. The common pattern was hot, humid days with an hour or two of heavy rain after lunch. David and I had to plan teaching days with practical sessions in the afternoons rather than lectures as the drumming of the rain on the corrugated iron roof was too loud for us to make ourselves understood.

These are exciting times for the Children's Centre. On Monday morning we shall open our doors to the first ten or so children. These are the children of workers at Beehive whose children previously had sponsored places at Tivwarane, a small local nursery. They have all been transferred to the Children's Centre and as their parents start work on Monday we are opening one room a week ahead of schedule. Diddy is going to lead this first, mixed age group class for the first week. Today is arrival day for two more room leaders. Hugh and I went off to the airport at lunchtime to collect Joan who travelled with George, the Krizevac employee who is responsible for recruiting the volunteers. Joan hails from the Norwich area and I have worked with her before on special needs playschemes. It is great to have someone familiar coming to work with me on the project. She is going to lead the baby room at least to begin with. This evening we shall be off to the bus station to meet Jennie who is going to work with the 3-6s. She is flying in via Lilongwe, being met at the airport and transferred to the bus station by someone from the Torrent Lilongwe office.

My first day back was the second day the Children's Centre was open for the staff. The opening has been a long time coming and there is some grumpiness and dissatisfaction amongst the students/care givers following the delay. Their first day was Wednesday and I think that David and Sarah had a hard time of it. Apparently there was quite a bit of grumbling. It is going to be important to work to keep them motivated. There will be problems as we are training enough workers to staff a 232 place nursery and on day one there will be ten children, but the following week there will be ten more and we hope that as potential fee paying parents see the nursery in action they will start to book their children in. Meantime we have to find work to keep all 68 trainee care givers busy. We hope that we shall be able to build on the good work done by David and Marc and some of the students at St James' primary school last term, and by Diddy and another team of students at the Stay and Play. There is also much to be done in terms of marketing the child care places and raising sponsorship for the free places. The students have had a full programme of activities and training during their induction week. David and Sarah went through the employment conditions and some of the more important Policies and Procedures of the Centre very thoroughly, including repeating the 'no tolerance of theft' policy that operates throughout Beehive. This is not news to the students of course as we have explained it to them on many occasions during the last year. Sarah had arranged for a visit from two people from Chilomoni Health Clinic to talk about infection control, and there was a demonstration of how to use the cleaning products from a man from the company we buy them from. I don't think he can have done this before because he was rather confused about the amount of product to be mixed with water and produced an awful lot of bubbles and used loads of the products. We shall be bankrupt in a few weeks if we follow his advice!! Each team of students went to the room they shall be working in and had a good look at some of the toys and materials they will be using with the children. Unfortunately a couple of students must have slipped a pencil case each into their bags during this time as when it was time to go home the guards spotted them and queried whether they were from the Children's Centre. Another student was stopped with a book from the child care library but I was able to confirm that this was properly signed out and therefore permissible. The two 'pencil case students' have since been dismissed. I am very sad about this. I cannot imagine how it can be worth the risk of throwing away a whole year's work for the sake of a pencil case. Sarah visited each group to sort out changes to the rotas, David made a mentoring appointment for each student either with me or with himself, and I went round and went over again how the practical assessment programme will work, and answered their questions. I continue to be amazed by how many questions they ask which show that they have simply not read the information they have been given, but perhaps I do not allow for the fact that it is not written in their first language.

On Friday we had arranged with tutors from the Malawian Red Cross to come and give a four-hour First Aid briefing. This has been a nightmare to arrange, but it has happened at last and although they did not really provide a course designed for those working with children as I had requested, they certainly knew their stuff and delivered the course competently and with humour.

Home for Christmas

Well, I am not home yet, but I am on the way! I have completed the first leg of my journey and am sitting in the café at Lilongwe airport with nearly eight hours to go until my flight. There are only two of the fast and comfortable buses each day from Blantyre to Lilongwe and they are at 6.30am and 4.30pm. Theoretically it is just about possible to make it to the airport in time if you take the afternoon bus, but there's not much room for slippage so I decided not to risk it. If I describe the journey today you will understand why! I set the alarm for 5.00am and got up to finish the last minute bits of packing. I decided to travel light in the end and have only really brought clothes for two weeks and Christmas presents with me. I was going to bring some of my books home so that I don't have too much to bring next year but Zoe talked me out of it when I said I couldn't decide what I would need over the next few months. She said that I'd brought them for the good of the project and if I couldn't take them all back with me they'd find a way to get them home. Rita decided to travel with me to Lilongwe as her partner was arriving on the 3 o'clock plane for a couple of week's holiday. Hugh kindly offered to drive us to the bus. He was very puzzled to find the Land Rover covered in mud and with the diff lock in Low. A mystery since he drove it home himself last night and has had the keys all night. Half way up the Mitsidi road we saw that a vehicle had obviously left the track during the night and left deep tyre marks in the maize field. We speculated that perhaps the Land Rover had been used to pull the mystery vehicle out, but who drove it? Did they have to hot-wire it? Who did they have to pull out? I am sure Hugh will solve the puzzle when he gets back! Our tickets required us to be at the bus station for 6.30 to travel at 7.00am, but the bus did not pull in until about three minutes past seven. There was a rush to get luggage in the compartments under the coach and then to find seats. Tickets were for numbered seats but obviously mistakes had been made and when I got to No. 19 it was occupied. Many seats had been sold twice so it became a free-for-all. Rita managed to grab a couple of seats at the back. Possession is nine tenths of the law! We sat tight and watched the poor conductress arguing with people, persuading them to get off and catch a slightly less posh bus half an hour later. Eventually enough people gave in and we were off – half an hour late. The trip is supposed to take four hours and to get you to the middle of Lilongwe just after 11.00am, but the bus dawdled along, taking its time for no apparent reason. Perhaps you use less fuel if you go slowly? We all had to get out at a road block for the police to walk up and down the bus. Goodness knows what they were looking for. Just the other side of Ntcheu we pulled into the side of the road for a black-market refuel. At first the TVs failed to descend from the ceiling and the film played to the ceiling. When they eventually came down properly the sound track was a couple of seconds behind the film. The end of the film disappeared and was replaced by strange music videos. It was all a bit surreal and this was the Executive Bus! We finally arrived at the Palace Hotel in the middle of Lilongwe at nearly half past one, after I had had to leap out of the bus at the stop before to prevent my luggage being left on the pavement where someone had removed it to in order to retrieve their own. Rita and I hastened into the hotel for a much needed comfort break, phoned our lift to the airport to tell them where to meet us and went into the dining room for lunch. Here we ordered a chicken salad which was supposed to come with mozzarella, seasonal fruit, tomatoes, lettuce and a balsamic vinegar dressing. When it arrived it was drenched in salad cream and was only chicken, lettuce and tiny scraps of tomato. An extra bowl of salad cream came on the side, together with French dressing made with vinegar that was definitely not balsamic! When we complained, the charming waiter went to the kitchen and came back with a message from the chef that the description on the menu was a typing error! The only bit of the trip that went well was our lift, and even here we were not collected by the person in the original plan. However the replacements were charming, efficient and helpful and managed to book Rita and Andrea (sp?) somewhere to stay, and sort out a 'deluxe' bus back to Blantyre for them tomorrow. Now here I am at the airport and the only café closes at half past five so I will have to have an early meal. My flight is not until 11.55pm.

The last week has flown by. David and I have taught a session on planning routines for children in day care five times, once each to the staff who are going to work with the different age groups in the children's centre. i.e. babies, toddlers, 3-4s, 4-5s and 5-6s. At one session or the other we saw 58 of our 68 students. I have been very concerned that because of the long delay to the opening some of the students will choose not to work in the children's centre or complete the course. In some ways this might not matter as we are going to open with fewer children than we planned and more staff, but nevertheless I would be sad to see some of them go.

Nairobi airport 6.30 am

I arrived at Nairobi airport in pitch darkness about an hour ago. International air travel is so weird from the point of view of meals! We had macadamia and cashew nuts between Lilongwe and Lusaka. We must have been given breakfast, Continental, at about 2.00am as we left Lusaka. The departure gates here in Nairobi are in a curious semicircular building with a corridor that feels as though it is about half a mile long. I spent about twenty minutes idly wandering along the full length of it looking for somewhere comfortable to sit. There are plenty of hard plastic chairs with rigid arms, and there are open doors to first class and Government lounges with huge leather armchairs that look as though they could each accommodate a small family, but these of course are out-of-bounds. There is a café at each end of the semi-circle and I ended up by the window of one of these watching the sky fade from deep navy blue, through iron grey, to pearl and eventually to palest turquoise streaked with grey and pink fluff. The whole process took only about fifteen minutes.

The most significant event of this week has been the handover of the Children's Centre keys from Hugh (site engineer) to Sarah (Daycare Manager). Sarah spent all of Thursday transferring toys and equipment from the container to one of the downstairs playrooms. Hurrah, no more searching for things in a hot container! More significantly it begins to feel as though we really will be opening the Children's Centre in January. There is an awful lot to do though between now and then and I feel a bit guilty about my trip home for Christmas. However it was planned and booked when we still thought the Children's Centre would open in September so I shall just have to be forgiven. After all this time though, I regret that I shall not be involved in the layout of the rooms. I feel less sorry that I shall not be involved in all the cleaning that will have to happen before the place is fit for children. The area around is still a building site with all the dust and muck that that involves, and it is the rainy season so all sorts of mud and guck comes in on the feet of the workmen who are still installing kitchen units, toilet partitions and so on. However the Centre is beautiful. Even on the hottest days it is cool inside. The walls are painted soft pastel shades (Steiner would approve!) There are built in concrete sinks for water play. There is plenty of light and air. The downstairs rooms open onto grassed areas which are not generous, but bigger than I originally feared, and the upstairs rooms have covered balconies where we can put sand and water play etc to extend the play space. I believe it truly may be the most beautiful Early Years Education Centre in Malawi.

What about children I can hear you ask. Well we are making progress here too. There are three types of places in the centre: paying places for the children of working parents, subsidized places for a very limited number of children of Beehive workers, and sponsored places for local children in need. We think the paying places will fill up slowly at first as parents will wish to see how the nursery operates before they part with their hard earned cash, but yesterday was the first of a series of open days to show new parents what the Centre will be like. We spent much of Friday setting up the Toddler room for play and it looked very nice when we had finished. There was a cosy book corner, puppet theatre, low shelves for children to help themselves to toys, puzzles and games, a dinosaur play mat, a choice of construction sets, baby play corner, home corner, sand and water play. If it didn't look exactly like a UK setting, it was certainly more like one than anywhere else I have seen in Malawi, but with an obvious African slant. Mavuto, Cosmos and Abel smiled out from buggies and chairs in the home corner and looked as though they thoroughly approved of their new home. Still not found the girl doll! I expect we'll discover her in a box in the next few days! I wonder if we actually received any bookings at the open day. I do hope so.

Recruitment for the other types of place is definitely not going to be a problem. Sarah and David have been working together to establish a committee responsible for allocating sponsored places. They have built on the relationships we have developed gradually over the duration of the training and have involved CPOs, people from the local health clinic, churches and the police. A system of visits with either David or Sarah and one of the CPOs has been developed and then the committee decides who will get the places. So far no one who has been offered a place has refused. There has been a deluge of applications for the Beehive places which are subsidized on a sliding scale according to income. Thirteen of the thirty available places have been given to families whose children previously had subsidized places at a local nursery. For the other 17 places there is a lot of competition. Again there will be a committee to decide how the places will be distributed according to a set of criteria. It won't be easy though. Wherever we go people approach us with forms, practically begging us to choose their child. The Children's Centre is seen as a huge and life-changing opportunity for the children.

3 hours later

I have spent the time wandering up and down the semi-circular corridor and exploring what Nairobi airport has to offer. I think I have probably been in every shop but have managed to spend nothing except in the coffee shop. I struck out down a spar from the main track and discovered a Kenya Airways lounge which is really only for Business class and Gold Card customers but the guy on the door must have felt sorry for me because he checked I was really travelling with Kenya Airways and then let me in. Now I am ensconced in a very comfortable bright orange upholstered armchair and I don't intend to move until I can board the plane!

So to continue with the last week in Malawi before my trip home for Christmas…. I find it hard to feel Christmassy in the heat, and it has been hot, and humid too because it has rained properly two or three times this week. On Wednesday Mary and Zoe had a Christmas/Going home party which was fun and I managed to spend most of the time talking to Mary's friends who I don't know very well, so that was interesting and stimulating. When I get back in January I will have a couple of other projects working with children in Blantyre to visit so that will be good. Drank too much wine, but hey, it's Christmas! I am quite looking forward to being cold for a couple of weeks, although I daresay I shan't really enjoy it when it happens. My brother and sister have promised to bring my winter coat when they meet me at the airport and I have a pair of socks in my handbag to put on with my sandals before I get off the plane. Not an attractive look, but better than being too cold. What I am really looking forward to is snuggling under the duvet in my own bed with a hot water bottle. Being cosy is a bit hard to achieve with tiled or concrete floors, and it's months since I slept with anything more than a sheet over me. On the way to this lounge I met a Kenyan airport worker on the stairs complaining of the cold, its 17 degrees here, much cooler than Malawi at the moment, but hardly cold. The paper said max 7 and min 2 in London last time I looked.

The Beehive site was strangely quiet on Friday. The construction department shuts down for at least three weeks over Christmas and Friday was the Christmas party. Admin keeps going for another week so I will miss that party which is the one we in the Children's Centre get invited to. In the morning I helped with the setting up of the Open Day but in the afternoon I prepared to go away for two weeks, writing David a list of things to do in my absence to prepare for the training to go smoothly in January, admiring the new Mother Teresa uniforms, finishing drafting a couple of policies Sarah asked me to look at, and actually doing my filing and tidying my desk. I regret that I shall miss making the CD with the choir and I really wish them well for the next three days when they will be travelling to Chilobwe to sing. In the end it proved terribly expensive to pay all those individual bus fares, so in exchange for swapping the preferred dates for dates in the holiday Hugh has helped us to arrange a truck and driver to take everybody. A friend of mine has offered to contribute towards the cost of fuel. The choir themselves have raised MK5000 and my friend and I have chipped in MK10,000 between us. This is not quite enough, but Hugh has kindly said it will do, so this recording is really going to happen at last. I think I really need this holiday. I am desperate to see the family again and cannot wait for four days over Christmas in a Youth Hostel in Wales with 17 of us all together. I shall miss a lot in Chilomoni but I am sure I will come back refreshed and ready for whatever happens. At last we shall be working with children every day. It's been a long wait!

Start of recording

Oh dear, I have left too long between blog entries again and now have too many things to write about. I don't know where to start. I guess chronologically is the simplest idea. Last week was distinguished by the fact that for the first time since I have been here we had a power cut every single day. The power was off altogether for over two days because of a lightening-strike putting out some vital piece of equipment. It was on only a few hours before the usual Tuesday evening cut took it away again. I am getting tired of finding things to do by candlelight. I can read, but it gets a bit of a strain after a while. Rita has discovered that little locally made oil lamps can be purchased very cheaply. I think I shall get one too and see if it produces any more light than a candle.

On Tuesday I spent a fascinating day with the choir, going to a recording studio in Chilobwe to start to make the backing tracks for the CD. Six of us went on the minibus. Chilobwe is a township clinging to the side of Mount Soche, one of the three mountains on which Blantyre is built. It can be seen from the Beehive site and from the door of our original classroom at St James' School. It has a distinctive clump of trees on the top and when I got overwhelmed with noise or frustration when teaching last year I used to go and stand outside the classroom door and look at it, so it is very familiar, but I have never been there before. Martin, the Choir Master was spruced up in smart black trousers and a pale blue shirt. The two sopranos were resplendent in African traditional dresses and the altos wore respectable black skirts and white blouses. I had not thought about dressing for a special occasion and so was in my ordinary work dress. Some of the others are normally clad in the blue work overalls of the Beehive site, worn by bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and labourers alike. The choir has been saving for several weeks. On each pay day members have given what they can afford to a fund for fares and other expenses for making the CD. Meticulous records are kept and at the business meetings the names of the members who have given money are called out, anything from MK20 from the lower paid labourers to maybe MK250 from office workers or bricklayers. Mary was issued with enough money for our fares, just less than MK500 each, and I contributed enough to cover my own fares and a Fanta each, and we set off for the minibus stage at Chilomoni market. We squashed into a bus with eight or nine others and were off to Blantyre. We had to walk across town to the bus station near the market to get the bus to Chilobwe. The bus station was a heaving mass of people and white minibuses were moving apparently randomly, backwards, forwards and in and out of each other. Eventually we located the right bus and got in. There was a bit of a wait while the other places were filled, but before long we were on the move. The driver had a bit of trouble getting it to start, but fortunately the bus station is on a downward slope to the road and the engine kicked in just as we had to turn left up the hill away from the city centre. As usual I was fascinated by the names of the little shops in the trading areas of the suburbs through which we passed. My favourite on this occasion was the 'God will find a way' cosmetics and salon! The minibus ended its journey where the tarmac runs out in the middle of Chilobwe. Martin set off with confidence towards the studio, turning off the main track and round several corners before plunging steeply downhill. After a few hundred metres he declared himself lost and borrowed my phone to call the studio and get directions. As usual no one else had any credit! Actually we were only a few minutes away, but we were hot and a bit weary. We were revived by glasses of ice cold water and shown into the studio which was housed in a small house. The room was divided into two by a wooden partition with egg boxes stuck all over it, well there was a gap where two had fallen off. The walls were covered with tie dyed fabric in cream and orange. A huge logo decorated one wall, a yin/yang symbol with sun and moon superimposed upon it and 'Weapon of Peace' emblazoned across it. The half of the room we entered was a bit like someone's sitting room, with a three- seater sofa against the wall under the logo facing a wooden bench against the other wall. A large microphone stood next to the partition which had a window in the centre and an open door towards the back of the room. We could see through into the back room where the computer, keyboards and all the other technical paraphernalia was arranged. We met Eugene who worked with us for the whole day. He reminded me very much of one of my students, he had a quiet voice, an intelligent expression and considerable capacity for concentration. We were there for nearly five hours during which time we sang five of our ten songs and he prepared backing tracks for each of them. We broke for lunch for only a short time. All available food was shared. Martin took my extra MK500 out and came back with a Fanta each and a couple of loaves of bread, one or two people had brought rice dishes from home. On the way back on the bus Martin confided to me that he was very happy with the way the day had gone. He repeated several times that 'They understand the music, they care about the music, just like me' he said. He pointed out places of interest all the way home, making sure that I knew the name of every place we passed through and making me repeat the Chichewa names. We paused in the market for the purchase of potatoes, cassava and vegetables and then it was back to the bus station for a minibus to Chilomoni. All the members felt it had been a very satisfactory day. An arrangement had been made to record the backing tracks for the other five songs on the following Thursday. Unfortunately I was unable to go that day as I had promised to run the Stay and Play group for Diddy who had the day off for her birthday, but I was very glad to have the opportunity to go and see how it was done.

I enjoyed the Stay and Play. I rang the student volunteers the day before and gave each of them something to prepare. I also encouraged them to arrive in time for a brief planning meeting before the families arrived and to my delight there was one student already present when I arrived at 7.30am. The session starts at 8.30am and by 8.15am all six of my volunteers were there and the room was laid out with a variety of activities. I gave myself only one teaching point for the session; that the activities we provide for the children at each session should be dictated by what we observed about the children's interests and abilities at the previous session. Diddy has set up a pattern to the way the group is run, with similar activities and equipment in similar places in the hall each week and the children are beginning to know where to go to find what they want to do. I had made some yellow play dough with red glitter in it. We taped strips of paper to the floor and made huge, group paintings. There were cars, balls, dolls, puzzles, maths games, water play, baby play, musical instruments. Each student had prepared a song for the music session at the end and Vasco was ready with a story. I assigned special responsibility for a particular activity to each student, but encouraged them to keep an overview of what was happening in the whole room as well. We had 24 children and perhaps 18 or 20 mums. I was so proud of the students. Each seemed to know exactly what they were doing and the session went very smoothly. I had made popcorn for snack time and was going to give each child their small portion on a piece of paper so they could put it down and keep it clean. Gilbert saw what I was about and immediately started twisting the pieces of paper into cones. This was so much easier for little hands to manage. The others picked up on what he was doing immediately and everyone was served in record time. Such team-work! Story time was a delight. I found out afterwards that the story Vasco told was written by Gilbert. My Chichewa is poor and I could only pick up the gist of the tale which was about a tortoise and a rabbit. They had made laminated pictures of the characters and also Vasco acted the part of the rabbit and used our big, tortoise floor cushion to play the part of the tortoise. The children were totally absorbed. It took a bit longer than I had planned and therefore there was not enough time for all the students to do their songs, but that was my only criticism. After the families had left we spent ten minutes talking about how the day had gone and 'Hey Presto!' we had a plan for next week. Excellent.

We are so busy here that time passes very quickly and the weekends roll around before you expect them to. Saturday was filled up by shopping in Blantyre and swimming at Mitsidi. In the evening Chris and I went to see Hugh and Linda perform in the Musical Society of Malawi Christmas Concert. There are only a couple of Malawians in the choir and orchestra but there are certainly a good mixture of people of many nationalities. There were songs in Chichewa, Swedish and Latin as well as English. It was a joy to sing along to various well known carols although I was disappointed to have to keep quiet during 'Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar', which is one of my favourites. After the performance there were mince pies and Christmas biscuits so we came out feeling quite Christmassy!

On Sunday Sarah and I were privileged to be invited to accompany Matthias, the stores man on the building site, to Chikwawa to visit his mum and family in their home village. I did the entire journey propped up on a mattress in the back of the pick-up. Even in Blantyre it was a warm and sunny day. I was glad I had my sunglasses in my bag and had smothered myself in suntan lotion before we left. I was also equipped with big scarf and a chitenje to cover myself if the sun seemed too strong. All went well at first as we drove out of Blantyre on the Chikwawa road. I noticed that the blossoms on the flame trees were beginning to drop and the rain of the previous weekend had allowed the maize to grow so that it was now about 18 inches high. I could see Mount Soche to my right as I rode backwards in the back of the truck and was able to pick out Chilobwe where I had been with the choir a few days beforehand. As we approached the outskirts of Blantyre and Fisherman's Rest we passed people selling mushrooms at the side of the road and resolved to stop on the way home and buy some. Mushrooms are a rare treat in Malawi. I guess it must be the season for them. We drove down a steep winding road from the mountains around Blantyre to the plains of the Shire valley, and the temperature got hotter and hotter as we descended until it was about 45 degrees and pretty unbearable. As we went down I knelt up and leaned on the cab of the truck so that I could see the incredible view of the valley getting closer and closer. The breeze was quite strong and this was enhanced by the fact that Matthias is no slow driver! The little hair I have left was standing straight up in the air when we got to the bottom and I had to keep my dress from lifting itself above my head by the simple expedient of kneeling firmly on the hem. I excited quite a bit of interest. Clearly it is not a common site to see a middle-aged azungu woman peering over the cab of a pick-up driven by a Malawian. Loads of people pointed and waved and called out 'Azungu, azungu!'. I was just beginning to feel that I was so hot I would have to ask Matthias to stop and let me recover in the shade, when we crossed the Shire river, went through a police road block and after a few hundred yards swung off to the right up a dirt road. A few hundred yards further and we had arrived. We were warmly welcomed by Cecelia, Matthias's mum, who spread a bamboo mat under a tree and made sure we had zitenje to sit on. Matthias and his step-dad had chairs and the rest of us on the mat. This was rural Malawi! Cecelia and Matthias's two female cousins who live with his mum following the death of their father, his Uncle Sylvester, rushed around bringing drinks, and cooking both in the house and outside on an open fire under another tree. When they offered food or drink to the men they sank to their knees to show respect. I didn't see either Matthias or his step dad lift a finger to help during the whole time we were there, but the girls were busy all the time. They made a lovely meal of chicken, rice, nsima, tomato soup, and salad which we ate outdoors under the tree. Occasionally the mat had to be moved round with the sun so that it remained in the shade of the tree. It was at least ten degrees hotter in Chikwawa than it is in Blantyre. I am so glad we do not live in those temperatures all the time; I don't know how I would cope. We were kept well supplied with water and drinks. They routinely put salt in their drinking water in order to replace the salts lost through sweating. I daresay Annie will tell me off for discussing toilet issues in the public medium of a blog, but I didn't need a wee all day, which is just as well as the only loo was a shared pit latrine which even Matthias said he would not recommend! The family has a small farm where they grow food and also cotton as a cash crop. Planting had not yet started as so far they have had no rain at all. Cecelia has an interest in traditional medicines and she told us all the uses of the tree we were sitting under and of other plants growing around us. I was fascinated. We met little Sylvester who is three years old. I was interested to hear about the village CBCC which he attends from 7.30am to 5.00pm each weekday to enable his young mum to go back to school. I rooted around in the depths of my hand bag and found him some balloons. Also a rubber ball made to look like like the earth as seen from outer space with clouds superimposed upon a globe of the world. This excited great interest and poor little Sylvester had to wait while it was passed around the whole family and admired. An older lad passed by on the road and Sylvester wanted to show him his new ball but his grandfather advised him not to as he feared the older lad would take it off him. I hope I have not caused trouble with this gift. After about three hours it was time for us to set off back to Blantyre. When we passed through the road block in the other direction we all had to get out of the car and walk on a pad soaked in disinfectant as there is foot and mouth in Malawi at the moment. At the top of the climb up the mountain we stopped to get our mushrooms and again at Fisherman's Rest for coffee and icecream (and a proper toilet!).

A week later

The opening of the children's centre is fast-approaching and a lot of the projects that have been on the go for some time seem to have come together this week. We actually have the beginnings of a register with the names of real children who will come to us for day care from 16 January. There are 13 who are the children of Beehive workers who have had subsidized places at a local nursery for some time. These are being transferred to our own Centre. We have a committee consisting of representatives from Chilomoni health centre, the local police, Social Services, the local Child Protection Officers and a couple of local churches, also Mary Kamwendo, Beehive's main HR person, Sarah as Day Care Manager, and David. These people have recommended children for the sponsored places. David and Sarah, with the CPOs have visited these families and made recommendations and then it is the job of the committee to decide how the places are allocated. I do not think it will be difficult to fill the hundred places as sponsorship gradually becomes available. The cost of each place is approximately 750 pounds a year. We have a marketing campaign raising sponsorship from local companies, the Beehive companies themselves are sponsoring ten places and a couple of individuals are each sponsoring a child. We hope that individuals, churches and other groups in UK, or indeed anywhere else, will also commit themselves to that sum to give a child the chance of a good pre-school education and thus a good start in life. This week has seen the appearance of our Mother Teresa Children's Centre chitenje fabric from which the children's uniform dresses and shirts will be made, and a decision has been made about uniform for staff. The Centre itself is still officially a building site but I have been assured that it really will be handed over to us to start moving in furniture, toys and equipment by the end of this week. This is just as well as the plan is to have an open morning for the prospective fee-paying children on Saturday 17 December. Unfortunately I will not be about as I set off for Lilongwe at about 6.00am on that day on the first leg of my journey home for Christmas. This trip was booked in June, when I still believed that the Children's Centre would be opening in September. I am very excited about coming home to see friends and family, but the timing is not good. I shall miss the move into the Children's Centre and a very busy period of preparation for the first day for the children.

This week also has seen the arrival back from the printers of the three booklets we have put together. First there is our annotated version of the Malawian ECD curriculum. Then there is a manual for the Practical Assessment tasks for the third part of the Beehive Child Care and Early Years Education Diploma. Thirdly there is an Answer Book for each student with all the paperwork they will need to accompany their practical tasks bound together. David and I have spent a lot of this week watching students leading activities in a little pilot of the practical tasks. So far we have not uncovered any serious or unpredictable problems, fortunately! Marks in the pilot vary between 44 and 88%. I have come up with a list of advice for the students following the pilot but it is the usual advice really starting with 'Read the question carefully, however good your activity is, if it does not answer the question you will not get any marks!' I have seen much to make me proud during this week. The group of students who have been supporting Marc in his work with Standard 1 in St James have developed into a good team. Their relationships with children were a joy to behold. I think I am going to have some difficulties assessing people working with little children in Chichewa, but it is not as difficult as one might imagine. It is easy enough to see whether children are relaxed, happy and interested.

Talking of speaking Chichewa I find that I shall be leading assembly again this Monday. This time it is the turn of the choir to lead and I was forced to agree to their request that I do the introduction and link bits. I think it amuses them to hear me struggle to do it in Chichewa, but they certainly appreciate the effort. Yohane has proved to be a star yet again and has helped me to put together the things I want to say. It s probably just as well that I have this role as they are keen to keep the songs we are practicing for the CD under wraps until it comes out, and have put together a programme of four Christmas songs for the assembly, all new to me, all in Chichewa, and I really cannot get my tongue around them in the short week we have had to practice. Now I have an excuse which allows me to contribute to the choir's assembly but not mess up the singing! Another disadvantage of the timing of my trip home is that the recording of voices for the CD will take place on the 19, 20 and 21 December, after the site is closed for the Christmas break. This makes sense of course, but nevertheless I am disappointed.

On Friday night most of the volunteers went to the Gala Night performance of the Blantyre Sports and Social Club Christmas Pantomime. Gala Night means the ticket costs twice as much but you get a buffet and Pimms beforehand. It proved to be a bargain. Rarely have I seen so much azungu food gathered together in one place since I have been here! There were all sorts of little savoury treats including several types of vol-au-vents, prawn rissoles, tiny quiches and, joy of joys, a cheese board! There were also custard tarts and mince pies. The pantomime was exactly what I expected. It reminded me of the amateur pantomimes we used to go to with Auntie Ver when we were children, which were always such a treat. Despite last week's carol concert and the pantomime it still doesn't really feel like Christmas, - too hot! Only a week to go and I shall be home. I heard on the radio that it's 2 degrees at home, so it will be a drop of about 30 degrees. I shall definitely need a hot water bottle!