Extract from a letter to George

Extract from a letter to George Furnival at Krizevac

I'm repeating this here rather than writing something new as it tells last week's news pretty thoroughly.

As you can probably imagine we are working very hard to get the Children's Centre off the ground and running properly. There is lots of good news. Firstly our target no. of children for the end of February according to the budget was 30 and although on Feb 29^th we had 29 children we do now have 30! The next step is to bring it up to 48 by the end of March and that will be more of a challenge. We have a Fun Day/Open Day planned for next Saturday and David and Kirren have been untiring in their efforts to spread the word about it. I do hope it all pays off. We are all looking forward to seeing lots of potential fee-paying parents with their children in tow, bringing their dollies and teddies for lots of jolly activities!

It is such a joy to see the children every day and to observe how quickly they are learning things. It is the case all over the centre but probably shows most in the 4-6s room. Children who had never made any attempt to write or recognize any letters were to be seen last week chalking their names on the concrete floor of the balcony! There are some great displays on the walls and much of the work is named by the children themselves, some with clearly recognizable names and others with a clear initial and final letter but a bit less well formed in between. This class has been particularly fascinated by the building site and the children were allowed to go on a visit and sit on the little digger. They were so excited and Jennie has covered a big notice board with their drawings and the comments they made. They have also drawn some great self-portraits and their pictures of some of the staff are a joy to behold!

The 2-4s are the biggest class at the moment and probably also the biggest challenge, but I have been so pleased at the way they have settled in. For the first couple of weeks a few of them were rather unsettled. It made me sad to see their little faces as their mums disappeared down the balcony to go to work. In the UK we would have had a settling in routine with visits of varying length, but here there is little regard for such luxuries, 'They will get used' Is the phrase that pops up all the time, and it is true, eventually they do! I have enjoyed seeing the toddlers get used to working with paint, glue, crayons etc. The first time they painted they had never seen anything like it before, but now, after two months they have gained in confidence and have painted hands, feet, rolled marbles in paint, spread it all over the table, and so on.

The baby room is a lovely place to visit. There are only 5 or 6 children in here at the moment so it has a tranquility that it probably won't keep as the numbers go up. These little people seem to be busy every moment that they are awake. Their theme for the last few weeks has been 'All about me', and they have done such lovely things. They have drawn round each other and have cut-outs of the whole class on the wall. On the window is a display of little painted footprints showing how tall each child is. For Thando's second birthday they had a party for which they made jelly and iced biscuits. They have had such fun in the home corner making meals with dried pasta, and on one memorable morning they had flour, water and shredded pumpkin leaves and immersed themselves in making nsima and vegetables for all the dolls and the Care Givers. What a delight!

David and I are on the move every minute! There is so much to be done. The practical part of the course is more or less on schedule and the students generally seem very keen to get the tasks out of the way. They want those Diplomas after waiting so long. It has been a great help to have Kirren here and we definitely made the right decision to postpone the second cohort until at least September. I have been focusing on the people management and hope I have put a fairly robust supervision and appraisal system in place. We have had our fair share of little misunderstandings and personality clashes to sort out, and there have been a few thefts, and a few people who want to be paid for being there but don't seem to want to do much work, but there have been so many more lovely things happening. The students mostly love having children to practice on. It is a delight to see the confidence of the students growing, and one or two of them are doing excellently. I don't know if you read my last blog entry, but I describe one morning when I went into each playroom one after the other and something lovely was happening in each one. Sometimes we tear our hair out a bit at the frustration of encouraging people who have been through an education system in which putting your head above the parapet is definitely discouraged, to think creatively and originally, but when it happens I either want to hug them, or to cry with pride!

This week we put up a notice inviting applications for 8 full time 'Trainee Room Leader' posts. The requests for application packs have been overwhelming. It would not surprise me if we got an application from every single Care Giver. We are also offering 25 places on a JPII Leadership course. So far we have 38 people signed up so we shall have to select those who show the most leadership promise.

I cannot believe that there are only 5 weeks left until Diddy, Joan and Jennie fly home, all on the same day. We shall miss them so much. I was very pleased that Vince agreed in a recent meeting that we could have two 'Practice Leaders' one for under 4s and one for over 4s in their stead. I have a horrible feeling that it was me that was supposed to let you know so that you could start the recruitment process. I do hope you've heard from another source, but if you haven't then I apologise for the delay and urge you to do your best, as you always do, and get us some good people. The students are doing well but there is no substitute for demonstration of good practice if you want Care Givers to learn to do the job well and we shall miss the Room Leaders a lot. I am really looking forward to handing all the management stuff over to Alison and going back to being a teacher full time. I like the people-based side of things, but am not very good at 'stuff', fortunately David and now Kirren have fewer inhibitions about getting on the phone and sorting things out. I have done my best, and David and Kirren have been amazing, but none of us can keep up this pace of work for ever, and without the Room Leaders….

So tell Alison how thrilled we are that she is coming out so much earlier than we first thought.

Vince has given his permission for the Annotated Malawian ECD Curriculum that David and I have produced to be made available as a free download from the Krizevac website, so Chris has made it into a pdf file for me and it is attached. It would be great if you could sort it out for me. I have already had two requests for it from other NGOs working with children in Malawi. I'll just email it to them.

A snapshot view of the Children’s Centre.

Normally I would never write in my blog during working hours, but then at the moment it feels as though if I am awake I am working, at least during the week, so perhaps I may be excused! This morning I spent an hour working my way along the corridor from the 4-6 year old room, through the 2-4s and ended up with the baby room. It was an hour that made the hard work all worthwhile, and as I write I am feeling quite emotional! I began by assessing a student on a task about risk assessment of activities. She is one of our youngest students but she is bright and thoughtful and intuitive and it was the quality of her relationships with the children in her room that moved me. She had organized these children into a game of Phada, a Malawian street game a bit like Hopscotch. It's quite challenging for 4-6s, especially the younger ones and I watched with great respect as she adapted her approach and level of support to meet the needs of each individual child. Those children did everything for themselves, including drawing a rather wobbly chalk line court on the concrete floor of the room. The student was full of praise, suggestions and warmth. For those who were less well physically coordinated she was there, jumping alongside them, others more physically confident jumped alongside each other. The classrooms tend to be rather echoing, all that concrete and not enough soft furnishings to absorb much sound and often I have heard students raise their voices to be heard, then the children also speak loudly and the volume of sound escalates. Not today, she spoke softly, focusing her attention on the children and involving them in preparing the activity. Everyone was interested and kept quiet to hear her. It was lovely! Oh and she had made a sensible assessment of the hazards as well and put in appropriate measures to minimize the risks!

When I had finished there I popped next door to the toddlers. This is a room that has been a little slow to get enough good quality activities planned to keep the children productively occupied all the time, and this is the room where we have had a few problems with staff relationships with each other, and the apparent lack of ability to behave in a professional way in front of the children, so I was thrilled to see three interesting looking activities being prepared all at the same time by Care Givers who appeared to be working well as a team! There were clay balls, brightly painted with thick powder paint, drying on the side of the play sink. I wonder what they were for. There were painting trays on the floor ready to be used, each lined with a rectangle of newspaper cut with a zig-zag border. A Care Giver was cutting out cross-shaped pieces of paper for the children to decorate with patterns as she wanted to find out what degree of fine motor control each child has. It is so good to see activities getting more interesting and original as Care Givers gain in experience and confidence that their own ideas are going to be good ones.

Next I looked in on the baby room just as their morning welcome routine began. It was an absolute delight. I sat on a chair in the corner of the room and watched. The first songs welcomed the babies individually by name, first in Chichewa and then in English. Each song was paired so there were two days of the week songs, two about today's weather, two naming body parts etc, each time one in English and one in Chichewa. These children, all under-two and a half were obviously already familiar with these songs. They helped themselves to instruments and played along enthusiastically and in rhythm so much better than the average UK child in a baby room. Little Ireen is a music and dancing star, her small face lights up with pleasure as soon as a tape is turned on or a Care Giver begins to sing. She swings her hips in perfect rhythm and plays along with drum or tambourine. Today she had helped herself to a tambour (? I think that's what you call it when it has no bells) and a fluorescent green recorder. She beat the drum with the recorder with such enthusiasm and in perfect time. Already she is streets ahead of the likes of me in terms of musical ability! Little Blessings, our youngest, sat seriously in the middle of the group with a drum and played steadily and usually in time through every song. Chisomo was the most focused on the words and sang with gusto in both languages. Mona Lisa put in a few words here and there and watched the faces of the Care Givers as they sang. The whole session was well thought out and well executed. I was so proud and not far from tears as I came downstairs to get on with the paper work. Sometimes I have moments of terrible doubt that I have managed to pitch the training at the right level and in a way that is appropriate to Malawi. This little walk down the corridor this morning shows me that we have at least got some of it right!!

Later in the day

I actually finished on time today for the first time since the Children's Centre opened. I realized it will not be helpful to anyone if I tire myself out so much that I am unable to continue to do the job properly. So here I am sitting on the bed in my house with June Tabor playing and an hour or so before the other volunteers get home to have a quiet time and organize my thoughts a bit, and to blog. Since I wrote last weekend David and Kirren and I have put our heads together and divided out the work that has to be done between us. There is still a heavy load, but too my delight Kirren appears to be as little daunted as David by all the practical 'stuff' about which I procrastinate so badly, so I have been able to hand over things like ordering cleaning materials without feeling too guilty about it. I am holding on to the management of the staff team and last week I was challenged by a fairly major falling out of workers in the Toddler Room, and some rather unprofessional behaviour which we really cannot have happening in the Children's Centre. All seems to have been sorted out now and on Monday and Tuesday the room has been getting on with putting together stimulating activities for the children and I have had reports from both sides of the dispute that everything is much better than last week. Kirren has put some time into sorting out the last pair of classrooms which have still not quite been handed over to us by the construction team. We had used them as a bit of a dumping ground for everything that we didn't have an obvious place or immediate use for. Now we still have one room being used for storage but it is much better organized and we have found one or two useful things that had been mislaid, for example the A2 sugar paper that I had planned to use to make scrapbooks for the children's Learning Journeys but had been unable to locate. The other room will be used for Stay and Play and is beginning to look more like a play room and less like a municipal dump.

Unfortunately one of the Room Leaders has had to take a couple of weeks off for health reasons and as we have to work towards having floor supervisors rather than an experienced member of staff in each room from mid-April anyway we are practicing by putting Kirren in there for a couple of hours each morning only and assessing whether this is sufficient support for the Care Givers to ensure that the children's needs are met. So far, so good, but I know it is early days!

I put up a notice today telling the staff that we shall be looking to appoint 8 full time Trainee Room Leader posts from 1 April, and inviting them to apply. Beehive is funding a leadership training course for 25 Care Givers on 4 days during March. By the time I left at 3.30pm 20 people had signed up, so I am sure that we shall have to select the ones that show most promise of being ready for extra responsibility. In order to be fair to all the students who are working so hard to gain their Diplomas in the shortest possible time we shall have to continue to employ them all for 2 days a week, but without a room leader to provide continuity for the children we must have someone on each shift who is there every day. Eeeeee! Balancing the needs of children, families, Care Givers, volunteers, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all is a pretty tough task!

David, Kirren and Edna are still working hard on the marketing of the fee-paying places. The 'Get March Free' promotion is over, without significant success. We are having a 'Fun Day' on the 10 March, for which Kirren is full of bright, interesting ideas. The next promotion is "Introduce a friend and get a free bike.' I was not 100% sure about this at first but bikes are certainly a valuable commodity here, so we shall see. We didn't have much response to the radio adverts, so we won't be spending money on that again.

Life is not all work, we had a great weekend with ten of us going to Majete. We stayed at Thwale camp and went on two game drives. We were lucky and saw elephants on two occasions. Rita was thrilled to see zebras. I saw Eland and Buffalo for the first time, although the buffalo was a long way away and looked not unlike a grey rock in the distance! The birds were good too. We saw a brown snake eagle, various bee eaters including an olive bee eater which I'd not come across before, kingfishers, various flycatchers, including both male and female paradise fly catchers. It was a beautiful and peaceful camp with six sturdy tents set in a semicircle around a water hole. You could just sit on your khonde and see baboons, impala, and occasional other visitors without even putting down your drink! Francoise and I took a sneaky look at the luxury tent to see what distinguished it from our more basic accommodation. The main difference was a magnificent outdoor bathroom. You could sit enthroned and contemplate the beauty and silence of the bush, shower in the open air, and clean your teeth while watching the antics of the baboons!

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.