Labour day

The sun has been shining today, the sky was clear and blue. It has not rained for about three weeks, so I think it can safely be said that the rainy season is over. Everything is still fairly green and lush but tinges of gold and russet are creeping in to the landscape and it will not be long before there is a lot of bare terracotta earth. The hedgerows are bright gold with sunflowers. Every morning there is more brown and yellow and less green, but the change is pang'ono, pang'ono, bit by bit.

It is less than six weeks now until I must leave it all behind and fly back to England. There I shall be with family again. I shall pick up relationships with good friends. I shall begin to try to sell my house. I shall pick up my dissertation again and start to look for a job. Such big changes, and so much to miss! I shall miss the students I have been working with for 18 months. I shall miss their enthusiasm for learning. I shall miss the misunderstandings which arise from coming from such very different cultures and the laughter, frustration, irritation and delight that come from sorting them out. I shall miss the view from my khonde of Sanjika mountain where I watch the daily changes in crops, colour and movement of people as I take my breakfast , usually in the sunshine. I shall miss the constantly changing population at Mitsidi where living and working together with the same people leads to intensified relationships which can be positive or negative, but which rarely have the opportunity to develop beyond six months. I shall miss the speedy change from dark to light early in the morning and from light to dark around six pm. I shall miss the children in the Children's Centre and the singing that comes through the ceiling of the office each morning as each class goes through their morning welcome routine. The babies sing 'Moni Blessings, mwadzuka, bwanje….', once through for each child in the class, and now that there are 14 of them it takes a while! I hear 'Good day, good day to you…..', we get the Malawian National Anthem, and 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' seems to be a favourite with every class! I am sure there is not another nursery in the world with quite the same combination of music and sounds. I shall miss the formal politeness of Malawian greetings and the slow pace of life that means that everyone has time to smile at and shake hands with all their colleagues. I shall miss power cuts. I know I shall notice how cold the water is in British taps. I shall miss hot sun, and torrential, tropical rain. I have grown to like some Malawian foods that are not common at home, things like okra and pumpkin, lots of green leafy vegetables, chambo and chips. I have to admit that I will not really miss nsima. I have been quite unable to persuade myself to enjoy it.

Diddy and Dereck had a party today to celebrate moving into their new house in Fargo, one of the smarter parts of Chilomoni. They had gone to a lot of trouble. Charles was recruited to manage the barbeque and we all made salads and bread and so on to contribute to the feast. There was a good mixture of people, volunteers, workers from all parts of Beehive, members of Dereck's family and friends from the Liquor Garden and other places. The music was loud, cheerful and African. Diddy gave us a guided tour of their home and we admired the bright curtains and other touches that made it their own. It was good to be with so many people enjoying themselves together, but after a few hours I was overcome by a feeling of, I'm not sure what? Loss? Sadness? Panic? It felt as if in an impossibly short time this would all be a part of my history. Today it was real and vibrant, but in six weeks it will be the other side of the world. I left earlier than most and walked back alone to Mitsidi, only about 20 minutes away. One of my students caught up with me and walked part of the way with me. Her kindness and support was so lovely.

Today was Labour day and therefore a Bank Holiday. David said that he cannot get used to midweek public holidays, and I know what he means. It feels odd to have a day off on a Tuesday. David, Kirren and I went in to the CC this morning despite the holiday. We wanted to have a good look at the number of assessments we have managed to get the students through, and the number we have left, and to work out the best way to get as many people as possible through their Diplomas as we can in the time available. When we planned it last year we had no idea that we would have to be managing the centre as well, and certainly no idea how much time the running of the centre would take. We knew that we had not managed to keep up with our target number of 6 assessments per day each to get them all through by the end of May. We have truly done our best, and I do not think we could have done more without more people. It is with some reluctance on my part that we have decided to reduce the total number of practical tasks that each student has to complete to gain the Diploma. This was a suggestion of Vince's a couple of months ago, and I resisted it at first, feeling that this part of the course should cover the same range of subjects as the theoretical part. However we must be pragmatic and if we stick to plan A it is doubtful whether more than a handful will complete before we go home, or indeed by the time Kirren is due to finish. So we have come up with plan B! We have rejigged the assessment timetables and reduced the number of optional tasks the students need to do to 7. They still have to do all 8 of the compulsory tasks. This helps also with another thing that has been concerning me. It feels as though a significant minority of the students is more concerned with passing their practical tasks than with the quality of care that the children receive. In our feedback we have found it necessary to remind students that activities should be based upon the observed needs of children and not simply on the need to pass an assessment on a particular topic. The pressure of time has taken its toll on us all I suppose. Any way this difficulty also will be eased by reducing the volume of the whole process and I do believe that taking the pressure off a bit will have a good effect upon the children. This has to be a good thing. It is both refreshing and a huge responsibility to have this degree of control over a qualification. I guess that all new courses must be piloted, tweaked and adapted before the final version is arrived at. I have just never been involved in the process before. I still feel that we have made a good course and given the students enough opportunity to practice their skills and build on the theory they have learned. The children in the CC will be experiencing a quality of early years' education that has previously just not been available to families without money, and that is probably achievement enough for me!

Six weeks to go

Only six weeks until David and I say 'Goodbye' to all our students and set off for home. So much has happened in the time we have been here. We have had the chance to get to know our students very well in some ways, although of course because of the professional nature of the relationships, in other ways we do not know them at all. We have seen some of them develop as professional Care Givers at a rate that has been quite surprising. The CC has been open for only four months and already we have appointed a couple of Trainee Managers, eight Room Leaders and a number of special needs support workers. At last these people have full time jobs with Beehive. They have been working towards this for a long time. One of the new room leaders told me that on the night he went home with the news that he had got a full time job his wife was on the phone all evening, telling all their relatives and friends how proud and excited she was that he had a full time job. It is humbling to see this enthusiasm for a job which pays MK22500 a month which is equivalent to less than eighty pounds. I will never get used to the difference in standard of living and expectations in Malawi from what I have been familiar with at home. Of course not everything is directly comparable between the two cultures but the odds are really stacked against ordinary Malawians. The standard of education is so different. The priorities of the culture are different. The expected modes of behaviour are different. Undoubtedly religion occupies different profiles in very different societies. School has such different educational goals and opportunities. The majority of our students are still working a two-day week so that everyone has a chance to complete their Diploma. We have had to part company with a few because of theft, and a few because they were not working well with the children or not making any effort to do the work to complete their qualification. This has been sad, but I suppose in any group of 70 odd people there will be a few who will not make it for these reasons. The remaining fifty or so are slogging away with various degrees of enthusiasm and dedication at getting through the requisite number of assessed activities before we go home. Kirren has joined us now in assessing every day, and of course she will still be here for four or five months after we leave so she will be able to finish the training for any stragglers. I fear there will be more of these than we anticipated in January because we have been running the Centre as well as doing the training, but we are only human!

Some days I am so encouraged as I walk through the centre from room to room as everywhere I go I see Care Givers interacting with children and providing interesting and educational activities. Children run up to me and smile, calling 'Marianie, Marianie!' and wrapping their arms round my knees! Babies and Toddlers put up their arms to be lifted and hugged, four and five year olds call me over to show me what they have made. They sing to me in English and in Chichewa. Ever since my birthday they have sung 'Happy Birthday to you, How old are you now?' on an almost daily basis as I walk down the balcony! Birthdays don't hold the same significance here as they do for children in the UK. There are several parents of children in the children's centre who really do not know exactly when their children were born. There are a few who know the day and month of birth but don't remember which year, so we have had to make a guess about which class to put them in. I hope we have got it right! On other days I walk from room to room and notice groups of Care Givers chatting to each other while children amuse themselves, or occasionally sit looking sad. David was tearing his hair out the other day because one morning he saw this in one room after another, but I suppose none of these people has been working with children for more than four months and despite the training, the place of children in Malawian society is a far cry from the place of the average middle class UK child in a nursery school! We correct, we encourage, we praise, we teach, we explain the same things over and over, and bit by bit we see practice change and improve. We miss the volunteer room leaders who went home a few weeks ago very much. George is working hard to find more people who are willing to give up a few months to come out here and lead practice in the CC. It's certainly a job that needs doing! I do fear that without examples of good practice constantly in front of them, standards will slip as we have not been working together long enough for good practice to become embedded. We have however made a good start. I would like to see it built upon.

I assessed some interesting activities this week. One Care Giver had spent a considerable amount of time preparing little clay figures to illustrate a couple of folk tales. She chose this activity to demonstrate teaching towards a Moral and Spiritual milestone of the Malawian ECD curriculum to do with teaching the children core values of honesty and obedience to parents. At first I was a bit concerned about her plan as I thought a tale of disobedient children leaving a baby by a tree, where it swallowed a snake, which had to be removed by bringing the frogs from the river to put them by the baby so the snake would come out of the baby's mouth to eat the frogs, would be rather scary! However the children loved it, and this rather quiet and reserved Care Giver turned out to be an expressive and animated story teller. The children carefully packed all the little clay characters back in their box and took them off back to the class room to add to their resources. One of the Room Leaders in the Baby Room had made a lovely display of recent activities in that room, and looked at it with a child's grandmother for her assessment about working with parents and families. The grandma was surprised by how much the babies do while they are playing and was fascinated by the explanations the Care Giver gave of why we do these things and what the children are learning. I was proud then of what we have taught and how well some of the Care Givers have taken on the lessons and are now passing them on. One Care Giver did the assessment on MTCC as part of the community in Chilomoni and rather to my surprise she invited one of the cleaners from the IT College in to tell the children what she does for her living. The cleaner proved to be a bit of a natural teacher and told the children how lucky they are to be at MTCC and how they must work hard and then when they grow up they can be whatever they want to be. She herself she said would have liked to be a doctor, but she didn't do well enough at school and now wishes she had worked harder. She asked the children about their aspirations. It was interesting to note the differences between their replies and those of children of a similar age in UK. Several of the girls wanted to work in construction as their parents do on the Beehive site. One boy wanted to be a driver, There were a sprinkling of doctors and nurses. Nobody wanted to be a teacher or a Care Giver! The visitor then asked the children what they thought she did as a cleaner and they sprang to their feet and mimed mopping and polishing, hand washing, cleaning windows and all the things the CC cleaners do every day. Little Sheila who is five did such an accurate mime of clearing up spilled water on the floor with a cloth that I felt she must have actually done the job herself many times. The chat finished with a discussion of why we need to clean, and hygiene. I am struggling a bit with Care Givers who are very keen to complete assessments but are not giving sufficient attention to the fact that the primary purpose of them being there and proving to me that they have learned what we have taught them is that they should be providing high quality, targeted care and education for the children which should be based on observation, related to the curriculum and to their knowledge of child development. I have had a few activities that although alright in themselves are not based on the needs of individual children, and seem more designed to pass assessments than to educate children. Of course these do not achieve the marks for observation and so forth and therefore do not always pass the assessment, which can come as a surprise to the Care Giver! This week I have had cause to speak seriously to a number of students, pointing out again these key points and asking them to pull their socks up! We shall see next week how much of what I have said has been taken on board.

Some visits

It is interesting to note how different is each volunteer's experience of Malawi, depending upon their interests, what is happening at the time that they are here, and how dynamic and determined they are! I have really benefitted in recent weeks in this regard from having Joan here working on the project as Room Leader in the Baby Room. She is here for three and a half months only and is determined to pack in as much experience as possible. She has arranged a number of trips to various provisions for children and I have been able to tag along and see lots of things that are new to me despite the fact that I have been here so much longer. We began some weeks ago with a trip to a small orphanage called Yamikani which currently houses 16 children aged between 3 and about 14 years. We had trouble finding it and drove up and down the first part of the Zomba road for a while following impossibly vague instructions. Eventually we phoned one of the two gap-year volunteers who are living there at the moment and helping with the education and care of the children. There are Malawian house-mothers who live with the children and they go to the local schools. Accommodation was basic. The children share rooms with about six children in each room. There is one wardrobe in each room which seems to be plenty of space to house all the possessions of the children. We saw the communal dining/living room/kitchen, but while we were there all the children who were at home were out the back on the concrete khonde making and decorating bean-filled balls from a kit that had been sent by the mother of one of the volunteers. The project runs a nursery school for local children. The profits from this contribute towards the food bills for the orphanage children. The older children grow some maize and vegetables in the back garden and I understand the project also has a farm, some distance away where more crops are grown to feed the children. The nursery school had a few basic puzzles and bits of equipment, but very little by our standards.

Our next visit was to a well-established orphanage project in Blantyre for young orphans. This has been running for about 20 years and I was thrilled and encouraged to see a project which has been sustained over such a long period. On arrival we were ushered into an empty living room and through a door onto a khonde where there were between 20 and 30 under twos toddling and crawling about or just sitting on the floor looking around them. There were three staff, one sitting on the floor playing with the half-dozen or so children clustered around her. The other two were occupied distributing first bottles and beakers of milk to each child and then little peanut butter sandwiches for mid-morning snack. Joan and I sat on the floor and were immediately swamped by tiny children desperate to be the one to get to sit next to us, or better still on our laps, snuggling in to complete strangers. My heart lurched to my throat and I had to fight back the tears, but these children are the lucky ones, cared for by a project that sees that they are as well-fed and healthy as they possibly can manage. There are toys and a few books, a few plastic slides and the like. How can these care givers provide the love and affection and individual attention that these children deserve? All three carers were busy the whole time we were on the khonde just attending to the children's immediate physical needs. Joan and I started playing singing games with the children around us, hoping that keeping the children busy would be helpful to the carers. As they finished their snacks the children were taken off to the bedroom for their rest time. We were left completely alone with about eight two-year olds and we continued to play with them for about twenty minutes. It became obvious that they were familiar with several of the songs and games we played, so they must get such input on a regular basis. Eventually a carer came back and said she would show us around. Off we set with our eight little friends holding hands and clustering around us. The first call was the dormitory bedroom. The carer opened the door, encouraged the children to lead the way and then the minute they were all through the door she closed it and left them to put themselves to bed for a rest and led us off to see the rest of the orphanage. We could hear howls of distress from the other side of the door. We saw the house for the under twos and then went across the garden to the house for the three to four or fives. These were all playing with some of the neighbours children in the garden as this was not a school day. A few carers sat in the shade. Everyone was friendly but no one was interacting with the children. There was one of those swings that look like a horse and are made out of recycled rubber tyres hanging from a tree. I started pushing a little girl on this and all the others came running. Joan and I had to organize a rota system and give them all a turn! After the tour we met an azungu who is part of the management of the project. She was very helpful and took us into the office and showed us lots of photos of children, explaining that when they leave the orphanage some go back to their extended families as they are now old and strong enough to survive in the villages. For others who have no suitable family the project buys houses and the children live in small groups with house mothers until they are grown up and can be independent. The education and support the children receive is a far cry from what would be considered ideal in UK, but so much better than they would get without the project. So many would die without the nutritious food, and the care of the house mothers in the orphanage. We learned a lot from this place. They must have some sort of sponsorship arrangement from Johnson and Johnson as the bathrooms were full of their products. We could do with an arrangement like that with the CC. Joan took a photo of their baby bathroom with its clean, efficient and comfortable facilities for changing lots of babies. The manager said that one of the biggest challenges they face is staff training. Maybe there is an opening for Beehive here? The training is written now. I wonder if there would be a market for other NGOs etc to buy training places off Beehive when the next cohort of trainees gets going, possibly in September.

We spent a fascinating couple of hours being shown round the paediatric services at Queens Hospital by Dr Neil Kennedy who is head of this department. He gave us a lot of time and trouble and we were grateful for his attention. I could write so much about this visit, but it was several weeks ago and the detail fades a bit as time passes. Next time I am tempted to complain about the NHS I will remember this visit and be grateful! The wards were huge, the number of nurses was small. Each baby has to have a guardian staying with them. In one ward there were 110 cots and 3 nurses, but the nurses don't always all turn up. There is really only time for them to give out the medication. Personal and nursing care is done by the guardians, usually the mothers. Meals are available but you have to sit outside on the concrete floor to eat them. This is the largest and best public hospital in Malawi. The services are free at the point of delivery. I wish I had written this earlier as I cannot remember all the facts and figures Neil told us, but I remember that the number of babies delivered each month is more than the number per year in many UK General Hospitals. We visited the Special Care Baby Unit which has some babies cared for in incubators and some by the 'Kangaroo' method where they are held against the mother's body by strips of cloth. I was impressed and humbled by the dedication of Neil and his team. Women come from far away when the time to have their baby approaches, and camp out as close as they can to await the delivery. He has been here something like 16 years. There is a separate accident and emergency unit for children and many other projects concerned with the health of children.

Most recently we went to see a place where they make made-to measure seating and standing frames for children with disabilities. They are basic and old-fashioned to our eyes, but we have met one or two children with CP who have nothing but a particular shaped hole in the ground to support them in a comfortable seating position. I dare say we shall use this place as children with special needs come to the CC. For MK3500, about twelve pounds, you can get a made to measure, wooden, corner chair. To have rexine covered padding costs extra, so this is not ordered so frequently. We met the man who makes the chairs who himself has a physical disability. Like so many NGOs in Malawi this organization is not able to maintain all the services it has managed in the past, and much of its extensive building is under-used. They continue to do what they can with the money they have, but the lady who showed us round was keen to know whether we had any jobs with children with special needs available in the CC. We met some families with children who were waiting for operations as the orthopaedic hospital. When they arrive from the villages they often come in with infections and malaria and so on, and they stay here until they have a clean bill of health and are strong enough to tolerate the curative surgery.

Joan also visited a school for deaf children, but I was not able to accompany her on this occasion.

I began writing this piece about three weeks ago when Joan was still here, but have been so busy, and have also had a holiday so I have only just completed it. Joan has now returned to the UK and I miss her very much. Not only was it a delight to have someone here who I know from home, we are both from the Norwich area, but also her enthusiasm and energy have been an inspiration. I am determined that the research she has done will not be wasted and that her ideas about services for children with disabilities will be passed on to the new manager and the outreach manager who we expect next month.

Malawi is really not the country of choice to be born if you have a disability. Already the teacher who has responsibility for SEN support for all the 22 schools in Chilomoni, Government and private, has made herself known to us and we are able to help with some of the families she knows with pre-school children with disabilities in the area. This will be part of the outreach work of the CC and is not really part of my brief, but certainly there is a lot of work to be done. We will be starting two children with cerebral palsy and one who is profoundly deaf tomorrow. We have appointed four of the Care Givers as SN support workers to work with these children, so we have made a beginning…….

102 Signing church

Today I have had an extraordinary morning. I have known that one of my students, Memory, is a fluent signer for a long time, and I have recently appointed her as one of four special needs support workers for the children's centre, but I had never enquired where she learned her skills. It appears that she is a Jehovah's Witness and that she belongs to a signing church. This project has its origins in America. All the members of the congregation learn to sign and services are conducted in sign language. Apparently this attracts many members of the deaf community here in Blantyre. I suppose there must be such organizations across the world, but I have never been to any of them myself and I found the whole experience fascinating. We were a few minutes late and the service was already under way with about 20 people ' listening' attentively to the signing preacher. A video camera was fixed upon him and the image projected on the plain white wall at the front of the Kingdom Hall. There was some translation into Chichewa, but by no means was all of the signing translated. Memory's sister Elissa sat next to me and translated in a soft whisper a lot of what was happening. I was further helped to understand because the service, which was something between the sort of act of worship I am familiar with and a bible study, was based on an order of service in the local JW newsletter and contained references to the Bible and a number of JW publications which turned out to be all in English. Memory's large handbag seemed to be full of all these books and leaflets and the two of them kept me well supplied with literature that meant I was able to understand quite a bit of detail about what was going on. They both had extremely well-thumbed Bibles which they obviously knew very well as they found each reference very quickly and thrust it under my nose with a pointing finger showing exactly which verse I was supposed to take note of. More and more people trickled in as the service proceeded until there were about 50 altogether. We spent a lot of time considering relationships and marriage, things to consider when choosing a suitable spouse, and how to behave morally. Attention was given to the temptation to get so caught up in wedding arrangements that you give no attention to the marriage which will last for the rest of your life. Later the emphasis moved to the duty of children to honour their father and mother, including advice not to spare the rod for fear of spoiling the child which caused me some concern. The hymns were interesting. I am well used to signing along while singing songs with children, but this was signing without vocals or accompaniment. We were led by a video of enthusiastic and spirited white men signing expressively, and the congregation joined in with obvious enjoyment and great gusto. There was rustling of clothing, but otherwise the hall was quiet. Next came the 'study' part of the service. The newsletter had questions about the history of the JWs and there was a video with photos and dramatizations about various historical characters important to their development. All members of the congregation seemed very ready to participate and contribute from children of ten or eleven up to grandfathers. Both men and women 'spoke' from the floor, not only in the study time but also during the service part of the proceedings including Memory and her sister. However all those who actually got up and led from the front were men in smart suits. We finished with another 'song' and a prayer. The girls had taught me the sign for 'Amen' in the Land Rover on the way so I knew when we had reached the end! Everyone was friendly and welcoming. I think Memory got a fair amount of kudos for having brought an azungu to the congregation. I was introduced to Brother Ken who seemed to be the leader of the congregation and whose wife was wearing the same earrings that I bought for myself when I took Joan to the airport last week. It's shallow I know, but I notice things like that! Brother Ken was interested in the work of the CC and I asked him about the work the congregation is involved with for deaf children. It appears that the emphasis of this is to go into the homes of deaf children and tell them about the Bible. Brother Ken said he feels guilty about this as parents ask them for help with education as it is only the relatively wealthy parents of deaf children who are able to afford specialist education. I offered possible help for a few deaf children who live in Chilomoni through the CC and he is coming to have a look at the place next week. I asked him to request any business contacts he may have to consider sponsoring places for pre-schoolers at the CC.

As I left the Kingdom hall I phoned Francoise and Kirren who were busy buying up the second hand market in the middle of Blantyre! Kirren emerged with a nice pair of shoes, some designer trousers and three tops for not much more than a fiver altogether. We met up in the Mount Soche hotel for coffee. I was there first as shopping appears to take longer than church (!) and I amused myself with a copy of The Watchtower, which does not seem to have changed much in content or appearance in the thirty years since I last read it. Back at Mitsidi I changed out of my respectable clothes into cut-off jeans and a t-shirt and spent an hour or so starting this blog. We finished setting up a room for Alison (Children's Centre manager – Hoorah!) and Jason (Builder) who arrived later this evening. Then we decided that since the President was lying in state only about a mile away in his official Blantyre residence at the top of Sanjika mountain we really should take advantage of the opportunity offered and go and view the body. I put a chitenje over my jeans as I thought it would be more respectful, and we set off. We left the Land Rover at the side of the dirt road and followed a long line of people walking more or less in single file and at a cracking pace for Malawians, who apparently according to some study or other are the slowest walkers in the world, along the tarmacked road and through the gate into the usually private grounds of the presidential palace. The grounds were beautifully landscaped and the lower slopes put me in mind of a well kept deer park at some British mansion with manicured lawns and spreading trees. Different species of trees of course…. but that kind of atmosphere. The pavements were concrete covered in what looked to my inexperienced eye rather like chips of white marble. We climbed steadily for maybe a kilometer and passed through three majestic gates before coming upon the palace; a collection of imposing concrete buildings which looked more like a military establishment than a palace to me. The views were magnificent. What a beautiful country Malawi is! Kirren tried to take a photo of the mountains but apparently photography is not allowed. We followed the single file of people around the back of the central building and then back through it past the open coffin. We were instructed not to stop but to keep walking slowly past the body. My memory of the room is very blurry. We were there for such a short time. There were at least two women's choirs singing as walked through. Guards with guns and policemen were in evidence. I think he must have been quite a big man. We passed straight through and down the front steps but were stopped and asked to return and write in the book of condolence. I had not expected this and did not know what to write, but as the last three people had just put R.I.P. I did the same. It's a wish I can genuinely make for anyone who has died. Francoise encouraged us to go back around the building and sit for a while to listen to the choirs. We had a chat with several women who were singing. We even had our photo taken with one choir by an obliging guard, so the rules must be different around the back. One women linked her arm in mine, saying 'I will be photographed with Marian!' I have no idea how she knew me. I didn't recognize anyone in the choir. The garden is high up and although surrounded by trees there are beautiful views over Blantyre and several surrounding townships. I could see bits of Chilobwe, where we went to record the choir, on the lower slopes of Mount Soche. We caught a glimpse of a decaying Chinese-style pavilion in the further reaches of the garden. The only way out was to file past the body again and we walked by a slightly different route back down the mountain to the Land Rover. I was slightly disconcerted to be told by a guard 'There is a man, just down there, looking for you'. I wondered for a moment whether I had inadvertently committed some kind of misdemeanor and an official was going to pop out from around a corner and tell me off, but it turned out that Alan had followed us up on his bike and was looking for us. But we didn't catch up with him until later as he went home after actually being told off by yet another guard for loitering at the bottom of the hill whilst waiting for us to emerge.

We arrived back at Mitsidi just in time to welcome Alison and Jason, which was just as well as I had their door key in my handbag! The eight of us now resident at Mitsidi spent the evening variously settling in, cooking and eating supper and getting to know the new volunteers just a little. Kirren made an excellent orange and banana cake and we sat for a while over cups of tea. The cake disappeared!

I feel I owe some of my regular readers an apology. I have received several messages and comments upon the fact that it is a month since I last posted. I have in fact started one or two entries and these may eventually be completed and posted, so watch this space! I have been working such long hours, and conversely I have also taken two weeks of very necessary holiday. I have had the pleasure of the company of John and Joe for ten days and helped Joe with his university dissertation about charcoal use and the law in Malawi, which was fascinating and worthy of a blog entry in its own right. I wonder if I can persuade him to write it! I also owe you an update on the changes at the Children's Centre. Sponsorships are gradually coming in and we now have 53 children, which is great. If anyone wants to sponsor a child, either as an individual, a church, or a group get in touch with George of Krizevac via george.furnival@krizevac.org I think it costs just over 750 pounds a year for the whole package including uniform and three meals a day. Anyway it's 10.18pm which is very late for Malawi and I will turn into a pumpkin if I don't get my beauty sleep, so that's it for now. Only six weeks from today 'til I come home!

A pleasure and a privilege

I spent the weekend with Mary in the village where she was brought up. Krizevac has recently changed its induction package for volunteers to include a weekend in a rural village location. Some of us old stagers expressed an interest in doing something similar and Peter is happy to oblige us all, however he will not allow my trip with Mary to count as he says it is too luxurious for a true village experience! Mary is the first born in a family of fourteen children. In Malawi to be the first born is a huge responsibility. Mary was the first in her family to go to Secondary School and she did very well, but unfortunately she was sick during the time of the final exams and was not able to take them all. Her teachers recommended that she return the following year and retake the exams. As it turned out, that year both her parents were sick and it was necessary for her to get a job so that her next three siblings could stay at school. She ended up with a good job in a bank where she stayed for 25 years supporting her brothers and sisters and later her own three children through school and in some cases university education as well. Mary fills a very important position in her family. Her brothers and sisters are aware of and grateful for the sacrifices that she made and she is respected for this.

Mary had arranged with me to be ready at 9.00am to be picked up from Mitsidi, but the best laid plans have a way of going wrong and this is Malawi where time does not have quite the same meaning as it has in the UK, so it was half past ten before the little Beehive pick-up arrived to take me to Mary's home in Chilomoni. Here we paused just long enough to load a mountain of food, beer, coolboxes, boxes of crockery, bags of goodness knows what, the biggest suitcase I have ever seen, my modest rucksack, Mary's younger sister and her small son, me and Mary before we set off for the village. I drove, Caleb sat on Mary's knee in the passenger seat and her sister settled on the sofa cushions wedged in the back between the suitcase, a huge blue bucket and a purple tub which later became my bath tub but during the journey provided a haven for a couple of dozen eggs. There appeared to be enough food to withstand a moderate siege but we stopped on the way for tomatoes and when we arrived we discovered 2 chickens and a pound of pork sausages had been left in the fridge in Chilomoni! We drove along the Zomba road with which I have become quite familiar during the 18 months I have been here, as far as Namadzi and then turned off up a narrow dirt road through a tobacco estate that is apparently owned by Greeks. The road was surprisingly well-maintained, presumably by the estate and I was interested in the crops we passed on the four or five kilometer drive to the village. I saw my first coffee plantation, there was the usual maize and vegetables, the tobacco of course, sweet potatoes and several fields of what looked like rosemary. I asked Mary what it was, but she didn't know, only that her relatives said that it smelled nice. We took several turns and the road got narrower and narrower until the plants we touching either side of the car and the grass in the middle of the road was scraping the underneath. We just hoped that there were no significant rocks hiding in the long grass. Eventually when I was beginning to think that we would soon have to get out and walk we turned sharply to the right and within a hundred yards we had arrived. Four or five houses were grouped in an approximate circle in an area with mature mango and avocado trees. All these houses were owned by members of Mary's family although one was rented to a local health surveillance worker and his family and a couple of them were empty. Mary's half brother, his wife and baby son live in Mary's father's old home and this is where we stayed. Across the way is a house where Mary's grandparents lived when she was a child but it is now occupied by her mother's younger sister who is only a few years older than Mary herself. We climbed out of, or down from, the vehicle and everyone came out to welcome us. I was very grateful to sit down in the shade as the day was very hot and for a bottle of water. We shook every one's hand and were welcomed in traditional fashion. Everyone seemed very interested to meet me and wanted to know how Mary and I had come to know each other. Throughout the whole of the two days people kept coming to the house and popping in just for a few moments to greet Mary and have a look at me. During the whole weekend I did not see another azungu until we got right back into Blantyre.

After a bit of a rest and a lunch of rice, vegetables and beef that Mary had cooked at home and brought with her we set off on a walk to see the primary school where Mary had started her education. She said she wanted me to see it because it was here that she began to learn English and if she had not she would not be able to talk to me today! It was not far, maybe half a kilometer, down a grassy path and over a bridge with a bit of a hole in it. Mary said that she used to drive into the village this way but some time last year the tyre of the car had got stuck in the hole in the bridge and so she now thought it prudent to come the long way round through the tobacco estate to avoid the bridge. I am sure she is right! One of Mary's sisters is the local MP and she apparently is looking in to the possibility of getting the bridge repaired. Just the other side of the bridge the track joins a reasonable looking dirt road and there are a few stalls which Mary described as 'Our local market'. There was a small shop selling a few items and doubling as a cinema, where people were watching a video. I didn't see any cars at all while we were there but there were many bicycles and a lot of people on foot. We turned right and wandered up the hill, past a modern convent and an older church, to the primary school. It is now a secondary a well as a primary and they were in the process of building more class rooms. Mary pointed out the graveyard where her parents are buried and explained to me how important it is that people are returned to the place where they belong to be buried. She expects to be buried there herself when the time comes. On the way back we dropped in to the convent to meet he Carmelite sisters. There are only two sisters and two postulants at the moment, as the convent is very new. We were offered fizzy drinks and lemon biscuits which we ate in a sitting room in which every piece of furniture was covered with a cloth or an antimacassar decorated with an embroidered zebra. The sisters were very welcoming and wanted to know how long I had been in Malawi and what I was doing here. Mary chatted about the church and the altar linen, and no doubt lots of other things I did not understand as most of the conversation was in Chichewa.

When we reached the house again my bath water was heated so I repaired to the concrete cubicle out the back and made my ablutions under the sky. Pumpkin plants were climbing all over the walls of the bathroom and there were many beautiful yellow flowers and a few long pumpkins dangling from the adjacent trees which were also covered by the trailing pumpkins. I negotiated the long drop toilet without mishap! I played with the children for a little while with a few balloons I discovered at the bottom of my hand bag, and then we got out felt pens and paper and drew pictures. I made Caleb a little paper boat just like the ones that my mum used to make for me, and a string of paper dolls for the little daughter of the HSA. Mary's aunt runs a little nursery school and she was fascinated and had a go herself so we made snapping monsters together, but it was too dark to see properly so they were not the greatest success! However she seemed happy and told Mary she had learned a lot!

We were indoors and eating supper by seven o'clock and in bed by eight.

Next morning we got up to find more bath water heated, so we washed and then set off for church. A two-hour Mass before breakfast is outside my usual experience! The church was packed by the end of the service but when we arrived, only a few minutes late, the service was under way. Mary had warned me, 'This priest' she said 'is a little crazy, he starts the service on time even if there are only two people there!' There were a lot more than two, but the church was only about half full. Men sat to the left and women to the right. The children were all sent down to the front apart from the babies who stayed with their mums. People were very orderly about filling up the pews from the front. Everyone was obviously in their best clothes. There were traditional African outfits in bold patterns and in broderie anglaise, there were bright dresses and skirts and blouses from the second hand markets and bridesmaid's dresses in abundance. I was glad I had taken a dress with me! At the end of the service I had to go to the front and be welcomed formally, giving the usual short address about who I was , what I had come to do, how long I had been here and what I thought of Malawi! Because the priest had to go on to do another service in one of the satellite parishes the offertory was postponed to the end of the service to save him some time. I was fascinated. About twenty members of the congregation went to the front with labeled wooden boxes which were firmly padlocked. Mary nudged me, 'When we go to the front stay with me and watch where I throw' she said, so I dutifully put my contribution in the same box that she did. Apparently it is intensely competitive, the individual amount from each box being read out in the service the next week. I never did find out if the boxes represented different areas of the parish, or different families, or what?

We wandered home for breakfast, harvested lots of avocados and then had lunch! After that we had to pack our things and set off for home. I felt delighted and privileged to have been invited to Mary's home. We were certainly welcomed and spoiled, and I was sent home with pumpkins, avocados and maize. The family were very generous. I had a lovely time!

100th entry

Wow!

I've actually reached one hundred entries on this blog! I don't think I ever thought I would write so much when I started it.

Today has been a long and exhausting day. It began when the alarm went off at about ten past five and I shrank down under the sheet and closed my eyes again! I have never been at my best in the mornings and the days start so early here. The CC opens at 6.30am and since I am completely incapable of functioning without a morning shower and a decent breakfast I have to get up at least an hour before I am due at work. Today it was a rush as 'just closing my eyes for five minutes' became twenty five, after which I woke with a start, staggered out of bed and started the day. I managed to make eggy bread and still be in the Land Rover by ten past six! Kirren came with me with peanut butter sandwich in hand. We distributed keys for the Care Givers to unlock their own rooms and I pottered along the corridor going in and out of rooms and seeing what was planned for the day. I like walking along the balcony and pausing to watch what is happening in each room, but this morning I was a bit too early and there were no children yet. Care Givers were sweeping and setting out activities, greeting each other and planning the day. Then it was downstairs for an informal meeting with Kirren, comparing notes about what needed to be done. I typed a notice explaining that David was off sick and rearranging his appointments, and another about the opportunity to apply for two trainee Children's Centre Manager jobs, found a few bits of paper that had gone missing yesterday, had a chat with a student who needed to go to a clinic as she had been diagnosed as having Malaria, and as she is pregnant she needs to get treatment urgently and wanted time off to go to a second clinic as the first did not have the necessary drugs. I accepted a piece of work for assessment from another student. As I had to be in Blantyre by 8.00am for a dental appointment I took the lady with malaria to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital which has a specialist malaria clinic, and then back across town to the dentist at the Seventh Day Adventist private hospital. This trip should have taken about 8 minutes but I got involved with a queue for petrol and couldn't get out of it so it took me about 28! Following the treatment and still numb from the anesthetic it was back across town to drop off something to a colleague who had left it behind. I was about to pick up from the Malaria clinic when I got a call saying the patient had been sent home for bed rest, so I turned round again and set off back to Chilomoni. A quick whizz round the CC to check everything was fine and then it was off to the Senior Management Meeting, and it was still before 10.00am! Then it was back to the Children's Centre and a steady stream of appointments to assess students on their practical tasks for their Diploma. When we planned this David and I worked out we would need to do six practical assessments per day each in order to get all 66 students through the Diploma in five months. We thought this would be tough enough as each takes about an hour to watch the activity, mark the background questions and then give the student some feedback on how it went. Today I did four or five and then a supervision meeting before picking up a pile of draft tasks to check for my mentees over a nice cup of tea on the khonde of my house after walking home to Mitsidi. Just as I put my pen down after an hour of marking, and a bowl of popcorn, Hugh came round to say that there was a crisis in the CC. A child had not been picked up, it was 15 minutes after closing time, the parent was unobtainable and the man on the end of the emergency contact number had never heard of the family! I had managed to leave my phone in the CC and the Room Leaders had been trying to contact me. It was back in the Land Rover and off to the rescue! I managed to find by digging out the child's registration form that the emergency contact no had been wrongly transcribed on to the child's contact card, so we rang the original number only to find that the person the other end was in Lilongwe and also had never heard of the family! In Malawi, addresses are much less specific that we are used to in the UK, probably because there are no postal deliveries. All post goes to Private Bags or PO Boxes. The child's address on the form was 'Behind the Chief's house close to St James' church'. We rang David who was the most likely member of staff to have done a home visit and, hallelujah, he knew roughly where it was. By this time it was pitch dark, so two Room Leaders, a Care Giver, the child and I all piled into the Land Rover, left a message with the guard in case someone arrived for the child, and drove to the church, where we met David. He set off down a narrow dirt road and I drove cautiously after him. The little boy who was about two and a half was thoroughly enjoying himself. He sat on the Care Giver's lap in the car, full of excitement at getting a ride in a galimoto! We came to a stop and David pointed at a gap between two houses and said 'I think it's about 50 yards down there', so David, the Care Giver and the little lad set off into the blackness and the rest of us waited in the car. Apparently the child knew exactly where he was going despite the darkness and they arrived at the house to find that his mother had set off to the CC to fetch him! Poor woman, she had arranged for his big sister to collect him but she had forgotten and gone off to play somewhere, only returning home when it got dark! David left the child with the next door neighbour and then it remained only to give the Care Giver a lift home and the Room Leaders and I could go back to Mitsidi for our, now cold, tea! We got in at 7.30pm. Our plan had been to go to the Wild Life Society talk on the birds of Malawi, but as it started at 7.00 pm and was several miles away we accepted our fate and settled down to enjoy Charles dhal and rice, which was most welcome. Only in Malawi……

Open day

Yesterday was the second Mother Teresa Children's Centre Open Day. I missed the first as it happened when I was at home in the UK for Christmas. The primary purpose was as a marketing event to try to sell fee-paying places, and as such it was not a great success. No one actually signed up on the day but there is one family who may come back and sign on on Monday, so there is still some hope! It is difficult to know whether the Krizevac vision of a mixed Centre with both fee-paying and free places for children in need is going to be successful here. There are so many possible contributory factors that it is hard to sort them out. We have certainly observed that several parents who have come for a look round, like the centre and what we do, but are not prepared for their children to mix with those from township Chilomoni. The dirt road from the centre of Chilomoni into our site is also a problem for the smart cars driven by the middle classes who can afford the full fees. Beehive is working on Blantyre City Council about this and there is now an agreement that it will be tarmacked within the next year, but can we wait that long? I am concerned that the more sponsored places we allocate the more difficult the problem will become, but I don't want a situation where we are not helping children for whom we have funds because we are waiting to recruit an equal number of fee-payers. I suppose the worst case scenario is that we become a centre for sponsored children only, which is certainly not all bad, but it is not the original vision, and I believe that both groups of children will benefit from being educated together in the long run, if we do it right.

On the other hand the opportunity to bring children to the CC to play games and have a good look round was taken up with enthusiasm by the local community. The local peripatetic special needs teacher brought three families with children with quite complex problems to have a good look at the Centre. Much of my time was occupied with them, but I found time to go around with my camera and take lots of pictures too. The theme of the day was 'Teddy Bears Picnic'. About 15 Care Givers volunteered to work on Saturday and run teddy-based activities. We had a tea-party in Jennie's room. There were homemade, laminated, put-the-teddy-together puzzles, a fabulous teddy bears cave with bells and sensory toys hanging from the ceiling and torches to shine in the dark. There was a relay race for the older children to move the bears' honey spoonful by spoonful to a bucket at the other end of the garden! This was another demonstration to me of how much more quickly physical control and coordination seem to develop in African children than in European. Little Sheila, who is 5, astonished me with the speed at which she was able to run while balancing a heap of popcorn in a spoon in her outstretched hand, without spilling any at all. All the classrooms were open to visitors. Lots of our children came with their parents and enjoyed having a good look in all the other classrooms as well as taking pride in showing family members their own classroom. Some of the Care Givers rose to the occasion very well and worked hard on consolidation of good relationships with parents and with other local professionals who work with children. The two Child Protection Officers for Chilomoni were there. We raffled a children's bicycle which went to one of the fee-paying families, a chitenje which was won by Zoe, and a voucher for 10 free books from Bee Books. I'd like some of the poorer families to have won really, my heart was with the son of one of the Care Givers, aged about five, whose mother had bought him a ticket to try and win the bike. Clearly the concept of a raffle was completely beyond him and when he saw the bike going off with the family of a child who was obviously far too young for it he cried as though his little heart would break! On the other hand, I had 25 tickets and I didn't win anything!

It was lovely to see the CC buzzing with colour and energy. Many of our children wore their bright turquoise uniforms with pride even though it was not a school day. There were decorations, bright interesting wall displays of children's work, a good choice of activities to keep the children busy and lots of mums and a few dads, relaxing in the garden. It was definitely worth doing, even if we didn't get any more fee-payers. I'll let you know if we do.

We had arranged with one of the girls who work in the office in JPII and who has a sideline business selling snacks to provide the food, and to our disappointment she never turned up and didn't answer her phone all day. That's the last time she will get any business from the CC.

I was grateful to the volunteers and staff members from other parts of Beehive who came to see what we are up to in the CC. Our weekends are precious free time and it was good of them to give some up to come and support us in what we are doing.

In the afternoon I went to visit a very interesting woman who I met on the visit to the Greek Orthodox church a few weeks ago. She is visiting her daughter who lives in Blantyre but is based in Derbyshire. She is a psychologist and is writing a book on the spirituality of living spaces. I found it all fascinating and we whiled away a very pleasant few hours over tea and homemade-biscuits in her daughter's back garden.

I went straight from there to a pizza-party in David's back garden, and then on to the Mibawa Café, a music club in Blantyre which was excellent, but I was too tired to enjoy it properly and was glad to get home at about 1.30am this morning. Today has been a quiet day. I have shifted an enormous pile of marking, blogged, and been very sedentary. I think tonight should be an early night!

I was amused to note in a student's remarks about the value of an early years centre having a good relationship with its local primary school; 'This will help a lot working together with them to provide a better service for the children using children's centre because in the centre there are high quality qualified care givers which will provide high quality care and education which the children will not find it difficult to start in the primary school, and the teachers will not find difficulties to teach because the children already know everything'. I know we've done a good job, but I didn't know it was that good!