Mchinji Blogs 2008
20/08/08:
Having heard anecdotes from other Tenteleni projects before leaving the UK, the 8 intrepid graduates that comprise Team Malawi 2008 were keen to get going to say the least. The entire team made it to Mabuya Camp, Area 3, Lilongwe for the the first week of the project, some having come in on buses from Dar Es Salam, Tanzania, and others from Lilongwe ‘international’ airport. The training week got off to a good start with Chichewa lessons from teacher-extraordinaire Shupe, team building with none other than Andrew White and presentations from two Education Curriculum Facilitators from Central West Education Division Office. Unfortunately Sarah E had to participate from a conveniently located classroom bed or miss sessions as Malarone was giving her nasty side-effects. Sad and Sarah-less the team soldiered on. Training was held at St. Peter’s hostel, a 15 minute walk from Mabuya, towards Old Town. On the Wednesday all eight of the team visited the Lilongwe office of NAPHAM (National Association for People living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi) and listened to a talk about the work that it’s members do to inform the community about HIV and AIDS, living positively and to address the stigma attached to the condition.
The night before leaving Lilongwe for Mchinji we celebrated Sarah R’s 22nd birthday by consuming vast amounts garlic bread, pasta and cake at Don Brioni’s Bistro in Old Town. The eight of us left our camp in Lilongwe on Thursday 14th August. One crowded bus and choc-a-block truck ride later we arrived at the Home of Hope orphanage, nestled at the bottom of the Mchinji mountains. Instantly about 30 children swarmed around us, and latched onto various body-parts while a group of older girls sang to us from their hostel porch that we were most welcome. After a tour of the orphanage we walked up to the Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) for the Working Together Workshop where we met with many of the teachers we will be working with throughout the project. The final day of the training week signalled the start of something the volunteers were to come to know an love, 5:30am devotions! The children sang on stage in groups and after the 90% Chichewa sermon we were asked to introduce ourselves to everyone, a chance to show off our new language skills. Later that day we got a truck to Mchinji Boma to visit Tenteleni’s partner NGOs; TANARD (with whom Romilly and Sarah R will be working) and Youth Alive (with whom Rob and Alison will be working).
We decided to remain at the orphanage for the first weekend so we could settle into our lovely Guest House accomodation and get to know some of the children and staff at the Home of Hope. We were invited to the community church service on Sunday which involved a 1 hour incomprehensible Chichewa sermon, more introductions and some beautiful gospel choir singing.
Monday saw the first day of final term for Malawian children everywhere and day one of work for the volunteers. The first three days (until today) were spent observing lessons and tomorrow teaching and classroom assisting will begin properly. The volunteers have been employed in areas where they will be of mot assistance: Rob and Alison at CDSS have been watching and helping with Maths and Life Skills, Sarah E and Andrew are to be helping with Maths, English ad Life Skils in Standards 6 and 7 at the Mchinji Mission Primary School. Sarah R and Romilly will be giving lessons in Bible Knowledge and helping out with the special needs class at Jane Glaves Primary (orphanage private primary school) and, last but by no means least, Liz and Sam have been observing Maths, English and Science lessons at the Home of Hope secondary (Liz has even been spotted taking old exam papers in her spare time, with some content of the Malawian syllabus being relatively new to her).
All in all the 1st week has been busy, colder than expected, power cut-tastic, water-short, early morning-ful, very devotiony and great fun!
22/09/08:
Moni Nonse (Hello Everyone) from Malawi,
After 4 weeks of teaching the unsociably late Tenteleni project in Malawi is running extremely well. Left, right and centre new ideas are being implemented as well as continuing the teaching and assisting in classes and building up relationships between volunteers, schools, the orphanage and the community. After school clubs in sport, drama and maths, a talent show, sports days and British days are all happening/ on the way.
Everyone’s body clock has slowly adjusted to ‘Malawi time’ with 5am starts for devotions and 7pm sundown (near instant blackness, often with a power cut to boot) with lots of work and waiting for water, electricity and trucks in between.
To help fill time in the evenings the meals prepared have got progressively more elaborate from ratatouille and rice in the first week to pizza, spanish omelette and BBQ potato wedges followed by mango crumble. Bobby had developed a taste for baking and he has produced several versions of chocolate brownie which no one has objected to. Staying on the topic of food; we have purchased a piglet (for a fiver!) who currently resides at the Home of Hope farm just down the road. We are yet to check on Pumbaa’s progress but hope he is fattening up nicely. The less said about the chicken bought at the same time the better. Just a few words of advice though; Don’t ever kill a chicken with anything as blunt as a ruler, do wait for any orphans in your vicinity to vacate the area and finally, never roast a chicken without triple checking removal of all faecal matter.
The Mid-project Review is quickly approaching and the intention is to stay in a town called Kamwendo on the way to Lilongwe for one night before Andrew gives us a grilling on our ‘thoughts and feelings’ on the Sunday. Something that might be addressed is lax Chichewa chat, most people have lapsed into just using greetings and Chinglish. It is amazing to see the positive effect of speaking Chichewa, whether your class is thoroughly amused by a mzungu’s awful attempts or impressed by their successes.
All else that remains is to wish Sam a belated happy 22nd birthday and move onto individual school placement updates:
Jane Glaves Primary School/ TANARD
Sarah R and Romilly have certainly got their work cut out for themselves on this placement, they are most frequently to be found assisting in Standard 6 and Standard 7, frantically planning lessons for their choc-a-block time tables or waiting 2 hours for trucks to take them Boma-wards 2 afternoons a week to work with their placement NGO; TANARD. Unluckily for Romilly the letters R and L are interchangeable in Chichewa which even after 6 weeks in Malawi gives some interesting results.
Both report back of the positive impact they are having in the special needs class, making the teacher’s life much easier and giving the kids the extra attention they need. Elsewhere in school discipline is somewhat of an issue but by using songs, games and expertly drawn pictures the pair are becoming pros at diverting the children’s energy towards their work. The school is relatively well resourced with games and art equipment but lacks more essential items such as Malawian syllabi, exercise books and mathematical equipment.
In Life Skills the pair used an anonymous question box to answer any queries the children are too embarrassed/ don’t want to voice in lesson. The questions ranged from the daft ‘Do people in England not love the sex?’ to the more practical ‘How do I get to England?’ and the serious and difficult ‘Where does HIV come from?’. The two were challenged to honestly and accurately answer the children’s questions whilst remaining within the orphanage’s policies on sex education and so that the children understood; but the children enjoyed and appreciated the lesson immensely. The work with TANARD has so far involved production of a manual for leaders of girls’ gender clubs and organising a visit to Jane Glaves primary from Sarah, a member of TANARD Mchinji, to discuss sexual abuse (this is in response to some questions from the life skills lessons).
On top of all of this Sarah and Romilly are the leaders of a Monday evening girls’ football session, involved in countless girls’ hostel visits and instigating many a round of Duck Duck Goose outside the Guest House.
Home of Hope Secondary/ Womens’ Voice
So far Liz and Sam have had a thoroughly positive experience of education and teaching at the Home of Hope. The secondary school, led by the approachable yet charismatic Head teacher, has integrated them well into the staff. Sam finds himself leading and assisting with lessons in Physical Science, English and Life Skills for Forms 1 and 3; while ‘Madam Eliza’ is coaching the Form 3s through Romeo and Juliet (with the help of a fantastic literature book from the well-stocked library) and utilising that degree of hers in maths lessons, with the prospect of setting up an after school maths club. Also Liz is organising an abridged performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Form 3s for the up-coming Talent Show.
Work with the NGO, Women’s Voice, has been slow to get going. Liz and Sam are now working on funding proposals to assist with the organisation’s financial problems and have established a weekly gender club at CDSS. So far they have established a good pastoral connection with the children and have faciltated free and open discussion on many topics relevant to young people in Malawi. There are plans to cover HIV + AIDS and gender roles in the informal setting over the coming weeks.
Mchinji Mission Primary/ Nyoka Resource Centre/ NAC work (a.k.a. the best)
What Mchinji Mission Primary lacks in buildings and resources it makes up for in spirit and drive. The site is an interesting combination of 8 ‘completed’ classrooms, one ready-to-be-refurbished staff room which currently is empty but for a small termite mound, a small headmasters office, currently used as a staff room whilst waiting for the new one to be constructed, and three so-called ‘outdoor classrooms’; two lacking rooves and one without walls. Of the completed classrooms all have blackboards and reasonable floor space, two have doors, one of which currently locks. All are heavily grafittied.
Andrew and Sarah E are assisting with lessons in Standard 6 (Sarah) and Standard 7 (Andrew). Since the Standard 8s completed their exams in early September these are the two brightest groups at the school and are taught exclusively in English. Andrew, although away often with his role as PC, has definitely established a rapport with his class and is missed in his absence. He often leads lessons in Life Skills and English and Sarah’s superbly behaved Standard 6s often overhear shrieks of laughter through the wall dividing the two classrooms (Andrew does insist on throwing his so-called child-standard Chichewa at them). Sarah has taken over English and Maths lessons from the Standard 6 teacher and contributes from the side to Bible Knowledge, Science and Life Skills lessons. Despite the academic time table at MMPS finishing at 1:05 (often earlier for manual work or sport) there is still plenty to do. The younger children tend to linger on site after their lessons have finished and are never adverse to a round of the hokey cokey, there have been traditional dance performances , football games, staff meetings and Sarah is currently on a voyage of discovery in the office cupboard, complete with live bat and droppings. So far she had found thousands of unused colouring pencils, wax crayons, felt tip pens, sheets of A2 paper along with chicken wire, unopened letters dated from 2000, a frisbee and copious amounts of poo!
The school netball team recently finished third in the league, winning 2000 kwacha for the school and Sarah has bought just enough material to make 7 pin-on netball bibs with some of this money to reward the girls’ excellent achievement.
This placement NGO began life as the Nyoka Resource Centre at CDSS, however the librarian has recently given birth to a baby girl which, has made time-tabling visits difficult. Regular weekly visits will resume this week and Sarah and Andrew will assist the prefects in stamping, labelling and organising books, helping with homework and promoting a lending scheme. Since the workload for this NGO is much less than the others’ Andrew sought to find an extra project. Having met Irene, a Peace Corps volunteer working for the District AIDS Commissioner, Andrew found out that they could assist with the mapping and documenting of CBO (community based organisation) work concerning HIV + AIDS in the Mchinji district. So far they have been producing a spread sheet, painstakingly aligned several 20 year old maps of the region and attached them to the wall with insufficient masking tape (one gusty day later and Andrew, the anal cartographer, re-emerges). A happy accident of this work has allowed them to train Irene’s 18 year old assistant to use Microsoft Word and Excel.
CDSS/ Youth Alive
Team Glasgow (Rob and Alison), currently in training for next year’s Tour de France, are the commuters of the group. They trek through some of Africa’s wildest woods to get to school- risking the shiny-ness of their shoes on a daily basis, all in the name of education. Thus far they have been teaching English and in Forms 1 and 3 as a pair, while Ali takes Form 3 English and Rob takes Form 3 Social Studies alone. In mid-September a weekly after school sports club was started which so far has involved frisbee and football. Another extra-curriular activity running is the gender club on Tuesdays after school (as mentioned in the Home of Hope section above). This is predominantly run by Liz and Sam through Women’s Voice but Rob and Alison assist along with American Peace Corps volunteer, Angela. So far they have had discussions on the differences between England, Malawi and America and some current affairs.
The NGO Rob and Ali work with is called Youth Alive. They are a new organisation who, amongst other things, provide home-based care for people affected by HIV + AIDS. They have visited members of the organisation in Ngobe and Chisankhari villages to help monitor the home based care programme. Rob and Alison are also going to write funding proposals to help the organisation financially.
On Saturday 6th September Youth Alive held a youth forum for young people in the Mchinji area at Mchinji Secondary School in the Boma. Rob and Ali prepared and delivered a presentation to over 600 attendees on the dangers of marijuana, alcohol and tobacco. Other speakers included the District Youth Officer and Sister Vary, a catholic nun. The disco afterwards was said to be great fun and Alison was cracking out some of her finest moves.
All in all life in Mchinji is challenging, tiring, exciting and frantic, yet highly rewarding. I think I speak for the entire group when I say we are looking forward to the remaining 7 weeks. Ya Bwino!
Blog entry 4 (08/11/08)
This is the fourth and final instalment of the Mchinji project blog 2008. It reports on the final week of the project (31/10/08-07/11/08). Since most of the events concern all group members and some of the schools finished term early on in the week it has not been separated into individual project placement stories.
Thus far Friday nights in Malawi have been pretty much the same as every other night (apart from the awesome tradition of pizza and wedges for dinner), but our ultimate Friday evening was an exception. The teachers at CDSS threw a leaving party for us (in particular Alison and Bob) with food, Fanta and frolicking on Friday afternoon, the preparations for which may have impinged on their exam marking. There were speeches, anecdotes, mingling and dancing, much similar to the party they held for Angela a few weeks earlier. The remaining Form 1s and Form 3s also materialised for the disco afterwards to ‘break some “shapes (Osbourne 2008)”’ and kept us and certain Youth Alive members dancing until at least 10pm!
The following morning preparations began early for pig day! The long anticipated slaughter and consumption of our Nyoka born pig was no anti-climax (though it was actually a different pig to the one we purchased). Sam had masterminded a CDSS-style ceremony with Andrew as MC, speeches from school teachers and the orphanage staff, salted fried pork goodness and vast amounts of squash outside to keep the kids happy.
To prepare a pig for eating in several easy steps: 1) Do not use the same knife that you barely succeeded to kill a chicken with a few weeks earlier, 2) Cut it’s throat with the not same knife, 3) Burn the hair off the body before gutting and chopping into small pieces, 4) Fry in copious amounts of oil with as much salt as possible over a high heat.
All the schools were represented at the ceremony and each had great things to say about the volunteers and their work this year. There were speeches from the Heads of the orphanage schools, the deputy of MMPS, Mrs Fula from CDSS and the Agogo. For some it was the first Tenteleni group they have met, for others their fifth but regardless of their past experience with the charity they all said good things about the project. One great thing that came from the event was that Mr Fula, Head of the Home of Hope secondary, said that similar events (even in the absence of Tenteleni volunteers) involving all the schools of Mchinji Mission should be held which should help to bridge the apparent gap between the orphanage and the wider community. The after-disco continued by candlelight into the late evening, the main difference between this one and the previous night being that the children were not allowed to join in at the orphanage but watched from outside.
As if our final weekend at the orphanage was not already busy enough we all attended our final church service on Sunday. There was much singing and the sermon was slightly less than incomprehensible (but only slightly, due to improved Chichewa) this time and we all went to the front while Andrew said goodbye on behalf of all of us. It was very nice to feel so involved and it is a shame but the volunteers will be missed. A member of standard 7 MMPS invited Sarah E and Andrew back to her house after church. It is so rewarding to be able to visit where the children live and work in their gardens, this particular estate grew maize and guavas and beans and also there were some 5 week old piglets scurrying around which made us feel particularly guilty for the previous day’s feasting.
On Monday night we all went to visit the leaving CDSS girls at their hostel as they were going home for the Christmas holidays the next morning. Bob participated in some farewell Chiterera dancing during a blackout, great fun!
On Tuesday Sarah from TANARD prepared and served a delicious buffet lunch for all the volunteers at the office, it was great to bid them farewell formally and let them thank Sarah R and Romilly for the hours they have spent working there over the last 3 months. Unfortunately Ali and Bobby could not make it as they were so pushed for time to complete the Funding proposal for Youth Alive by the end of the week (several late nights and early mornings in the last few days meant they did complete it by the deadline at a cost to their hours spent sleeping).
As if TANARD had not already done enough for us by sorting out our precarious visa situation and making a lovely lunch for us Sarah M also visited the Jane Glaves primary school for the second time and MMPS Std 6 and 7 for the first time to talk to them about all kinds of youth issues (similar to last time). Afterward she talked of how much she and the children enjoyed it (much laughter was overheard) but how much more willing the boys are to ask questions than the girls.
Final week means photo week in Tenteleni terms and while it was nice to capture some memories of our time here on film nobody was too snap-happy. The children do enjoy having a ‘Jambule’ taken of them, particular if they can see it straight away afterwards on a digital camera, but it is often really difficult to catch one of them smiling.
Wednesday at MMPS was British Day in the Std 6 classroom which involved Geography, comparing Britain and Malawi, a Wordsearch, Tag, Timebomb, Pin the tail on the donkey, Shortbread, Pass the Parcel and looking at British and American money. The kids really enjoyed learning about life in Britain and hopefully they will continue to do so if some pen pal links are set up between them and Sarah E’s old primary school. After this Sarah E visited Ndwandwa village for the last time with her partner teacher to say goodbye to the Chisomo NGO committee and the villagers she and Andrew had met. This NGO is a potential placement for next year’s volunteers and the possible types of work volunteers could do to help were established.
Everyone spent the entire week marking exams papers whenever there was a spare moment. JOY! (Sarah R even marked some Chichewa papers!) This was totally worth it to find out that some of our children did very well in their exams and will pass to the next Standard or Form.
At Thursday morning the volunteers said goodbye to all that remained at the orphanage by singing their favourite Chichewa hymn (complete with dance moves) and Andrew addressing the room with his ‘near fluent’ Chichewa! The mothers also came and presented us with Home of Hope Xitenji as a leaving present.
On Friday most of the orphanage children left for home and MMPS had their results ceremony (all other schools had finished earlier that week). The finishing touches were also added to the infamous now bat-poo-free cupboard before showing the head teacher around his new accessible space.
On Friday afternoon all that was left to do was pack up and say yet more goodbyes! On Saturday morning the group had a pleasantly uneventful trip back to Lilongwe before going out to see the Black Missionaries and celebrating our group baby’s 21st birthday! Hope you had a good one Ali!
Post project news includes: Sam got Malaria the day after project finished (this is inadvisable to future volunteers), Liz and Ali began their epic journey to be in Cape Town well before Christmas, Andrew and Sarah R headed North to meet friends at Nkhata bay, Bobby trekked to Zomba with Jay from America and Rom and Sarah E stayed the night in Addis Ababa on their way home, a very strange place lacking Malawi’s charming inefficiency. Also the puppy at Mabuya camp that we had somewhat doted on is now rabid, unfortunate but true. From Andrew White and his seven dwarves thanks for reading about all of our antics, long may project Malawi continue!
Tapita!