"Hey Louise, it's snowing at home! And I'm sunburnt."

End of Week 7, still no rain.

It’s really getting ridiculous. They had rain on the 5^th of October last year! Darn climate change.

This week hasn’t felt as hot, but that could just be a bit of acclimation on our part or because we’ve decided to avoid walking home during peak times if we can help it. It has been over 40°C this week.

Back to Nama Simba on Monday, a lot of kids were absent because it was a holiday for some of the local schools and they were staying at home with their older siblings. This made our attempts at teaching much easier, plus our Chichewa is definitely improving, so we were able to say ‘Where is A?’ (A ali kuti?) and they could attempt to point to it on the poster. Few were successful, but they gave it a good go. Also, the feeding centre has just gotten a bit of extra funding and the screams of delight that come from these kids when presented with a plastic spoon was absolutely adorable. They also got a bucket with a little tap attached, so Lou and I no longer have to pour cups of water over the kids’ hands in order to get them washed. Now we have both hands free to make sure no one budges the line or to stop Katherine beating everyone up.

More teaching at TST this week – I really think Lou and I should get medals for improvisation. We literally get told what we’re going to be teaching while the children are sitting in their seats waiting for us to begin. Sometimes we get given a book that has a chapter on the subject, other times we just wing it. This week included articles, as in A, An and The. Louise looked them up in her Chichewa to English book, so we could explain using some Chichewa examples, only to find the sentence “it’s important to mention that there are no articles in Chichewa like the English ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’.” Very helpful. Even though this was a lesson for the older kids, most had severe trouble understanding that an is only used before vowels. By the end, we had one guy who understood and I just said to him, ‘okay, now explain it to everyone else!’ It’s fairly demoralising.

My best improvised lesson was probably when we were asked to teach latitudes and longitudes. I found this extremely entertaining, as I literally don’t ever remember learning this and I kept getting the two confused. Edwin told us not to go into as much detail as in the chapter – he gave us a book, thank goodness – but just to explain the difference between the two, and to go over the Equator, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and their functions. As he walked away, I turned to Louise and said ‘The tropics have functions?’ It was not in book and I swear their only function is to confuse all students who learn about them. Anyway, I still don’t know. I did do some pretty amazing pictures of the globe on the board, earning my first compliment concerning my artist abilities since my mother once told me that my crayon drawing of an elephant was ‘quite good’ (in an extremely surprised tone). Mum, you may not remember this, but I certainly do.

We also did the alphabet with Standard 1 – 4. This had to be the most fun I’ve had teaching since I got here. We decided this would be an oral and aural lesson – as none of the children had a pen or paper. Still, we made it exciting. Like when we couldn’t think of a simple English word beginning with G (being put on the spot for every letter is HARD) and we got one of the girls up to the front called Gertrud. Who needs visual aids?

We also did a fair bit of weighing. Millie is able to get Pranziquantil for all the children, as practically everyone has Bilharzia, but we need to prescribe according to weight. Again, the children’s fascination with a set of scales was extremely endearing. They also loved finding out another thing about themselves. Chimwemwe (15) was proudly telling anyone who would listen that she is 51kg. Also, we were able to say that no one was underweight. I wasn’t sure about Precious Meki, but then he is always on the top of the pyramid in the acrobatics, so I suppose he needs to be light. I still kept telling him ‘kudya nsima kwambiri’ until he was sick of hearing it.

We went to the cinema on Friday, had pizza and went to Doogles again. It was really good fun, met up with some friends and we met some new people – a guy called Harry who has Aberdonian roots! He’s moving back there and was asking what I thought of Robert Gordons and whether Highers were difficult! Bless. The next morning we went to a local pool and I had one of the best hot showers of my life.

We’re still meant to be going to do community work around Baluti with Mary, so that’ll hopefully happen this week. It’s nearly November! I can’t quite believe it. I heard about Scotland having its first snow while rubbing cream onto my new acquired sun burn – while I’m feeling more and more comfortable here, the contrasts with home are becoming more prominent and we’re both starting to worry about how difficult it’s going to be deal with going back home.

I’ve noticed that every week I seem to have a new complaint – cockroaches, then the heat – well, this week the new problem has been water. We’ve had more problems with people taking water from our outside tap (it’s not public, Mary pays for it) which not only stops any water reaching our house, but they often drain us dry. This means no water for the kids at the nursery, either. Also, often there’s no water in the whole of Baluti and while we always have water saved for emergencies, we don’t know when we’ll have water again so I don’t like to waste it on a bucket shower or washing my clothes. This week, the water ran out in between washing my clothes and rinsing them. So I had soapy clothes. Woe is me.

So that’s life with me. I have no quotes this week as I haven’t been writing in my diary and I’ve forgotten everything funny that’s happened. I’ll cover the witchcraft issue next week, watch this space.

TTFN, see you in November.

More pictures from the coffee morning from Steph's camera. The bottom one is Ruth photo-bombing. XD

Why is it this hot? What have we done to deserve this?!

End of Week 6, the hottest week so far.

I really brought it on myself. When walking to work with Louise last week I actually said to her ‘You know, I was really worried about how I would cope with the heat here, but it hasn’t been too bad!’ The sun must have heard me and took it as a challenge because, apparently, this has been one of the hottest Octobers for a long time.

Last Sunday, Louise and I went to an English service at our local Catholic church. I had never been to a mass before, but Louise is actually Roman Catholic, so it was very different experience for her than me. The church itself was fairly opulent, quite a contrast with the fairly poor area that surrounds it. Louise told me the mass was almost exactly like the one she attends back home, if a bit less lively! I really want to go to a proper Chichewa service sometime this year, as its all singing and dancing and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ 

You can't tell, but it was chucking it down.

We were then invited to a coffee morning at a nearby village by some other PT volunteers, which was great fun. There was cake, tea and coffee, and our first glimpse of Malawian rain! While the locals looked on in amusement, the azungus ran outside to exclaim over the first rain of the season. It was awesome.

The next day was Mothers’ Day – a national holiday. It gave us a chance to catch up on housework and washing that we’d usually do on a Sunday. Louise met some school boys, when she went out to buy bananas, who told her that on Mothers’ Day in Malawi the children cook the meals and clean the house while the mother sleeps! Sounds like a much better deal than a poxy card and flowers bought from Tesco.

We’ve been doing more teaching this week, as well as being taught more Chichewa by the kids. I also repaired a pair of jeans for a boy called Christopher to make him go to school. This boy is one of the smartest kids at TST, has near flawless English and goes to a private school – he’s only about 12 years old. He just wasn’t going to school and we just couldn’t understand it. We finally managed to get out of him that the other kids give him stick for wearing shorts and his jeans had recently torn right down the middle seam. We spoke to Edwin who told us that many of the children get bullied because they’re behind in class, or because they don’t have many clothes or any of the luxuries that the other kids have. It was really heart breaking to hear – I quite naively assumed that the kids love school, because it’s such a privilege here, and didn’t even think about how the other students treat them. It seems grossly unfair that these kids, who have been through so much, should be subjected to that. But that’s children for you.

The TST kids still treat us respectfully, but I’ve had to break up quite a few fights this week. Some of them will just flip out over the tiniest things and take forever to calm down – Millie says the heat is a major contributing factor. I’ve learnt that reasoning in Chichewa or English has no effect; I just hold on the one of them and attempt to wrestle the rocks out of their hands. They would never hit me, so I make an effective human shield.

We went out to Blantyre on Friday night with some other PT volunteers to Doogles, a bar and backpackers’ lodge that we stayed at when we first arrived in Malawi. It was such a laugh and I met some really nice people – we even went out for an Indian! We stayed over at Doogles that night and left around lunch the next day. Unfortunately this meant walking home at around 1.30pm, the absolute hottest time of day. It was insane.

I had severe trouble sleeping last night due to the heat and now I’m feeling rather ill and I have a killer headache. Luckily, I can just stay inside and veg today. I keep reminding myself that it could rain any day now and that the hottest time of year is drawing to a close. November promises to be much cooler and wetter – I cannot wait.

Not as many cockroaches this week – we decided to invest in Raid Max – Cockroach Specialist Killer. ‘Kills Cockroaches and the Eggs they Carry’ It’s fricking amazing. It really does kill them, rather than stunning them, and when we spray it around the places we see them coming from we find loads of dead cockroaches on the floor the next morning! We still use Doom on the ants though, it seems to work fine on smaller, less resilient, insects.

Aaaah, ma tête est mal. I’m going to extend my closing section to ‘Quotes and Anecdotes’ because some cute little things happened this week that don’t really fit easily into the above spiel.

TTFN, please send some of your abundant rain my way, ta.

Please ignore my face.

Quotes and Anecdotes

Madulitso (he must be about 15) sat down with us and taught us a load of useful Chichewa words, while we taught him the spelling of the English words that he only knew aurally. When he was teaching us things like face (mkhope) and eyes (maso, eye is diso), we were getting him to teach us the Chichewa for all the body parts in Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. When we got to toes, he couldn’t remember and went to ask Edwin who explained to us that there is no word for toes in Chichewa; they just say Fingers of the Feet. I thought this was the coolest thing ever.

In contrast to last week, when I made a child cry, this week there was a young child standing by the road, crying, as we walked home. She saw us and gave a timid wave. When I waved back, her face transformed into a face-spiltting grin.

Catriona: Are you going to school today?

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Yes.

Catriona: When does it start?

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Ten o’ clock.

Catriona: (checking phone) Look! It’s 10.09!

Boy at TST who I’ve forgotten the name of: Oh… NDAPITA! (Used like bye, literal meaning - I’m going)

Madulitso has an Arsenal bag to keep his school books in. I asked him if he supported Arsenal and he told me that actually supported Chelsea. He then tried to tell me something that sounded like ‘actuleeco’, which he wrote down first as ‘acileco’, then ‘athileco’. He was trying to say ‘Ashley Cole’.

I also totally forgot to mention – Zoe Salmon has been in my house! Blue Peter came to Malawi in 2006 for a Shoebiz Appeal and they came to visit Nama Simba! Not only do they have her signature in the visitor’s book, but this was back before the current nursery building was built and they used the building Louise and I now live in. ZOE SALMON WAS IN MY FRONT ROOM. Ah, my life is now complete.

"There's no food that I really feel like I'm missing... apart from bagels."

End of Week 5! Only, like, 47 to go!

So it's getting hot. October is the hottest month and, man, are we feeling it. I have discovered that there's nothing better than an ice cold shower after a sweaty walk home.
This week has been pretty busy; on Monday at Nama Simba we were asked to do some teaching... which was quite a fail due to the massive language barrier between us and the kids. And between us and the care givers, for that matter. We also don't really have the authority to hold the kids' attention. Like when Catherine, one of the care givers, shouts "Alphabettie Lettas!", the kids scream back "ALPHABETTIE LETTAS!!!". But when we do the same, they just look really confused and mumble to each other in Chichewa, perplexed as to why the azungu entertainers are shouting weird things at them. I have also discovered this week that the kids love being lifted up, twirled around, tickled, held upside down etc. However, they never want me to stop, no matter how many times I say I'm 'topa' (tired). The nsima and ndiwo was really good this week, though. It had potatoes in it! :D
Been doing bits of teaching at TST, mostly Maths with some adjectives and nouns on the side. At the end of the English class, Louise came up with the idea to get them to describe what they were wearing, as I had been pointing to my clothing to show that t-shirt is an noun, but then the colour is an adjective. However, this proved tricky as my colour blindness meant that I couldn't actually decide what colour my t-shirt and skirt were... and I didn't have the confidence to correct them when I suspected meant they green, not blue, or brown, not black... Urrrrgh, it was such a stress. I'll be leaving that to Louise next time.
I was also asked by one of the older boys what 'anxious' meant... far more difficult than I thought! I said upset, sad and another adjective that I can't remember, didn't even think of worried. I am the worst English speaker ever.
On Wednesday, some Med students from Queen Elizabeth Community Hospital came to play a football match against the older boys at TST. We helped the girls to make a massive fruit salad for all the kids - it was the most fruit we'd eaten in a month! Unfortunately, the QECH boys won. We'll get them next time.
I think I'm starting to get used to life here; there are little things that I'm sure would have shocked me in the first few weeks that now feel normal. For instance, that we found a kitten living in the pet food aisle at our local supermarket, or that minibus drivers often run out of petrol in the middle of the road and have to fill up from a bottle they carry around with them. Today I even said to a minibus driver 'There's plenty of room!' when he said he couldn't fit Louise, 4 carrier bags, 2 back packs, a mirror and myself into his nearly full minibus. I'll have you know that we did fit. Ha.
On the other hand, I wouldn't say we're completely accepted here. On the walk home one day, I was walking behind a man who had a child on his shoulders. The child burst into tears at the sight of me. We are constantly a target for beggars or street sellers in Blantyre and men are always striking up conversations with us that include the sentence 'Are you married?'
While I say we've been busy, we did find time at TST this week to play 'I spy', but Louise said she wouldn't play anymore when I got bored and used E for Existentialism. Also, we often don't have power past 6pm and it's no fun trying to catch the cockroaches in the dark. So that's why you'd find me in bed at 6.45pm on a Friday night, making shadow puppets against my mosquito net. At least until I accidentally made one that creeped me out, then stopped before I gave myself nightmares.
In other news, we watched a lizard eat a live cockroach on Tuesday. Louise cheered it on: we love lizards and despise cockroaches so it was great entertainment.
Next week promises to be busy too, with more time being spent at Nama Simba and around Baluti. Plus, we're gonna make a cake!
TTFN

Quotes:
We'd just been going over adjectives
Stella: Louise's hair is LONG.
Catriona: Yeh, well done.
Stella: Your hair is LONG.
Catriona: Nah. my hair is SHORT.
Stella: Well, it's a little long.

Nice man we met on the way home: Don't get burnt! It's too hot!

The power had been off most of the day
Catriona: (looking at phone) I'm gonna turn off my phone to save power.
Louise: Well, I've got mine on.
simultaneously
Catriona: So, if anyone desperately needs to reach me...
Louise: So, if a murderer comes...

"The plural for cockroach is cockroaches"

Been here for, like, a month!

This week started much better than the last. I think we expected too much too soon at Nama Simba, firstly as we only spend one day a week there, so when we’d been at the Samaritan Trust two weeks, we’d only been at Nama Simba two days, and also it was a new intake of kids. This week we actually found out names; Honey – Loofa, James – Chi/Ki, Flash – Ayesha, Bea – Cecelia, even Monster Child - Katherine. There are also others I learnt: Mada, Vi… and others that I’ve already forgotten. The actual education part of the nursery school has started now, learning the days of the week and alphabet letters. Now when we leave the house, there’s less AZUNGU, more hugs and smiles.

This week at TST has been really eventful too. We started by just helping with a maths lesson, but then spent the rest of the day teaching English! Typical Malawian style, we had no time for preparation and had to wing it. We taught plurals, as the teacher Edwin requested, and then when we ran out of ideas, included irregular plurals ending in O, CH and S. Edwin said he was really impressed and that he would definitely be getting us to do more classes in the future. Well, the very next morning we were teaching again, this time with Louise assessing a boy who wanted to go back to school, and me helping the other children with time arithmetic. In the afternoon, Louise felt really sick, so I had to do a class on my own! Nouns, proper nouns and verbs. It was much harder than I thought it would be, as Edwin had said I should give the whole lesson in English (not that I could do much else) and I found it very hard to describe a noun to someone who’s English wasn’t great. Still, we definitely felt like we were making an impact and I now know more names! (PS Louise is feeling much better.)

Yesterday morning, we hung out with Chimwemwe, Maia, Florence and David, as they tried to teach us some Chichewa. They said that we were Malawians now, so we need to speak Chichewa 24/7. The older girls tend to particularly closed off, so it was great just to talk to them and to be accepted by them. After mpunga for lunch (no nsima L), we had to go to Blantyre to renew our visas. It only took an hour – rocket speed for Malawi!

This week, we also got our roof and our door fixed, meaning we got our house absolutely covered in dust and wood from the beams AND now our rape gate doesn’t close. What’s the opposite of ‘every cloud has a silver lining’? ‘No good deed goes unpunished’? Or my personal favourite ‘Well, this is Malawi!’ 

In addition, since the roof has been fixed, the wind seems to have miraculously disappeared. Which we would be happy about, but the wind tends to keep the cockroaches away. So all week, the cockroaches have been EVERYWHERE. As well as in our bedroom for the first time. I have met my nemesis, and it is the cockroach. One night I couldn’t sleep because we found a massive one the wall above my bed… ahh, it’s a stress.

Other than that, things have been pretty good. We definitely feel more settled and like we are making the difference we came out here to make. TTFN

(PS Totally watching YouTube right now. :D)

Quotes

Me: So, where do you live?

Boy who likes to talk to me as we walk home: I live in Nancholi.

Me: Oh! I have friends in Nancholi.

Boy who likes to talk to me as we walk home: Yes, I know where they live.

Woman who works at Nama Simba: (pointing to my arms) Don’t you have a mosquito net?

Me: Oh, yes I do. Those are just freckles.