It's March now.

10/3/13

(I was busy concentrating on my university accommodation when I typed this up, so apologies for lack of interesting material or emotion.)

It’s week… 28? Something like that.

I’m starting to get used to going to Nama Simba every day – to look forward to it, even. The children are challenging, but what’s life without a little challenge? It also means we are more likely to get Nama Simba nsima – as long as there’s no fish. The children love our company, asking for the ‘round and round the garden’ rhyme so often that I am officially sick of it. I get them to count to ten, spin them around, like in ballroom dancing, I tickle them to make them stop crying: it’s less mentally demanding than TST, but a bit more physically strenuous.

TST has been busy – lots of teaching. This week Juniyo came to me after school with a sheet of paper on which he had drawn out hundreds of dots so that we could play the paper game again. I like to think he hadn’t been doing this while he should have been working in class… There are a couple of new children, which always means we have more to do as they haven’t been placed in school yet.  Brian and Ben are 6 and 8 respectively – and absolute cuties. On Thursday, we went with William to buy some mosquito nets with the money my Dad raised from his sponsored run. A gift all the more poignant as Dad has been told he has knackered his joints and can’t run anymore! Well, the kids really appreciate your pain, Dad – Malaria is a serious problem in Malawi and the nets will make such a big difference.

We also got our first mail for over a month this week! Due to strikes, the mail had been delayed – we still haven’t received our monthly Project Trust newsletter for January. I always look forward to letters from my Granny, and I was able to show the kids the pictures she sent me of us on a camel over Christmas. They love seeing photos of my home or family and they’d never seen a camel before.

This time next week I will be North of Lilongwe with my parents as they are coming to visit on Friday. I can’t wait; it’s going to be great to see my family again and to see more of Malawi.

No pictures this week, coz I be borin'.

TTFN

Anecdotes

We were getting a taxi through town, (we don’t often do this, but we were out later than usual) when the taxi ran out of fuel. This is not that unusual, so the driver took a jerrycan to the local filling station, but they wouldn’t fill it for him. He then proceeded to reverse and turn around to the way we’d came. We had stopped on the dual carriage way, so we then began to coast down the wrong side of the dual carriageway towards the roundabout, with the hazards on. I truly thought this was the way I was going to die. When we ran out of downhill, the driver and some bystanders began to push us towards another filling station. Eventually we got there, got fuel, got to our final destination and, because they had been so lovely about it, asked them to pick us up 2 hours later. Not one died. This time.

"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