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.

So what do I do all day?

End of Week 3!

Today we discovered a new internet café that I can bring my laptop to and, therefore, can upload the video I took of the house! Hurray! Check it out - http://youtu.be/1sG7Lk63jx8

Many things have been occurring in my life since I last posted. I also realised that I wasn’t very descriptive in my last post about what exactly I’ve been doing here.

On Mondays, Louise and I go next door to Nama Simba Nursery School and help out there. This consists of playing with the kids, washing the kids hands, setting out the chairs for porridge time, helping serve up the porridge, playing with the kids, washing their hands, setting out the chairs for nsima time, helping serve nsima, playing with the kids, then sending them home. Compared to our project at the Samaritan Trust, the kids are absolute terrors and this wears us down. In addition, the staff are friendly, but have very little English and the children have none. The only words we really use to communicate are basi, iyayi (a very forceful no), siya (don’t) and the occasional zili bwino (very good). So yeah, it’s hard going.

Malawians don’t really call each other by name, especially not the children, preferring just to say ‘Iwe’. Because I know there’s no way I can get the children at Nama Simba to tell me their names, I make names up in my head. My favourites so far are Honey, who loves to bring me coloured pencils, but doesn’t want anyone else to have them, James, who shouts AZUNGU repeatedly at me until I give him attention and Bea, a girl who turned out to be a bit mischievous, but can be very cuddly. There is also Harry (very smart kid), Connor (smiley boy with a lazy eye), Dina (an actual real name I managed to discover), Flash (because her top kept falling down) and Monster Girl (named by Louise, as she is the most horrible child we have ever met).

The Samaritan Trust children are absolute angels in comparison. I think it’s mostly because they’re older, their English is way better and they’re used to us white foreigners from previous volunteers. They can make my day with one hilarious anecdote. They are all extremely eager to learn English and make such an effort to communicate with us (the majority of them anyway).

Our days can be extremely different, from helping them with their reading or maths, or kicking a ball about in the sun, or playing cards in the shade. On our second day, we went to a local market to watch the children’s community drama – educating the public about HIV and AIDS. The children were so confident and engaging, a massive crowd gathered to watch. Another day, English volunteer Millie took us to the local hospital with two of the boys so that we’d know how the system works in an emergency. We took one legged Chisomo to paediatrics while Millie took Jack to general admissions. We have used the computer lab at TST to run an IT class. This was surprisingly challenging; as a member of the generation which has grown up around computers, I never really appreciated how difficult it is to learn simply things like typing, clicking the mouse etc. For example, I struggled to communicate in my limited Chichewa that you only need to press the space bar ONCE in between words. It was frustrating, but we really felt like we were making a difference, which was nice.

TST has just had a change of management and the children put on a sort of variety performance for the leaving director. While mostly in Chichewa, it was very moving and entertaining, from beautiful singing, comedy skits and a hilarious foot drill (using cardboard hats and football kits as uniforms).

SO YEH, at the moment, life is good. We came home from a short visit to Blantyre yesterday to find party going on in the nursery next door. We hope that this is a monthly event and that we might get an invite one day. It was cut short by the nightly power cut, however, so we weren’t kept up all night.

Got my first mail this week! It was so exciting! A lovely card from my granny and another from my parents the next day. Felt like such a celebrity. Mail seems to take about two weeks, so Michael, I’ll be expecting my birthday present any day now? XD

Have I missed out any crucial info? If anyone has a burning question, please do comment. I’m missing home, but I’m really starting to like it here, so I won’t be coming back anytime soon.

TTFN

I'm here!

Friday the 21^st of September – Baluti, Blantyre, Malawi

It seems fitting that I should finally sit down at my laptop to chronicle the beginning of my experience exactly two weeks after I left home. I write this in the kitchen of our house in the village of Baluti, about 10 minutes’ walk plus 15 minutes by minibus from Blantyre. We have three rooms:  a bedroom, shower room and kitchen. I am sitting in the kitchen to write this as, while we do have fairly reliable electricity, we only have two working sockets and neither of these are in the bedroom. Imagine my delight when the bed I happened to choose in our room had a double socket above it! Alas, it doesn’t work. Our unofficial host Stevie, who works for the Joshua feeding project that runs Nama Simba, has been gradually improving our abode, amazingly quickly by Malawian standards. In less than two weeks, the gate has been ‘fixed’, the shower painted (we didn’t have the heart to tell him that the water just causes it to peel off) and the burglar bars and windows repaired. We have been promised that the door will be fixed, as it currently has a gaping hole, and the roof will be more securely attached. It gets incredibly windy here at night and the corrugated iron really wants to be free.

There are little aspects of living in our house that took a bit of getting used to, for example, our shower room it lacks a sink. Also the handle of the toilet doesn’t work, so we lift the lid of the cistern and pull a valve to get it to flush. While we are extremely lucky to have a western toilet and shower, cold water showers have not gotten any easier over two weeks.

Project Trust provided us with a basket of useful things when we arrived, such as sheets, pans, cutlery and… a shower curtain? With nowhere to attach this to, it has been utilised as a window curtain, washing line and ‘banana hammock’ (literally a hammock Louise has constructed to keep our bananas away from the ants). They also bought us an electric hot plate for cooking, although the electricity usually cuts out around six, resulting in a very late tea or peanut butter sandwiches. For some reason, the plug for the hot plate is for South African sockets, but another volunteer at our project managed to source us an adaptor. We were also given a second hand toaster which we only discover was white after scrubbing it within an inch of its life during one of my cleaning frenzies.

Our cosy little house was once the Nama Simba nursery school, which has now moved into a bigger building on the same lot. We rarely escape children as there are swings, climbing frames, a sand pit and a slide surrounding our house. It means that we always have to have our makeshift chitenje curtains closed, otherwise the children chant ‘azungu’ at us; which can become very creepy as it starts to get dark. While I’m sure the entire village knows us from our walks to the market and to our project, the staring has not lessened any. It is really very unusual to have white people in Blantyre, never mind in a small village like Baluti. We went to visit some other PT volunteers in Nancholi, we were sitting in their house waiting for two other girls to arrive from Limbe. Louise and I went to meet them off the minibus so they wouldn’t get lost in the midday heat like we did. When the bus driver saw us, he simply pointed in the direction that Gemma and Anna had gone, without a word. I found it hilarious that it was so obvious who we were looking for. A German guy visited the Samaritan’s Trust on Thursday while Louise and I were playing with two children and Florence shook my arm and pointed at him as if to say ‘Look! One of you!’

I truly hope that people will begin to accept us here, as the constant badgering does take its toll.

Our project is at the Samaritan’s Trust, an ‘orphanage’ that houses, teaches and feeds children who have had to live on the streets on Blantyre. There are about a hundred children, aged 6 to 22, and about 15 staff and volunteers.  The organisation is, frankly, amazing. The children get fantastic emotional and physical care, as well as uniforms so they can go to school or practical education in things like brick laying and carpentry. They treat all staff and (most) children with great respect and really seem to look out for each other. We are told that they can be aggressive, and were even taught the words for stop (basi!) and let me go! (tayeni!) just in case, but we haven’t seen any evidence of this yet.

We have decided to really try to grasp Chichewa, which is fricking hard by the way, as it will make it so much easier to talk to and influence the children. Some of the kids’ English is absolutely amazing, but the younger they get, obviously, the harder it is to communicate with them. I’ve found that I can make most of my intentions known with njala (hungry), basi (stop), ndikhuta (I’m satisfied) and zili bwino (well done). While nowadays I actually look forward to nsima for lunch every day, for the first couple of days I really didn’t have an appetite and the children get really angry when you don’t finish what’s on your plate. Now, I simply say ‘Ndikhuta, zikomo’ and hand them my plate. It very quickly disappears or is kept for what we interpreted to mean a ‘midnight snack’.

Greetings here start with ‘Muli bwanji?’ (How are you?) to which the response is ‘Ndili bwino, kaya inu?’ (I’m fine, how about you?). Everything is followed by zikomo (thank you, excuse me etc.) and I’ve found it to be the easiest word to say, so I chant it constantly. The locals really appreciate any attempt at their language, however I am struggling with good morning/afternoon as the response is different to the question. This is because they literally translate to mean did you sleep well/have you spent the day well?

I knew I’d regret leaving it this late to write a blog post, as there’s so much more I want to say, and it’s already really long. I want to mention how we killed 9 cockroaches on the first night in our house or how I met a guy from Inverness in the back packers place we stayed in at the beginning or how people say Ls and Rs exactly the same here or how we saw a gecko in our kitchen last night. Well, I hope to get an internet dongle tomorrow which means I can update this when I like, meaning more regular, shorter posts. 

So, TTFN, take a nice hot shower for me.

Quotes 9 – 21 September

Lydia: I am going to Plaslott.

Catriona: I’m sorry, where are you going?

(She was going to ‘Praise God’)

Nice man on minibus: Where are you from?

Catriona: Scotland.

Nice man on minibus: Ah! You know what I like about Scotland?

Catriona: What do you like?

Nice man on minibus: The men wear skirts.

Catriona: I HATE YOU

Louise: I’m not too keen on you.

Catriona: What?

Louise: I was talking to the roof, too. I’m not as forceful as you and I don’t like to say I hate people, even if the people are roofs.

Louise: (As the children point and laugh at us) Well, now I know why clowns cover their faces with white make-up, apparently white faces are hilarious.

Photo of the Safety Instructions on Kenya Airways. I couldn't understand why the girl was in a tutu.






Oven gloves and a switch for the cooker when we had no cooker.







The welders' method of using the sockets.