Our new abode and such excitments!

We moved into our proper teacher house on Monday after one week living at the Pastrol Centre which was about 11km away from the school site. The house looked very grand from the outside and when we finally got the door open my first impressions thought the house was very western with a dining area as you walk in, sitting room just down the steps with many sofas and chairs. The house also has 3 bedrooms, a large kitchen, a bathroom and a store room. However you can never tell a book by its cover… after the headteacher finished the guided tour and we were left alone, I started to do some investigating. First the TV didn’t work (I was actually pleased about this as I didn’t want a TV in my house!), then the kitchen sink wasn’t plumbed in, most of the lights didn’t turn on, the toilet didn’t work, the sink in the bathroom was majorly blocked and the shower didn’t work. Also there seems to have been a fire in the kitchen as all the walls are charcoal black and the ceiling has been taken out. But all of this is a blessing in disguise really as I had wanted to live in more basic accommodation and now I was. I still don’t think this is a “Malawian house” more like a Greek house you see on these property development programmes during day-time TV where the British couple is trying to renovate a terrible house into their dream apartment! It was in our house that I saw my first rat of the trip… unfortunately it was in our bedroom and there were at least three of them. At first I was really un-nerved by this but after living with the animals around our house for the past few days I have come to not notice them and now it is quite fun when I see a lizard walking up my bedroom wall.

After two days of living in our house I received a phone-call from the deputy headteacher. He told me that the previous owners of the house were coming round in 2 minutes to take some of their stuff. I desperately tried to clear up around the house but failed, then a couple of minutes later a van drew up outside. The people were perfectly nice but watching them take the stuff in the house felt like watching bailiffs removing your possessions! After 10 minutes they left and our house was minus the cooker, cutlery, plates, bowls and any pictures they could find. The kitchen was now completely empty other than the taps and basin which weren’t plumbed in! This immediately worried me as there was no way of cooking any of our meals anymore. We would have to rely on cornflakes/sandwich for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and go to Nkhata Bay for dinner. Anthony bought me a delightful present to make up for our loss – peanut butter… that sandwich was the best ever. And we have since found some lovely frankfurter style sausage, it probably has about 2% meat in but it is so tasty after 2 weeks of rice

In the evenings, at the moment there isn’t much to do other than read (I am currently reading Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman), plan lessons and play games. We have been playing multiple games of chess and boa’s and now we have a big enough table to keep the boards there the whole time. So far I have lost 10 games of chess and only won one, but what a win it was! At least I won the last game of boa’s so I have decided to retire from the game on a winning streak of two! I have finally tried the local beer – the “Shake-Shake” as it is most commonly known over here… why “Shake-shake”, well basically you have to shake it before drinking. I had read that most of tourists don’t like the shake-shake but I thought I am open to most beers so I would definitely like it. This was not the case. It is perhaps the worst beer in the world as it looks like a milkshake and is very lumpy, but the taste is the worst part of it… all I could taste was yeast and maize, but at least I can tick Malawian beer off my list of world beers to try!

At school this week I came to the end of the unit in maths and social studies so I prepared a “mini exam” for my students. After a whole week going through adding and subtracting of negative numbers I hoped they would be quite good at it, if not then it was down to my teaching. It is actually quite a nervy thing and whilst marking the tests I got a little energy burst when one got over 80%, however the complete opposite when they achieved a fail. Out of the 80 students I teach in maths 92% of them passed which I am quite pleased about but I still know where I need to improve on. One of the students got 100% and I have decided to buy him a coke for his success – promoting healthy schools!! My Social Studies exam didn’t go as well as I only had a pass rate of 70% which is quite annoying and I may have to go through the constitution of Malawi once more – which is quite dull.

I really wanted to play football with some of the kids but when I went and inspected the football pitch the grass was about 4 foot high. This led Anthony and me to a plan… to help slash the pitch on Saturday with some of the students. Slashing is a form of punishment here and basically involves a large metal stick that is sharp which you swing (a bit like a golf club) to cut the grass. We told the students of our classes to meet at the football pitch at 9am on Saturday morning but we had no clue how many people would turn up. We wondered down at 9 and there must have been around 60 boys all gathered and willing to help, it was an incredible turn out but there were only 13 slashing sticks so many were waiting around. I was given a stick and gave it my best effort, at first I was given a large round of applause by the students but that soon turned in to laughter and shortly after I was relegated to raking the grass up. I can really see why slashing is used as a punishment as it is so incredibly tiring and I now have many cuts and blisters on my hands. The experience showed us how unfit we are and how very fit all the students were!! After a good 2 hours of slashing we had made a progress of about 1/6 of the pitch when the kids decided to start a mutiny and said they would come back on Monday and do some more. I was actually quite glad of this as I was shattered. The early finish meant that we could travel into Mzuzu and meet up with Sarah, Jess and Marcella who live about 2 hours from us. The afternoon was great as we caught up with the girls, compared placements and showed each other photos of our accommodation. Theirs is very much like ours except they do have a fridge which I am very jealous about!

We have agreed two trips at the start of February which I am really excited about, getting out of Nkhata Bay and travelling would be lovely! On the first weekend of February we are going to visit Jen and Julia in Nkhotakota (about 150km south from us). We have booked a nice room in a tourist camp near to where they are staying. From there we will be able to visit the surrounding area (including a possible safari) during the weekend. Nkhotakota is an interested town/village, first of all it has an awesome name and second the area played a huge role in the slave trade in the 19^th Century. The second trip is a birthday surprise for one of the Aussie volunteers on the second weekend of February (so let’s hope she doesn’t read this blog). We are travelling down to Blantyre (a LONG way, can’t be bothered to calculate the distance but it will be 10 hours of travelling or so!). Quite a lot of the other Lattitude volunteers will also be making the trip, so we can explore the area as well as spending time with plenty of lovely people once more! It will be interesting meeting up after a month apart and seeing what experiences we have or haven’t learned from each of our placements.

Anyway, I have just noticed that I have written over 1,500 words and should probably finish but I could happily write about my experiences for hours. I am quite hopeful that in my next blog there will be some very important updates, but I can’t spill the beans yet. Talk about cliff-hanger or what!?!