After a long Easter holiday I am now back
doing the day job in Fulirwa. The first few days were hard as I had to go back
living the basic lifestyle, without electricity and running water, but now I am
enjoying life once more. Time is going very quickly and I now have just over 2
months left of the placement… and less time actually teaching!
We came back to quite a shock, one of our
teachers had been transferred to another local school – something the
headteacher wasn’t too happy about. This meant that we had just 5 other
teachers apart from Anthony and myself. 7 teachers to do 180 periods in a week
is pretty tough and the headteacher has had to take on 27 periods along with
headteacher duties, so things are pretty hectic around here. Having said that,
I have actually lost some of my periods as I had to give up English Literature
Form 1 to another teacher who has to be assessed in it. So now I am down to 17
subjects a week which is fairly low, but this has given me more time to do
extra lessons with my Form 3’s to help their maths and business, which are
horrifically bad! They are 18 years old and can’t answer “I think of a number,
add 5 to it and multiply it by 3. The number I end up with is 39. What number
did I start with?” (The answer is 8, for those who can’t do that!!) So I have
been working on their basic maths skills, teaching them Form 1 maths in spare
periods and after school, hoping that will help them. So far I have actually
seen a vast improvement in there maths – now they can do difficult quadratic
equations with ease – though whether they will be able to do it come their
exams is another matter!
I am starting to enjoy teaching English
Form 1’s now, before it was my worst subject as I had been going through the
study book and they really couldn’t do the work. It was such a pain to me that
I bought a teacher’s guide book for English in Lilongwe and to my amazement there was an
extract describing Carisbrooke
Castle! They wanted the
Malawian students to do an exercise where they had to write a leaflet for
tourists going to Carisbrooke
Castle explaining what
they could see, including “Working donkeys”!! The idea of 15 year old Malawian
students learning about the Castle’s construction – like I did when I was their
age is quite strange and remarkable! I will have to do that topic with them
soon but for now I am doing a topic about weather where they are writing
weather forecasts and I will film them present the weather on Monday… should be
interesting as I have promised a prize to the best one.
Business Enterprise is going well, last week I taught
them how to do a cashflow forecast, which they seemed to enjoy and made a
cashflow for their imaginary business. This week was SWOT analysis and a
balance sheet, so they are gaining important business knowledge little by
little which will hopefully help them in the future. After a request from some
of my students I have started teaching them how to use the school’s laptop,
which is extremely interesting for both them and me as the differences between
cultures is incredible. We started off by using Word and they, “Ooo”ed and
“Ahh”ed as letters appeared on the screen as I typed. They also find it
completely hilarious every time a new line is automatically started instead of
going off the end of the screen… and when I showed them they could make the
font bigger they were utterly amazed. After some getting used to I got them all
to do some typing as we wrote an email to students at Ryde High School
in the hope they will reply. The email was about ½ a page long and took 1 ½
hours to type (even slower than my dad which I didn’t think were possible!) but
I was very proud of their efforts and I hope someone from the school will reply
as it will really get them excited (HINT-HINT TO ANYONE AT RYDE WHO IS READING
THIS!) As well as the great excitements of the computer I have just found a DVD
of Planet Earth in our school library, which a former volunteer must have left,
and now I am showing them one episode per week which they love. They haven’t
seen the world before, anything outside the village is alien to them and to see
polar bears, penguins and other exotic animals is great for them. Unfortunately
I am going to run out of David Attenborough classics before I leave but I am
going to search the markets for something similar!
Since coming back from Easter I seem to
have acquired a boyfriend! Francis, a student in Form 1, rushed after me after
class one day and handed me a note saying, “Mr Davide Lewis, I want a
relationship with you as a friendship. Good Luck, Francis.” To which I said
“Aww thanks, I will put this up on my wall”. Obviously this wasn’t the answer
he was looking for as the next day he nervously came up to me again… he was a
bit like a love-sick 13 year old and asked, “Have you…. thought about… umm…
ummm… the relationship?” So I said that we could be friends and shook his hand
politely. Then the very next day he turned up at our house at 6:15am with a bag full of 12 eggs,
which is so amazingly generous – eggs are very valuable around here and 12 is a
lot of eggs. Since then he has been asking to come to the house and talk to me,
I am trying to subtly keep my distance but I don’t think its working. It’s a
shame because he is a great kid just I think he is slightly confused at the
moment!!
Anthony received a thermometer in the post
from his mum so now for the first time we can actually see how hot it is which
is quite interesting. I first saw it in our house at about 7pm and it read 28O which explains
why I get so hot at nights. The hottest I have seen it so far is 33 O but
bearing in mind we are starting the dry season now and it’s getting much cooler
I think it must have been in the high 30’s at the start of the year! Most
mornings I wake up freezing, shivering as I get out of bed – the other morning
in particular so I took the thermometer outside, and I was right a freezing
temperature of 18O! As I said, the dry season is starting – we are
still getting the occasional downpours but nothing like we were getting in
March. It’s going to be quite an interesting change in the landscape of Malawi as
already things seem less green.
Last weekend was the former President’s
funeral and so Monday was a Public Holiday. Since President Joyce Banda has
taken office there has been an incredible sugar crisis, I thought the queues of
100’s of cars to get petrol was insane but seeing 100’s of people queuing for
sugar is truly incredible. There is genuine excitement, though, of what Banda
can achieve, she needs to reinstate trusted democracy back to Malawi as well
as sort out the failing economy. The papers are already saying she will devalue
to kwacha, lets hope its not just speculation this time! There was quite a lot
of interest around for the funeral and everyone had their radios on to listen
to the service… unfortunately I didn’t get chance to listen or watch as I was
travelling back from Nkhata Bay where we spent the weekend. Whilst at Nkhata Bay
there was an interesting party where I met a guy that is going to Oxford
Brookes next year to study Politics and Economics (I am studying Politics,
Economics and International Relations there) pretty small world, eh?
This weekend we are going up to
Livingstonia, made famous by Dr. David Livingstone who started a settlement in
the mountains to avoid malaria carrying mosquitoes. The trip requires a 3 hour
hike up a dirt track to get to the top where we will stay with Rakesh and Claus
who live up the mountain. I’m quite excited about the weekend, don’t know why
exactly but should be good and then of course we have another day off on
Tuesday for “Labour Day”! So for now, as I want to keep this blog post nice and
short, I will finish but I will update you again soon…
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