Teaching and all the other excitements!

Monire (Hello)!

Yes, I am now learning the language at ultimate pace… been here for 2 weeks and I know 2 words, impressive eh?

Local women around Nkhata Bay

Anyway, I am starting to get used to everything now, there will always be things that mystify me about this country and Nkhata Bay, for example the slowness of everything! But in general I am getting used to the people, the hitchhiking and the food! I realised that in my past two posts I have missed some essential information as I was rushing my blog due to being in an internet café. However this time I have been wise and I am using Anthony’s netbook to type everything! Anyway…

This past week has been a one of differing moods. I started off feeling quite annoyed by my placement as I wanted to go to a poor school and make a difference; instead I am at a fairly well-off school that achieves very good results. It isn’t perfect for me but I have decided to give it a proper try. We met up with Chloe and Elizabeth in Mzuzu on Wednesday and they were quite upset as their placement hasn’t worked out but now they have moved up-north to Karonga to start another project – hopefully this works for them as I really did feel sorry for them when we bumped into them in the city! Whilst in the city I bought some quite jazzy shirts that I am going to wear into school, green and white stripes are definitely appropriate in this country!

Thursday saw my first day of proper teaching. I have had a bit of preparation during my time at Oakfield Primary School being a teaching assistant but Thursday it got real! My first lesson was double maths with 1A at 8:20 in the morning and it’s fair to say that I walked into the classroom incredibly nervous! I did a little introduction to myself, where I was from and what I was doing and then cracked on with 1 hour 20 minutes of estimation and approximation. The kids seemed to pick it up really quickly which sort of destroyed my lesson plan as they went to quickly that I finished with 30 minutes to spare!! I then used this time for a Q&A session with the kids asking questions about me and my culture. But then the tricky question came up, “How old are you?” Bearing in mind that I am only 2 years older than some my pupils I sort of dodged the question and said “Old enough.” This bought a fair amount of laughter aimed at me! After a long Q&A session I was straight into another double maths with class 1B… this was difficult for me as I was repeating the exact same lesson which got my confused (doesn’t take much to confuse me, I know). Then finally in the afternoon I had 2 single lessons of Social Studies to 1A and 1B, in which I introduced the topic of the constitution – this went down well, I think!

Since being here we have become slightly obsessed with a local board game called Boa’s (we think it’s called boa’s!!) We bought a lovely wooden boa’s set from a street vender called Kelvin in Nkhata Bay, it cost us 1000MK each, a small price to pay for a game of such class! On Friday night Anthony played some of the locals in a bar and has received a master-class so now I stand no chance in beating him so I have challenged him to a game of chess, but I fear he maybe better at chess too!

On Saturday I did my first solo-travelling in Malawi as I went from Nkhata Bay to Mzuzu (50km away) to do a bit of shopping. The experience was amazing as it was just Malawi and I for the first time. Once in Mzuzu I went into the first supermarket where I was recognised by a man who knew Matt, country manager. His name was Justin, which I remembering by Justin Bieber (luckily he wasn’t like Mr Bieber at all!) He then showed me around the city and all the shops collecting the items that were on my shopping list, including: a needle and thread, paper and some medicine! He was great and stayed with me about 1 and half hours whilst shopping! Whilst he was showing me around I bumped into a nice western guy called Matty who was German. He is also on his Gap Year and is volunteering at a Primary School about 30km from us. He was filling me in with all the local knowledge as he had been here for about a month. Hopefully we will be able to meet up with him and his German friends in the near future! It is so nice to talk to a westerner now and again as speaking to Malawians can be quite annoying. Conversations aren’t very interesting and you can spend 30 minutes talking about the weather and not really discussing anything! I definitely miss good conversation!

On Saturday I persuaded Anthony to go out to the town to see what the area was like on the weekends. We were quite shocked at how empty the town was as we walked around, so based on this we decided to go to a local tourist bar (I know, not really in the Malawian spirit of things!!) But I am glad we went as we got chatting to some girls from the Netherlands along with some of the locals. It was during the walk back that we found to have picked up some followers, two dogs were walking along side us for the whole of the 40 minute walk back. At some points this was quite dodgy as they started fights with other dogs as we walked through the town… I am absolutely terrified about getting bitten by a rabies dog and the walk back was one of the scariest for a while! The dogs seem to be our companions now, whether we like it or not as each time we go into town the two dogs find us and follow us where ever we go. After another 4 hours of following through the town I decided that we should name them. One was ginger so I called him Lenin (obviously) and Anthony named the other one Trotsky (obviously). So now we have our own bodyguards in Lenin and Trotsky!

On Sunday I was walking up to the football pitch on the bay to go and see if the children needed any training or anything, what I found completely surprised me. All around the pitch there was a crowd of at least 2 deep watching a game going on. The game was between Nkhata Bay and Mzuzu City, so of course I had to have a little watch! I was amazed by the professionalism of the game as both sets of boys (aged around 18) were decked out in brand new kits and trainers. However I will never complain about the state of a football pitch in the UK again as the pitch was half sand and half over-grown grass! The conditions led to a fairly scrappy game with many long-balls from goal-kicks (something I hate with a passion!). But then when the ball was played on the ground, the skills and talent of the players was quite clear. When I stopped watching the score was Nkhata Bay 2 – 0 Mzuzu City with some quite interesting refereeing going on, all bias to Nkhata Bay of course! The passion of the crowd was clear to see as well as when Nkhata Bay scored their second there were parties going on around the pitch! This led me to the conclusion: I must go and see Malawi play before I leave the country!

The food here is very nice, yet a tad predictable! As we still haven’t moved into our school accommodation we are served breakfast which is some bread and butter, egg and chips. This is brilliant – chip butte for breakfast! I have since realised that the bread and butter is meant for a jam sandwich or something, but my chip butte goes down well! At the school we are given lunch until we move into the on-campus house… this usually consists of a lot of rice with either egg, chicken or fish as well as something green (which we are not sure what it is, but it is alright!). Then for dinner we usually go out and buy chicken and rice which would cost about 500MK (£2 or so)… it’s good as it fills you up, although I am sure that I have already lost a fair bit of weight due to the lack of snacking! Chocolate is relatively expensive over here as they have to import it all in, a small bar of Dairy Milk costs around 200MK.

Over the past couple of days we have had some massive thunderstorms as a result of tremendous heat! Thursday’s storm was the most impressive to-date. The thunder was the loudest I have ever heard and the weather sent the whole area into a power-cut for most of the day. At the start of the power-cut it was fun and interesting but after a few hours without any power the “fun-factor” starts to wear off a bit! Generally the weather is okay, quite a bit of rain around at the moment as we are in the rainy season but I am pleased to say that I have picked up a bit of a tan already – 5 months and 3 weeks to go… the tan should be pretty good by then!!

One thing I love about the Malawian culture is the hitchhiking (I am not sure if I have already mentioned this in my blog!!) but to get to school I walk up the road until I see a car going my way. I wave my arm a bit and they take me a bit closer on my journey. It would generally cost about 100MK for a trip from our place to the bay which is about 2km away, not bad! And you get to experience some strange things with 8 people piled into a stranger’s car! Yesterday I hitched a lift from school from an ambulance with a patient already in there! This should definitely be introduced into the UK – okay maybe more urgency about saving people’s lives actually! It is actually quite difficult to get into school as there are so few cars on the road… Malawi is going through a massive fuel crisis and it can cost up to £4 per litre of petrol, so basically no one can afford to drive round here! Today I walked for 30 minutes along a main road and saw 1 car. This does have its advantages though – the roads are far better than the roads of the Isle of Wight!

There is definitely one thing I won’t miss when I get home – the music. African music is so terrible, it is playing at about 1,000 beats per second and every song sounds the same. In the staff room one song was played on repeat 15 times the other day, this is now my most hated song but yet I know every word to it! Malawian music has nothing on Oasis or other brilliant British artists!

I am sorry for the length of this blog, I got a bit carried away as I didn’t have a time limit to type in.

Speak to you soon!