Big Kids...

So this is just a quick update on what I`m doing this week. Unfortunately I am typig this on a Belgian keyboard where the letters are in the wrong place so if you see many misspellings then it`s due to the keyboard – not me.

As I said before I am now at Nkhata Bay staying in a place called Butterfly which is a mix of a tourist camp and a volunteering place. I arrived expecting that I would be the only volunteer, however I am one of 8 volunteers working here, 1 Scot, 1 Irish, 1 Northern Irish, 1 German and 4 English... so it`s a nice mix of people. For the first two days I have been working at a local nursery that was set up by Butterfly for kids aged between 2 to 6 (an age group I have never worked with before!). The kids are, in a word, crazy... I spend half of my time there with 6 of them crawling all over my trying to get me to pick them up. But they are also the most adorable kids aswell with the cutest smiles and I can see why Madonna adopted Malawian children!!

At nursery we start at 8am with letters, this week we have be learning the letter A which is going okay but most of the kids are struggling with the tail of the small A. After an hour of learning we have Play Time which is chaos, little children running around everywhere making mud pies and eating them! After play time is porridge which I think is one of the most important things for them as all of them get one decent meal a day. The porridge is maize porridge and is just basically maize and water, they even give me a bowl and I have to say that it isn`t the greatest thing in the world, generally I find the thinest child and fill their bowl up more. But I think it is great that they get the porridge and they all love it, fighting over the scraps left in the bowls. Then we have `Nap Time` which is a favourite for me, jokes... it`s such a big waste of time as the kids never get settled enough to sleep, they just end up rolling around on top of each other for 45 minutes and playing with my leg hair (they are amazed by my leg hair as Africans don`t really have any so they think I`m a bear or something!) I have found something that keeps me entertained during it though, pick up the naughty kids and spin them around... they love it and watching them dizzly bumping into things is hilarious! Then we have another hour of learning, doing numbers or colours... some understand but many of the boys have the attention span of a goldfish and hold up something green and proudly announce that it`s orange.

The nursery is very challenging for me as I`m not used to the age group and they have so much bloody energy!! So I have spent the afternoons hanging out in the lake and mastering the canoe with the other volunteers. Today I am doing something a bit different with a visit to a disabled childs house. The German girl and myself are going to assess how he is progressing and do a few lessons with him which should be good hopefully. At the weekend we are all going to another school set up by Butterfly with our paint brushes to give it a make-over.

All in all I am loving this week at Nkhata Bay, plently of interesting stuff to do with some really nice people to work along side. Not quite sure what I am going to do next week, been invited to stay here, go to Nhkotakota with some Lattitude volunteers or go back up to Maji Zuwa... who knows!?

Bye Bye Fulirwa!

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping in touch with you recently but the problem is that I don’t have a laptop I can write my blogs up on anymore as Anthony got his bag stolen in Mzuzu which contained the precious laptop! Fortunately Anthony is okay and he can claim most of it back on the insurance so that’s all good.

Well last time I updated the blog I was talking about 2 weeks off due to the Form 2 exams, but I didn’t know what to do… well… I decided that I would help out some American volunteers staying at Maji Zuwa who are building a new school block at Khwawa CDSS (where Chloe and Liz teach). I was accepted by Matt, saying they need all the help they could get so during the first week of the holiday I went down to the school and helped build. Now, I have no knowledge about building at all and I have never laid a single brick before that week but now I am proud to say I still know very little!! The other volunteers are all Engineering students and so they had to explain everything to me like I was an idiot! I learned how to mix sand and cement without a cement mixer and how to lay bricks and fill. By the end of the week we had done half of the 4 foot foundations which I was quite pleased with. The work itself was quite easy, the difficult part was standing outside in the sun for 9 hours at a time – my scalp got quite burned after I forgot to suncream it up!! After the week I decided that my building days were behind me and I should retire from construction forever and I got invited on a holiday with Chloe and Liz.

The girls were going to take to ferry to Ruarwe which is a really remote resort that is a 6 hour hike away from the closest civilisation. Perfect! I tagged along with them and we arrived in Ruarwe on the Monday morning. The resort doesn’t have any electricity or running water, just a heap of books, board games and a view to die for. I was still a bit miffed as it meant that I couldn’t see the England game and there was no phone coverage to receive updates! After 3 games of Monopoly, 4 Scrabble games, numerous games of Bridge, 2 books and 2 days we decided there wasn’t that much left to do so we managed to get on the mid-week boat to Nkhata Bay. I wasn’t feeling very great after my pancakes that morning and was very sick on the journey (I’ve never had sea-sickness but I know lake-sickness isn’t very pleasant!). Other than throwing up, everything else was going well as we were cruising towards Nkhata Bay, until the captain decided to dock for “a 15 minute break”. After 2 hours of not seeing anyone we got suspicious and decided to go and look for people, only to find they were all chatting and had decided to go back to Ruarwe today!! We were stuck in a very small village with no room to stay, water or food. Luckily there was a conference going on and we managed to hitch a lift in a rich mans car all the way to Mzuzu – phewww!

Nkhata Bay was great as usual, we stayed a place called Butterfly this time which is a tourist place but also does a lot for the community, its set up a local radio station for the kids, a music area and much more. The owners are incredibly friendly and we met another Englishman who we watched the England v Sweden game with. There were only 4 English people in the large African bar but we made up for it with noise as England took us on another rollcoaster ride of emotions!

Also during the 2 weeks off I went and visited the Bwengu girls for a couple of nights. On the Monday I went to their school and sat in some of their classes which was very interesting to compare with my school. I was shown in the Form 3 Maths class and Sarah mentioned that I taught maths at Fulirwa, at this point the teacher said “Oh excellent, you can teach this class for me then,” – or words similar. With that I was thrown into an alien maths class with just a book and a piece of chalk for 40 minutes. I was so proud of the way I dealt with it and I realise that I would never have been able to do that at the start of the trip. But now I really enjoyed it, testing the kids knowledge and being able to manage a class of 40! After school finished the girls took me to one of their local shops (an average Malawian shops that sells the basics) and we took over for the afternoon, greeting and serving the customers. Okay, there was a communication issue and we had to be helped by the owner almost every time but it was great fun and I realised how much I miss serving people. The business is quite incredible, they never look busy and there are so many competitors around the area but he reckons he would take K15,000 to K30,000 a day (40 – 75 quid!) which is an amazingly large amount in Malawi. Obvious this is only his revenue and I am sure his profits are just a tiny percentage of that figure. In the two hours we were there 14 people came in and asked for a Coke (which was unfortunate as we were out of Coke and most didn’t like the alternatives.)

So the 2 weeks ended and we went back to school, if only for a week. The week was full of exams for our Form 1’s and 3’s which is actually quite a nervous time for me as I get to see whether my teaching has helped them. The results weren't too bad in the end but I would have hoped for better with my Form 3 Maths after we did so much extra study. On Friday we were given an amazing send off from the school with a nice party, speeches and Coca-Cola of course!!

Now I have just 2 weeks left in Malawi but I don’t have anymore work to do at the school. I was going to work on the school building again with the American volunteers but I have decided to go back to Butterfly in Nkhata Bay and volunteer there. I am now volunteering there in a nursery school with kids aged between 2 and 6 which is quite challenging but also so much fun. I am also going to help out with football training and a video editing suite that they have there. I really want to do as many different things here before I leave and I hope that the week there will be beneficial! Also it means that I can watch all the remaining football games on the massive screen they have at the Bay – good thinking eh? I am only going to stay there a week as I want to be back at Maji Zuwa for the 4^th July as there is going to be a huge party for American Independence Day with about 50 Peace Corps volunteers invited. I think it will be quite funny to be there with Chloe and Liz (proud Brits)!