This morning I woke up feeling almost completely better. After breakfast of oranges, toast and tea, we hitched a lift in the back of the little pick-up. I really enjoyed the journey up to the site, with the three of us sitting in the back. Everything seemed much closer and more real from the back of the pick-up, rather than through a rather dusty window. People, especially the children, waved at us, and the whole day has had a sound track of “Hello, how are you?” “I’m fine, how are you? Thank you” “Thank you”, sometimes in English, and sometimes in Chichewa.
We arrived at the site, and went into the classroom, which is set up with an office space at one end, separated from the teaching space by a tall metal cupboard and a bookshelf full of children’s books. David was busy laying out pictures of all the students, in order to put them on the wall to show which room they would be working in when the children’s centre opens.
It was still really early, about 7.45, and I realized I didn’t have any food with me – a potential disaster as lunch wasn’t till 12, and I get very grumpy if I don’t eat regularly. Fortunately one of the women who works in the admin building brings in samosas to sell, so I went up there and introduced myself, and bought one each for myself, Lin and Sarah.
The students arrived in a gradual trickle – the earliest at about 8.15 and the latest about 45 minutes into the session. As each one arrived they greeted each other in turn, and then came over to be introduced to me and Linda, and greet Mari and David after the holiday.
The course today was called “Looking back, looking forward”. The session started at 9 with Mari reading the class “The story of Mama Panya and her pancakes” – this is to encourage the students to listen to English, and also to read to the children when they start working with them.
After the story, the students worked in groups, thinking about what has changed for them in the last 10 months, both good and bad, and then what they thought would be expected of them. After the break, they were due to think about their hopes and fears for the future. This was potentially quite a sensitive issue, as the children’s centre opening has been delayed for 4 months to January, and this has had a big impact on most of the students. I suggested to Mari that we could use a model of facilitation we use at work, called a community conversation, as a way to give everyone a chance to air their concerns, and then work together to think of ways in which things might be improved. So suddenly there I was, running a community conversation in Malawi!
| Going round the circle hearing from everyone about the impact of the delay on them was very moving, as it really demonstrated what people have sacrificed to come on the course and how important the job will be to them. The main concern was the difficulty for people who had planned their lives on the basis of what they were told originally, that they would finish their course in July, and start work in September. Many had made considerable financial sacrifices, or been supported financially by partners, parents or siblings, on the basis that they would be earning a good wage from September. Some were worried about the difficulty of finding the money to pay the minibus fares to get to the short courses which are being offered to fill the gap between September and January, which are very expensive for anyone on a Malawian wage. There was also an impact on their reputation in their families, because they were not now earning as they had said they would be. And the fact that they had only found out about the delay on the same day they got their exam results left some of them feeling let down, and unsure whether they could trust what they were being told now, or whether they would ever get a job. For me it also gave a glimpse of the importance of family relationships and support here, and how financial responsibilities can run much wider than just for partners and children. After listening to everyone’s concerns, the students worked in groups to come up with ways in which they might support each other, or that Beehive might help them manage the challenges of the next few months. The list included some suggestions about financial support, and others about clearer communication. Marian and David agreed they would pass on the concerns. At 11.30 sharp we all had to take our chairs upstairs to the library, where dinner was being served for 60 people (there are no books in the library yet, so it is a nice big empty space!). We then came back down and finished the class standing up. The feedback I got afterwards was that it had been a helpful and controlled way of dealing with a difficult topic, and I have been asked to do the same again for the second group on Thursday morning. At 12 Marian, Lin and I went for lunch. We arrived first, and discovered that the first person to arrive is asked to say a prayer over the food! Marian rose to the occasion, and managed to rescue a short grace from our childhood, and we tucked into chicken and rice, and a banana. Our first taste of nsima, the local staple, is still to come! Most volunteers apparently find it quite difficult to get used to. Marian then took us on a walking tour of Beehive projects, starting with a visit to the building site which will one day be the children’s centre. What I found most interesting was the high number of women working on the site. Then we walked round Chilomoni, taking in the knitting project, the tailoring class, the bookshop and the bicycle shop. In each we were shown round by the person leading the project, and I discovered many things I didn’t know before, like how many jumpers someone can knit in a day on a knitting machine (4), how long it takes to get a tailoring diploma from your first sewing lesson (about 2 years) and how many bicycles the Post Office send out to Malawi (several thousand – I can’t remember now). We ended up in the Liquor Garden for a Fanta, before walking back to the IT college to help with Marc’s English class at 4.30. This was the first of a 6 week course for anyone who had signed up, and there were about 50 people there, many of them from the building site. Marc asked them to sort themselves out into tables, according to their own assessment of how much English they spoke, and there was at least one volunteer on each table to help out. Mari and I shared a group of near beginners. The theme of the class was greetings and sharing personal information, so we spent a lot of time on “Hello, how are you…” “My name is… what is your name?” etc. Even within our group there was a lot of variation in ability, with two young men who were doing quite well, and were soon chatting away to each other, even if with a lot of giggling, and one woman who was just so overcome with shyness that she couldn’t say anything except her name, which wasn’t really the point! We had a lot of fun though, and at the end, when Marc came round looking for people who were willing to stand up and share what they had learned, one of the young men did, although he was still a bit shy, and dried up in the middle. He got a round of applause for it even so. What a busy day! We travelled back for dinner, which was late anyway, because Charles, the cook, had been at the English class. After dinner, we retired to our house, and opened a well-deserved bottle of white wine. |
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