Hello everyone from a very warm and humid afternoon here in Mzuzu!

We are in the middle of the rainy season where its hot and humid these days.  We have had some days of really heavy rain day and night and its great to see the sunshine again.  Because of the humidity things are damp and there are now many mushrooms in the garden, and mould growing all over the place.  Thankfully we usually only have a few weeks of humidity!  

In some areas there has been severe flooding because of the heavy rains and people have lost their homes, but the good news is that in most areas maize is growing well and people are looking forward to a bumper harvest.

I heard a few days ago of a lady who had nothing to eat except the husks from the maize - the new maize is not yet ready and for many the old maize is finished so this is a time of scarcity.  Because of the currency, the Kwacha being unstable, prices are rising almost every day and it is hard for people to survive.

Time is flying past and its hard to believe its February already.  We had a sad occasion a couple of weeks ago when one of my trainers, Emily, lost her husband very suddenly.  Emily is our trainer in Mzalangwe presbytery.  She is expecting her fourth child and it was so sad when her husband passed away.  I went to the village with Nicolas and two other trainers as we heard the news after the funeral had taken place.  Here are some of the children outside the home.

As I said in an earlier posting, we are now doing Early Childhood sensitization with Ministers and session clerks in Presbyteries.  Last week we went to Limphasa Presbytery where we had a successful meeting.  It was great to see one of my past pupils from the nursery school in Zomba - he is now in Form 4 of secondary school and is taller than me - it made me feel very old!!  The ministers are keen to know how to assist us in the ECD centres and there were many questions!!

group work

Diane in action...

As I said we have been having quite a lot of rain and off the road travel these days is difficult as my colleague Vincent found out (the one in the red shirt) when he got quite stuck out in the field a couple of days ago!!

However, as is typical in Malawi, villagers quickly came to the rescue and eventually they got the car out!!

Last year in August, the Synod decided that Early Childhood Development would become a department, and it was very exciting on Wednesday as we had our first Board of Directors meeting.  Here you can see the members of the Board after our meeting when we went to visit our Preschool.  I am happy with the Board because all of them are interested in Early Childhood and some have even gone to South Africa to do Early Years training, so I hope we will work well together and be effective in supporting the children in our centres.  I just realised we are not very gender sensitive as we only have one lady on the Board and the rest are men!!  

My colleague Nicolas has been off for a few days now as he has malaria.  Please pray for his quick recovery - its very quiet in the office without him!!

Wishing you all a good weekend whatever you plan to do.

Blessings,

Diane