Hello everyone,

Its been another busy week coupled with a bout of sickness.  When I was in Chitipa last week I ate some food in a local restaurant and that night I was quite ill.  However, I felt okay the next day, but this week I did not feel well at all and eventually succumbed to visiting the doctor yesterday, so have been prescribed with some medicine and feel a bit better today!  Have had a lazy day so far (well, I did the washing this morning by hand as usual and went to the market, and made lunch and cleaned the house.......)!!

I was coming in Mzuzu one day last week and at the minute the Cassia trees are in full bloom everywhere so the city looks beautiful, so I took this photo.  Doesn't really do the trees justice but I couldn't be playing with the camera and driving so I just had one shot at it. The sky looks pretty impressive too I think!!

As I said, its been another busy week and Nicolas and myself went to Rumphi to meet our trainer, George to arrange training that we are planning in April together with another organisation called Matunkha.  We met in the church and can you imagine it even has stained glass windows!!  Not many of our churches here have any windows never mind stained glass!!

The Early Childhood Centre in Rumphi is held in the church hall, but it was having cement put on the floor so the children were all at the front of the church. This is the scene that greeted us as we went into the church.  As you can imagine I was not very pleased as children were just sitting on a mat doing nothing, and there were very few play materials around!!  However, this is typical of what we find in so many centres, even after caregivers have been trained.  This is possibly due to caregivers never having seen a well run ECD centre and have no idea what it is they are meant to do, or as is sometimes the case, its because the caregivers are lazy!!

While we waited for George to come (he was keeping African time!), Nicolas sang some songs with the children.......

When George arrived we had a good discussion with our traditional bottles of coke as you can see here!  After our meeting we travelled to Enukweni on the way back to Mzuzu to meet Freeman, another trainer from Henga Presbytery but as his meeting was on the roadside I did not take a photograph!

I visited Ekwendeni this week where one of our trainers was involved in training caregivers with another organisation.  I went to supervise and was shocked at what I saw - this photo is of a play area for young children.  I was not happy with the trainers and I don't think they will do it again!  

The participants usually make dolls - well these were the dolls and again I was not happy with the facilitators - green dolls or green dolls with white heads!!  Not acceptable I am afraid!!

On another note entirely.  I was at home for lunch one day and it was raining heavily and as I was eating my sandwich and looking out at the rain, I spied this leaf with water hanging on it.  Thought it made quite a good photo!!

Due to the rainfall we have had the plants are all growing at a tremendous rate, and so the fruit in the garden is doing well. The oranges are beginning to change colour, but I doubt if they will  be there long enough to ripen properly as people tend to pick them before they are ready!

Although this picture is quite dark, you can see that the pawpaw (or papaya) tree is laden with fruit but because it is so high usually many of the fruit are damaged when they hit the ground!

When I went out this morning I found a visitor taking guavas off the tree.  This is a common occurrence in Malawi - nothing ever belongs to you, it belongs to the community which can be a bit of a problem sometimes!!  It was my neighbour and I teased him that he would have to pay K10 for every guava.

This is the guava tree and I took this photo a few days ago and when I looked at it I was surprised to see the pink colour in the middle - so I decided to go again and take a close up picture....

This is t he close up - unfortunately it is not quite in focus and I have no idea what had eaten this but it is amazing!! 

The rains are a blessing as people always tell me, but the fruits of the rains are sometimes not a blessing.  This is the fence of my vegetable garden and the things you can see are enormous snails who have decided to camp there.  There are many of them all over the fence!!  Perhaps good to eat........

And just to finish off today, a beautiful flower I found in the garden this morning.  It is really tiny and this is my favourite photo of this blog!!

This coming week is also a busy one, in fact until the end of April it is non stop!  We have some trainers coming to Mzuzu on Monday for a meeting on Tuesday, so lots to organise.  From the end of March right through to the end of April we have about 10 or 11 different workshops going on in different parts of the north, and it is my job to co-ordinate them all and make sure everything goes smoothly!  No easy task - I think I will take a holiday in May!!

I had a shock this week.  In 2011 I posted a blog about opening a new Early Childhood Centre in Nkhata Bay which had been funded by two European girls.  They were still in Malawi and building another centre in the Nkhata Bay area but for the community.  On Tuesday last week, one of the girls was travelling to Nkhata Bay on a lorry with cement for the new project which she had just bought.  The road is narrow and very steep with lots of bad bends.  Unfortunatley the lorry may have been speeding or brakes failed, we will never know, but Tine and another person were killed instantly as the lorry with the cement in it over turned after hitting another truck.  Such a shock for everyone especially her friend Rjimke who was working alongside her.  

Many times I talk about praying for safety on the roads here.  Roads are narrow and drivers speed, some have no licenses or brakes in the cars.  As we were coming home from Rumphi we also passed a truck which had gone off the road and two people were taken to the local hospital.

Continue praying for our safety!  Thank you for all your comments last week.  Much appreciated.

Wishing you all a good week wherever you are!

Blessings,

Diane