Blessings at Easter....

Hi everyone,

Its been a few weeks since my last posting and you will see that I have been kept quite busy - I just never seem to have time to sit down with a nice cup of tea and relax........

As I said in my previous post, our trainers are doing volunteering practice and so either Nicolas or myself visit them at least once during the month they volunteer in a centre. Kamoza is in a nice centre which is being supported by a Norwegian lady and so they had lots of toys and papers and pens (something we never see here in our early years). However, sustainability will be a problem when she pulls out!

Kamoza singing with the children

Cooking porridge at the centre

Enjoying the porridge

Nicolas and myself went to Lilongwe for a day to discuss opening two centres in the city. Livingstonia Synod have some really large congregations in Lilongwe and the Early Childhood Centres will cater for those people who cannot afford to go to any nursery school in town.  I hope that it works!  We had a lovely time sharing with our ministers and other people from the church there.

Of course we have elections on 20 May and there are posters up everywhere in Lilongwe - in Mzuzu its not so bad, but we do have a lot of campaigning going on.  Much of it takes place at the sports stadium which is behind my house, and of course loudspeakers are necessary.......not much peace and quiet these days, and I imagine it will be worse before it gets better!

Its the end of the rainy season (at least its supposed to be but we had heavy rains this morning!).  People are busy harvesting tobacco as you can see here and the auction floors have opened in Lilongwe!  We grow a lot of tobacco in this country - its the main cash crop.

Bringing home tobacco

Coming home from the garden

We went to visit Freeman on his volunteering practice too but were disappointed to find that he was not there and had not told us.  It was not a wasted journey though as we sorted out the mess that the caregivers were calling play materials.........

The children in this centre had no materials and so were very rowdy as there were a lot of them with nothing to do.  Some of them however used their imagination and you can see these two girls found a hole in the floor where they took out sand and filled one of their shoes with it.  As I watched they then progressed to pretend the shoe was a sieve (its as if they were being mummy in the village here!!).  

The chairman of one of the Community Based Organisations (CBO's) came to visit us in the office one day as they have two ECD centres and they wanted training for their caregivers and committees.  Before we committed to anything however we decided to go and visit one of the centres and this is what we found............

This is a typical rural ECD centre in Malawi and the village were really concerned about their children.  After watching the caregiver at work, I was also concerned as she was being very much a teacher with a big stick!  We have agreed to train their caregivers and committees probably next month.

One of the caregivers

the village headman

The children were being checked for weight 

with the parents and some children

End of school term has come very quickly and I was the 'guest of honour' at Enukweni Early Years Centre on 4th April!  It was a good morning and the children were very enthusiastic (except one who cried when she saw the mzungu....the white person).  

With Rev Mtika, the minister of Enukweni

Parents and older children watching

While the children were busy, these two were playing with the mat!!

The day before our school here in Mzuzu closed and three of the children had birthdays so I was asked to go and take photos for the parents.  I thought it would only take a few minutes but it became hours..........

Deborah and Emmanuel below are twins

This is Peace

Last week I was in Johannesburg for the whole week working on Material Redevelopment for Africa with colleagues from all over sub saharan Africa.  It was a great week - wonderful to catch up with old friends and we worked hard but we also laughed a lot! We were writing booklets on Early Childhood Development for teachers which we hope are simple enough for them to understand the concepts!

The whole team

So, its Easter week and thankfully there are no signs of Easter eggs on the shelves here!! However, Easter week services are taking place daily and the Anglicans will be having their way of the cross walks on Friday which is very meaningful to all.  I wish you a blessed Easter time as we celebrate the risen Christ.

Diane x

One of the many birds in my garden!