New life at Christmas......

Hello everyone,

Hope you have all had a good week, no doubt full of shopping and frantic searching for Christmas gifts.  Yesterday, I found we have sparkling lights at our small roundabout here in Mzuzu - I think that is the total of the Christmas decorations here in Mzuzu!!

I had a busy week as usual but now am on holidays for two whole weeks!!    Nicolas and I travelled to Dwangwa this week to have a meeting with the Presbytery leaders (ministers and session clerks) about Early Childhood Development and how we can assist each other to support our ECD centres especially in the rural areas.  It was a terrible day weatherwise as it poured down all the way to Dwangwa (about a 3 hour drive) and we dodged the lightning or at least it seemed that way!  However, we arrived safely and had a good meeting.

After having heavy rains, there is much new life developing as everything grows at double the speed in the heat and damp.  Here you can see just a few pictures of the fruits from my garden!

lemons

avocados

guavas

pawpaw or papaya

oranges

and the flowers in the garden.........

and of course the rains bring out the bugs and the animals too.  This morning this friendly creature decided to come into the house...........there are so many snails around at the moment and they are enormous.  There is nothing worse than waking up in the morning, opening the curtain and finding this enormous snail sticking to your window!  Maybe something to think about for Christmas dinner instead of turkey!

On Friday, we had the last day at work and so a Christmas get together was organised with a women's netball match and a men's football match!  I was the photographer, never having played netball in my life!!  (I was a hockey player!)

Mrs Gausi the Deputy Education Secretary 

the ladies in action!

the men being very patriotic singing the National Anthem before they begin!

Of course, these big people playing football attracted a lot of children and they began to copy and have a game on their own!!

and we also had an acrobat show........

for those of you who know Nicolas, that's him on the left...

After the sports we had a party all together which was also great fun.  We had a

competition to see who could drink a bottle of soda the fastest.  On the left here is one of my teachers, Judy.  She did not win but another teacher Gift won!  

the eyes of victory!!

and so that you know I was actually there, here I am with Mirriam my good friend and mentor here in Malawi!!

I hope that wherever you are in the world you also have a time to celebrate as we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  I will  be getting together with some friends, going to church and having some food and fellowship together afterwards.

Wishing you a Christmas full of joy, love, peace and hope.

Blessings,

Diane x

Its all about the children.........

Hello everyone from a dull and grey day here in Mzuzu, but are we complaining - no, not at all because we really need rain!  We have had a couple of days of rain which is great - mind you I don't appreciate going to the market and sloshing through the mud!!

This past week has been busy as we were training caregivers from 5 private Early Childhood Centres which belong to Wukani Private Schools.  Although it was busy, it was a really enjoyable and fun time.  This is the entrance to one of the schools where we conducted the training.  Very wise I thought!!

At the minute we have 4 different workshops happening, one in Chitipa, this one in Mzuzu, one in Njuyu and one in Mchinji, so its a busy time.  This is because schools are closed so its a good time to train the caregivers so as not to disrupt the programme.  I can imagine the thoughts of people in Ireland if they were asked to attend a workshop the week before Christmas!!

In Mzuzu we had our trusty trainers, Kamoza, Enala and of course Nicolas. Kamoza and Enala were with us for the first two days and then Nicolas and myself facilitated for the next 3 days.

me in action.........

We had 12 caregivers from 5 centres and they all had a very good understanding which made the teaching simple!

We did a lot of group work so that there would be active participation, and it turned out to be great fun.

I really appreciated being able to do a lot of the facilitating and I don't have so much time these days to teach, and I really enjoyed it.

and yes, one of my topics was brain development!!...

Nicolas loves doing music and movement in the early years with the caregivers and we used our local musical instruments and has a wonderful time.

We were blessed this week with heavy rains, but I did not think it such a blessing when we had torrential rain during one of my sessions and due to the noise on the tin roof, I had to go round each person individually and shout!!

 Our locally available materials.......

On Friday we had the closing ceremony where I had to make a speech as the 

ECD Co-ordinator.

Our guest of honour was the Manager of Wukani Schools and you can see the lovely smile as she made her closing remarks.

So all in all, it has been a great week.  I continually am humbled by how people here want to learn, and how they enjoy learning.  Every time I facilitate a training, I learn so much from the participants and this time was no different.  I praise God for the opportunities I have had in Malawi in this role.  And I praise God that we have the opportunity to reach out to so many children all over the north through the caregivers that we train.

Apart from training, of course there were other things happening during the week.  The final stages of the electrical installation at the new school building was completed thanks to the fundraising the school had a few weeks ago.  Here you can see the inside of the classroom now with light fittings and sockets and switches!

Our two watchmen, Brave and Gift.........

 and Lemoni (good name for a gardener), who works in the garden trying to keep the grass down, which is not an easy job these days as it grows so quickly with the rain and the heat, with the added bonus of snakes possibly lurking in the grass!! 

I hope you have also had a good week as we prepare for the birth of Jesus.  I am sure in the UK there are Christmas carols singing all around and trees glittering with fairy lights.  None of that here, in fact not really any mention of Christmas at all!!  One of my friends is returning home to USA after 14 years in Malawi.  Please remember her in your prayers as she goes through the transition of life back in the West, in what has been a very speedy and unexpected exit from Malawi.

As we train our caregivers to look after our young children, I think of Mary who had the privilege of bringing up the baby Jesus.  Let us remember the reason for the coming of Christmas.....its all about Jesus, its all about the children...........

Wishing you many blessings during the coming week,

Diane x

Christmas is coming.......is it??

Hello everyone from a very hot and sunny day here in Mzuzu,

This week has been very hot as we wait for the rains to come.  We had one big thunderstorm this week which cleared the air for a few hours, but now its hot again!  We started the week with a workshop for our trainers where we were having our Review and Evaluation meeting for the year.  We had 26 out of 29 trainers present.  Two were studying and one was at a funeral.  We began with a devotion from Mrs Mirriam Gausi our Deputy Education secretary.  Here you can see her in action, talking about the joy which comes with the coming of Jesus.

Nicolas and myself were facilitating at the workshop and here you can see Nicolas in full flow singing an ECD chorus with the participants!  

For the people who have been in Malawi and met some of the participants, here are a few photos.  This is Grace........

Kamoza in full flow commenting on an issue...

Myself, leading a session......

Rodney, relaxing or maybe meditating.....

Our newest member, Praise who is only a couple of months old and belongs to Hlezipe....

Mercy, doing an activity.........

Madalitso, who as well as being our trainer is a traditional chief, working on an assignment.....

And finally, Nicolas explaining something from one of the play areas to the participants...

It was a fruitful workshop, a working workshop, and the participants were tired when we finished.  They all had to make a vision for their Presbytery for ECD for 2013 and then write the objectives of how they were going to fulfil that vision, and then make a workplan for 2013.  So it was intense but I think it was worth it and hopefully each one has gone back to their Presbyteries with a little more knowledge on how they can deal with things in the early childhood centres.

Today I had a card making workshop in the afternoon with Blessings and Bongiwe - here you can see their products.  They were thinking of having a shop in the market to sell them!!  At least this was not as intense as the one earlier in the week!!

This is a busy time of year because schools are on holiday and so we can train committees and caregivers. From now right up until Christmas eve we have 6 different training sessions going on.  It will be hectic so I need your prayers for strength and perseverance!! This coming week Nicolas and myself are leading a workshop for 5 days with a group of private nursery centres, so we are looking forward to sharing our knowledge with them.

Christmas is coming and yet it does not feel like it here.  Everything is going on as usual - its hot outside and there are no Christmas trees or lights or music anywhere. There is still a fuel shortage and so people are becoming frustrated and prices continue to rise.

Thank you to those who have sent me Christmas cards - I have received many especially from PW groups so thanks for that. 

Wishing you a blessed week,

Diane x

old friends, new friends, visitors and work...........

Hi everyone,

Its been a long time since my last blog but that is not because I have been lying idle!  Its been an extremely busy few weeks with visitors and work!  I had the pleasure of entertaining four lovely ladies from Myres Park in USA who were visiting the Synod.  I had them for lunch at my house and I felt as though I were with old friends.  It was great!

Then I had another visitor this time from Northern Ireland - her name is Joy Ryan and she was passing through Mzuzu and so I was able to provide accommodation for an evening.  It was such a joy when three other Pastors turned up later in the evening, and one of them was Rev Francis Matumba from the Anglican Church and he had been a student at Zomba Theological College.  We had a lot of chat to catch up on.

Rev Francis Matumba

Meanwhile work was continuing through all of these visitors and we had a workshop with four of our trainers to empower them to be supervisors for one of our training programmes.  We had Khwima from Euthini, Prescott from Chitipa, Daniel from Embangweni and Madalitso from Ekwendeni.  We chose them because they are in strategic places within the synod for supervision purposes.  It was a great time of fun and learning together.

Khwima, Prescott, Daniel and Madalitso

myself in action

Nicolas

Khwima giving a presentation

During the workshop, we discussed using locally available materials as play materials.  It was so exciting to see the gourds and seed pods which the participants brought to be used in our ECD centres.

It was during this workshop that I had another visitor for a couple of days, someone that people in Ireland will know well - Rev. Uel Marrs.  It was a pleasure for me to be able to show him one of our workshops as well as our CCAP International Pre-school and our new school building.  I hope Uel enjoyed the visit as much as I did!

In a previous post, I discussed workshops that we were doing with the Private Early Childhood Centres in Mzuzu.  The final one for this year was in November - we had a great time of discussion and learning together, and I hope that we see great things happening in our private centres.

Enala facilitating

one of the caregivers children - isn't he cute!

I also mentioned training the group from Nkhata Bay in a recent blog, where the World Bank have been doing a pilot study in Malawi in four districts.  Last week I was invited to a meeting in Lilongwe to review this study.  I was supposed to arrive on Wednesday night which means leaving at lunchtime on Wednesday.  However, there was no fuel in town (a common occurrence these days).  Thanks to one of our drivers I managed to find enough fuel to get to the meeting.  Well, imagine the pleasant surprise when I arrived in my lodge in Lilongwe to find an enormous room with a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen complete with flat screen TV and a computer in the room.  For those of you in first world countries this is probably standard but believe me this was a real treat for me!

After the meeting, I stayed another night intending to go home on Friday morning.  However, guess what........there was no fuel in town.  Absolutely no petrol or diesel anywhere.  So I had to move out of my nice lodge into a much cheaper place while I searched for fuel.  Eventually I made it home on Saturday night having bought it on the black market - otherwise I might still be in Lilongwe.

The fuel situation is becoming worse.  On Friday I had a meeting here in Mzuzu and one participant was coming from Mzimba (about an hour and a half away).  The meeting was at 8am and she arrived about 1pm - the bus had run out of fuel on the way!  These days we expect higher prices in the shops because fuel is scarce and businesses are finding it difficult to cope.  Who knows where we are headed!

However, today I spent a lovely afternoon with my good friend Estie and Jenny, and the good thing was I was able to walk there - no fuel needed!

Jenny and Estie

Back to nature - by now you must realise my love for the outdoors.  Yesterday I had some children playing in the garden and we were removing lots of hornets nests which are being built all around the house.  We also came across this amazing spiders web which is about 1 1/2 metres wide and extremely strong.  Its a spider of the orb family - not sure which one but I would not like to get too close to it!!

Usually the brighter the colour the more dangerous the spider......... but it is beautiful!!

One of the hornets nests with a couple of small hornets on it - God's creation never fails to amaze me!

And today, as I was walking back from Esties, I passed this beautiful tree with purple and white flowers - such a glorious sight.  Last time I mentioned that we had had a few days of rains - grass is green again and plants are growing very fast due to the heat and humidity.  We have not had any more rain but lets hope it comes soon.  We need it not only for the vegetation, and to fill the dam, but to clear the air..........

On that note, let me wish you a blessed week,

Diane