adventures......

Hello everyone from a beautiful sunny day in Mzuzu,

Its so nice to have a Saturday where we are not training or rushing somewhere!  Friday week ago we travelled to Lilongwe for a meeting with Lilongwe Presbytery on Saturday.  On the way we took advantage of meeting with one of our trainers along the road side.  This is Kettie with her lovely family and here you can see Nicolas doing some 'business' with her in the roadside office!

Kettie and her family.  The youngest boy was scared of me!! (are you surprised??)

We proceeded to Lilongwe where we were meeting the Presbytery the next day to sensitize them on Early Childhood Development and here you can see me in action!  It was a good meeting with many questions being asked.

We returned to Mzuzu on Saturday evening and then on Sunday these four ladies arrived from Karonga.  Some of you know Lucy on the right our trainer in Karonga presbytery.  Lucy brought three caregivers from the Presbytery to have some experience of Early Childhood Centres in Mzuzu.  it was a pleasure to have them even though it rained solidly for the duration of their stay.  On the first day I was taking one of them to one of our centres within Mzuzu and we got stuck in the mud - or rather the car just turned around by itself  - eventually I managed to right it and continue on our way!!  They enjoyed their time in Mzuzu and hopefully the centres they have come from will benefit from what they have learned.

Martha, Ireen, Bettie and Lucy

On Tuesday Nicolas and myself together with the Lucy and her caregivers travelled to Karonga where we dropped them and then we proceeded to Chitipa.  In the good old days it used to take 5-6 hours to reach Chitipa due to the road condition after Karonga.  However the road was tarred last year and it makes such a difference - in stead of 3 hours from Karonga to Chitipa it took 1 and an half hours.  Another plus is that as I was driving I did not arrive completely exhausted!!

Chitipa is in the far north of Malawi and borders Zambia and Tanzania.  I always enjoy going there - people are very welcoming and friendly and work hard!  When we arrived we were told there was no running water (which is quite a common occurrence and quite ironic considering the heavy rainfall we have had!  However, this was my bathing water for the night!!

I took a picture of the soap as I thought it was hilarious (and only in Africa).  It was a bar of soap cut in half!!  I was just thankful to have water and soap!

The reason we went to Chitipa was to meet our trainers from Chitipa district.  There are two from Wenya Presbytery, two from Chitipa Presbytery and one from the remote Misuku Presbytery.

Prescott, Dennis, Vibrin and Lyness

Dennis (second from left) comes from Misuku and he walked for 6 hours to get to the meeting - never mind that it rained heavily the whole time and he had to cross a fast running river in the process - he was almost washed away.  I was very thankful to see him in one piece!  

Lyness and Foster

Lyness and Vibrin come from Wenya and the road is treacherous at present due to the rains (its a dirt road) and so it was a slow journey for them that took almost a whole day.  We always give thanks for safe travelling in Malawi especially during the rains.

Part of the assignment we were doing with the trainers was monitoring two centres in Chitipa to ensure that they understand completely what we are looking for.  This is one of the centres which as you can see was a small room with 50 children when they are all present.  The teacher was standing at the front and it was all rote learning - a big disappointment for me, as we promote child centred approach and play!  

Outdoors was a bit better with some play materials available but inside there was nothing!

Children enjoying the seesaw made locally

At this time of year when its raining we have some incredible skies in the evening and on Wednesday night in Chitipa was no exception - it was as if the sky was aglow and someone was painting it in golden colours - it was fabulous and the picture does not do it justice.  The wonder of creation!

Another wonder of creation but this time by human hands!  I am always fascinated by some of our shops and I found another interesting one in Chitipa - the chips room where  I am sure you have guessed you can buy chips!  Notice the sign behind which is a welding and coffin workshop - you can get anything you need here!!

We came home on Thursday and passed  by one of our centres in Karonga which you can see in the top picture and in the two pictures below - it was great - the caregivers were doing a wonderful job and the kids were having a lot of fun.

Play materials inside the centre

Arriving in Mzuzu, I noticed that the outside our church beside my house it had been painted.  I thought maybe we were having a function on Sunday and they were getting ready for it.  However, I was not aware that March 1 was the Women's World Day of Prayer and the Guest of Honour in Mzuzu was the President of the nation - that was why everything was being cleaned up.  On Friday morning I went to work as usual at 7.30am to find that many people had already gathered at the church even though the function would not begin until 1pm.

In Malawi on special occasion there is a cloth printed and the Women's World Day of Prayer cloth is green as you seen the photo below.  

At lunchtime I had a phone call from one of my colleagues to see if I could take photographs at the function as her daughter was chosen to present flowers to the President.  Of course I readily agreed, and rushed over to the church.  Here you can see the lovely young girl with the flowers awaiting the  Presidential car to arrive.  Behind you can see the church leaders from different denominations.

Of course in Malawi no function which the President attends is free from her party supporters and these are the ladies dressed in orange lining the route into the church.

I was privileged to be allowed to take photos and  was one of few photographers allowed to take pictures.  Here you can see the girl handing over the flowers to a very gracious President, Her Excellency Dr Joyce Banda.

proceeding into the church

So its been an exhausting as well as an exciting week - we travelled from Lilongwe in the central region to Chitipa in the far north and were blessed with travelling mercies.  I hope you have had as exciting a week as I have whatever you were doing.

Wishing you a good weekend and week ahead - we have a public holiday on Monday so its a time to relax!!

Thank you for all your support for the blog - please do leave a comment as it encourages me to keep going!!

Blessings,

Diane

anyone looking for a working holiday???

Hello there,

This is just a quick post to ask if anyone would be free in August 2013 for a couple of weeks  (or more) to come and teach our teachers in the CCAP International Pre-school.  They have been Montessori trained but I am not really looking specifically for a Montessori trained person to come.  I am looking for someone who can deal with issues like health and nutrition, managing unruly children, interaction between teachers, learning in the outdoors........the list is endless!!

Another aspect to consider is looking at issues of working with children 1-3 years as most of our early childhood manuals here deal with children three years and above.

If anyone is interested please get in touch with me as soon as possible (if you don't have my contact details just leave a message on the blog and I will get in touch with you).  Obviously you will need to have experience in an early years setting yourself!!

Look forward to hearing from you!!

Blessings,

Diane

another week......

Hello everyone from a cool damp day in Mzuzu!  I went to the Anglican church this morning which meant I was home just after 9am, probably while most of you were still in bed!  

This week has been busy as always.  Its the rainy season and although in Mzuzu we have not had as much rain as I remember in past years, some parts of the country have been really badly flooded, and yet others have had little rain.  Here the maize is growing well and people are busy working in the fields - we are getting rain every few days and it doesn't seem to be too much!

Last weekend it was Matt's birthday so I went to his party in Ekwendeni - doesn't he look well with his flower in his hair!  One of the children gave it to him!!

We are continuing to visit Presbyteries to sensitize ministers and session clerks on the importance of Early Childhood, and to discuss how we can assist each other in this ministry.  This week we went to Champhira Presbytery.  Unfortunately as we arrived there we realised there was a funeral in the village so the Presbytery Clerk had to go and conduct the funeral.  As the meeting was going on the funeral passed by with the coffin in the oxcart - I didn't think it appropriate to take a picture but you can imagine what it was like.  It was windy and the minister's robes were flowing behind him!  They had to walk 5kms to the graveyard from the church and it was in the heat of the day.......

Here you can see the group of session clerks with one minister who were very active in their participation.

On Friday morning Nicolas and I decided to go out to visit two centres within Mzuzu to see how they were getting on.  The first one was at Msongwe and we found some children (there are 55 on the rollbook) but they had not yet all arrived.  They were very excited to see us.

I brought a box with some toys and the boys especially were very excited with the balls inside......

After Msongwe, we went to Lusangazi where we found only a few children with the caregivers - this was because of a funeral in the village and many of the children had not come.  In this culture if there is a funeral in the village everyone goes to it regardless of whether you knew the person well or not.  This causes many problems in the workplace when every day we have funerals here and so the workforce almost certainly has someone missing each day to attend a funeral.

On Saturday there was a state funeral for Paramount Chief M'mbelwa IV of Mzimba.  He was not only a chief but an Ngoni King and he died suddenly.  I did not go to the funeral but saw some of it on TV.  As an Ngoni he was buried sitting up as is the tradition so the coffin was not the usual shape that we know. Ngoni people bury their leaders in a seated postion so that they may keep watch on enemy armies, perpetuating the belief that Ngoni's never die but live on to play watchful roles over the living.  His body was viewed and he was sitting up holding his head in his hands with his glasses on - he just looked like he was sleeping! As it was a state funeral the President and many other politicians were in attendance.  Livingstonia synod were doing the funeral service which was accompanied by different funeral rites of the Ngoni people.  Apparently in the past when a chief died, the servant girl who worked for him was buried alive with him - nowadays that tradition is no longer followed, but a  bull is killed and its hide put around the chief and the gallbladder also put in with him!!

His son who was the crown prince will take over his throne! 

Yesterday I was driving in Mzuzu when suddenly a bicycle came at the car and as I swerved to miss it, it hit me and took off the back bumper part of the car.  I stopped and the guy on the bicycle was okay thankfully, but these are the perils of living in a city where most people travel on 'sacramento's' or bicycle taxis!

So that is how my week went - I hope you also had a good week and I wish you all a pleasant week ahead.

Blessings,
Diane

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

A new year with new ideas.......

Hello everyone and a very Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that the new year brings you much joy and peace.

Today is a public holiday so I thought I would take the opportunity of updating the blog as I haven't done it since before Christmas.  On Christmas Eve I went to an African Nativity which was really quite well done, although due to the late start (African time) it went on late into the evening.  Here you can see Mary looking very perplexed as Joseph wants nothing to do with her after hearing she is pregnant!

and Joseph in a dilemma as he doesn't understand how Mary could have betrayed him as he loves her so much...

Of course no drama of the nativity is complete without angels...........

and being an African nativity, we had a few traditional dancers thrown in too!!

All in all it was a great show, and the traditional aspects really made it a true African nativity!

Christmas day dawned bright and sunny and as has become a sort of tradition I had a barbeque in the garden with some friends. Here you can see Luso and her family - with the baby Asimeye who is now grown up so much!!

Fidelis is with me for the holidays and he had some of his friends over on Christmas day too...

Asimenye is very busy carrying things to Dad...

When the children are there, we always have to play pin the tail on the donkey...this is Nicolas looking for the donkey which was stuck to this tree.....he did find it eventually!

And no this is not someone from the Taureg in North Africa come to visit us, but it is blessings with the blindfold tied on very creatively!

Pass the parcel is also a favourite and Pemphero got the prize which maybe was not what he would have wanted - a teddy bear!!

Well its now 2013 and Nicolas and I have been making plans for the first quarter of the year in terms of Early Childhood Development.  We are planning to have an induction ceremony for the ECD Board at the end of January and then they can assist us in planning. However, we hope to do some material making workshops with our trainers so that they can be more creative in the things they make with caregivers.  Thanks to people in Ireland sending scraps of material in the training boxes, we spent a couple of days this week looking at various soft toys we could make and then making them.  Even Nicolas made an elephant - you can see him here concentrating hard.........

a tortoise...

a funky chicken...

a frog or possibly a toad as it is quite large......

I am very fussy about the sewing that we do  because we want these toys to be sturdy enough for young children so that they don't pull them apart and eat the stuffing!!

and Nicolas's elephant.........

We have had some good rains in the last couple of weeks.  However, in the south of the country there has been a lot of flooding and many people have lost their homes and crops.    Here the maize is growing well and in my garden this week I have a lot of mushrooms growing - not advisable to eat them I think.  Many of the mushrooms here are edible but I am not sure which are and which are not so I just stay clear of them.  Every year we have many people admitted to hospital due to eating the wrong type of mushrooms.  I must say they do look beautiful in the garden though.

So, its a new year and although I did not make any new year resolutions, we have begun the year with new ideas for the Early Childhood office.  We will be visiting some Presbyteries to sensitize them on Early Childhood and how they can best assist us in congregations; we hope to have workshops with our trainers in material making; we hope to be able to complete another phase of our building project so that possible one class will be able to move to the new site.  In all of this we ask for God's guidance and provision and blessing on our work.  

I had the privilege of being the first person to preach in St Andrew's church on the first Sunday of 2013.  Our theme for the month is 'being sure of our calling and salvation'.  It is the first time I have been asked to preach (probably due to our new minister who I know quite well), but I did enjoy the experience very much.

I also hope to complete my studies in early 2013 and will spend the rest of today writing up my dissertation.  

I hope you also have good plans for 2013 and trust that God will bless you wherever you are.  Thanks for all the positive comments - please keep them coming.

Blessings and love,

Diane