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Lorne Primary School, Lorne Street, Edinburgh, EH6 8QS, (0131) 554 2308

News From Malawi

News update from Malawi 5th April 2009

It was very touching to see their delight at the start of February, when UNICEF delivered a set of Class in a Box for the school. They are a great idea: a lockable steel cabinet containing chalk, writing slates, pencils, paper, rulers, blackboard paint- everything, in fact, that you would need to turn a bare room into a classroom for 75 children. The stationery was given out the next day, a ruler, rubber, packet of crayons and two jotters in each re-sealable carrier bag, and the children were ecstatic. The slates have revolutionised Standard 1 (carrying 247 jotters was getting too much for the teacher) and the blackboard paint- well, that has gone in the store for now, but will come in handy in due course, we're sure.

Then there were the desks. They arrived (all 120 of them) tied more or less securely to the back of a lorry, to be unloaded and distributed by the kids themselves. This means that, together with the desks we had restored with Lorne's money, all of Stds 5, 6, 7 and 8 have good, solid desks to work on. Admittedly there are three children sharing a desk meant for 2, but it's a whole lot better than sitting on the floor.

We have had our remits extended- I suppose we should be honoured- with the allocation of extra responsibilities. This year, Fiona will be joining the elite and dynamic organisational force that is the entertainments committee, while James has assumed the heavy mantel of sanitation and beautification officer. We sometimes feel that sweeping the playground and cleaning the toilets are higher priorities than teaching and learning (all of them, of course, taking a back seat to the eating of porridge, naturally...) so this is high esteem indeed.

We are now on holiday for Easter for three weeks, during which we will be kept busy. We are currently working on a programme for the Saturday orphan school for the next year, trying to find builders, carpenters, tailors, etc to share their skills with the children and projects around the centre which the children can be involved in and even run themselves, as well as enjoying the fruits of their labour (the photo shows two of the orphans with the aubergines from the vegetable garden they have been working on). It's slightly odd to be planning all this, knowing that we won't be around to see it all happen. We might just have to come back to visit soon!

We're trying not to get too excited this time, but the electricity seems to have made a tentative return to Likhubula. It hasn't quite reached our house yet, but we think that may be due to the bats nibbling through the cables in the 6 months since it went off. It's a shame it didn't come back on two weeks ago. Trying to book our holiday to Zambia over the internet was fraught with difficulties, but seems to be done now and we leave on Friday as long as our money, which is currently wending its way across the ether, gets to them on time! Hopefully next time we write on here we will be in the company of elephants, giraffes and zebras, or perhaps looking out over Victoria Falls. How exciting....

News update from Malawi 31st January 2009

Last time we wrote, the work at the school was nearing completion. It is now long finished, dried, and beginning that slow decline inevitable in buildings containing children. However nice it was to see it looking pristine, it is, of course, fantastic to see the classrooms being used, and it was really touching to see the delight that the children, and especially the adults, took in having newly decorated classrooms. We have been told countless times how beautiful they are, and how great it will be to teach in such a lovely environment. The pinboards have been a particular success- although it cost us considerable angst to get the things done properly (now is not the time to go into that. There are children reading.). What has been really good, though, has been the extent to which the adults and children who helped in the work have taken ownership of it, telling their friends which bits they did, asking if there’s anything else to be done and, most importantly, ensuring people take care of it.

We didn’t stop with the interiors, either. The Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust kindly donated some plants and trees for the playground, which we planted at the end of our work, just as the rains were starting in earnest. They are now well established, and their presence has been a catalyst for all sorts of outdoor work. The drains have been cleared, steps have been repaired and the scrub land outside the head’s office has been hoed and loamed, ready for some tomato seedlings and beans to be planted by the Standard 8s during next week’s manual work. Various small shrubs have appeared overnight, brought by pupils and staff to complement the hedges (now complete with cordons to keep the little ones from trampling them), fruit trees and leafy bushes (so the staff can sit nearer their classes and still be in the shade). It’s not the Beechgrove Garden, but it’s a start, and the pupils and staff seem genuinely proud of it.

It is unlikely that we will ever again share a class, especially one with 130 pupils (a school perhaps, but not a class...) but it has been a fascinating and very enjoyable experience. Fiona mainly teaches Environmental Studies and Life Skills. James takes responsibility for Science and Health and Agriculture. English and Maths we rotate week about. But the really interesting bit, and the main focus of the last four weeks, has been the establishment of a class ethos- the rules and the routines which make day-to-day teaching possible. We are not yet there, by any means, but we are making progress. Considerable progress if you take into account the language barrier, the sheer size of the class (doing the register takes twenty minutes. Giving out all the jotters takes about the same) and the fact that, to all intents and purposes, they have had no permanent teacher for the last two years. After four weeks we have (we think) learned all of their names. We have a ‘Clever’ (aptly named, but 19 and a bit too old for primary school), an‘Average’ (who is in fact very clever) and a ‘Bright’ among them, which amuses us, and the smallest boy in the class is called ‘Fraction’. Last term we told the headteacher that we wanted to work much harder and we are certainly doing that. It is, however, very satisfying when all 130 of them are paying attention and are engaged with our lessons (it is starting to happen more often!). It was particularly moving when we told them all about the inauguration of Barack Obama and the story of his father, who came from a village and school just like theirs.

Blodwin began by helping mainly in our class, but we were told we were being greedy by keeping her all to ourselves and she is now going round various classes assisting with the marking of the hundreds of jotters and occasionally even being left to supervise a class while the teacher goes into town shopping for the day! She brought with her many books and jigsaws kindly donated by the parents at Lorne Primary. The children are loving being able to borrow books to read at home, and the Nursery children are having great fun with the jigsaws (when they are allowed to play with them- the teachers also think they are great!).

News update from Malawi 8th December 2008

It seems incredible that we are into December now, and that we have been here for almost four months. The big news here this week has been the reappearance of electricity- a very welcome development.

The rains have now well and truly started, much to the relief of the villagers, who can at last plant the maize which will be their staple for the coming year.

While we, together with one of the teachers and a few of the pupils, have done all the painting work, we have hired plasterers, carpenters and joiners to do piecework like mending desks, building cupboards for books and making noticeboards to display pupils’ work.

The pupils’ reactions to the books have been astonishing. Boxes of brand new, graded reading books were donated some years ago, and, in order to preserve their condition, have sat on top of the head’s filing cabinet ever since. Now, for the first time, they are seeing the light of day, being cleared of the bat poo, and being put into new cupboards in the appropriate classroom, where

the children might actually have a chance of reading them.

A number of children have helped in the sorting of these colourful,

interesting books, although several became distracted by the literary wonders unfolding before their eyes. Even the carpenters had a couple of breaks to see what was Fantastic about Ben’s Plant and to read about Footballing Legends. We have been very encouraged, and look forward to using these amazing resources in the new year.

In the meantime, we have our trip to South Africa to look forward to, beginning next weekend. We are looking forward to a bit of variation from our current diet of vegetable stew (although the mango chutney has added a new dimension, there are only so many ways of making tomatoes and cabbage interesting), a little pampering and a few glasses of select wine. Not to mention electricity and running water.

News update from Malawi 25th October 2008

Our classes are in the middle of exams at the moment, which means we are very busy with writing them and then doing all the marking. It takes a while when you have 90 of them for each subject! Our reading club has now been going for 3 weeks. We have about 50 regulars from Standard 6 who walk all the way home for lunch and then back again to school for the club, which starts at 3. In the meantime we scratch together a lunch from the market, usually consisting of bread and tomatoes, then go for our half hour Chichewa lesson with Mr Keyala, one of the teachers at the school. It’s been good to get to know him a bit better and we feel that we are progressing with our learning of this language, which is so different from any other that either of us has learned in the past, albeit slowly. It is good to be able to use some Chichewa phrases with our classes. “Khalani pansi” and “Khalani chete” (“Sit down” and “Be quiet”) are particularly helpful.

We thought when we left Scotland that the children here would be desperate to learn. This is true of some children but certainly not all. The school role rose dramatically when Mary’s Meals started to serve porridge there every day and it seems that that is the main reason for some of them being at school. There is a very clear appreciation here of the relationship between education and escape from poverty, to the extent that children will walk for miles every day to go to school. Does that mean that they all shut up and listen when they get there? Not exactly.... The reading club itself is going well. It is lovely to work with relatively small groups. We are helped by Alastair, the other Scottish volunteer living at the house with us, so we have groups of 15-20 children each. The children are so enthusiastic about reading whatever books we find for them, and it is good to see a genuine improvement in their English even in this short space of time.

News update from Malawi 8th October 2008

As well as our previously mentioned ideas, it had occurred to us that the teaching of agriculture has to be a priority in this region and that teaching it through textbooks as happens at the moment is nowhere near as useful as teaching it practically. The problem is, of course, that the school has none of the equipment (ploughs, oxen, etc) needed and nor for that matter do any of the surrounding villages. We had thought that purchasing a piece of land, a plough, ridger and some oxen for the school could have a number of benefits. It would allow the children to learn about these things practically, it would provide a resource for the local village smallholders to use and it would allow the school to make some income of its own, which would cover the maintenance of the equipment and purchase of seeds, etc. Mr Nyambalo was enthusiastic about this idea but had reservations. In fact he said that, unless he remained teaching at the school, the sad reality was that we would probably return in a few years to find the oxen dead and the plough broken and lying in a cupboard somewhere.

There have been several ‘casual’ holidays from school recently so we have taken these opportunities to see a bit more of Malawi. Last weekend we took a guide up Mount Mulanje, which is actually an enormous plateau. There are several huts on the plateau- very much like the best kind of Scottish ‘bothy’- which people use as bases as they explore the mountain. We took a 3 day route, climbing 1000m the first day to Chambe Hut, then traversing the plateau the second day and spending the night at the CCAP Hut and climbing down on the third day. Although the heights are no more than we are used to in Scotland, the heat certainly was.

News update from Malawi 19th September 2008

Having now been teaching here for five weeks, we are starting to get an idea of how things actually work (or don't...). We want to be as useful as possible while we are here, but are keen that changes we make and initiatives we begin are sustainable.

It seems to us ridiculous that the entire curriculum here is taught in English when the children's English, and in most cases even the teachers', is not good enough to understand the content. Imagine our pupils learning everything in French or Spanish and that is what it is like. Only the very brightest children seem to have any idea of what they are learning and the rest just learn to repeat, parrot fashion. It is particularly sad in the case of agriculture as it is practised exclusively in Chichewa, but the children 'learn' about it in English, so the ones who are likely to go on to be smallholders are the ones who are least likely to understand it.

We are not here to reform the Malawian curriculum. It seems, however, that good English is the key to success in this country and that is something we can help the children in our school with. We have found a huge stash of Scottish reading books, still in their original boxes, in the school office. We spent this afternoon with some children who were keen to help, sorting them out and scraping the dust and bat poo off them! We plan to start an after school reading club four afternoons per week using these, for keen beans in Standards 6 and 7. We hope they do not all turn up, however, or our groups will be huge!

We had a chat with the headteacher this week about how best to spend the money raised by Lorne Primary School, and we agreed that painting and decorating each classroom was a good start. We will also put up noticeboords so children's work can be displayed and commission local carpenters to build shelves for the many books, giving each class a small library. We plan to do a lot of this work ourselves (hopefully with some little helpers) during November, which is the start of the school Christmas holidays. By the time that is done, we will have earned our rest in South Africa!

News update from Malawi 6th September 2008

"Highlights of the last fortnight have included the Standard 8 Leavers’ party- the children took their final Primary school exams this week, and won’t come back to school now (assuming they are successful...), so there was a big party last Friday, complete with DJ, decorated classroom and optimistic speeches. Oh, and a goat. We were slightly startled to meet a group of Standard 8 children leading a goat towards the school at the beginning of the week, and even more startled to learn that this creature was to be the star attraction- having been slaughtered and cooked by the children themselves.

We’re told that goat is quite an acquired taste, and I’m not sure that either of us has truly acquired it yet. The speeches centered on encouraging the children to work hard, have courage and not to get married in celebration of finishing primary school (the legal age for marriage is 18 for girls and 21 for boys, but apparently this is frequently ignored and no-one bothers very much)."

Mrs Hutchinson and her Husband have arrived safely in Malawi and here is their first impressions of their home for the next year.

"Our first impressions on arrival were of an amazing setting -

Mulanje Mountain is stunning and the sun setting on it was beautiful.

The centre is high up the side of the mountain, with its own river to provide the water supply. Our house is very basic, but does at least have electricity (when the supply works- which it didn't at all on Sunday and Monday) and hot water, which is more than 90% of Malawians have. We share our garden with monkeys and occasional dogs, and our house with various interesting and rather large insects and spiders.

Nansato Primary School, where we are teaching, is a 20 minute walk down the hill and we have to be there at 6.30 every morning! The children arrive at 7, when they have a short outdoor assembly and then are set to work sweeping the playground and scrubbing the classroom floors!"