Half a year!!

6 Months in Malawi!

I can’t believe I have been in Malawi for just over 6 months. How time seems to fly past! I have had lots of time to reflect this week as I’m the only volunteer here at the moment, Katrein and Andrew are away at a Doctors training thing, Sue is down in the South of the country, Jonathan is on motorbike training and Hill has left for home. I feel I have achieved some good things at work, albeit slowly but I still have lots to do before I can call this a successful placement. Some weeks there is really nothing to do and other weeks I don’t have a minute for myself.

My main job so far has been to set up and help run events that wouldn’t happen otherwise due to funding or forward planning. This really includes holding a chairing some monthly meetings for the Education Advisors, running workshops like library training and computer training, helping the Advisors run their Teacher Development Centres by setting up Action Plans, facilitating exchange visits to try and help the Malawians learn good practise from each other and finally monitoring and giving advice to the classroom teachers. I especially like working with the teachers and I really to admire how they try to cope with such large classes and such poor resources (Basically no resources at all!). I do sometimes feel like I am an intruder to their classrooms (a bit like how us teachers feel when someone comes to watch us) but they really seem appreciative that I have come to watch them teach.

I have also been taking lots of photos for use back in school and recently asked George my night watchman/gardener if I could take some pictures of his family and especially his nephew for a sort of Day in My Life type activity. George was very pleased about this and we agreed to meet at his house a 9 the following day. When I arrived the whole family was very busy washing themselves, brushing their hair and changing into their Sunday best clothing. It was very humbling to see them make this much effort just to have their pictures taken. Mind you I did tell them that all the boys and girls in Scotland would like to see the photos!!

Anyway had a great Saturday night just past and woke up on the Sunday with a slight hangover, only my third hangover since arriving here 6 months ago! At least my liver will be a lot better when I return home!! We had a double celebration in Rumphi as it was Jonathan’s birthday and Hill’s leaving bash combined into a barbeque at Dr Andrew’s house. (Poor Andrew actually missed the event as he was in Blantyre!) Hill has been working with a small organisation called DAMRA so several of his Malawian counterparts came along as well. His boss is well known to us all as he is the resident language teacher – although my skills in Timbuka, the local language, are still very limited surprisingly enough!


So this way a party with a difference – a Malawian difference. They do like to have formal proceedings for every event and this one was no different! We had a Master of Ceremonies to conduct the whole evening and there were formal speeches from just about everyone, singing, dancing and an opening and closing prayer for the event! It was highly entertaining and for my dance, I taught them the Flying Scotsman in a very small room!

We had all prepared the food which of course had to include rice for the Malawians and there was lots to drink. I really enjoyed the whole event as did the other volunteers. It will be sad to lose Hill from Rumphi as he is highly enthusiastic and always on hand to help out with any of my motorbiking problems!!

It does make you think about our placements and how our Malawian counterparts must feel. They spend a long time getting to know and getting used to the volunteers and then all of a sudden they leave for home and, if the organisation is lucky a new volunteer arrives and the whole process starts again. I guess that is the general pattern when working in development, well especially volunteering. Some VSO’s do stay for up to 5 years but mainly they are fellow African volunteers from Kenya or Uganda. Most of the European volunteers need to get back home and start earning proper money again and paying their pensions etc etc!

Hills leaving speech summed up the past year from him by saying that at home the years can feel like they just roll into one but this past year has been something totally different and special. That is quite a true statement, well for the last 6 months for me at least!

Missing you all

Caz xx