Well for the last 2 days it has been pouring rain and overcast in Malawi. All of the natives have been saying that we have brought the Scottish weather with us! But that does not stop the daily life of Malawians as they are up and out before 7am – the streets are full of people walking to where they need to go and are constantly busy at a very early start. Yesterday was a very busy day for us with a 7.30am pick-up from Kabula Lodge. We then visited for primary schools that the Glasgow teachers will be working in (Namwiyo, Ndirande, Chitsemi and Nyambadwe Lions Primary Schools). The greetings from all of the pupils were amazing, singing and dancing as our mini-bus pulled up, waiting eagerly to see who would arise out of the doors. We honestly felt like some sort of celebrities. Check out our facebook page for some pics and videos. We also were able to visit with many of the teachers from the schools. We were able to look at there school action plans which were very basic and hand written on paper and put up in the Headteacher’s office. In Chitsemi, one of the statistics up on the walls was their exam results. In primary school, you must pass an exam to move up a level and also onto secondary school. However not all pupils were selected to go to secondary school. Out of the 303 students who were entered for exams, 238 passed but only 58 of these students were selected to go to secondary school. We then visited two secondary schools, Blantyre Secondary School (BSS) and Chichiri Secondary School (our partner school). It was amazing to see the differences between the two. Although both schools are fee paying, BSS is a boarding school where students stay and only go home during holidays; Chichiri is a day school where pupils walk up to 10km per day to get to school. At Chichiri some students decided to stay home or go home early because of the poor weather (rain!) – imagine if that happened in Scotland?!! At Chichiri we were able to meet our link teacher, Damian, who has been great at helping us get our project up and running. We discussed how we saw the project moving forward and how we would like to establish some initiatives for the students. We also briefly visited Mary’s Meals headquarters as 2 teachers are working with an Early years project there. We plan on going out another day to look at everything that Mary’s meals in Malawi. Here you can see some of the Mary’s Meals porridge being made at one of the primary schools. Today was our first day at Chichiri to meet more staff and some of the pupils We arranged to teach some classes as well. Miss Timlin took a PE lesson in the assembly hall and all of the students were well behaved and happy. They do not have PE kit and good footwear like pupils do in Scotland but we had to make do – and there was not one complaint! Mr. Lamb was able to observe a maths lesson as well. He was amazed that although there were 50 students in the class, it was much quieter than he normally teaches! They were all very studious and when they were answering questions they stood up to say their answers. All very polite! Tomorrow Mr. Lamb will be teaching the class geometry. We then got picked up to visited Zingwangwa primary where Holyrood Secondary are doing some work. They have built classrooms last year so this year they are painting them. We have some pictures of some of these classrooms as we would like our pupils to perhaps do something similar next year at a different primary school. We then met Sister Eunice, who is the regional director or Education in the Blantyre district. After a long day we are back at Kabula Lodge for some dinner and an early night. We can’t really sit out with all the rain and I have managed to get quite a few bites so have made sure I use spray all the time now! We are amazed how much the children here want to be photographed – they follow you everywhere. And once you show them the photograph, they are so happy!!
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:22:17 +0000
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