10 June

My birthday today, something that I had planned to keep hidden from the staff and other volunteers here, but Yanni let the cat out of the bag a couple of days ago, so I was met with enthusiastic singing when I finally dragged my lazy arse from the mosquito net and began to hobble, clenching desperately, hoping to reach the only flushing toilet (which I’m sharing with about 20 others) before disaster struck.  The toilet is accessed through the living room, and as I soon as I entered it I was commanded to sit, and presented with a plate of scrambled egg and cheese on toast by Yanni, a magnificent gesture, as cheese is very hard to obtain here, and Jospeh our cook had made the bread himself. (The egg was begged off another volunteer.) But I would rather sit there and clench and be loved, than have free access to the toilet and be lonely, I tell myself, as I ate with real gratitude (Yanni really is a good cook) and clenched desperately. I’m glad I’m here.  My second birthday since Arie died.  Somehow its easier to acknowledge it here, and be able to move on to think about something else.

We had community outreach again today.  This time too the school was housed in a brick building, and the mud floors and pathways around it were swept meticulously clean.  The ‘brooms’ are made of very pliable twigs bound together at one end, no stick being needed.  The classroom we were to give our presentation in was extremely dark, as all classrooms are, due to the lack of windows or electric light.  As I attempted to scale the 2 foot wall in front of the classroom (a very difficult thing to do in a Chitenja) I was really amused to see several groups of children hurrying towards the classroom with large battered galvanized buckets and long straggly mops about 2 feet taller than they were.  Little clusters of children went to different areas of the dark classroom and started mopping energetically, while some scooped water in double cupped hands and threw it around the floor, and third groups used large rags to collect up the water and dust together.  Another group of 8 children set to on the glass windows with a bucket of very dirty looking water and some rags, and did an excellent job of cleaning them; and a third group of about 20 boys began to ferry furniture from other classrooms into our empty one.  Merry chaos ensued, but in an atmosphere of great anticipation of the treat before them (!!!).  In about 20 minutes the children had mopped the floors clean of a good half inch or so of red soil dust, the windows were clean enough to see through/let light in, and so many desks and benches had been lifted through the door that it was difficult to squeeze the children and teachers in.  But squeeze them in they did.  In the end there were 137 children squeezed onto about 20 wooden benches, ages ranging from 5 to 15.  Once all were seated, and 6 adult teachers had squeezed in and stood alongside the wall, we were given a rapturous greeting by the children who sung a terrific welcome song,137 sets of perfect white teeth gleaming amidst the darkness of the room.

Cleaning windows

A fully assembled class

A lovely surprise then as the children sang me happy birthday, and I have attached a video clip of as much of that as I could film.  Again, 137 sets of perfect white gleaning teeth shone at me out of the darkness.  I felt very touched.

The room had electricity, a wonderful bonus, so although there were no lights we were able to use a projector to play a short film on the subject “Educate girls”, before moving on to the theme of deforestation, our theme for today.  I presented, and a translator translated into Chechewa simultaneously.  Afterwards, we went outside and played the game of musical chairs without the music or the chairs, this time using scrunched up bits of waste paper in the place of chairs.  It was all very enjoyable, and at the end the children poured up to me to hug me - I think a lot of them just wanted to touch a white person. Hugging seems to be the way they are comfortable doing this.  Only the tiny ones were too shy to hug, but they responded very well to a soft “Bo bo” (meaning “hi”) and a wave, some even replying with a shy “How are you” - a phrase they call also say although of course many don’t understand - before they melted with shyness into the red dust floors.  I must say that in the year I spent teaching on mental health issues in schools in Scotland I never met a single class as well behaved as the children I meet here.  Theyare a real tonic for the soul.

On the way home from the school we drove through a house scheme - or shanty town is perhaps more realistic - that appeared to have been built on a rubbish dump.  The buildings were event dirtier and more basic than ever, and I could see very few water pipes, so the occupants must have been walking a good distance each day to access water.  Given this, its particularly striking to note that the children in the school were all wearing school uniform, many of which were very clean and well presented.  Of course there is so much dust everywhere that all the smaller children had clothes that evidenced a good deal of dust and disorder, but it seems to me to be a miracle that the children had school uniforms at all.  Uniforms must be purchased, also books and pencils. And although the government says schooling is free, each child must pay a sum each term in to the “Development fund”, and if they do not pay this they can not attend.  I heard one of the taxi drivers says his children could not attend school this year as he had not made enough money.  No one is complaining, but these guys have a tough life, no doubt about it.

We dropped of ten large bags black plastic bin bags of paper waste to a group of women who made briquettes, and we were met with immense enthusiasm and real gratitude by the women, all of whom repeatedly addressed me as “madam”.  They proudly showed us their briquettes (here’s one I made earlier), ready for sale.  When we got back to the Sanctuary I suggested to the outreach manager that we take briquettes to the schools with us, and during the presentation,  give each child a briquette with a small slip of paper with costs and a phone number to order them.  The sanctuary could then deliver the briquettes for free.  This would be expensive, but potentially a very effective way to get people to try a new form of fuel.  As we know, it is very difficult to get people to change their habits, and this is of course just the same in Africa.  If any barrier to trying a new fuel can be removed, it must be a good thing.  We are currently costing this to see if its something the Sanctuary can fund for 6 months, to see how it works.  We would know the success rate as orders would come direct to the Sanctuary itself, and we would also deliver the briquettes.  This may also provide extra work making the briquettes, which could be met through the donation of another £60 to purchase the necessary equipment as a gift for a group of women keen to find a way to work.    These micro grants have a very high success rate, and certainly the projects I have seen here are very successful. Fingers crossed some of this works out.

I had the afternoon free, as it was my birthday, so had a long nap (it gets very tiring in the heat, or anyway, that’s my excuse), and am now settling down to a fun evening with a new volunteer who has just arrived, and has announced she has cheese, and 400 films on her hard drive, including Mockingjay part 2.  A great night ahead!