I arrived in Blantyre, Malawi, mid-afternoon on Monday 14th October to a bloke called Melvin holding a sign with my name on it. I was then carted along dusty roads past people, cattle and cacti to the small countryside area of Domasi, about 30 minutes outside the main town Zomba (30 minutes in a taxi, it takes significantly longer by public transport). My reason for arriving here first? To volunteer with the project
Tikondwe, meaning 'everybody be happy' in Chichewa, the local language.
The project is wonderful with a focus on just about everything that goes on in and around the Domasi area.
7 community schools for children of all ages, 2 HIV support groups, an orphanage, a youth group, community healthcare initiatives, a female empowerment group, the list is ENDLESS. And the villagers rely on the project so much for various crazy reasons ranging from needing a njinga ambulance (push-bike with a seat on the back for a passenger) to village quarrels which need to be solved by Emma the project coordinator. Her blog is fantastic to learn more about the project and keep up to date with what they're doing;
http://emmacammmalawi.wordpress.com/. If anyone is interested in volunteering with Tikondwe just contact her! She is a fantastic person who works far too hard with very little support, so don't take offence if your email isn't answered within the next few days of sending it! She is in Malawi after all, the place where EVERYTHING takes roughly 10 times longer than it would anywhere else in the world.
I was to stay with the Tikondwe project for 4 weeks before moving on in Malawi to visit the rest of the country.
My role was teaching local kids in the village of Mapanje, the main subjects being English and Math. A lot of the kids who came to this school (or rather brightly painted room with a blackboard) couldn't afford Government school and so I and the local teacher Diana were their only source of
education. We had a morning class for children ages 2 to 9ish and an
afternoon class for the elder kids. These students were to give me my
first taste of what children in Africa are like, my initial reaction
being that they are INSANE. Jumping on you, holding your hand, dragging
you to the ground with hugs, constantly asking to be picked up and
thrown about, doing handstands against you, cartwheels around you and
chatting away in the local language/any broken English they can think
of, the children of Mapanje school are
exhausting! And absolutely wonderful! Diana is a fantastic teacher always trying to make the lessons as new and as interesting as possible and the kids
love her. She has complete control over the class (something I never quite mastered) and always gave me the perfect amount of responsibility, never over-doing it and leaving me to my own devices so they children ran riot but never over-crowding me and my lesson plans in any way.
Mapanje school and the elder afternoon class showing off some of their work :)
Whilst working with the project myself and other volunteers stayed in the volunteer complex with a local family and our Malawian Mama and Papa. Mama can't speak much English but Papa knows how to hold a conversation perfectly. Themselves and their very large family live in 3 small homes nestled in between the volunteer bedroom (a room chock-a-block full of bunk beds), a common area (for eating, playing games, writing, socialising etc.), an outside toilet, an outside shower and a small courtyard area with a veranda. Although it all sounds very posh it wasn't, however it was very lovely. There is very (very, very) little electric in the village and so we had only one main light in the common area which sometimes did and sometimes didn't work; everywhere else at night had to be navigated by torch or candlelight. The outside shower was cold water only (a blessing in the October sun but I can only imagine the pain in the cold, wet season) and we cooked dinner bit by bit on the fire every night. It was wonderfully old fashioned and seemed to instantly bring all the volunteers and family closer together as a unit.
Our dorm room. The people in this room changed over time but it managed to stay a girls only zone! This had 8 beds altogether and another 4 in a smaller room to the right. There were also bunks in the common area in two small rooms off the main room. Mattresses were provided and sometimes mosquito nets if you were lucky enough to have nabbed one!
The Common area. Since 2011 (?) volunteers have been putting their handprints on the common areas walls to commemorate their time at Tikondwe. To the left where Toby is sitting is another 4 bed dorm room and Sam is sitting at the main table where we had 4 chairs. Around the room are benches to accommodate everyone for dinner and general social time.
The toilet and shower block. The toilet is the far left door (the proper flushing kind, privilege in Africa!), the shower is the middle and the door to the far right was some kind of storage. The floor was concrete and never clean, so showering was interesting! I don't think I was ever properly 100% clean once considering the sheer amount of dust you accumulate on your body throughout the day. But it did the job well enough and is better than a bucket shower any day!
The veranda and garden area. To the left is Mama and Papas house and the fire area and to the left is the common room. I'm taking the photo outside of my dorm room. This veranda was wonderful. There was often a lady called Mrs Perry sitting underneath it sewing all kinds of things with her sewing machine and the family would usually come and sit here in the afternoon when it was too hot to stay in the sun.
The volunteer and Mama + Papas compound. To the left is the volunteer common room, the white house next to it is the dorm area with the toilets behind the common room. In front behind the trees is the veranda and behind that is the kitchen area and Mama and Papas home. There were two other homes beside theirs for other family members and their children. It was one big, happy family; literally!
Unfortunately (or fortunately?!) the day after my arrival was Malawis' Mothers Day, a National holiday and therefore no school. As disappointing as it was to not jump straight into volunteering the day was a blessing in disguise as I was taken around the local town (and old capital city of Malawi), Zomba. Zomba is the nearest town to the project and is a mere hop, skip,
njinga ride (see picture) and minibus journey away. Old minibuses are the only way to get around Malawi without your own vehicle and are crammed full to the brim with people, luggage, chickens, shopping, bags of maize, crates of soda and just about everything else you can possibly think of. Zomba is a fine enough town with a fair sized market, few guesthouses, small botanical gardens, a few eateries and all your general basic needs (bank, post office, internet cafe etc.)
My second full day in Malawi came and went still with no volunteering as the local teaching staff had become confused as to whether school was on after yesterdays holiday or not. Why it wouldn't be was rather nonplussing as the day was a perfectly normal one with no national holiday to be had. This sort of inane confusion became very normal to me over the course of my time in Malawi where everything seems a little out of sorts and a tad backwards! Luckily I was to meet some of the children from other Tikondwe schools as we found a long band of rubber piping
which we managed to tape together to make a kind of basketball hoop.
The kids near the house LOVED this and Amos (a longer term volunteer) hammered it into a tree so the children could all try their hand at shooting some hoops!
Finally, 3 days after my arrival on 17th October I was introduced to Mapanje school by Amos and the crazy children that reside in the village. It was also incidentally my birthday. Diana and the children were so very, very sweet singing happy birthday to me and making me feel more than welcome! The younger childrens' English has very little to be said about, it's practically non-existent. Unfortunately without a real Government education where the children HAVE to go to school every day (Mapanje is a charity school and therefore rules are not enforced to ensure the children arrive every day), retaining information seemed slightly impossible to the youngens. We wrote numbers on small blackboards and played number games into the early afternoon, but after a while of doing the same thing the children get very bored. There's no stopping them going mad when the parla turns up; a
thick runny porridge like mix that the morning class are given around midday as an incentive to turn up to school and learn
(see picture of children sitting down ready to eat parla). Plus alot of their families can't afford breakfast OR lunch and so this parla would be many of the kids first meal of the day.
The elder class knew marginally more English and so teaching them was a little easier, however they are all at SUCH different levels of learning having 30 odd children all in one class, all of a different abilities, learning the same standard as each other was very difficult. The first day went well though and the afternoon class was always significantly less mad than the morning!
Tikondwe is a lucky charity in many ways, one of which being the sheer range of volunteers that arrive to help out. It's not all about teaching! Some volunteers don't want to be surrounded by crazy children all day (although whyever not surprises me greatly as they are fantastically hilarious 99.9% of the time!). For example a 70+ year old Aled was more interested in working in the garden associated with a HIV group, and a man called Richard was passionately trying to sort out a local ambulance service for the village. That's what makes this project so great; there are tons of people out
there with extraordinary passions which can easily be used in the
volunteering efforts. One guy called Charlie was a
FANTASTIC breakdancer (you can see him busting some moves in these photos!) and so an early evening breakdancing class started which proved to be a great success and a WHOLE LOTTA FUN! It doesn't matter that myself (and all the other volunteers come to think of it) sucked, the kids and teenagers had a whale of a time and were 1000x times better than us muzungus'
** ever could be! So my first day of school was followed by a break dancing class in a tiny room with about 10 other people. Fighting for space was difficult and actually managing to dance was near impossible, but Charlie is a brilliant, energetic teacher who kept the kids on their toes (and hands, knees, bellies, heads...) so they had a fantastic time!
My first few days at Tikondwe were pretty full on culturally as you're just thrown straight into hardcore African living. I'm glad it happened this way as I experienced absolutely no culture shock as I was so busy doing things, like being bombarded by the locals who LOVE having someone new to chat to, and just generally getting used to the local surroundings!
Besides,
the weekend to come was to be one of the best in my entire life...
**muzungu means 'white person' throughout Africa. Everywhere a white person goes the tag 'muzungu' follows! It's not derogatory at all, although sometimes it may seem like it, it's purely just a term Africans use as if to state 'tourist' or 'someone who was born in a 1st world country'.
climbed, and we are rewarded with a departing view of ladies washing their clothes by the lakeshore, naked children playing in the water, and a bunch of brightly coloured boats bobbing up and down with the most obscure names! 'Road Hell 2", "Jesus is my lover" and "bitches be crazy for my boat" to name just a few. The Ilala is not a grand boat. In fact, in my diary I've referred to it as "a bit of a dive". It's not a boat specifically made for tourists, it's a commuter boat; an easier way of getting goods from one end of the lake to the other, specifically to Likoma Island.
