So, here is my day in Open Arms Mangochi.........
Up at 5.30am to be in the "feeding room" at 6.15/6.30am.....EVERY DAY! Then its the feeding of the masses (currently 34 kids)....older ones (1-2 yrs old) get to sit in the high chairs and feed themselves (or cover themselves as is more appropriate!) and the babies have to get in line for their bottles of milk....I try to stay as far away from the high chairs as possible given the distance porridge can travel when being flung off a spoon, so pinch a baby to feed them their milk!
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| Waiting for milk! |
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| Kattie - Supervisor with the milk buckets at the ready |
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| Full tummies |
Breakfast takes about an hour and a half and then I dive into the kitchen to wash and dry all the pots while the sprogs go and get changed. You should see some of the outfits they come out in....have me in absolute stitches! One little lad- Mussa - came out on my first day wearing a wetsuit!! Brilliant!
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| Feeding room before the carnage begins..... |
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| Dinner time! |
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| Its too much for some of them! |
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Feeding room after!
After pot washing duties have finished, I normally wander into the laundry room to see Lonny & Grace and begin to fold the washing - this is a constant stream of clothes, bed linen and blankets- I could literally spend all day in there as it like a conveyor belt! So that takes me until about 10am. If you can imagine 34 children having at least two changes of clothes every day, plus the blankets and the towelling nappies they get through - there is a whole load of laundry to get through!
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| Washing before..... |
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| Washing after..... |
On a week day, at 9am the children get taken on a walk around the homes perimeter to get some vitamin D from the sunshine - they usually end up with the Teacher under the mango tree, looking for monkeys and singing songs.
At around 10am they all get walked to "class"....bearing in mind the oldest child here is 2 years old, they all get told to line up outside the classroom door and go in and sit at their desks which they ALL do! No messing, fighting, nothing-these children are the most well behaved children I think I've ever come across - we could learn a lot from them!
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| Getting ready for class |
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| Model students! |
They all then sing a prayer and then get given a quarter of a peanut butter sandwich and a beaker of milk.
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| Break time |
In terms of the actual lesson, we have been doing shapes this week - kid you not, they can all say and recognise a circle, square, rectangle - in English which isn't even their Mother tongue! Amazing! (On a weekend, they just play outside instead of learning) Once the children are done with their snacks, we (the staff!) get a break which is a cup of tea and a peanut butter sandwich.....you learn to like peanut butter! :) I nearly died when they bought the tea out.....its literally in a bucket, as in a real bucket you'd take out to wash your car with! Already has milk in (powdered stuff is all they have here) and is actually quite nice. My first day I was asked how many sugars I have.....replied with 'none' and everyone looked at me like I'd got two heads, I then realised why....they all have at least 3-7 sugars and they aren't just little sugars, they are massive heaped teaspoons!! Nearly fell off my chair!
Then its lunch time, which is a re-run of breakfast although they usually have rice or Nsima and veg/beans. Nsima is maize flour and boiling water which looks like anaemic mash potato and tastes of nothing at all so you need a "relish" as they put it, to be able to give it some sort of flavour. This is eaten with your fingers - by staff and kids so it is just utter carnage! After dinner, the children then have a nap until 2.30pm which is when the Nannies get to have their dinner (same as the kids) and clean up the mess made during dinner time. This place must be the cleanest place on earth, how they do it I do not know!
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| Roseline with the kids dinner...rice, eggs and cabbage. |
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| Nsima with cabbage relish.....yummy! |
Kids get up at 2.30pm then have a play, then before you know it its their break time again where they have milk or Sobo (orange squash) and either a biscuit or some crisps, then a change of nappies and clothes before tea at 5pm.....more porridge!!
In between all this, if any of the tiny babies are needing to be fed they are getting bottles, so I feel like all I do is wash porridge pots, and feed!!! I'm loving it though! So my day finishes between 6-7pm depending on who needs feeding - I am knackered!! 7 days a week until the end of the month, I think I'll sleep for England when I leave!
So that is a "day in the life of Open Arms Mangochi".
On a Monday & Thursday I get to go to the market to get supplies......bananas, papaya, veg and eggs is my diet (which suits me) and for my market shop it costs me about 1000KW which is about £5 - so its not an expensive place to live!! :)
I went to another school on Friday - The Victory School - turned up at 7.30am to be met by the headteacher. The entire school was stood in their respective class lines having assembly....I got hauled up to the front and the headteacher literally stood there and told me to introduce myself.......I was stood at 7.30am in front of between 300-400 pupils ranging from 3yrs old to 16 yrs old and staff and had to talk!! I nearly died!! I don't even remember what I said, no doubt something utterly ridiculous! Thinking it couldn't get any worse, I then got asked which class I wanted to teach!! Jeeeeeeez!!!! So I spent the morning attempting to teach Malawian kids maths and English! By the end of the class, they all had "I have one sister and two brothers" written in their exercise books so I achieved something!
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| Standard 2 Class - 7 years old |
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Not enough chairs to go around
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The teacher of the class I took over very kindly took me to her house after school had finished.......never seen anything like it in my life. It must have been the size of my lounge at Park Terrace and there were 5 of them living there. No running water, no electricity, nothing. This is a full time teacher who has got a tin roofed room to live in......made me cry when I left. Very humbling and something I hope I'll never forget when I'm moaning about my washing machine being on the blink, or my computer not working properly!
Toughest thing I've had to deal with so far is one of the little girls, who is also HIV positive, fell ill with Malaria last week........horrible to see her so poorly. Malaria here though is like the flu where we live, it happens that often. Still she was so ill and that really upset me. When any of the children fall poorly and need hospital treatment they have to pay upfront, not a lot, but they need to have money available......as I had paid for my accommodation when I arrived, it was that money that paid for her medication-that is how tight the money situation is here, not just for Open Arms, but for everyone here. Its terrible to see & when I got back to my little house I cried my eyes out!! So hang on to your hats people as when I get home I'll be on a fund raising mission!!! :)
Only other big thing I've had to contend, which following that story is nothing, but to me personally is a biggy.......cockroaches..........absolutely hate, loath and detest the things! I thankfully managed to find some 'Raid' so that is my new best mate! The other night I saw 3 run along the kitchen floor, and immediately after we had a power cut, so I spent the rest of the night sat on the breakfast bar until the power came back on in case I trod on one!! I clearly need to 'man up' a bit!!
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| I think this was a frog, however it walked & didn't hop?! Either way, it was under my bed! |
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| Me & my best mate "Raid" won this battle! |
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Just what you need under your stove - gross!
The weather is lovely - gets to about 34 degrees mid-day which is warm enough, not that I've seen much of it as we're either indoors or in the shade with the little ones.
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Tomorrow I'm going on an 'Outreach' outing which is to see some of the children that have left the orphanage to go back to their extended families to make sure they are ok and being cared for in the right way, so I'll get a real taste of what the village life it like then. Tuesday I'm heading up to Blantyre (4 hours away) to the Open Arms HQ which is also where any of the kids who can't go back into their extended families go after the age of 2/3 yrs old. So at least I'll have had a couple of days out this week.
So, that's about it for now you'll be pleased to know! Sorry to have bored you all silly, but at least I can't be accused of not letting you know what I'm doing now!!
Hope all is well back in the UK!
Will email soon (whether you like it or not!)
All my love,
Z xXx
For anyone wanting to give any money to help Open Arms Mangochi, please visit my Just Giving page.....any donations, no matter how small make a HUGE difference....
http://www.justgiving.com/Zoe-Morrison1
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