#2016 Part 2, Malawi

Teaching about dinosaurs with worksheets

It's almost 6 months, since I blogged something about my actual stay in Malawi and, more especially at MOET. After an extensive travelogue, I thought that a few updates and stories from my last months in Malawi should be interesting as well!

With the beginning of my third and last term at MOET, I decided to diversify my teaching in Standard 6 a bit, adding the subject "English Language" to my responsibility. Previously I had just taught "English Grammar", which is really important for the children, but rather unexciting to teach. My new subject gave me a lot more freedom concerning the choice of topics, educational games and the use of our new projector.
The most exciting lessons were definitely those about the Malawian Parliament, in which the children learnt about the way a parliament works, read some simplified speeches and in the end wrote their own, to have a real Malawian-Parliament-style discussion.
In their speeches, most of the children commended the good roads (true, I think!) and the good schools (definitely!!) in their constituencies, whilst criticising the government for the shortage of food and the bad police. It was really lovely to listen to the speeches of the good students, and to the great ideas they had for Malawi! Another highlight was the introduction of worksheets, "Can we really write on the papers, John??" about dinosaurs, of which they have never heard of before.

Since I was given full responsibility of English in Standard 6 during the last term, I was also responsible for preparing my class for their End of Term Examinations in that subject. It was a bit more scaring than it initially sounded, because the headteacher and an examination board usually create those exams, to have an unbiased overview of how each class has really progressed in the last year. After a few days of uncertainty, I was quite relieved to see that my kids had done really well and the vast majority of them passed the headteacher's exam.

English exams

Another highlight of my stay was meeting a group of asungus in front of Mangochi's "People's Metro" supermarket, who, as I learnt later were the famous UK band Rudimental and a group of other artists playing at a festival in CapeMaclear 2 days later. Seeing the possibility of avoiding an overcrowded truck, I asked them if they could take me up to my school, what they - like any western band with a couple of UK/US no. 1 hits probably would have done - accepted.

Piers Agget from Rudimental an me

Having forgotten my big bag of laundry in their minibus, I had no choice but to take one of the overcrowded matolas (pickups) to the venue at CapeMaclear. A choice, that has apparently been made by half of the other volunteers from South-Eastern Africa as well. Even more surprisingly, I met a South African, who told me that she is part of a group of 4 girls volunteering at Palm Beach since August 2015, which is just 15km away from MOET! It was her as well, who told me that Rudimental was scheduled to play later that night. Slightly more intimidated than the last time, I approached the group of which I now knew Rudimental was part of, to find out that my laundry has made its way to a room in their lodge. After a night of partying with an uncountable number of volunteers around, I went to their lodge and had a few Fantas with some slightly hungover artists including some Rudimental until someone found my laundry bag maybe an hour later. On my way out, I was lucky enough to get a photo with band member Piers Agget as a remembrance.

  "Recovery of stolen property"... Due to the mysterious disappearance of my credit card after returning from CapeMaclear, I was shortly tempted to ask Dr. Dungu, whose services I found being advertised in Lilongwe for advice, but unfortunately his or her phone number was partly covered so that I had to call my bank instead to get the card replaced. What a shame!

At MOET, I am quite used now to show people around the school grounds together with Patterson or the head teacher. Normally, I always skip the garden part as I reckon myself as being quite clueless in anything agricultural. This time, I decided to participate in the tour with Kerry Ann, who stayed at MOET for 3 weeks. I was quite stunned by a technique, which consists of pipes that suck in water from a small canal, transport it uphill and then down to the garden-level again without a pump or electricity or magnetism or whatever. Seeing this for the first time, I asked Patterson if he had invented this elaborate system just to be told that these so-called syphons were invented by the Egyptians about 3000 year ago. Still in disbelief, a curious but clueless Johannes pulled the pipe out of the water to find the hidden pump which resulted in slightly bugged but still amused garden workers needing 20 minutes or so to restart the flow of water.


My second project for this term was a rather sporty one: After MOET got a new locally made table-tennis table, I started training a group of eight Standard 5 learners (who never played table tennis before) every Thursday in front of the library. After a few weeks, they knew all the basics and the better ones even beat me once or twice! In the end, all of them were ready to show off their skills on "Sports Day" in a tournament-style competition, which was clearly won by Kelvin Nakopo.




My last memorable event here should have been our Thumbi Island trip, which is a long-time MOET tradition to bid farewell to their volunteers. With a pickup full of cabbages, tomatoes, rice and some meat we started our journey to CapeMaclear surprisingly punctual. We means most of the teachers, our cook, the director and of course Rowan - a volunteer from London, who fortunately joined me volunteering and traveling, leading to a lot of fun during the last 4 weeks of my stay!
The clear highlight of the trip was the snorkelling, for which only a few of the attendants were brave enough. Notwithstanding my horrible snorkelling experiences from Mozambique, where my oversized flippers and leaking goggles lead to an uncomfortable flippers up - head down situation, with me drinking a lot of salt water, not seeing a single fish and feeling a bit like being part of "Titanic", I decided to give snorkelling another chance. With all the gleaming blue and orange fish I could see everywhere around me, my "Titanic" memories were quickly forgotten, and I felt like being part of "Finding Nemo". Memorable and really atmospheric!

View of Thumbi Island from Cape Maclear

Having spent most of the last 13 months at MOET, I feel quite quite weird now about leaving a place that has over time become something like a second home for me. Nonetheless, I'm quite certain that I'll return at least for a few weeks as soon as the circumstances of studying in Germany allow!

As my last picture I chose something very dear to my heart: The "Green Corner" restaurant in Makawa somewhere between Mpemba Cottage and MOET that became a haven for me every time I was to tired to cook for myself.