clare in malawi

“What was the food like?” is a question I have been asked many times since I got back – the honest answer is: remarkably varied, very healthy and LOTS of it.

The staple food in Malawi is called nsima and it is like a thick porridge made from ground maize. It doesn’t have much taste, although it is not unpleasant, so it is served with some type of relish. I was expecting to be served nsima for every meal, but in fact on most days I only had it once, occasionally twice, and very occasionally not at all. However, if they don’t eat nsima, Malawians would regard it as not having eaten. I expect the variety was at least partly for my benefit.

For breakfast, I was usually given bread, but occasionally potatoes or porridge or eggs, and on one occasion some samosas which were very tasty. Other meals were either nsima with relish or based on rice or potatoes or sweet potatoes. The sweet potato stew was particularly delicious. The relishes varied: I got fish quite often – rather bony and eaten entire (except by me – I just couldn’t manage the heads), beans cooked with tomatoes were lovely (remarkably similar to Heinz), and various types of greens – cabbage, rape, bean leaves and pumpkin leaves, again often cooked with tomato. It was the wrong time of year for most fruit but I did get bananas sometimes and also lemons.

Meals were large and I had difficulty persuading my host family not to feed me so much. In fact, for the first few days I was being given two evening meals: perhaps some potatoes when I came in from school (a whole panful!) and then an hour or so later, nsima and relish with the rest of the family. I ended up refusing whole meals and then it all settled down a bit.

At other times, especially when visiting other homes, there were snacks: groundnuts either freshly picked or freshly roasted were common and one day I got popcorn. Chewing sugar cane was also popular – I was introduced to this on my second day by the Head Teacher and we chewed sugar cane together quite often. The only snag was that my teeth weren’t really up to it – Malawians pull the outer bark off with their teeth and then chew and suck the fibrous inside before spitting out the fibre – it’s actually quite hard to do. I think I was so slow – they would eat about a 2 metre length while I was still chewing on the first 10 cm – they took pity on me and mine was usually peeled for me and cut up into chunks! Another treat was doughnuts made from maize flour and sugar which I bought in the market.

Most of the time, I drank water – supplied in bottles by Link. One thing that amazed me was how little the Malawians seemed to drink. At a meal, as I downed yet another bottle, other members of the family might take a small sip from a communal cup, and I rarely saw them drink at other times, though I think they must have done. OK, water had to be carried from the borehole to the house, but it was hardly in short supply. For breakfast and before going to bed, I was given tea, and I usually also shared tea at the Head Teacher’s house at the end of the school day. As you may have gathered from the sugar cane, Malawians have a very sweet tooth, and they simply could not believe that I drank my tea black with NO SUGAR. On my first or second morning, my host mother made my tea without me looking, and when I took a gulp I nearly hit the ceiling. The “usual” amount of sugar is 3 or 4 heaped teaspoonfuls in one small cup,so this is what I had! After observing me on several occasions, the Head Teacher decided to try tea with no sugar – his face told it all – clearly completely disgusting. On special occasions (staff meetings, end of term, my farewell) we got bottles of the ubiquitous Coke and Fanta which were very popular. A more local speciality drink was called toba (or something like that) and, if I understood correctly, was made from partially germinated maize. It was made for special occasions, including the weddings I went to, and apparently one lady was so pleased that I went to her daughter’s wedding that she sent a whole bucket of it to the school for me the following week! Not really knowing how it was made, or where the water came from, I was a bit concerned about drinking it, but in fact I was fine and my colleagues eagerly consumed most of the bucket anyway.

On special occasions, there were also special dishes prepared. My favourite of these was one cooked for me by the Head Teacher’s wife on my last morning. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name, but it was made from whole maize kernels cooked with ground groundnuts – it was delicious. Another delicacy in Malawi, but one I didn’t try, is mouse! One Sunday, on our way back from Church, the Head Teacher bought a very fresh, but clearly dead, mouse from some boys beside a field. He laughed as I pulled a face and put it away. A few days later, I asked what had become of it: ” I gave it to my daughters. They fought over it.” was the reply. Further questioning revealed that it had been cooked in the traditional way, roasted in the fire, and then eaten whole. Each to their own!

Partly because I was aware of the possibility of being offered mouse, and partly because I was concerned about what other parts of various animals I might be offered, and I didn’t want to cause offence, in common with most of the Global Teachers I had decided to go vegetarian while I was in Malawi. This was no great hardship as it’s the way I eat most of the time anyway and my hosts just thought it was peculiar. However, Tchetsa zone was the gossip capital of Dedza district and the Global Teachers were definitely top of the pile for gossip-worthy material. I got used to being asked questions about my Global Teacher colleagues as information about us got passed round the zone – often my questioners knew more than I did! However, I really didn’t know what to say when, in my last week in the village, I was asked “Is it true that everyone in Scotland is a vegetarian?”

I’m putting some pictures on Flickr related to this post if you are interested.

It’s only now that I’m finally back at school here in Scotland (term started yesterday) that I am starting to make sense of my experiences in Malawi, and noticing some of the contrasts and similarities.

In Malawi, school was supposed to start at 7.30a.m., although for lots of reasons this didn’t quite happen on most days. Before school, it was the duty of the pupils to sweep out their classrooms. The day always started with assembly, and that usually involved some physical exercises to warm them up – although I found it hot, for them it was quite chilly being the middle of their winter, and in the last week even I found the wind cold in the mornings. There were also prayers (muslim one week, christian the next in this mixed-faith community), notices, words of encouragement, and finally the national anthem. Then the children went to their classes.

Maths, Chichewa and English were usually the first lessons of the day, although the timetable, and any possibility of adherence to it, remained a complete mystery to me throughout my visit. Other subjects included Social Studies, Science, Creative Arts, PE, Agriculture and RE. Lessons for the youngest children, In Standards 1 and 2, ended at about 11 a.m., for Standards 3 and 4 at about 12 noon, and for Standards 5 to 8 at about 1 p.m. However, the Standard 8 pupils, who have their leaving exams in September, returned to class in the afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m. for extra revision lessons. The dedication of these pupils and their teachers was remarkable.

On some days, all lessons seemed to stop about 11 a.m. for whole school activities. The first week I was there, this was mainly for sports practice, as they had football and netball matches against other schools in the zone at the end of that week. On another occasion, it was for “activities” which seemed to include things like choir practice. Sometimes it was for “manual work” – helping to keep the school maintained and repaired: groups of pupils were delegated to tasks such as mopping the classroom floors, helping the school management committee repair the borehole, and re-building the boys latrines (sadly mostly washed away last rainy season).

On Fridays, the patterned changed again: as many of the pupils were muslim, school ended at 10.30 a.m. in order to allow pupils time to prepare for mosque at 12 noon. However, once again Standard 8 pupils were back in their classroom for revision in the afternoon.

Mercifully, here in Gairloch, we don’t start so early, although it probably wouldn’t be a problem if we also went to bed as early (more of that another time). And we have the comfort of a predictable timetable: I found the variable start times in Malawi and the apparent lack of correlation between the timetable and what actually took place in classrooms quite frustrating. Part of this was undoubtedly my developed world obsession with time and timekeeping and part was my consciousness of the short period I had in the school there to try to make a difference. Now I have come home, the relaxed attitude to time seems attractive….

Today we had an assembly in our school, though we don’t have one every day, or even every week. In both schools, notices and encouraging words form part of this. However, I would be truly amazed if we started singing the national anthem on a daily basis. Of course, we have a dedicated team of cleaners who attend to the school each evening, so our pupils don’t have to sweep out their classrooms, and we have our janitor (and others) who deal with repairs, so “manual work” doesn’t feature for our pupils either. But most of the subjects studied in both countries are the same or have parallels and, whilst the range of classroom equipment is obviously more limited in Malawi, many of the ways of teaching are similar or are becoming so. I was really impressed with the teaching skills of some of my Malawian colleagues – I could learn lots from them – and their ingenuity in using what was available to enliven their lessons.

I got home from Malawi at the end of last week and have been trying to think since then about what to put onto this blog first, but it’s really hard to decide. One thing that is very striking about returning home is just how complicated our lives are here and how dependent we are on the rest of the world to maintain our lifestyles. In September, three headteachers from Malawi will be visiting their Link schools in Scotland – they are very excited about this as they’ve never left Malawi before. However, it is hard to imagine what they will make of Heathrow airport as their first impression of the UK. And then there’s all the other things that we take for granted: it has occurred to me more than once in the past few days to wonder how I could explain a washing machine to my Malawian friends.

The most important thing though is to pass on the greetings of a whole group of villages and Mlozi school to my entire family, all my friends, all the schools in the Gairloch ASG and the whole community (this sounds extravagant but is entirely genuine). They were delighted with the greetings, the pictures of our area, the letters and drawings from the children, and the gifts from our schools and community. Although materially they have very little compared to us, they have also sent back some drawings, pieces of writing and handicrafts done by the pupils as well as a specially-commissioned carving for the school. The fact that a visitor had come and shown an interest in helping them was tremendously important and exciting for them and, as the headteacher said at my farewell ceremony, they hope it will be the beginning of a long-lasting friendship between our schools and communities.

I have lots and lots of pictures which are going to take quite a lot of sorting through – but I’ll put some of my favourites on Flickr asap.