Week One

Can't believe it's been almost a whole week that we've been here! And yet it feels like a lifetime, in terms of experience and activities.

We've gone shopping at regular stores, and next week we'll go to the market with our young friend who lives on the same compound as we do. The stores have been a revelation to us, whose main overseas experience of shopping has been in Bangladesh thirty years ago! They seem fairly "normal" from our Canadian point of view, except that you have to show your receipt to the guards at the exit before leaving to make sure you haven't acquired anything illegally. That will be something to get used to, but it's not a big deal.

We got some vegetables, courtesy of our hosts on the compound, bought in the market by their cook. Later we may arrange to have him do some cooking for us too, but in the meantime, for our initial short stay here, we are eating dinner with them and fending for ourselves at breakfast and lunch.

Today I'm going shopping for skirt material with our friend Vivian who lives on the compound here at Canada House, where we live in the guesthouse. I will feel more comfortable once I get a few more skirts made. Some women that I've seen here have been wearing pants, or trousers as they say, but I know it will be appreciated if I wear a skirt for teaching--perhaps even a chitenji sometimes. (A piece of material that is wrapped around and tucked in at the waist.)

Our big activities this week have been our visits on Thursday and Friday to the two prisons, Zomba, where they have the national prison headquarters, and Chichiri here in Blantyre, where we will actually be working. It was thought appropriate to show our faces at Zomba and get the okay from the authorities there before showing up at Chichiri Prison. Everyone seems very pleased to see us, and we assure them that we are very happy to be here at long last!

Our time at Chichiri Prison was spent mostly with the man in charge of the education program there. We sorted out what each of us would teach, in terms of subject and level. I will be teaching Forms 1 and 2 language (grammar), and Macbeth to Form 3. I'm still not entirely clear what "grammar" I will be teaching, but I'm sure it will become clearer as I go. It will be challenging to teach Macbeth to a group of Malawian students for whom English itself is at least a second language! But I'm familiar with the play from teaching it multiple times in Canada, and they gave me a copy so I could refresh my memory of it. There is a lot of good material in the text that they use, so I'll be able to rely somewhat on that for activities--although some of them would be challenging, since they rely on the students having access to computers, not something that is likely to happen in Chichiri. I'll have to be creative!

Steve will be teaching Form 1 Mathematics and Forms 1 and 3 Chemistry. The Chemistry will be especially challenging because of lack of access to appropriate lab facilities. He will likely end up doing a lot of description and explanation to supplement what they have in their textbooks. He has books to follow, and a syllabus that outlines what he is supposed to teach, so that helps.

We are starting to get used to the sights and sounds of Malawi. I still find myself doing comparison to Bangladesh, somewhat unconsciously. Here people seem to be less likely to stare at us than we experienced in Bangladesh. On the other hand, people are less likely to greet us in passing than they were in Bangladesh. Of course, we are in a city here and we were used to being in the rural areas in Bangladesh where people at least were familiar with us as a sight along the road. So that makes a difference too. We've been told that it's not customary here for people just to say hello in passing. It's more normal to stop and chat if you actually know the person. We've had some strangers at least raise a hand in greeting or say "hello" or "hi", so we respond in kind to them.

It's warm and lovely here, with rain most days in the afternoon. It hasn't rained much for the past two days, but it will likely rain later today. Big thunderstorms seem common during the rainy season. We are grateful for them, as they actually seem to cut the heat somewhat. It's very comfortable so far, much more so than Canada is right now!

Well, about time to go shopping, so I'll leave this for now. More next week. Blessings to all.