Attack on education

The weather changes so drastically here and if it weren’t for all the goats and maize, I’d swear I was still in Cleveland! We’ll have a few days of gorgeous weather and sunshine, and then the clouds roll in suddenly and it’s downpour from as little as 15 minutes to a couple hours or days. The roads flood and become impassable, but the scenery is spectacularly green!

This week, we continued our lessons on action verbs. We experimented with different games, trying to find the best one, but the clear winner is the Action Race. It allows the kids to go outside and run off some of their pent up energy. Each week, we base our lessons on what the teachers have been teaching the learners, as well as needs we see from our experiences after school.

We are combating the problem with our feeding program and its stupendous lack of sustainability by planting cassava, maize, moringa trees, and potatoes in the land surrounding the school. Hopefully this will provide us with a good source of snacks for the kids in all of our after school activities. Nearly 300 kids per week participate in an activity, be it English, tinsmithing, tailoring, or band. It would be great to have a completely sustainable feeding program for all of these kids.

Sunday marks a bittersweet moment as it is the departure of the first volunteer since I have been in Malawi . Tahlia is headed back to Australia after a productive time here. She was working at the Nandumbo Health Centre and assisting the staff there. Her knowledge as a nurse is invaluable and she used that knowledge to train the staff, which will ideally motivate and increase successful outcomes at the clinic. Hopefully, Tahlia will spread the word about HELP and volunteering and encourage others to join us in our mission to assist others.