Tarcondwa

Moni, muli bwanji? Tarcondwa! (for those of you who are less versed in the language of Chichewa, we have been taught to say 'Hello, how are you? We are happy!') We have had a very hot couple of days in Blantyre. On Friday we had some free time in the morning so we took the opportunity to visit St Michael's and All Angels Church - the second oldest building in Malawi, built in the late 1800's by scottish missionaries.

We were allowed to look into the new church which has been built on the site of the mission, to allow more people to attend the services. It was a very big, well looked after church building - a shame we couldn't stay for a service. We were also shown into the original church which surprised us by how English it felt from the inside. We met some of the ministers from the mission before being allowed to visit the H.H.I mission primary and secondary schools, which were also on the site of the mission.

It was the last day of term at the school so all of the students were waiting to collect their grades and reports. We spoke to a few of the students, who seemed quite happy with their results. We met a teacher called Alice, who told us about a few of the school buildings and let us wander inside some of them. The teachers of the team were particularly interested in the alphabets, times tables and weather painted on the wall.

Back in the main town of Blantyre, we trawled the fabric shops for Tchjenga fabric and managed to find tailors to make us some traditional dresses - we will keep you updated on this!

When we got back to our hostel, Gertrude, the regional commissioner for the south of Malawi came to meet us. She was very glad to see us and pleased to hear our plans for trainings this weekend.

We finished the day sorting our training plans and preparing our resources for the first day of training.

On Saturday we had our first day of training! While we were waiting at the MAGGA resource centre for more girls to arrive, some of the staff were trying to teach us phrases in Chichewa. The girls were particularly amused at our pronunciation of the Malawian Guide promise:

Ndikulonjeza kudzipereka kugwira ntchito ya, Mulungu kutetza dziko langa ndi anthu enu, Ndikusunga lamulo la Guide.

We started the day with only 6 guides doing a lot of icebreakers and teamwork activities. A few hours later, a truck arrived with 30 more girls ranging in age from 6 to 16. The girls enjoyed playing a bit with our parachute, before doing some leadership and teamwork activities. We were given nsima for lunch which we had a go at cooking but we weren't nearly strong enough to stir it properly!

We finished the day with a few more leadership activities and the girls showed us some of their songs and dances. We haven't quite mastered their dance technique yet!

This evening we have been rearranging training plans for tomorrow. We should be training more guides tomorrow - we'll let you know how it goes!

GOLD love,

Alice and Team Malawi x