The Grammar School at Leeds' BLOG

Global Schools’ Partnership Plan -teacher exchange to Malawi, May 2009

Malawi May 2009

   Deputy Head of English Judith Kerr’s account of her trip to Malawi with Deputy Head of Biology, Andy Shaw, sponsored by DFID, as part of the Global Schools’ Partnership Plan.

Andy Shaw and I spent a week during our summer half term holiday at Kamuzu Academy in Malawi, Andy working with the Biology department and I was with the English department. This is my second trip to the country and Andy’s sixth visit. Both of us felt that it was good to be back in the ‘warm heart of Africa.’

We arrived somewhat bleary eyed after the overnight flight from Heathrow to Nairobi and then onto Lilongwe. From there we drove along the M1 road ( its name indicating that it is straight and covered in tarma) to the Academy,stopping en route to buy enormous cabbages from sellers at the side of the road, bartering for the best price.  We visited Kasungu hospital to take photographs of the wards which GSAL students will decorate when they are on their three week visit in July. I was told that the hospital was quiet, yet every bed was taken and each was surrounded by relatives who were feeding their children, or were just there to support them. Outside under a rush canopy mothers were queuing up to have their babies weighed.

The weekend was spent at Luwawa Forest Lodge, which is situated amongst a pine forest, planted originally in the 1950s, searching for giant lobelia plants whilst being observed from the safe height of the trees by curious monkeys.  We took a walk with a guide to observe the indigenous plants, spotting a manmade insect trap, left to capture insects, which when fried, supplement the diet of nsima, a semolina-like porridge made from maize served with a relish, which is the staple diet of most Malawians.

 The next day we were driven along a dirt road, complete with overgrown foliage at the edges, ruts and potholes caused from the recent rains, towards a waterfall. Stopping the car, we scrambled down a steep slope and crossed a river by means of a rung-less ladder which was stretched above the flowing water, using overhanging branches as hand holds. When we reached the waterfalls we were greeted with a torrent of water tumbling from a rocky precipice. It was a stunning sight and well worth the steep walk.  Andy was pleased too as we found lobelias of over 4 m high. It is hard to believe that these giants are related to the tiny bedding plants we use in the UK.

One of my objectives of the trip was to teach in Mbonekera village school. This village is part of GSAL’s comparative village project. I first visited  Mbonekera school two years ago and organized the Big Bake for Malawi events to help, which have funded the school’s netball and football strips as well as some books.  When I went to the school in 2007, it was in the process of being built, although lessons were still taking place, amongst the piles of brick and rubble. There were 400 children then and only four books. Richard Hewitt, a Classics teacher from Kamuzu Academy, has worked hard to help the village raise money to build the school. Mbonekera School now has 700 children, aged from six years old to nineteen, who are taught in eight classrooms. They also have a library, with books provided by The Grammar School at Leeds. There are however, only 4 teachers and two GAP year students. I was delighted to see a number of LGHS green jumpers and black watch tartan skirts being worn and Rose Court green book bags being carried. I took four more big bags of clothes with me, including some former LGS jumpers. It’s winter in Malawi at the moment, which means that although the days are warm and sunny like UK summers at their best, the people feel that they are cold, so they appreciate sweaters. Because there is a large diurnal range, the nights are much colder and it gets dark by about 6pm. I arrived at Mbonekera in time for assembly at 7.30am. All the children lined up in rows and chorused “Good morning. How are you? ”to the headmaster and to me. When I asked them how they were, the reply came in perfect unison, “We are fine, thank you.”  They also sang the Malawi National Anthem in English. I was amused when the headmaster asked the children to tuck their shirts and tee-shirts in. Some rules are the same the world over!

I was thrilled to be invited to teach English comprehension and grammar to standard 8 and standard 5 children at Mbonekera School.  Texts books are still in short supply so the classes are taught in groups with one book per group of about six or seven. It must be hard to read in a language which is not your mother tongue from a book which you cannot see properly. But no-one complained. The students mostly learn by rote. When I asked each group to read a paragraph out loud they read it in a very rhythmical lilting way with a good level of accuracy of pronunciation. I noticed a lot of the text books contained passages with strong educational messages, so that they are not only learning English but are learning about the dangers of flies, mosquitoes and AIDS.  The children each had exercise books and a biro and they had benches and tables to sit at, which GSAL has helped to provide by organising fund raising activities. The teacher’s only aids are some very dusty chalk to use and a blackboard painted onto a wall.  The children were very proud of their books and asked me to mark them, which I was most happy to do.

At the end of the morning the students were fed porridge from the feeding station which is still in the process of being constructed outside and I sat in the headmaster’s tiny house, eating fresh groundnuts dug from his garden.  I pinched myself to check that this was really happening. What an amazing privilege!

The next day saw me teaching all day at Kamuzu Academy; one of the English teachers was off sick, so I volunteered to step in and had a wonderful day teaching two year 7 classes, a year 8 form, a double year 9 class and a GCSE set. It was interesting to teach ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold to the GCSE class who had never seen the sea but having visited Lake Malawi on my previous trip, I was able to draw some parallels with it about the waves. I explained that the distance between the coast of France and Dover is about as far as from KA to the nearest town of Kasungu. The classes were all very responsive and extremely well behaved, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I gave the year 7 children the letters the GSAL year 7 boys and girls had written to them and they wrote back. I brought these letters home with me for the GSAL students, so a pen friend link has been established between the two schools.

 KA is a private boarding grammar school, founded by the country’s first president, President Hastings Kamuzu Banda, after the country became independent and is known as the ‘Eton of Africa’. Half of the children here are quite wealthy but the government also sponsors the top boy and the top girl from each village school, so the students come from a divergent background. The school has recently received The Princess Diana award with twenty-nine students receiving individual awards for the worldwide Shakespeare event, ‘Shakespeare 24’, in which 24 time zones in the world put on a Shakespeare play in 24 hours. This award is given in recognition of the compassion and commitment of the school to improve the lives of others. The members of Kamuzu Academy Dramatic Society (KADS) volunteered to put on a Shakespeare play to mark the 444^th birthday of the Bard last year to a predominantly Malawian audience.

The rest of the week was taken up with more lessons and discussions with our colleagues in our partner departments, exchanging ideas about teaching methods and materials and developing our Global Curricular links.  We also went to Lilongwe, the administrative capital of the country, visiting the animal sanctuary to see wild animals which have been rescued and which are now housed in spacious, safe and natural environments. I was thrilled to see a leopard and a lion as well as a huge variety of different monkeys and baboons. I even viewed a crocodile and a python but kept a safe distance! 

Mr. Frank Cooke headmaster of Kamuzu Academy also arranged for me to visit nearby St Andrew’s hospital and orphanage. Here I was shown around all the rooms of the hospital and met two mothers who had recently given birth. One of the mothers, whose daughter had been born that morning, asked me to name her baby. This was a tremendous privilege for me, so I named her after my own daughter, Emily and added Joy as this is what I hope for her. The hospital has facilities for AIDS testing and counseling and is in the process of completing an operating theatre but they are waiting for an anesthetist to be trained. I next went to orphanage and met the children there. Many had been there since they were day old babies, their mothers having died in childbirth, or whose parents had died of AIDS or other diseases. Although their circumstances were sad, this was not an unhappy environment. The children were well cared for, attended school and had smiley faces. They were pleased to see me. Clearly they were relatively fortunate but there is always more work to do in this, the fifth poorest country in the world.

Andy and I would like to thank Frank Cooke for his generous hospitality, with the staff and students of Kamuzu Academy, together with the Headmaster and children of Mbonekera School who all made us feel so welcome, as well as Barry Brindley who administered all the necessary paper work for DFID to make the trip possible.

Judith Kerr,

 May 2009