Day 1 - Monday
We stepped onto the tarmac at Blantyre airport to be met by a placard saying, “Dr Jenni Barr, party of 3”, and were promptly led away from the disembarking passengers, over the tarmac and into a garden and the VIP suite.  Our passports were taken, luggage collected and customs cleared, all without moving a muscle. The General Secretary of Blantyre Synod had taken care of it all for us.
 
Day 1 was used acclimatising and gathering provisions in Blantyre. I think all three of us were hit by first impressions: 

For me it was the African streets lined with pedestrians carrying great loads on their heads – long bags of charcoal, filled 80 litre rucksacks, bags of maize.  One lady had a lengthy heavy sportsbag on her head and a baby strapped to her back – an image that speaks either of great skill or great trust.  
 
For Brigitte it was seeing 7ft flowering Poinsettia in the garden where we were staying – indeed, just about everything that flowers in wee pots on her window at home, scaled here by 10.
 
For Jonathan it was discovering strawberry-flavoured Fanta. Apparently they’ve had it in Malawi for years.  He’s now hooked!
 
Day 2 - Tuesday
Once we left the town we could see the Mulanje mountain massif ahead. Here it is referred to as ‘the Island in the Sky’, since the foot of the mountains is frequently ringed with cloud.
 
We stopped in a village for vegetables at a roadside market. Better and fresher than Kildean, with avocadoes the size of mangos. You buy vegetables in neatly arranged piles.  Want a lemon?  Buy a pile.
 
Returning to the vehicle there was a crowd. “Madam, you have a puncture!” We did indeed.  But with six willing hands and two sets of eyes to guard the vehicle, we were fixed and on our way in a very short space of time.
 
In the next village we spotted tyres on a rough roof supported by four poles.  This was the local Kwik-Fit.  They took off the tyre, sanded down the rubber, cut a piece from an old inner tube, applied glue, waited in the sun, stuck the two together and reinflated the tyre with a hand pump (“I am a man of power, Madam”).  While waiting, a man offered to sell me a turkey. A live turkey.
 
We’re now approaching Likhubula, and before going up to the Youth Centre where we shall be staying, we have been asked to stop at the home of Rev Mrs Navaya to meet the Steering Committee that is guiding our partnership.
 
They have been waiting since 2pm.  The written report which we later receive specifies that, “The afternoon of Tuesday, the 14 th June 2005, remains a memory in the minds of the members of the Steering Committee representing the Likhubula CCAP Church, Nansato School and the entire community. All the members were filled with joy to see Dr Jenni Barr, Brigitte Beck-Woerner and Jonathan walking out of the Synod car driven by Dr Margaret Swain at 14.26, welcomed by smiling faces of the Steering Committee members, church officials, Rev E Navaya, the minister for Likhubula CCAP and Rev R J Navaya for Pasani Church.”

We are greeted formally by a line of 15 people outside the house, and then escorted inside.  The programme (for these occasions are formal and scripted) is as follows:

• Greetings   (“You are most welcome”)
• Prayer from Mrs Navaya
• Chant with dancing , during which we recognise the words “Likhubula” and “Dunblane”

(Note: we’re trying to encourage the pronunciation away from “Dublin”. For those of you at home, pronunciation of Likhubula places an equal emphasis on every vowel)
 

• Formal introductions.  All 18 of us stand up and give our names and positions. This gathering includes 12 year old Anastansia – Jonathan thinks our church committees need to learn from this.
• Hand washing .  A bowl is brought round and water poured over our hands, with a cloth for drying.
• Drinks  A coolbox has been prepared with ice and we are offered bottles of coke, Fanta, lemonade.  This is clearly a treat.  The fabric in the house is very simple.  The settee where I am sitting is threadbare and lacks several springs.

To our surprise (for we have already had lunch) we are then given lunch.

• First, a prayer
• Then for the whole group, 2 ft diameter bowls of nsima (local staple) and rice, with smaller bowls of bony chicken, sauce and vegetables.  Eating is a serious business, requiring much concentration and little small talk.
• Another prayer
• Soapy hand wash, since we have eaten with our fingers.
• Speeches.  Mr Chiromo, head teacher of the school and Vice Secretary of the Steering Committee stands and talks of the great joy when  they heard of our partnership.  I am later given a copy of his address. It is a moving speech, with much hand clapping where there is strong agreement.
• I reply in kind, as I am able.
• More singing.
• A final prayer.

Then we are released, this time to stand at the door and shake each person’s hand.  We request a group photo to mark the occasion.
 
Day 3 - Wednesday
Already I am having to be highly selective in what I choose to write, but I want to give a flavour of the next day also.
 
We were requested to arrive at school with the children at 7am, so we set off down the hill at 6.30.  The step counter which I have been loaned by St Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling records 10,777 paces to the school, so we shall become fit! There are simple houses / shacks / huts interspersed as we walk down the hillside. Mothers and children regularly appear to call a greeting to us. Over the coming days, we often have offers to carry our bags – if we accept, this is a sign that we are willing to be accompanied and to make conversation as we walk. Many of the young men of the village fall in step as the week progresses to learn more about Scotland or to tell us about their studies or their family.
 
At 7am the children are gathering on the rough ground, which surrounds the single built classrooms.  Several are sweeping the twigs and leaves off the sandy courtyard.  We are greeted formally and introduced to the teachers (“On my right, this is Mr R. S. Mwanakhu” . . ). We are most welcome, we are to feel very much at home in the school, indeed, we are to feel very free. The 1000+ children in the school then gather outside one of the buildings for an assembly.  The singing is outstanding – magical - with full harmony and great volume.  Again we are introduced and welcomed. Jonathan will spend time in Standards 7 and 8 while we are here.
 
We will give more detailed accounts in other reports, but the education here is very formal, influenced partly by a paucity of textbooks.  I spend much of the morning with Standard 1, 6 year olds (but the class has those of 6-12 years, since if you don’t rise to a certain standard, you don’t move on).  This class is taught by Mrs Chiromo, wife of the head teacher.  On Wednesday she has 202 pupils being taught in the shade of two trees. It is dusty and the (African) winter wind can whip up the dust.  At one point, two children have to hold the blackboard to prevent it from falling on others.
 
With such numbers, much of the learning is done by rote. The children use chants and ritualised encouragement of right answers (“Well done, Elias” – clap). Their clothes are raggedy and dusty (mine are now dusty too!), and each carries a simple shoulder bag to hold a pencil and half an exercise book.  Writing is done on each child’s lap, marking by lining up on their knees and shuffling forward to present their books to the teacher. For Maths, some are using stones to help counting, but for several their parents have improvised an abacus out of a stick and string (so it can be carried round the neck) threaded with dry grass or bottle tops.  After the first playtime, the class have to be retrieved for they have regrouped around me, the curiosity figure, and not their teacher. Teaching is in Chichewa until Standard 5, but these little ones learn English too (202 voices chanting, “This is a green-a ruler-a”).
 
The two Scottish volunteers here are about to return home, and have been given permission to take Standards 7 and 8 (the oldest ones) up to a hall at the Youth Centre to record their singing. We go too, as I will make the recording.  We lay down 17 tracks of outstandingly energetic singing, and enjoy the repartee and a first sook of sugar cane as we walk together up the hill.
 
Also in honour of their ‘final days’, the volunteers are preparing a lunch at the centre for the teachers.  At least, they would have, but we have one of the frequent power cuts (I should stress that the school itself doesn’t even have power, and the village in which the school is situated has no running water, although there are plans to rectify this).  The delay imposed as fires are lit for cooking lets Brigitte and I sit with the teachers and ask and answer questions.  Teachers work hard here, but even the government does not afford them a very high status. A month’s salary can buy around 3 (large) bags of maize, though with the failure of the rains this year a month’s salary may soon buy only 1 bag of maize. We talk for several hours.


AFTERNOON DAY 3
Formal gathering in the church to introduce us to the Session.  

Over 300 attend (many out of curiosity).  Two choirs perform.  Over 30 people introduce themselves to us formally.  In the course of the session we are asked to give a speech – in English, translated into Chichewa. There follows 45 minutes of question and answer – all translated.  How are the houses in your village?  Do you give a proportion of the harvest back to God?  What will the weather be like in Scotland now? As we approach the shortest day in Malawi, there is amazement when we try to describe longest and shortest days in Scotland. Life revolves so much around the hours of daylight here, that they cannot easily contemplate the adjustments needed if they had our extremes of length of day.

It is clear in the gathering that the church is very happy indeed that we are seeking a partnership with them. There is a sense of awe – why did we choose them – but as the story unfolds (an outdoor centre up the hill owned by Blantyre Synod with assistance from Word Exchange in Scotland that can offer us ready accommodation and hence simple access to the church, school and community) – the process becomes clearer. From time to time joy bursts out in a spontaneous song, which can have many in the church dancing. We look on – maybe sway a little - in true Scottish fashion!
 
Day 4 - Thursday
We travel to Mulanje Mission Hospital, to be given a very detailed tour and explanation of health care in the area. Not all beds are filled at this time of year, although in the rainy season, rates of illness increase. I myself have been a patient in the past (1997) in two government hospitals in Malawi, at a time when one of the hospitals had no doctor and the other no drugs. This hospital is better staffed and stocked (indeed, they are intensely proud of having just employed their first Malawian doctor, Dr Reginald Chunda), and we see a brand new specialist ward for Kangaroo Care - close hugging of premature babies, demonstrably more successful than incubators in a country where electricity can be unreliable.

We also visit the ART clinic, a programme (in a building funded by friends in Holland) to offer retroviral drugs (supplied by the government) to those who are HIV positive. The clinic has been going for just over a year, and was started in a small way, so that it could be incorporated as just a normal service in the daily health care delivery of the hospital. Patients are taken on for life and are seen on a monthly basis. In the first year 300 patients were attended to and on 1st April 2005, 247 of these were still alive and on daily treatment. The target by the end of 2005 is 500-600 patients, and the hospital is confident it can meet this. In a nice touch, we find a ‘secret’ access through the hospital laboratory to the counselling rooms attached to the clinic, so that those entering do not have to face the stigma of being spotted by the many friends and relatives who camp out in the hospital to provide food for patients while they are staying in hospital.

We return at 4.30 (not long till dark) to find members from the Steering Committee awaiting our return.  We are greeted formally and invite them to sit with us in the Youth Centre. They explain that we are their guests, and this afternoon we have been on a journey, and it is their duty to welcome us back and to enquire if we have had a good visit.  It is also a sign of friendship that they will come to greet us where we are staying. We sit together – a smaller group of 8 – and talk freely (all translated), amazed how much we seem to be learning from each other.  The deep excitement is that this is just the start of the partnership.  The sense of mutual understanding, after so short a time, is significant and palapable.
 
And so, dear friends, to bed.  The chalet has a tin roof, and all through the night cones and debris drop on to the roof from the overhanging trees. However, this is nothing to the sound of monkeys coming to collect them!

The following was added on return to UK:

Day 5 - Friday

Back in school in the morning. Between us we are working our way around all 8 classes. There is one empty classroom – the 202+ children in Standard 1 cannot fit in there, and so are permanently housed under the two shady trees. There are some original classrooms – quite dark, concrete floors, concrete fretwork windows with no glass, so at least some air is able to get through, blackboards that can be very hard to read unless a volunteer from Scotland manages to acquire blackboard paint. There are also 4 new classrooms, more airy, with brightly coloured wrought iron fretwork in the windows. They have boards at the front and back and on the side-walls. The traditional desks for the school are wooden benches with a fixed writing surface and seat backs. However, the ministry is encouraging groupwork, so some of the classrooms have four large concrete tables and fixed concrete bench seats. They are recently installed, but the concrete used to attach the surfaces to the base is not of the highest quality, and already some of the bench plinths are loose (very heavy and pretty dangerous). The teachers are fairly clear they find the tables a problem when numbers in the class are so large - several of the classes have over 100 children.  

The head teacher has an office, but it is tiny – a long thin broom cupboard. The pinboard on one wall has been constructed from cardboard boxes, but the charts on it (hand drawn by the head teacher) are meticulous, and the programmes of work for staff as well as pupils, exacting.

Almost all work is done using little exercise books. I am given one that has warnings about HIV/AIDS on the cover and the encouragement

• Say NO to pressure for sex
• School first for a brighter future
• Life is precious, look after youself.

As part of a pen-pal scheme which we are hoping to set up, I will provide a ream of white paper for the children to use when writing to children in Scotland. The rest of the paper I will leave with the head teacher. You would think I am handing over the keys to Buckingham Palace.

This afternoon, we are the guests of the Women’s Guild (Mvano). We arrive at the church to a welcome party, who escort us, singing, into the church. I tape most of the session – singing, detailed explanations of their aims, descriptions of the various works they are involved in, including ministering at funerals etc. They have a uniform – a blue skirt and white top and headdress. Their questions to us are probing and the clarity of their own role definitions a challenge to our ability to reply from our setting.

I enjoy one of the comments from a senior member of our steering committee. He listens carefully to the whole session and then affirms that people should not think that their questions to us are insignificant. They are important because we have treated them with respect, and even the act of sharing views, listening and reflecting together has been encouraging to both sides. In my view, this is a very important aspect of partnership, and I am delighted that it is already such a reality, even in these early days of our contact. I find that the votes of thanks which we are quite frequently invited to give are often an opportunity to affirm those from whom we have been learning.

As the first week draws to a close, I am aware that matters will only be aired in these very public forums and we may not have the chance for more intimate discussions with the Steering Group about arrangements concerning the partnership. I decide to write two letters over the weekend, one for the Steering Committee, one for the school, so that any questions which we have are out in the open during our remaining days in the community.

Day 6 - Saturday

We have a day off! Time for a little washing, although clothes hung outside will have to be ironed to beat the tetsie fly (this includes underwear), and those that we try to dry indoors struggle in the concrete dominated atmosphere, which seems to absorb moisture.

We stroll up to the Centre and find Andrew Missi, an artist, laying his paintings and batiks on the ground in preparation for selling. I commence Christmas shopping.

Jonathan joins some of the youngsters playing football with a makeshift ball, constructed from carrier bags, fixed with rubber bands. I enjoy taking photographs, and the youngsters love to pose. The trick is to stay around long enough so that you catch them not posing.

I gather a little group around me, and we sit in the dust and start some basic drawing. My drawing is very basic, so I am relieved when a piece of paper is dropped from standing height into the group. A beautiful cartoon drawing of a person (Mr Chankwilu) running from a snake (the label says ‘osachosa’). John (the artist, Standard 5 or 6?) takes over, and includes a picture of Jonathan (Jonasoni) in each of his drawings thereafter.

In the afternoon we travel with Margaret to the nearest market for vegetables and to look at rocket stoves, a new design that burns very little wood, and could offer good ecological hope in Malawi. I take the opportunity to price bicycles – around £35-40 for a basic import.

A day for relaxing and reflecting.

Day 7 - Sunday

The Sunday morning service is set to start at 9.30. At least, that is when we are invited into the vestry, to spend the next 30 minutes or so meeting others who will also take part in the service. A programme is constructed.

There are visitors from another congregation, who will be joining with the Fellowship / Evangelism committee in the afternoon. One of their number will be the lay preacher for the sermon today. Mr Chiromo will listen to the entire sermon in Chichewa and then give a precis in English for our benefit. He has remarkable skill (and - I suspect - tact, as my impression of the sermon was that it included a goodly dose of fire and brimstone).

We had already been asked if we would like to preach. Wishing to see the shape of a service in Malawi first, we have declined on this occasion. However, as the service unfolds, Jonathan will be invited to address the Sunday School, Brigitte will take one of the readings, I will make a formal speech concerning the partnership and then, when 3.5 hours have elapsed, we three will be invited to answer questions from the congregation of 350 or so. The public clarification continues. In a very significant question we are asked about our statement that we hope this partnership will include some visits from Likhubula to Dunblane. If they cannot even make short journeys in Malawi (“because of expenses in transportation and so forth”) how possible is it to be that they can travel to Scotland? My reply that we see it as part of our job to assist with the costs meets with immediate clapping and cheering – even before translation! I take the opportunity to talk further about how such visits may be arranged, who might be involved, the role of both Steering Committees and we issue a formal invitation for two people to visit Dunblane before 2005 is out. There is great happiness in the congregation.

After the service we are invited into classroom 6, in the same compound as the church, and served with lunch – nsima, chicken and vegetables. Jonathan does us proud!

We are then escorted over the bridge into the next village and to the tailor’s store. He has electricity and the same Singer treadle sewing machine that my mother used when we were growing up in Glasgow. To my embarrassment, after formal introductions we are measured for garments in front of the elders. Three outfits will be completed by the day after next.