Having had the Malawian version of “Delhi Belly” for the last few days we are now back to normal! Today we were therefore able to get out and have visited a children’s nursery in a village in the middle of nowhere. This is run by the Good News Revival Centre where we are staying and is one of 15 such centres run by them in the district. There were about 50 children there, many of them orphans who live with foster carers nearby. The school provides them with education but also with food, for many of them the only meal they will get in a day.
The room the nursery was in was completely devoid of any furniture, books , pictures, toys…, just a bare floor. The children learn by rote from teachers who have had very little training and aren’t paid. It was a very humbling experience, making us realise afresh how fortunate we are in the UK, how much we have. The welcome we received there was wonderfully warm, a song and dance for us!
The deprivations that we feel in not having our own things, food that we are used to, reliable electricity and water supplies, comfortable chairs… seem insignificant in the light of seeing these children. In the evenings when the power is down our aging eyes are not good enough for reading by candlelight; the only letters they can register are those on Scrabble tiles, so we are playing a lot of that. It’s 2 all at time of writing.
We are in the rainy season here, so this has curtailed our travelling around a bit but today is very hot and sunny and the red dust soon makes our clothes very grubby. But enjoying the warmth as we think of Tonbridge in early February!