Mphungu School, Lilongwe Malawi

Greetings from the Warm Heart of Africa!

I have arrived in Malawi and am once again enjoying the sights, sounds, and people of this wonderful nation. I am staying at the home of Samuel and Hannah Kayuni. The Kayuni's have two biological children and 25 chosen children. Because they have two homes, I knew more about the area near the other house than the one I am staying in for this trip. So I asked around for the name and location of the local government school. One of the yard men walked me over to the school last Thursday morning. When we arrived I could tell that classes were on morning break, because kids were chasing each other wildly through the school yard. Red dust was flying in every direction!

There were various buildings on the school grounds, but the first one I met had curtains in the windows. I assumed this was the main office. Inside there was only room enough for two desks and a few chairs along the opposite wall. I went in an introduced myself to the deputy headmaster and asked permission to observe classes. He kindly invited me to come to school for the day on Monday, today. I left excited, knowing that a connection between Brandon and Mphungu was very possible.

Today I spent the day observing and meeting students and faculty. This school runs from standard 1 (grade 1) through standard 8. After standard 8, students move to secondary school.

The first class I observed in was an English class. Although all subjects are taught in English for standard 5 on up, Chichawa remains the children' s primary language. The room was packed with students. There were 5 rows with nine desks in each row. The desks were new wooden desks that were set up to seat two children. However, most of the seats with children in them have three or four children per seat. As I watched the lessons, I counted close to 80 students in that one classroom. Halfway through the lesson, about 10 to 15 students entered. I thought the teacher was amazing! He continued the lesson and checked individual students' work even with this number of students and all of the disruptions of the lesson. He had to use a loud voice to be heard over the rumble of the off task talking, but he kept the lesson moving.

I noticed that the reason there were groups of students was because the students had to share books. There were not enough books to go around. The teachers told me that the government just can't afford to provide enough books for each student. Although the children do not have to pay for their books, they must share. Lesson are written down in small notebooks that the teacher moves around the room checking.

I moved to a standard 1 class from here. The little once were adorable! They sat on the floor together in little groups while their teacher taught them subtraction. There were bottle caps on the floor near some of the children. The bottle caps were used as manipulative for those who didn't use their fingers for subtraction. The teacher wrote some simple subtraction problems on the board. The children were supposed to copy the problems down and solve them in their notebooks. While the teacher walked around the room correcting students' work, she sang a echo response type of song to keep the others occupied. Brilliant!