I have a dream...

Nansato by Niels

Today was our last full day of work on the classrooms and there was a lot to do. We needed to paint all the windows. We think that the guys managed to paint around 36 of them today – that is a lot of circles. We also had to paint the last classroom with PVA. Mr A ignored his risk assessment by climbing up a very dodgy looking Malawian ladder that was probably not build for a man of his ‘stature’. We also had to paint the blackboards which was hugely satisfying. Everyone got a shot which was a welcomed relief from the dreaded windows. I had to write up the alphabet and numbers one to ten in two classrooms. While I was blissfully getting into a routine of marking up the alphabet the rest of the group were struggling ahead with the windows, especially with the yellow going on the blue, that was particularly annoying. Luckily for me I had a secret weapon for the murals, Lucias, he was one of the workers who happened to be a sign painter so he painted the alphabet and corrected any mistakes I made. The murals are very simple but very colourful and finish the room off nicely.

Pasani by Connor

Today was also my last full day at the school that I was working at. At Pasani we had glossed all the classrooms except one so some of us got to work on that while I continued work on colouring in the alphabet and number murals which was quite easy and relaxing. By the time we had lunch we had finished glossing the fourth and last room and had completed two sets of murals. Lunch was pre-packed and was two sandwiches, fruit and egg. After lunch we went around touching up the gloss and white paint and finished the murals. 

Dinner at Nancy’s

We arrived at the restaurant expecting something quite fancy but were surprised to find one large room with basic seating and tables. Nancy then came and introduced her staff and gave us a very powerful speech about how and why she started her restaurant. She is married to a pastor and is very keen to help vulnerable women who may suffer from any discrimination based on their gender. She had a dream to create a restaurant about 20 years ago and always held on to that dream despite the challenges of starting a business being a woman. The food was quite basic but very nice and we got to try nsima which is a dumpling like thing. When I first saw it I thought it was raw dough but on eating discovered it was plain in taste and had a dumpling like texture. We all ate it with our hands by breaking off a bit and mixing it with some vegetables or beans. We were also served chicken, rice and lovely pizza. We then finished the meal with a very nice cake which had a green inside which we all theorised about which ended up just being food colouring.