another week flies by

Greetings from Mzuzu!
It's hard to believe that another week has passed by and that it's Sunday again. It's been busy and great fun as I spent some more time in school with the children this week, helping out as another teacher has needed some time off. The day in the pre-school is from 7.30am to 4pm, which is quite a lot longer than my usual nursery day in Northern Ireland. I have been able to try out some new activities with the children and teachers which we all enjoyed...
Children are the same the world over - water, sand and mud always go down a treat! Well, at least with the children. Maybe the mums were not so pleased with the colour of the clothes that were sent home... One of the slogans of the washing powders available here is 'DIRT IS GOOD!' so I hope it works well. Watch this space......

This is one of my most useful kitchen items - the water filter. I was very glad it was well filled on Friday morning as the water and electricity went off early and it stayed off until yesterday afternoon. We can completely take for granted the water that comes out of the taps until it is not there. I have learned that my buckets should always be filled with spare water just in case, a wee job that I musn't forget to keep up to date.
The lack of electricity meant that the night sky was clearly visible and the stars were just beautiful. This was one of the upsides of this short chapter!

This week I also had the opportunity to sample fresh sugar cane. I have had some growing in my garden but it was harvested by the family that lived here before me. It is quite a funny thing to eat as you strip the outer hard layer off with your teeth and chew chunks of the inner layers. It is very sweet as you can imagine and then after chewing the inner layers the leftover fibres in your mouth are put into the bin. It would easily satisfy the sweetest tooth. (if it didn't, there would be a problem!)

Freshly harvested sugar cane.

Some happy children enjoying outdoor play time.

This week I will be back in the office adding more new information to the database and reading through and organising the data from the monitoring forms that the trainers have been sending back from their visits to the nurseries in their presbyteries. Already it is not difficult to see the next chapter of work taking shape even before this first chapter is completed. As you can see life is getting busier...!

Enjoy your week.

Blessings

Fiona