Simon Flint describes his first three months as a VMM lay missionary teaching in Africa
Simon Flint
I came here in November into the searing heat of the warm heart of Africa as Malawi is sometimes called. My first month was spent with Damian and Bridgett who are both volunteers working with Network for a Better World. It was very nice to not come to an empty house and to have some people to show me how things worked.
Most of November was spent acclimatising to my new circumstances in a brand new country. In this time I visited the school a couple of times, went to some of the teacher training centres in Malawi with Bridgett and also visited some of the local communities with Father Owen, the local Catholic priest.
Both Bridgett and Damian left mid-December leaving me on my own in the house for the first time. Thankfully I was allowed to tag along with a group of Peace Corps volunteers who went up to the lake for the holidays. When I came back at the beginning of January my work in the school started.
Luntha Secondary School is a Catholic day secondary school with about 470 students. It has four forms divided into two streams of A and B. I took over all the English language classes of form 1 with about 50 students in each of my classes. I had been pre-warned about the level of English among students but it was still a bit of shock.
There are some in the class with practically no English whatsoever and the very best are still only able to speak at a very basic level. I think there was also an initial shock on the part of the students brought on by a very different style of teaching.
Feedback
After a couple of months the feedback that I have got so far is that I am the teacher that forces the students that were getting away with saying nothing into at least some contribution. I am still not sure if they meant this in a positive or negative way but I am taking it as a compliment anyway!
The students get a very long lunch break and most do not have any lunch to eat so a lot of it is spent just hanging around. A couple of times a week I have been taking out some table tennis bats and balls to play on the tables that Damian had built.
At first they were just kind of knocking it over a plank being used as the net so I taught them a game called ‘Round the World’. In this game the players hit the ball back in a rally and then run around the table to play from the other side.
Any player that breaks the rally in whatever way is eliminated until only two remain who then play for a final winner. I think that if they remember nothing else that I teach them then they will at least remember this game!
One of the aims that I was given when I first came out was to start a homework club for the students. I tried one session of this but it soon became apparent that none of the students really received homework. Luckily I had a couple of reading books and so handed them out and we discussed the story a little.
This seemed to go down pretty well as none of the students had ever really just sat down and read a book before.
This after school club has now morphed into a reading club where students can come and pick a book off the shelf and read it. At the moment the most popular books are the ones that deal with school subjects, but I am hoping that this will eventually lead to at least some interest in literature and reading for enjoyment.
Research
I have also been conducting some research in the local villages. This has involved going to households and trying to find out how many people live there and some other basic questions about how they live. It has also involved finding out about school dropout rates and the reasons behind them.
It has been interesting to get out and speak to people (with the aid of an interpreter) but many of the answers have been more or less the same for each household. I sometimes suspect that I don’t hear things which they consider to be blatantly obvious, such as the fact that they grow some vegetables as well as maize.
I also think they sometimes tell me what they think I want to hear, such as that they need sleeping nets and blankets
The immediate future for my time here is unfortunately going to be rather defined by an ongoing drought and food crisis. With the help of Network for a Better World and Sr Catherine, who teaches at the school, there will be porridge provided in the school during the lunch breaks. This is currently for the two weeks when the students are doing their exams, after mid-term break.
Hopefully on a more positive note there will be a new Sitima Premier League for some football teams. The deacon and I have sounded out the youth of the area and unsurprisingly there has been a lot of interest. The details are yet to be finalised, but hopefully we will get some teams registering in the next week and start the first games by the end of March.
*VMM (Volunteer Missionary Movement) recruits, trains and supports qualified personnel to work in developing regions of Africa, linking with diocesan organisations and other agencies responsible for the health, education, development and empowerment of communities. For more information see www.vmminternational.org or call 01 8734 562.