Saturday - Our Last Post!

After morning Mass on Friday (that’s 6.30 a.m. – remember!), Eric presented Fr Chunda with a certificate to commemorate our visit to St Peter’s but, fortunately, he didn’t inflict the Chitumbuka speech on us again – it’s last outing was earlier today at Galamala village which we visited on our way to Lilongwe earlier today (more details later on).

The final assembly at school was delayed until 7.30 a.m. so that we could get breakfast (porridge again) after Mass. Dominic led the whole St Peter’s school community in prayer including some Chitumbuka – nice one, Dominic!

After a few words of thanks and an indication of our hopes for the future of the partnership from Eric, the Head Girl from St Peter’s spoke; this was followed by stirring renditions of both the Malawian national anthem and “Flower of Scotland” before we presented more of the gifts which had been so generously donated to us before our departure. The school received a laptop, a multimedia projector, netball bibs and tracksuits and football strips and boots while the pupils were given pencils, pens and toothbrushes. The resultant excitement meant that no classes took place for most of the day – although the Head Teacher did tell the pupils that anyone caught dogging school would have their pen/pencil/toothbrush taken from them!

We quickly nipped into town before lunch so that the pupils could buy their nearest and dearest some more gifts – bet you’re all on the edge of your seats now and unable to contain your excitement about your presents! If it helps, part of the shopping spree took place in the Tanzanian market – if there was a picture in the dictionary next to the word grotty, it would be Mzuzu’s Tanzanian market!

After lunch, we marched behind our piper, Michael N, from the house to the church hall to the strains of “Highland Cathedral” for a farewell concert. After we had been entertained with a variety of dances, songs and sketches from the pupils (and staff) of St Peter’s, we inflicted – sorry, performed – our own cultural items on the audience. These included “Flower of Scotland”, “Loch Lomond” and “500 Miles” as well as the Gay Gordons, the Dashing White Sergeant and the Strip the Willow. Members of the Malawian staff were invited to take part in the dancing with varying degrees of success! We were also presented with T-shirts by the school to commemorate our visit –the 3 spelling/grammatical mistakes in “St Matthew’s Academy” did upset Mr Banda just a little although we all thought it added to the whole atmosphere of our visit! The concert finished with the whole audience singing the two National Anthems – this proved just a little emotional for some of our staff! To finish off a wonderful afternoons, Eric, Michael D and Caroline were interviewed by the local radio station – although how much sense the listeners will be able to make of their unprepared responses is open to question.

Our two “dodgy wee guys” (© Bernadette 2009) from Nkhata Bay, Bob and Tosh (yes – really!), duly appeared with our carved key fobs and whole lot of other high quality (?) souvenirs. While Michael D managed to get rid off a wide variety of items such as his binoculars and some batteries, Captain Trading (i.e. Dominic) again reigned supreme by trading his school blazer for goods! As Paul said, “Dominic – the man who put the ‘shark’ in Sharkey!”

We finished Friday off with a final visit to the Ilala Lodge; several staff from St Peter’s Secondary, St Peter’s Primary and Mary Martha Orphan Care also came along and joined in a great evening of dancing and singing – both Malawian and Scottish – and including, believe it or not, “Old Macdonald’s Farm” (initiated by Irene from St Peter’s Primary School), “The Hokey Cokey” and “The Slosh”.

And so to this morning, when it seemed as if half of Mzuzu turned up to wave us off at shortly after 8.00 a.m. Again our luggage was packed into a pickup while we settled into our seats for the trip south. Celia was a bit overcome with emulsion but soon recovered although tended to suffer a relapse when anyone spoke to her.

On the way to Lilongwe, we had a diversion to make to Galamala village (home of Fr Nazarius). To get there we had to journey for many kilometres on very bumpy dust tracks but, on our arrival, we were greeted with all of the ceremony normally reserved for special guests. Ngoni warriors performed tribal dances but proved to be less fearsome than they looked when they posed for photographs with us afterwards. We presented the head of the village with K100000 (about £400) from the project fund which will be used to carry out some gardening initiatives in the village to help them become more self-sufficient. The locals showed us some of their traditional houses as well as one of the water pumps which were installed during our previous visit as part of our joint project with Irvine Seagate Rotary Club.

From Galamala it took the best part of 6 hours (much of it spent sleeping) to reach the luxury of Nelly’s Guest House in Lilongwe by which time various parts of our anatomy were aching. However, the promise of a shower, a hot meal and a beer or two was enough to overcome our discomfort.

Tomorrow, the 6 pupils along with Celia and Eric will begin the trek home, leaving here at around 10.00 a.m. to head for Lilongwe Airport – assuming all of the connections go according to plan, we will see you all at Glasgow Airport at 7.50 a.m. on Monday morning – unless, of course, you are a loved one of Frances or Ally who return a day later at the same time or Anne, Paul or Bernadette who don’t come back until the end of the month.

It’s been a brilliant week and we want to thank everyone for keeping in touch via the blog. Although this is the last entry for this part of the visit, Bernadette (and Anne & Paul when they get back to Mzuzu from Zambia) will be posting from time to time – so keep logging on to find out how Malawi is managing without us!

See you bright and early (although quite late for us!) on Monday morning.