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“I'm Dreaming Of A Hot Christmas”
“Let It Rain! Let It Rain! Let It Rain!”
“In The Bleak Midsummer”
Yes, that's right, Christmas has come to Malawi! But the rains haven't!
Hi, I am still alive. I've just been crazy busy doing absolutely nothing. This means that I haven't had much time for writing updates, and when I have had time there's been nothing to report, but I figured it was time to write something!
Since mid October when I last wrote something here, I have been undergoing some training, paid for by Joshua (the charity for which I'm working out here). I did this with Stevie, Agnes and John – the local people I will be helping with the feeding centres. For the two weeks succeeding half term we had intensive teaching from a charity called boNGO. We saw 2 of their (extremely good) feeding centres, and had some very long sessions of education about management. Unfortunately, this was all in Chichewa and I didn't have a translator, so I can't be very sure what we were taught, but I'm sure it was extremely enlightening...!
Since then, things have gone quite slowly! boNGO spent some time looking at some of our feeding centres, and then when that's finished we will plan how we are going to go about improving our own centres. Unfortunately, this second stage took a very long time, and didn't finish until the end of November, so I had a lot of time to sit around and twiddle my thumbs :) I actually didn't mind this, and (thanks to the rule that if I have free time I have to bake) the family gained quite a lot of desserts through this, so there were few complaints! However, our centres all close in a week as this is (in theory) the start of the rainy season, so everyone is required for planting crops. This means that the reformation of our centres in all reality isn't going to start until after Christmas.
Four weeks ago we moved house. We are now living in the home of Sylvia, who runs the Joshua trust, as she went home for a couple of months and didn't want to leave her house unattended. Her house is lovely, with THREE bedrooms and an enormous garden. This means I have a bed, and my own bedroom! Which is wonderful :)
Ever since I arrived, people I've met have always asked me what school I'm going to out here (depressing, I know) but this weekend I went to a swimming gala at Dom's (secondary) school (he swam very well, but unfortunately the rest of his relay team weren't quite as good) and a student there asked me if I was one of the parents! Apparently this last week was a lot worse than I had realised!
This week I am going to visit and orphanage here in Blantyre to see if that is somewhere I could do some work on my spare time, especially when our feeding centres are on holiday. Hopefully this will work out and I can get started in the next few days as our centres are about to close so I will have a whole month with nothing to do!
That basically sums up the last 6 weeks, sorry there isn't more to report except that I miss you all and can't wait to see you when we return.
All my love,
Julez
xxxx
P.S. For anyone interested I am planning on doing a sponsored 48 hour fast. I haven't chosen a date yet, but it will probably be sometime in January. All the money raised will go towards the work I am doing with Joshua and will be used to buy stuff for the children in the feeding centres. For more information, or to donate, please see http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JulietHeyes
Thank you :)
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