Saturdays at the Centre For Learning

27th February 2016:
My only comment can be Wow, what have we started. I think mad people have wild vision and imaginings. I certainly lost the plot when Rose and myself wrote to all the schools in the area asking them to send all their girls who had qualified for a place in Secondary school and were too poor to attend. The numbers grew and we now have committed to enabling 77 girls and 4 women to take up their places. AND school fees are actually the easiest part.
We soon realised that the quality of schools, the enormous class sizes, the poor training of teachers, the no blackboard, no chalk scenarios were too challenging, not to mention that very few books are available, meant a rethink and regroup.
SO we decided to invite any girl who could come to attend classes for half day on Saturdays. We used our own employees at first, but have now employs the best teachers (we could find) in the area to teach Mathematics and English.
We now have four teachers and we are using part of our factory space. We have benches for bums, but TIM, this is Malawi and you can't go to IKEA !!
again we are working on it.
Todays group came from long distances, some walking for three hours each way and in expectation we had a hurried move to the maize mill on Friday evening and to the markets for relish and beans. Rose had to get a big pot  for the Nsima and others for the beans. She arose at 4am because feeding 65 girls and the staff and the visitors, maybe 100 in all, is no mean task, using sticks and charcoal as food. 
EVERYONE was fed and even a few passes-by as well.
There were no loaves or fishes, but maybe a minor miracle!
No for further madness.
On Wednesday morning we will collect the girls who live too  far away, to walk, give them a place to sleep, employ a matron or two and a few cooks, bet three new stoves, bigger pots, more plates and cups, plastic of course and have a four day session of teaching but maybe some games and a little fun, I'm sure.
Maybe now, this is the best work we can do here. the tragic stories could make me cry all day. We have no idea in the developed world where we talk about poverty and the poverty line. The idea of Global Citizenship is a heap of rubbish, like UN Charters and human rights.
You would want to have heard the joy from 65 girls so excited and delighted by the idea of four days schooling on their mid-term break.
We will have to watch this space and maybe get a few individual stories.