After our trip to the villages, Jenni and Laurence headed
into Mulanje to visit the banks. From
all accounts it was a pretty fruitless trip as the machines were empty.
I had phoned ahead and asked to make a time to speak to the
Head Teacher. The toilets at the school
are badly in need of repair. The toilets
are similar to pit latrines and in the girls’ toilet, the entire floor
collapsed and in the boys’, it is the roof.
There are 1400 pupils in the school and 3 boys’ toilets and 3 girls’. We have made no promises but we have asked
the Head Teacher to cost up how much new toilets might cost . In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, this is high.
During our discussion, I also discussed why there had been
no feeding programme that day. The Head
Teacher explained that the phala had run out and they were supposed to get
extra bags but they hadn’t arrived. I
asked if I could speak to the local distributor who explained that they had
phala at other schools but didn’t manage to get it there. My fear was that this would be the case for
the duration of the school term (school ends on the 12th). I had a robust discussion with him and
explained that we were visitors to the area and indeed Jenni was instrumental
with others to get Mary’s Meals into Southern Malawi and were very
disappointed. I said that I would expect
to see the programme running the next day and Mr. Banda made a promise to get
phala to the school. Well a couple of
hours later I got a call from The Director of Mary's Meals in Malawi from Blantyre telling me that I had upset his
staff and that if I was visiting the programme I should let him know. I said
that we weren’t actually visiting the
programme but the local area and were part of a large community who were great
supporters of the programme. We chatted
a bit more and all was well. I did offer my apologies for upsetting the system in place. We have
also arranged to visit the Head office in Blantyre next Friday.
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