Students to tell how their marvellous Malawi expedition changed all of their outlook on life
Over the summer, seven Arran High School pupils took part in a three week expedition to Malawi. Now students, Katie Morrison, Jack Ewing, John Stewart, Charlie Weir, Alan Dillon, Aiden Gold and Tom Remmington, would like to invite Arran residents and visitors to a presentation of their trip in their own words on Wednesday, September 30, at 7pm in the High School Theatre. There will be a raffle of goodies from Malawi and Arran they hope to see as many people there as possible. Here, staff member, Amanda Hogge, gives a summation of the trip
After two and a half years in the planning, we were finally boarding the ferry to start our 30 hour journey to Malawi. We set off with an air of excitement and nervousness as some of the team, including myself, had never left the country before. Being responsible for the seven young people in a far off land was made easier by the amazing support I knew I had from parents, and fellow staff, Stephen Garroway and expedition leader, Lucy Wallace.
We took an amazing group of young people who, coming from Arran, found it easy to talk to locals and try their hand at the local language.
We were very fortunate and grateful for the time Helen Kerr from Shiskine had spent with us over the year to prepare our language skills. Our trip was split into four phases, each with a different view.
After arriving in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, we found our camp, then set up and assigned roles to the team.
As we embarked on the first taste of Malawi life and the dreaded supermarket, we were taken by how busy the streets were and how dusty the air felt. The team needed to find and purchase their own food for the following phase until we were able to return to the town. This was not an easy trip for our young people as they needed to work out budgets, change money, work in different currencies, plan meals for a week at time, prepare the necessary shopping lists and then find the quantities and items needed in an unfamiliar setting. During the settling period, we also visited the Ministry of Hope children’s orphanage. It’s an amazing facility which, at the time, was caring for 15 babies all under two years old who had lost their mothers in childbirth. When we visited, there was a set of two week old triplets weighing the same as a bag of sugar. The care-givers work tirelessly with the babies to ensure growth and health.
For the first phase of our trip, we were driven to the Dzalanyama Forest Reserve to the west of Lilongwe. The dry and dusty land was clearly not the conditions we were used to at home. Our plan for this phase was to help renovate a staff room at the local primary school. The group prepared the walls and shelving for painting, played football with the children and tried to help them with their English. Even though we had arrived on a Sunday and it was a national holiday on the Monday, children still met us at our accommodation to walk us to school each day. We could only have seen one day of classes at this school, but the teachers were on strike so no classes took place at all. We left this school knowing we wanted to go back and help and we felt that completing the staff room/library would benefit the school. We returned to Lilongwe to prepare for the next phase.
This saw our team undergo the day-long journey to one of the most spectacular places we had ever seen. Mount Mulanje sits within the teagrowing region with its lush green fields. This can be some of the wettest parts of Malawi. In January, the area experienced some very dramatic rainfall and had to put in a lot of work to get their standard of living and local infrastructure back. Our guide for the mountain was Wonderford Mmambo, he quickly sussed the strengths and weaknesses of our team and chose an appropriate route for us. During our three day trek, we took in sights of the mountain and were able to catch the Porters’ race as we crossed the plateau during the second day. Again we watched our students get to know the porters and join in with games on the top of the mountain.
Phase three saw us visit Fisherman’s Rest, south of Blantyre. This is a project that works in partnership with 22 local primary schools to help improve education and standards of living. They also help community centres and local villages maintain water supplies, help continue and promote education outside of school and have developed Project My Girl to help teenage girls and keep them in education. Wictor and his team had recently built a traditional village within their grounds which we were able to use during our stay. Our team worked hard during our stay, getting up early to start language lessons at 7am before heading to one of the primary schools to help build walls for a library or read to the children. There are many UK charities that Fisherman’s Rest work with such as Mary’s Meals and Hope4Malawi to provide the basic nutrition that young children need to help them develop mentally and physically. One of our team, Charlie, became ill during this phase and spent his time there resting. Thankfully we had medical back-up and were able to help Charlie get well again in time for the last phase.
As we travelled north again, we visited Liwonde National Park. This is home to many, many crocodiles on the River Shire, along with hippos, warthogs, elephants and a vast array of birds including some we recognised such as osprey and heron.
The highlight was hearing the elephants pass through our camp at 4am, unbeknown to most of the sleeping students. Several times we found Mr Garroway ushering warthogs from the camp swimming pool area, along with the cheeky monkeys trying to steal anything which was not nailed down.
As we came to the end of our three weeks in Malawi, the group found themselves a little more flush than expected so treated themselves to a delicious last evening meal back at camp in Lilongwe and an indulgent cooked breakfast before we left. We took this time to remember all those who supported the team along the way from parents to guest speakers and how much this has changed each of us in our outlook.
Thank you again to everyone who has helped in some way, especially Andrew Walsh at Arran Active and Helen Kerr.
Thank you also to the Banner and the readers for the support we received over the past year.