Second day of training in Mangochi

Moni everyone, its Ruth (and Lorelei) here!

A strange but good day of training today. We arrived this morning and to our shock horror everyone was ready to start. This has proved somewhat unusual in Malawi so far. Myself, Lorelei and Elizabeth trained the young girls today whilst Kirstie, Hayley and Emily trained the adults.

We decided to keep the entire programme today very active and fun. We started the morning by putting the girls into patrols to ensure there was a good mix of ages in each group. We taught the girls the Crazy Elephant song which they enjoyed immensely, particularly our rubbish English dancing skills! The girls were very noisy today, don't know what they were fed for breakfast, but we want some! We then looked at scavenger hunts and treasure hunts and got some of the older girls to run their own treasure hunt. We also did lots of communication and team work games. We used some of the older girls as our translators today which worked really well.

The adults today looked at WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts), focusing on their mission statement and goals. They interspersed this with lots of energisers and songs as the ladies need lots of encouragement to participate actively.

At lunch we were informed that we would be finishing at 2pm rather than the planned 3.30pm as we were to meet the District Educational Officer (DEO) - This meant scrapping most of the afternoon's planned activities. With the little time that we had left in the afternoon, the ladies created a world guiding history timeline while the girls took part in a team building straw tower challenge. The girls needed a lot of support to create a tower that could stand independently.

We have just got back from our meeting with the DEO, he talked to us about the importance of guiding in Mangochi where many girls drop out of school to start their family at a young age. He was proud that we had come to Mangochi and referred to us as role models for the girls we were training. This made us feel that this week's training is very worthwhile and important - a lovely end to a busy day.

We have also experienced eating sugar cane today, which is tasty but rather difficult to eat as it involves you spitting the chewed bark all over the streets - don't think this would go down well in the UK!

Cheerio

Team Malawi xxx