Hi All

Just visited this school on the edge of Blantyre. The children are all under 6 and are orphaned. Some live with extended families. They come to this school to be fed a Mary's Meal. Donald and I sat among them and soon we were surrounded! I was filming them and they loved seeing themselves in the camera screen. Particularly little Zaitwa & Azai. Little characters they were, wrestling the phone off me and laughing at their images on screen. Anthony, the teacher, said it was the first time they had seen themselves in this way.

We had a bag of sweets and they lined up around the room, again, no chairs or tables but a concrete floor. What an amazing difference MM is making to their lives. They are fed twice and these are their only meals of the day. All the photos will follow later, so check back in for photos and videos of Zaitwa and Theresa (the class princess?! in pink dress). Each of the children stood up in turns to welcome us, some counting to 10, so doing the alphabet.

A little boy wouldn't leave my side. I kept feeling this prod at my knee – Nelia, our representative from MM  – who is doing life-changing work with these under 6's – told me he had HIV. I sat down and they laughed at my hair (that is consistant with the world ove…).

On the way there we passed a bustling township: meat on sticks, music pumping, and a fruit van carrying a load of workers in the back who sang as we passed.

As we left they lined up and Donald and I stood in among them as they jumped and hopped the length of the classroom. A big sign read 'you are most welcome'. We waved and the little boy stared at me, no smile. Zaitwa liked havin his stomach poked.

We had nom advance notice of the number of children there would be. There were 83 children. And randomly we had 84 sweets. One spare for the teacher too.

I got more names than I could document. And then they repeated mine (I took no chances this time…I dont want to forever be called 'Ke-vin' while here. So… 'Co-lin' I said, and they repeated after me. Then shouting to a creshendo. We wished we had Donald's acordion – next time…

As we drove away we looked back and they were still waving. We leave tmrw to gte back to Glasgow for the concert on Friday. Nelia tunred to us and said they would be expecting us tmrw. The one word she repeated was 'hope'.

Photos of Zaitwa and all below…films to come in final blog 5.

Colin

Azai & Theresa (left)

…enter Zaitwa (in green)

 

 

 

Mary#s Meals Music

Fri 29th Oct – Fruitmarket, Glasgow – they will show films from our visit on the night.

Feat. Jon Fratelli, Colin MacIntyre, Eddi Reader, Tommy Reilly, Roddy Hart, Washington Irving. £18 (feeds two of these kids annual Mary's meals)