It was an early start today as we were collected by Francis and Charity ready for 6am mass at Stella Maris girls’ school. This was a highlight of my trip the last time and I couldn’t wait to return. We arrived for mass and were instantly made to feel welcome by the warm smiles and “good mornings” from the girls as they also filed into mass.
As the mass began, I quickly remembered the power of prayer in this church. The sound of the girls all singing like angels filled the church. It is such a powerful and emotional sound as they joyfully sing and prayed. We were reminded by the priest that mass should be a joy and a reason to celebrate and participate in the singing, dancing and celebrating.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the same rhythm or beautiful singing voice like the girls do.p but I tried my best.
As mass ended, I found myself frantically structuring an introduction in my head as I had remembered during the last visit, the priest who welcomed us also gave us a kind opportunity to introduce ourselves to the girls. However, he only asked for one person to speak on behalf of the group and Laura, being the team leader( as we keep reminding her that she is the ‘Big Boss’) made her way up to speak.
Laura, spoke so well and was inspiring in her words mentioning the work we would be doing during our trip and the strength and power of women and girls in education. After commenting on the beautiful singing, we were then treated to the choir singing for us. It was a very emotional experience and lovely to see Karen join in and see the joy on her face as she shares this passion and love of singing and leading the school choir.
We were then kindly invited to enjoy breakfast with the sisters, which was lovely sharing stories and learning more about the girls and their lovely school. After breakfast, we were taken around the school by the sisters and even taken to the nursery and primary building as they explained Stella Maris is expanding and will be also including boys in the nursery and primary.
It was so lovely to see the excitement the sisters have when discussing future plans to expand the school to include more local children. As I always am when I see classrooms in Malawi, I was so impressed at the commitment to learning, seeing classrooms with handmade posters and word and number cards to promote learning. It made me reflect on the simple but effective learning posters and compare these to the many laminated posters that can often just become wallpaper in some of our schools in Glasgow.
We also spoke to two young girls from the secondary who just happened to be in an empty classroom who were studying,despite it being a Sunday. They explained their commitment to their studies for their upcoming examinations and were proud to show us their study books.
I couldn’t pretend to understand the difficult Physics learning the book contained!
After another amazing visit, we said our goodbyes and made our way back to Kabula for time together to prepare and study for our upcoming training. As we worked as a team to get everything ready, excitement and a few nerves kicked in.
Bring on a great week of training! I can’t wait to get started tomorrow!
