The food that is prepared at the school is only for the teachers and is food that we have to pay for. As you can imagine, this means the students are basically on a water fast all day. This can make learning difficult, especially towards the end of the day when all they can think about is getting home for supper. This also makes it difficult to start clubs or sports teams at the school if there is no nutrition involved.
Kamuzu Palace CDSS is a low resource school, meaning we don’t have any computers, often not enough textbooks, and sometimes not even enough pens, chairs, or desks. I will often see a student not working and ask them why they are not taking notes, and they will say it is because their neighbor is borrowing their pen and so they have to take turns. The principal of the school told me that last year some students even had to write those important national exams on the floor because there were not enough chairs, let alone desks, for everyone. Teachers will often have to spend class time copying the content of the textbook onto the chalkboard so students can write it on paper and have something to study. However, like I mentioned earlier, many of them didn’t want to be teachers in the first place. Sometimes, they will just give a student the textbook or notes and have the student write them on the board so that the teacher can spend the time working on other things in the staff room. Don’t get me wrong, the teachers are amazing people and some of my good friends, but the education system doesn’t really provide much motivation for them.
This is more of a fun fact, but I thought I would just give a list of common names of my students and others that I have met in Malawi.
