Currently, Matandani has two communal water taps connected to mains water by pipes that we installed in Year 1 of the project. This year, one of our priorities is to extend mains water to taps in each classroom. The two outside water taps currently cater for 1400 children, but with a tap in every classroom one tap will serve roughly 100 children! These taps will be easier to protect and care for as they will be inside. It’s also envisaged that soap will be available at each inside sink to improve the children’s hygiene after they go to the toilet or work in the gardens. It’ll also cut down on the lines of children wanting to fill up their water bottles for class.
The toilet situation at Matandani is very poor. And with the number of children attending the school expanding, it is getting worse. The priority construction project for 2016 is to build two much needed toilet blocks, one for the girls and one for the boys. At the moment there are just 12 toilets for 1,430 children! That means that 119 children share each toilet. This is an unpleasant situation. By comparison, in an average Irish school there is 1 toilet for every 10 children!
There are currently no teacher toilets at the school. The teachers must walk to the deputy head teacher’s house and use the toilet there. This is certainly not ideal! We are hoping to build flushing toilets for the teachers as these could also be used for volunteers and guests to Matandani.
The many teacher volunteers coming to help out at Matandani this summer will complete a deep assessment of what each local teacher needs to teach the curriculum. Each Standard from 1 to 8 will develop a list of posters, books, and other teaching resources needed and we will buy them. Many teaching manuals will be replaced or updated so that the teachers can teach each subject effectively.
At the moment, ALL children in Standards 1 – 4 are sitting on the concrete ground everyday. You can imagine that this is not comfortable for the whole school day. Not only is it uncomfortable, but there are no desks for the children to write at. We hope to have local craftsmen build wooden benches for the children to sit on and also kneel behind and use as makeshift desks.
In the HOT season, the classrooms can get incredibly warm, especially with over 100 children in a room! Several children have passed out over the years. Having access to cold drinking water in the classrooms will help hugely. There is, however, another way of improving the situation: install a false roof (just like we do here in Ireland) to act as a barrier from the metal sheets of the roof that act like a radiator in the hot sun.
Soccer (football) is the most popular sport in Malawi. It is mostly played by men/boys but increasingly girls are starting to play, especially at school! Matandani’s soccer pitch is one of the most popular in the area. It is constantly in use with school children playing on it, and even at the weekends when village teams come to train and play league games on it. The problem is, however, that the pitch is very uneven. Dangerously uneven. I have watched many soccer games there and I usually witness at least one avoidable injury that is down to the uneven pitch. It is also very sandy, which makes it hard to run (think of a beach) and also to mark the boundary of the pitch itself! It also has two non-identical wooden goals that are not the correct size for a standard goal.
With the flooding of Southern Malawi in January 2015, it was evident that the school lacked a proper drainage system. Work needs to start on this to help protect the school in case the flooding happens again in the future.
Also, general maintenance of the classrooms will be needed as the wear and tear of 1,430 children at the school will need repairing. Example: doors, door handles, floors, and notice boards.
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If extra money is donated:
With Matandani situated in a rural area, it is particularly important to have teachers houses on site. Not only does it drastically improve teacher attendance, but it also gives the teachers an opportunity to raise a family and settle down in the area. Some teachers are posted (given jobs) at Matandani school but live far away. Having the houses near the school would help these teachers a lot and attract new teachers to come and work here. Matandani currently has TWO teachers houses. These are owned by the school (government) and if a teacher moves school or retires, these houses become available for new teachers.
In Year 1 we built a new classroom block comprising 2 classrooms and a storage room. This has been used to split the classes of Standard 1 and 2 in half. However, class sizes are a huge problem still in most other standards at Matandani, and it would be fantastic to get the school up to 16 classrooms to have two at each standard all the way up!
