Registered Charity SCO37402

More details up to May 2007

For more recent developments, please go to the NEWS & PICTURES page.

April 2007

Building work is finished!!!  Only painting and furniture needed and then all 4 nurseries will be finished.  We are hoping to have all the nurseries opened by the end of May so we are busy sending out registration letters, having furniture built, building playgrounds and planning parties!!

Nansato nursery opened on Wednesday 21st March.  It is fabulous.  The first day was very exciting with lots of singing, dancing, playing and a few tears.  Since then the children have settled incredibly quickly, they are learning so much.  They sing and dance every day, which is so fun.  The nursery is full of smiling faces, the children are enjoying playing games, colouring, listening to stories and lots of other activities.  Every day the children settle under the trees with a wee bowl of steaming porridge and they love it.  They also love to play outside - kicking balls, running, balancing, swinging or playing in their wee house!!  What a privelege to watch and play with them.  The teachers are wonderful and are learning lots, they have such enthusiasm and love to play!!  It such a blessing to see what started off as a dream only a year and a half ago becoming a reality!! Thank you for all your help.

March 2007

Building work is going amazingly.  Nansato is finished!!!  Samson is being decorated, the alphabets and colours are all being painted, furniture made and outside cleared.  Pasani, nursery number 3, has a roof and is being plastered.  At Nkanda, nursery number 4 and our favourite site, right at the foot of Chambe peak, the longest cliff face in Southern Africa, they are building the walls.  We are totally amazed and as you can imagine super busy now with 4 nurseries on the go.  Regular visits to Blantyre for materials, working on the playgrounds and going to all of the sites regularly are all
part of a normal week.

On the educational side - we are really delighted to have found our teachers and assistants, they are full of energy, enthusiasm and fun.  It was a long process with 140 applicants, followed by 97 interviews then a further 27 on the short leet.  We have employed 1 teacher and 1 assistant for each nursery.  We are starting training with the staff, which will include games, songs, resources and looking at the curriculum.  It is so fun and exciting to imagine that within 2 or 3 weeks Nansato nursery will be full of children!!!  The realisation of a dream, lots of hardwork and amazing support, thank you!!

January 2007

We took a short break over Christmas and returned to find amazing things had happened. Nansato is finished, well, nearly finished! We came back and it was plastered, painted, and a door was on! It was so good to see all the work that we, and so many other people, had put in as something physical. It looks brilliant and since we've been back another couple of coats of paints have been put on and the drainage has been built. It's really in the final stages which is really exciting, we've had joiners come to make desks and cupboards and an artist is doing lettering for Alphabets and Number Lines. At Samson things are going well also. All the brickwork is nearly complete and the roof will be going on next week. Unfortunately we haven't been able to get there very often. There's a lot of rain here. The roads are impassible and you have to cross two rivers which are waist high in the dry season! Yesterday we saw a flash flood which was amazing. The river rose 8 feet in the space of a couple of minutes! However, the builders are braving the elements and progress is still fantastic. Rumour has it there's always a brick shortage in January so we've stocked up at Pasani already and hope to start there in the next couple of weeks. So everythings still going on brilliantly here, hope you all had a good Christmas!

December 2006

Building's fast in Malawi!  The foundations were started on the 17th of November and already the foundations are laid, floor laid and walls built up to the top of the windows.  In two days we're going into Blantyre to buy iron sheets for the roof!  We can't believe how quickly things are happening.  Also on Tuesday the 28th of November we began at Samson, foundations have been dug and footing concrete has been laid.  It really is incredible, we stay in the house one day to work on accounts and things and the next day the nursery is unrecognisable!

The speed of building is mainly to do with how basic the structures are (there's no insulation, plumbing, wiring...you get the picture) but also because the foreman we have found is amazing.  He has everyone working on a contract basis so they work fast and he's constantly looking for the cheapest way to source materials and best way to transport things.  At Nansato we dug sand from the river, we hired a tractor and 5 tonne trailer and moved the sand to the site.  At Samson, Mr Maotcha (our foreman) worked out it was cheaper to pay local women 20 kwacha (8 pence) per bucket of sand they bring.  He arrived to us last night with a list of women, 4 and a half pages long, which detailed how many buckets they had brought!  It was amazing, most women had bought 6 or 7 buckets but one lady racked up a grand total of 54 buckets! She must be some kind of machine!  In the end he saved us 12,000 kwacha, £48, and around 200 ladies got a little bit of money rather than a driver and a couple of diggers getting heaps.  Everyone's a winner! Well, apart from the driver and the diggers.

So things are going amazingly, our car is giving us a few troubles but we're working round that!  Hopefully we'll have some more photos for you to see soon.  Mr Maotcha has impressed us so much and building is so fast that we have decided to use him for all four nurseries.  He is working at Samson and Nansato at the moment, we have arranged it so he is working at two sites with a head builder in place at each site for when he's not there.  Once Nansato is finished he will begin at Pasani and then when Samson is finished he will begin at Nkanda!

November 2006

We have spent lots of time visiting local schools and have finally decided on 4 nurseries in the local area.  One being Nansato (the school where Paula taught on her first visit) and the others all within 5km.  The last month has involved lots of visiting the schools which has been hard work as we have had to walk everywhere in the hottest part of the year, some days over 45 degrees!!!  The schools set up meetings with the village heads and other members of the community to select a committee to work with us in the building and running of the nurseries.  All of the schools have been really enthusiastic and really supportive.

We have a pick-up! It's a Toyota Hilux if that means anything to anyone. It's a single cab, one tonne pick up, it's yellow/cream with brown leather interior, it takes ages to start, the brakes don't work and we love it! Suprisingly, we got it for under our budget so we're going to spend some money doing a little bit of work on it!  We also made a deal with the owner, which we're quite proud of, that he's going to pay for a full service which is happening tomorrow.  Yesterday we drove it to it's new home, it was quite a tentative journey but after a few stalls we made it.  On our way back the heavens opened and it was then we found out the windows don't work either, my whole right side was soaking!  Oh, the horn doesn't work either, or the speedometer, fuel gauge, driver door...you maybe by now have built up a picture of our new car!

We're both really excited because on Wednesday we start building nursery number 1!  We have found a foreman who has been working in the area but is from a construction company in Blantyre.  This is pretty much ideal as he has the skills that you maybe wouldn't find from someone local but he has contacts and knows the area.  We are still going to hire local builders and we may use this foreman to oversee more than one site.  Another good thing is he has really good English, unfortunately our Chichewa usually comes up a little short.  So everything is going here, at the beginning it was slow and we were complaining about being bored.  Now we don't have time to sit down and wish we could have that time back.  There's no pleasing us.

October 2006 - The first message from Paula and Stuart in Malawi:

Paula – “We have met lots of my friends here and most of my pupils have come by to say hello.  Last night we went to the rock-pools and some of my pupils sang to us.  They sang all of my favourite Malawian songs then sang 'O Flower of Scotland' to make Stuart feel at home. We have been swimming in 'Paula's' pools every day.  Last time I was here by the time I left people called them that because I was there so often.”

September 2006 - Final plans for the Nursery are all in place.  Thanks to your generosity, we are leaving for Malawi tomorrow with over £17,000 of funds.  This total is far beyond our origanal total of £13,000 which gives us room to explore different opportunities and possibilities.  We arrive in Blantyre on the 27th of September.  When we get there we will begin researching nursery care in the area, as well as playing with the monkeys!  Thank you for all your support!

August 2006 - Thorough lots of fundraising and an unbelievable amount of generosity our total is at £10,000!  Our flights out to Malawi are booked for the 26th of September.

July 2006 - We finally received charitable status! It seemed to take a long time but we are now officially 'Nansato Nursery Trust.'  Fundraising is going very well, we are amazed by the support and help the project is
recieving form everyone.

March 2006 – After deciding to register as a charity, we held a meeting with the chosen trustees and sent off the necessary documents to the Inland Revenue.

January 2006 - We received a letter from Mr Chiromo to say he had met with the stakeholders and the Primary Education Advisor and they supported the project.

December 2005 – The head teacher from Nansato Primary School, Mr Chiromo, and the minister from my church in Malawi came to Scotland to visit. This was the perfect opportunity to talk about the nursery with 2 Malawians I had a huge amount of respect for. They were both very positive about my plans. It was then that I made my final decision to go ahead with the nursery.

October 2005 – I returned from Malawi and began to research the practicalities of building and running a nursery. I also spent a lot of time praying and talking with people about the most effective ways to help. My friend Stuart Glegg was very interested in the nursery and decided to take a year out of studying to join me on the project.