Petch and Emma in Africa 2014: Butterfly space, nkhata bay

We arrived in nkhata bay about 3 weeks ago now and are living in a tired looking paradise right in lake Malawi.

Butterfly space is a resort for volunteers which offers a variety of projects, or you can come and stay if you are just travelling through.

I am involves in little leapers, the nursery school attached to butterfly. I work 8 - 12 Monday Friday with 12 delightful and highly energetic children aged 4 to 7. I've been continuing to embrace the jolly phonics programme that I learned and taught in Tanzania and have also been using the many tricks learned in our Uganda teacher training session with Ali and Nikki.

We also do swimming lessons for them, as some of them have never been in the water, despite living next to a lake! Lots of spare volunteers are needed for this!

What I also implemented in our first week was a business plan for the FAWN HIV women's group that come to butterfly. Rich and I cooked Ugandan roleggs for them, (the common street food of Uganda that we loved), of chappati wrap of egg and veg omelette). I took them shopping for the starting ingredients and set them up in town and they have since been continuing to sell to mzungus and locals in town. Its great for us its its a cheap delicious lunch in a place where there's not much else to buy but bread, beans and rice, dried fish, deep fried goat and chips!!

Rich cooking Chappati

Necky enjoying her roleggs!

Butterfly has an amazing kitchen and staff and we enjoy a communal dinner each night and either breakfast or lunch all included in our volunteer package. The food is delicious! We have started to increase our exercise accordingly!!! Our hut is right on the edge of the water with amazing sunrises and we are able to enjoy a swim at the end of the day!

our hut

the sun deck

balcony

view from bed

sunrise

Rich has been busy too. He has written a proposal for nkhata bay council regarding the construction of numerous bins in a rather untidy town. He has met with various council members and environmental officers to get this underway.

He has also been building tables and shelves for little leapers and the other butterfly nursery school up the road.

Butterfly has had many volunteers through July and had a big school group for 2 weeks and world race mission group for 3 weeks. Water has run out regularly, the lake and my soap have become good friends and the poor staff have been busy in the kitchen that I've often helped out with dinners.

Now it is quiet again and there are less volunteers to spread around the jobs that need doing in the community, we may have to spread our wings and help out with youth club each day, disabled club on Fridays, sewing on Wednesdays and the new HIV women's nutrition group on Mondays that study a years course on healthy eating and natural medicine.

Lucille Flood also visited us for 5 days which was amazing. We played netball on Chikale beach when Butterfly ran a sports day, and had a good old catch up!