The rains bring the bugs, and the bugs are AWESOME. I could do without the flying ants, though I’m told they’re quite delicious.

I’m designing a small multifunction building to house both a nursery school and offices for a community-based AIDS services organization in Golomoti. The building will also function as a community center when the school is not in session.

MANET+ (Malawi Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS) is coordinating the project, and it will be built next fall by a group of engineering students from Canada (www.gcius.ca).

GOLOMOTI

Golomoti is a small village in Dedza district, close to the southern tip of the lake. It used to be an stop for the railway, back when Malawi used its rail lines for passenger transport. The center of Golomoti has now shifted to the main road that connects Salima to Monkey Bay. The old center has the feeling of an inhabited ghost town.

NURSERY SCHOOL

The nursery school is run by volunteer teachers (above). They teach about 260 kids between 2 and 5 years old. The school is open Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 11 am. Classes are currently held under a large tree. Students are sometimes taught all together as one group and sometimes split into smaller groups.

The typical weekly curriculum is as follows:

Monday: Calendar (days of the week), Gospel songs

Tuesday: Sculpting with clay, Hygiene

Wednesday: Alphabet

Thursday: Poems (English and Chichewa), English words, Counting

Friday: Songs

Prayers are taught everyday

GASO

GASO (Golomati Active AIDS Support Organization) coordinates 200 volunteers in Golomoti to provide services and support to HIV-positive individuals and their children. They currently rent two small rooms (3 meters by 2 meters each) in the building shown here.

PLAYING IN GOLOMOTI

The site will also have a playground. The nursery school teachers gave us a list of ways that kids play in Golomoti:

• Fish-fish (jumprope)

• Bao (a Malawian board game)

• Draft (Checkers)

• Fly (Cross between monkey-in-the-middle and dodgeball)

They also said that the kids would really enjoy having seesaws and swings. I haven’t seen to many jungle gyms around Malawi, but it would be easy to make a fun jungle gym out of blue gum branches.

THE SITE

The traditional authority in the village has donated a large empty plot of land for the building.

There are two structures on the building right now.

The first one is a run-down building without a roof. It would certainly need quite a bit of restoration and repair, but the walls are solidly built. It could house the offices of GASO. It might be a good idea to separate the GASO offices from the nursery school, which will get quite loud (with 260 kids singing, running, and playing).

OTHER FUNCTIONS

When the school is not in session, the building will also be a meeting space for different groups, such as:

• PLHIV (Persons Living with HIV) support group (40 people)

• Traditional authority meetings (30 people)

• GASO volunteer meetings (up to 200 people)

• Adult education classes in literacy and accounting (variable number of participants)

I was told that there wasn’t any McDonald’s in Malawi.

(LNS = Lilongwe Nature Sanctuary)

Sorry, Malawi. These chairs are everywhere, and they’re terrible.

It wasn’t an easy week in Malawi.

First, my trip to Mulanje got canceled, and along with it, I lost the driver to take me to different factories around Blantyre.

Then, the map office was closed because the owner was sick. When I went, there were four employees hanging outside the office, but they told me that the owner was the only one who could open the office. So I couldn’t get a proper map of Blantyre to locate the different factories.

So I decided to go to Blantyre on my own, to jump on a bus and make my way around town. How hard could it be to find a few factories?

Turns out, it can be quite hard, especially when the phonebook doesn’t have any actual addresses for places, only P.O Boxes; especially when factories don’t answer the phone; and especially when most roads aren’t named.

My first stop was supposed to be Terrastone, a factory that makes pre-cast concrete parts. Some locals, eager to help, gave me quite detailed directions, and others along the way confirmed the directions.

“Terrastone is this way?”

“Yes, it’s that way.”

After about an hour of walking, I pull up to the location: the Bridgestone/Firestone office. And even that has moved to a different location.

The worst part was that my phone betrayed me today. (Yes, this is the same phone I recently referred to as the best phone in the world.) It seems my line got crossed with somebody else’s, because a couple times when I tried to call customer service, I only got an old man screaming, “HELLO? HELLO?”

So I couldn’t call Ismail, the Lilongwe architect with whom I’m collaborating, for help. I couldn’t call the factories or my local contacts for help.

But I did make it to the Blantyre map office right before it closed, and got great maps of both Lilongwe and Blantyre. Also, the view from my hotel room is amazing (below). So, all was not lost in Blantyre… only the things I came to accomplish.

I’m looking for waste, extra material, and factory byproducts, to use simply and beautifully as architectural materials. 

(It would be so easy: I’d get published, everyone would celebrate me, and I’d be well on my way to becoming a famous architect. “Have you heard about that kid who made beautiful bricks out of those extra plastic tubs from the dairy plants in Malawi?”)

Only… there doesn’t seem to be any such waste in any of the factories that I’ve visited so far. I can’t even seem to locate a junkyard. This place is maddeningly efficient; with not much new material coming in, many here keep reusing whatever they can get.

There are just those flimsy blue plastic bags that people toss on the side of the road. I wonder if we can do something with them.

The search continues…

mosquito net + fan = net on the face

mosquito net – fan = sweat on the face

fan – mosquito net = bites on the face

One of the things I’ll be doing here is looking at how kids play, and taking advantage of natural materials and local manufacturing processes to develop low-cost or no-cost toys for underserved children.

This past Saturday, I went with a couple friends to Dedza, a town 85 kilometers southeast of Lilongwe. On its map of Dedza, the Brandt guidebook had a little dot locating a metal toy shop, which I thought might be worth checking out.

Well, there was no toy shop where the map promised one, only a small general store. I did see a young boy pushing a metal car (above), but he ran away before I could ask him where he got it, or if he made it himself.

Here are some photos of Dedza, with a focus on play patterns and points of departure for new toys.

Football goal

Football field

Climbing

Playing while working, tomatoes as building blocks

Ceramic balls for macrame (and maybe something else?) at the Dedza pottery workshop

Modern printing combined with classic glazing, also at the pottery workshop

House of Pooh (and orange Barney)

Kids dancing, Avik dancing behind camera

I traded in my iPhone, which some might argue is the best phone in the world, for a Nokia 1200, which some might argue is the best phone in the world. Let me make the case for the Nokia 1200.

This Nokia 1200 cost 3,500 MWK, which is about 25 USD. It’s the entry-level device and the most popular phone on the streets of Malawi. When I bought the phone, I knew I was getting a bare-bones device. 

There are three features, however, that make this an important tool for people in developing countries, beyond its communication functions. This phone was designed for people in the villages.

The first feature is the screensaver—a big clock. Before my trip, I was warned to be careful with my wristwatch, by two different people who had traveled in Malawi. I appreciate that telling time is integral to development. How can you join the larger economy if you don’t know when to show up? But with more cellphones in the rural areas, phones like this—all small portable alarm clocks—make watches unnecessary.

The second significant feature is the flashlight. I have had phones with a flashlight before, but it always seemed like a useless add-on. Here, where power outages are frequent and scheduled, and where many villages don’t have electricity at all, the strong white LED is a brilliant, invaluable addition.

Finally, the battery life is amazing. I haven’t charged the phone since Friday, and it still shows a full battery. I’m sure the battery life will decrease over time, but this phone is clearly designed to conserve power, allowing villagers to use communal charging stations when they don’t have electricity in their homes.

If only I could receive international texts…(and use the iPhone’s Google Maps application…)