One of my calls

I visited this rural school where we are helping the community to build a teacher's house, to drop off 10 bags of cement an found a dire situation.
Only two of the seven teachers were present and there were students everywhere.
These four little dotes were sitting under a tree trying to be diligent trying to do the little work on the board. It is so sad to find such eager students and no teachers.
Teachers are badly paid, have no status, no books and have to cycle miles to get to school over treacherous roads. No wonder they give up.
If anyone tells you there is a primary school education system in Malawi, just laugh out loud. Of course there are individual, well run and successful, donor funded schools driven by mainly Christian evangelists which do amazing work.
Again as I say I only speak for what we see and try to help and these are schools built by local communities, where the state allocates and pays the teachers. I met a teacher yesterday who only got 2 passes in her final second level exam and then had two years training, just beginning to teach. Her standard of English was poor, so she will have a hard job making any impact on a class of over 100!!