ATEM Activities at the Boma

ATEM, the Association for Teaching English in Malawi organizes events throughout the country to encourage secondary school students to practice and improve their English speaking skills. This past weekend I accompanied two teachers and a group of 15 students to our Boma to compete in this year’s activities. My students put together poems, a comedy, a drama and a debate to perform. Though there were supposed to be many schools present, only four turned up. Anyhow, my students were amazing and we had a great time!
We started the events with a prayer lead by one of my best Form Three students. Then we moved onto poetry in which a Form One student, Asumayiri, did an awesome job reciting his poem. I was amazed at how confident he was and how well he spoke in front of such a large group of people. He’s been an active member in our Debate Club and has improved so much in his speaking! He took second place!

Then they performed an original comedy/song about education, “the key to success.”. We were the only school to bring a comedy, which meant an automatic first place, but hey we’ll take it!
Then came the Debate competition. My students prepared opposing and proposing points of view on the motion “It is good to be a farmer, rather than a teacher.” They were fantastic and took first place! Again I’m so proud of them for being so confident and well prepared. The final activity was drama. Each school prepared their own 25-35 minute play on any topic of their choice. The first place school performed really well with a drama about Child Abuse in Malawi. In the play a set of parents from a village sell their child as a house servant to a wealthy couple from a tea plantation. In the end of the play the husband tries to propose the young girl and when caught by the wife, she reacts by killing her. Another school put together a play called “Behind Closed Doors” which was about the transmission of HIV/AIDS within a group of people inter-connected in various ways.

My students put together a drama entitled “The Effects of Peer Pressure.” In the play, a girl from a very rural village gets selected to go to one of the best private all girl school in Malawi located within the capital city. The girl begins as a great student, eager and happy to learn but then becomes influenced by her “cooler” city friends. They question and embarrass her about her life and lack of material things like cute clothes and cell phones and eventually set her up with a “Sugar-Daddy” in order to get these things. This as you can imagine, leads to a whole string of mavuto (problems). The girl becomes pregnant, gets kicked out of school and eventually thrown out by her parents as well. My students did a great job in writing the play and performing. The message, similar to the other plays, was very pertinent to all of their lives as child abuse, HIV/AIDS, and girls having sugar-daddies are real problems affecting Malawian students.

In the end we took third out of four in the drama competition, but I’m sure with a bit more time to practice we’ll come up with a second or first at the regional level!Overall, it was a really great day! We were all so happy when we left and the students encouraged me to request that we have a dance that night at school to celebrate! When we arrived at the school everyone was cheering, welcoming us and preparing for the dance. My students were so proud of themselves and so were their friends. We all sang the Malawian national anthem and headed to the dance. Actually, I headed home but could hear their music until nearly midnight!


I've uploaded pictures from the day on my picture site! Enjoy!