V-Tractor, Soccer, and Responsible Action

It is hard to see how a V-Tractor, members of the Senga Bay Soccer Team, and buckets of sand can equal responsible action, but it happened in this Lake Malawi village area.

V-Tractor on beach of Lake Malawi It started three years ago when the Malawi Project and Agricultural Aid International made available two of the innovative, new, farm tractors designed especially for the unique farming conditions in Malawi. Senga Bay ranges from the old to the new on the eastern side of Malawi beside the big lake. Ancient fishing villages line the shore and people make a living the same way their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. They till the land with small hand held hoes, and they fish the lake with the help of dug out log canoes. At the same time, coming to visit the pristine lakeshore are modern day first world travelers. The two worlds meet in Senga Bay. While this interaction has its benefits, it can also bring its difficulties.

The temptations that offer quick money from the visitors can at times overshadow the need for responsibility to their local community. The young boys and girl are tempted to ignore the advise of their elders when it comes to education, and responsibility to home and family to reach for the gold ring. In order to develop social responsibility, community pride, and a sense of self worth, Samantha Ludick and her Cool Runnings Guest House, sponsor the Cool Soccer Club. The team is expected to define a community project each month to assist.

It is Thursday in Senga Bay when one of the members of the Soccer team comes to Cool Runnings to talk with Samantha. Seven-year-old Abraham greets her, and then proceeds to outline the project they have chosen. He reminds her of that additional classroom being built at the Senga Bay Primary School. He reports how the builders have run out of sand from the beach for the construction. Samantha recalls the conversation as he makes his appeal.

“You know Madam, this block needs to be done before the next school term starts. This way more children can get an education … like me! Oh, I forgot,” the small lad adds, as though it is an after thought, “May we ask for your Ferrari to assist us to collect two loads of sand and drive it to the school?” (His reference to the “Ferrari” is a reference to what Samantha calls the two V-Tractors donated to the program to help the villages and the poor with their gardens.)

Samantha responded to his appeal, “Now how could anyone say no to such an passionate appeal? I asked if he would like to use the tractor? He responded politely, and asked if the Ferrari could meet them on the beach on Monday morning, time and place to be determined.”

“As I walked back to my office I felt so proud,” Samantha muses. “Here is a 7-year-old village boy who loves to play soccer and in so doing is learning that nothing in life is free, and that life is a matter of give and take. Thanks so much to the Malawi Project and Agricultural Aid for ‘my Ferrari’”.

A Thousand People Fight Deforestation

A jovial mood characterized by dancing and singing recently occurred in the village of Msoma- Fighting Deforestation - Man plants a tree Malosa in Zomba district. Drawn from seven area-wide villages, 580 women, men and children gathered for the event. But one must ask what calls so many people together for a joyous event? Believe it or not, it was a tree planting exercise!

These people recognize the increasing loss of trees and more than anyone, they feel its impact. For this reason the villagers around Msomba village came together, and discussed plans of how best to fight deforestation and eliminate its impact once and for all. With the leadership of Group Village headman Minama, these villagers agreed to form a club that would constitute all villagers from the surrounding area. They would seek government help to raise tree seedlings and start a tree-planting project.

Joint Program for Success
The “Shoes for Trees” Program is a joint effort of the Malawi Project, World Emergency Relief, Malawi Forestry Department, Namikango Mission, and villagers throughout the nation. This program is based on WER obtaining truckloads of new shoes. WER and the Malawi Project get them to the Namikango Mission Warehouse. The Malawi Department of Forestry donates free of charge thousands of tree seedlings, then Tribal Authority and villagers work together to institute large scale tree planting programs. When the planting is completed those who participate receive a new pair of shoes for their labor.

Village Headman Encourages Support
During the tree-planting program Village Headman Msoma thanked contributors through the Namikango Mission for giving them the incentive that would encourage the program. He hoped this would motivate others to join the club, and increase the tree-planting program. Trees such as Mahogany tree, Acacia tree, Blue gum, and a number of trees indigenous to this part of the world.

Woman planting a tree In neighboring Machinga District, in the southwestern part of the nation, 500 people came together for a tree planting exercise under Group Village headman Masi. People participated from eight villages and planted 8,000 trees during this season alone. During one day alone this group planted 338 trees on the hillside near Machinga District headquarters.

“Shoes for Trees” is an extremely successful program, and can be enlarged many times over, if sufficient funds are made available. You can help Malawi villagers plant trees for their future, and in turn benefit the environment for all of us. Send checks to: The Malawi Project, 605 Winding Brook Drive, Noblesville, IN 46060 U.S.A. or, you can donate online, at www.malawiproject.org/donate.

Eating Leaves to Survive

Senga Bay, Malawi … The “Cool Mobil Clinic “was visiting the home of Jane, a 65-year-old villager who lives not far from the Cool Runnings Lake Resort on Lake Malawi. The Clinic and the resort are located in Senga Bay, a short distance from the Salima Trading Center.

Clinic “I had to come to the house to clean and redress Jane’s wound,” notes Samantha Ludick, who owns the resort, and at the same time carries out the medical outreach program in the villages along the lakeshore. Ludick continues, “Her leg was healing nicely, but still needed careful attention. We were still not out of the woods.”

As Jane sat quietly in her chair Samantha carried out the painful cleaning and dressing of the wound. Tiffany, one of the volunteers assisting the clinic watched in amazement as Jane handled the pain and distress with such calmness. She knew it must be extremely painful, but Jane gave no indication as Samantha continued to dress the wound. Everyone knew if it had not been for Samantha and the supplies from the Clinic this case could be going disastrously in another direction.

Then suddenly Kamuenda, Jane’s 91-year-old husband said something that surprised and alarmed Samantha and Tiffany. She recalls his calm words,

“Kamwenda expressed his concern with the strong medicine (mankwala) his wife was taking since their only food in several days had been maringa leaves boiled in salt. While maringa leaves are full of vitamins and high in protein, they are not healthy when that is all you are eating,” she notes. “I asked why he had not told me they had no food.”

“’How could we,’ he asked me, ‘when you have already done so much for us? They had gone four days without any food.’”

Sam continues, “How could I leave these old people without food? I told them I would be back. I headed off to get some food, then see the chief about giving them a small plot of land so we could bring one of the V-Tractors (Ferrari’s are what Ludick calls them), and prepare and plant them a garden. I could not leave them in this plight.”

In Malawi, even in good years the ability to raise enough food without anything more than manual labor, and hand hoes, leaves most of the people teetering at the edge of starvation. The slightest change in weather patterns, sickness, or old age can tip them over. For many the V-Tractors, or the new walk behind units are, and will be, their hope for getting out of the constant threat of starvation.

When it comes to medical care the plight is similar to the one with food production. In most cases they have inadequate resources, insufficient funds and no way to reach other, more distant, health care facilities. Cool Mobil Clinic is an extension of the Clinic at the Gate, a medical outreach to the community that is conducted from the Cool Runnings Resort. These medical programs are supported by the Malawi Project through funding and supply shipments from various supporters in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Additionally Agricultural Aide International and the Malawi Project have donated two V-Tractors to a major agriculture outreach called “Cool Agriculture.” This program is also conducted through the Cool Runnings Resort.

Good Morning Mr. Ox, Meet Mr. Wheelchair

Kasungu, Malawi … It is a strange scene that is repeated over and over all across this nation of 15,000,000 people. The sick, the injured, the suffering, and the dying have little in the way of Oxcart at Kasungu Hospital transportation, or mobility, with which to reach heath-care. Especially in the village areas there are few ways to transport the sick except walking, bicycling, carrying, or by ox cart. The same is true in one of the larger trading centers, the Kasungu Trading Center in the Central District of Malawi. Kasungu has a population of over 60,000 and is located 130 kilometers, or 81 miles) north of the capital city of Lilongwe. In spite of the fact it straddles highway M-1, the main highway through the country, this fact does little to help the people in the area that borders the trading center and the hospital. Small rural medical facilities dotting the region feed patients to this district hospital with the cases they cannot handle, and Kasungu District is often overwhelmed with patient needs. In spite of having a 179-bed government-funded district hospital, the situation is often dire with overcrowding, staff shortages, and a shortage of medicine and medical supplies. Add to this the extreme difficulty getting patients to, and into the facility, and then the problems associated with getting them from place to place inside the hospital.

In a recent “turning over” ceremony George Banda, the founder of Kuthandiza Osayenda Disability Kasungu Hospital Wheelchairs Outreach (KODO) delivered 4 wheelchairs to the medical facility for use by it’s patients. The Malawi Project and Free Wheelchair Mission of Irvine, California have worked together in recent years to deliver over 3,000 wheelchairs to Malawi for nationwide distribution. Banda and KODO is one of the recipients of wheelchairs that are then distributed nationwide to individuals who need assistance, as well as organizations such as this government hospital in Kasungu.

The Malawi Project focuses strongly on working through local organizations in order to assist them to strengthen local efforts to care for their people, and to help them establish local programs and organizations to carry out their work, and to solve local problems.

His words and influence defending the dignity and freedom of man still cascade across the African landscape 200 years after his birth. His description and outcry freed a continent from the plague of slavery, and his question, in the form of a poignant declaration, still causes mission focused people to consider the definition of the word “sacrifice” when it comes to their work on the continent.

“Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay . . it, is emphatically no sacrifice.

Say rather, it is a privilege!”
David Livingstone

Born in Scotland in 1813, Africa celebrates the 200th year since the birth of their most famous European visitor, missionary and explorer David Livingstone. As one traces the footsteps embedded in the history of time their course leads through what is today called Malawi, and what is today known as the Shire River.

This year the EMMS International (formerly the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society) is celebrating the year with events as widespread as a Bicycle Mountain Tour from Monkey Bay on the shores of Lake Malawi, via the Liwonde National Park, Zomba and Blantyre to the slopes of Mount Mulanje in the south of Malawi. There are many events scheduled throughout the year to which can be located at the Livingstone200 website. Notable ceremonies including President Joyce Banda’s attendance at ceremonies at the Livingstone Center, the laying of a wreath at Livingstone’s grave at Westminster Abbey, and addressing the Scottish Parliament.

Livingstone’s party lodged here

Livingstone is still honored in Malawi (and Zambia) for his determination in stopping the slave trade in Sub-Saharan Africa. Two significant trees stand to this day in Malawi that have significant historical interest. The first, located in the Liwonde National Park, marks the location where the exploration party lodged during his travels along the Shire River.

Nkhotakota Treaty Tree

The second tree, still stands by the former slave trading center of Nkhotakota, on the banks of Lake Malawi. Under this tree, Livingstone, along with Commissioner Harry Johnston, negotiated a treaty with tribal chiefs that would bring to an end the slave trade in East Africa.