Sunday, December 07, 2014
Most exhausting week we’ve had here in Lubumbashi. We had Phillip Moatlhodi, our Area Welfare Manager from Johannesburg, visiting from Wednesday thru today. He is the head cheese for all of welfare in Southeast Africa. We had prepared for his visit for most of the last month. We are allowed to have 5 local projects opened at any one time and this week we organized and completed the closing ceremonies for 3 of our 5 projects. Closing ceremonies are an event that is symbolic of turning over ownership to the beneficiary of the welfare or humanitarian work completed. We have lived with these projects and I’m sure I’ve bored you with the details before but I want to review them again in my own mind and record this record for my history.
Thursday we attended Mapendano School where we have completed 32 new latrines for a combined student body of over 3,000 students from 3 separate schools. These are Catholic Schools and our hosts were the Catholic Church representatives. We had ordered sodas for the celebration and they had supplemented our order with beer and chicken. I did sample the chicken and luckily recognized the beer to avoid disaster. They had 200 of their student leaders attend and welcome us with songs of appreciation. We had a wonderful reception and a little adult gathering after visiting the new toilets. The only problem is that this school is part of the community water system and has not received water for the last 3 weeks; it makes it difficult to use the new toilets. Needless to say, they had barely received the gift of new toilets before they were asking us if we could help them with their water problems.
Phillip is a “can do” leader and had all of the representatives brainstorming about how water could be developed to assist them. There is a school bordering the Mapendano property that has already developed water and Phillip suggested running some distribution lines in exchange for adding a larger pump and an additional holding tank for the current site. We’re meeting next week to attempt to implement his ideas.
Friday morning we had arranged to go with Immaculee from the Ministry of Health to visit Kipushi. This is a model project in small village water development and management. We hope to pattern our small village program after theirs. Unfortunately Immaculee’s husband suffered a stroke early Friday morning and they were in the hospital. We visited her twice taking food and comfort but had to shuffle our schedule. Based on our discussions and a previous report that we had sent to Phillip, he suggested we create a revolving repair fund for small villages of $25,000. We had previously selected one of 68 health zones where we repaired 5 pumps for hand-pumped wells. This is the health zone where we’ll start.
Fortunately we had previously contacted Regideso, the local entity responsible for commercial water development. Their visit was extremely profitable. World Bank is currently involved in a multi-million water development of trunk lines for Lubumbashi, however, the majority of the city is still without running water in their homes. (over 60 % have not running water at home)
Regideso had identified 5 project areas where distribution lines could be run from the World Bank trunk lines to service key neighborhoods. Phillip liked their ideas and we now need to sell this project by gathering the supporting documentation. This could potentially become a repeatable project if successful. The population is estimated at around 2 million, so there is plenty of work to be done with very limited funds. Again Phillip had the vision that the residents could participate by hand-digging the trenches for the installation of the piping for the lines. The trenches are about one meter in depth and he would accept this as their 10% contribution. Again, Phillip could see possibilities everywhere and we had felt so restricted before his visit in what we could request, but we have renewed vision of the possibilities because of his visit.
Friday afternoon we met Enoch from the Ministry of Health and two of his technicians. They had established a listing of new water wells that could be developed in the community. Their list was about 170 wells. We had asked them before to identify their top 5 and allow us to visit just one neighborhood where a new well is needed. It doesn’t take long to identify more needs than you can ever satisfy. I still remember a film we watched in the MTC called trade not aid for Africa. They really need to develop the welfare principles of self-reliance if they ever want to become independent.
Saturday was spent in celebrating two event closings. The Notre Dame School for Girls was probably our favorite celebration. They have 350 girls attend who otherwise may not be in school at all. Therese Ndaya is the director and such a good role model. She had received 10 sewing machines from humanitarian 2 years ago and has developed an entire sewing curriculum from that humble beginning. This time we added a cooking lab where the girls can be taught culinary skills. They knew how to celebrate with hats, steamers, banners, balloons and Santa. We had a wonderful time here and had a hard time leaving after over 2 hours. We had invited the other senior couples and the Drapers and Sister Anthony attended. I don’t think they will miss another ceremony; it was so fun. Therese and her husband had also prepared some drawings for us that we’ll share with you on the photo stream.
The Katuba Bridge project was the last ceremony. The construction of this pedestrian bridge had united two communities and both were well represented. The television station came for $300 and we were on the nightly news. The program was held at the bridge and at the church which are separated by about 4 city blocks. We were trying to showcase these projects to our leader and there was a major glitch. We are not supposed to participate in proselyting of any kind. Humanitarian projects are not designed for church members and no missionary activities are to be promoted with the beneficiaries other than upon their request. Well the refreshments were served by missionaries who had pamphlets and a referral notebook in hand as they handed them out. Once the horse was out of the barn there was no calling them back. By the way I was asked for more church information from the guest of the burgermeister and the village chief has invited us to visit his home on Wednesday. Not bad, one referral and a dinner invitation from unauthorized proselyting. Did I tell you that 1 in 4 investigators in the DRC actually join the church? Those are amazing odds! One in 11 in Africa join the church and Spencer, Andy, Matt and I can tell you the odds are not that good in Europe. Our translator, Steve, I believe baptized 210 people on his mission to Kinshasa. I’ll give you a follow-up report next week.
Weather could have ruined any or all of these events and yet we had rain every day and not one of the events was cancelled or interrupted. We felt very fortunate and blessed to have so many things to show Phillip that we had been doing and that the closing ceremonies came off with only a few hick-ups (beer and proselyting)
Mom and I are doing fine. This was a very exhausting week, as we delivered Phillip to the airport today. We came home and have been documenting things ever since. The Mikesells have been gone this week and we are happy to have them back home. It is much less lonely in our complex with another couple. We’re ready to veg out but darn, no Downton Abbey. Have a great week.
Love, Dad
No comments:
Post a Comment