Visit Home of Hope

I'm imaging that you've asked me a question: "Alex, can you show me a picture, just one, that best sums up the week you, Ruth and Phil have had in Malawi?" Ah, that's tough! Just one? Can it be a video clip? No? OK - just one picture. I could show you Home of Hope from the air again: a whole village complete with houses, schools,  a college, dorms, a hospital (that's how the government now categorizes the Home's clinic, so effective has it become), where 25 years ago there was only scrub land and just one small building at the foot of the mountain, built as a place of prayer by an early missionary - and a bereaved family ready to treat abandoned and lost children as their own. Perhaps you'd like to see the Farm again? The land lying ready to feed its children, cleared of the last harvest's stalks and set for sowing.  What about the things we brought? A laptop, perhaps - bizarre in all its incongruence just kilometers from where villages stand as si...

[Just landed back in London] Is "home" a place? How broad is that place? A way of wrangling the wrench of leaving is not to do so - instead, to let Home span the worlds. Malawi has no off switch. You can't leave it. It goes with you. I don't even remember eating breakfast. My brain has completely hidden from me the last bowl of maize porridge, so that there is no end. Did I add honey, or did I just let it be as it is?  Lucy and Linda came to the Visitors' Lodge on Saturday morning just as we were doing final packing. A moment to video a "tour" of the now tidy space (we did rather spread out!) so others can see where they might spend 10 days next year. Lucy plays the guide, and we improvise a running commentary that includes the comfortable mattresses, the taps that spin (the tap itself, not the bit that you wind to let the water out), the electric hot shower that works because Phil figured out this morning what was wrong with it, the electric...

What a week. We feel lifted. Tomorrow morning we leave for Lilongwe by 10am, to get there for a lunch gathering. We’re seeing a few of the university students (including Faith Winga - interview with her from earlier this year  here ) and a former pupil who studied Tailoring and Design. She now supports herself by sewing garments, and doesn’t know it yet - we’re getting her her own sewing machine tomorrow so she’ll no longer have to wait for her friend’s to be free. (It’s a tiny step in the direction of sending out Vocational Training Centre graduates with tools of the trade.) Still others will be there whom we know from their days at Home of Hope, and  have moved on.  Perhaps being able to look forward to the lunch will make it a little easier to leave. In truth I doubt it.  But about today. Just after sun-up we all went across to the Main Hall for the morning devotional. Having been a Youth Minister etc in the past, I get asked to speak. We made it interactive, with...

I hadn't heard the expression "food security" before visiting Home of Hope. Nothing to do with comfort-eating, by the way. It's the mindset you need when you've got 700 mouths to feed in a country where hunger stalks most families for months of the year at a time. The period before harvest, when village grain stores sit long empty - it's called the Hungry Season. So when we visit the Home's farm land, bumping along in the much loved blue farm truck, it's not the mesmerising views of misted wooded hills sprouting from the plain we're here to see - achingly beautiful though they are. At this time of year we've learned to appreciate the beauty of land made ready to plant for maize in October, and the significance of irrigated out-of season beans. Workers will plant well-spaced maize seeds, dress with carefully aimed fertiliser (there’s a serious move in the country towards soil-improvement using animal manure: we’ll get there) - then, just add wat...

Dawn in Africa is a bit special. The Home’s guard dogs barked a lot during night. We’re told it’s the hyenas that set them off, as they head back to the hills after roaming the villages during the night. After breakfast Ruth, Phil and I sat down with the Home of Hope management to learn about their vision and objectives. Across key areas of Village (which includes the basics of food and accommodation), Schools, Vocational Training Centre and Farm, we heard from each person their vision at one, three, seven and fifteen year timeframes. It was inspiring and sobering at the same time. At the heart of the team’s vision is the desire see the best possible outcomes for the young people in their care. “In fifteen years time we want to see the leadership of our country include graduates from Home of Hope.” Over the coming weeks we’ll all work together (with the help of technology - Google Docs!) to identify Vision Owners who’ll lead the efforts to see vision become verifiable change. It’s not ...

  Home of Hope, below Mchinji Mountains Home of Hope sits below “Mchinji Mountains” - a government Forest Reserve stretching up from Mchinji town and marking the border with Zambia. I love looking at those hills. Look down from the peaks, and you see the plain of Mchinji district stretch away, dotted with remote villages and farms blessed with water from the hills. I put the camera drone up this morning to enjoy some views from above without the sweat of the climb! Next year will mark the 25th Anniversary of Home of Hope. From just one house for the Chipetas, their ten orphaned grandchildren and ten other orphans, it’s now a huge campus - a village, actually. Houses for the “mothers” and younger children in family units, dorm blocks for older children, Nursery, Primary, Secondary and Vocational schools all on site, with accommodation for administration staff and a growing number of teachers. That’s not all. There’s an on-site clinic, which since Covid extends care to people from th...