Leaving Well
But first, breakfast. Yesterday at the farm, Rev Chipeta asked Bernard the Farm Manager to cut some green maize cobs for us. These turned up this morning as a supplement to our usual maize-porridge.
Thus fuelled, we split up for a number of activities in parallel.
Gillian, Phil and Ruth met with Gertrude, an expert in Fish-Farming from the Malawian Ministry of Agriculture (above, right). Home of Hope has a number of fishponds already, but the project is in need of investment: removal of a metre of silt; fresh stocking with “fingerlings”; feed, etc., and know-how. Among us on our Friends of Home of Hope trip are a number of trustees of Malawi Orphan Fund - a UK charity that supports Home of Hope. We as Malawi Orphan Fund decided recently that it’s best to involve expert help when funding projects requiring special expertise. We’re accountable to you for the effective use of funds you provide.
Geraldine confirms that Home of Hope is an excellent site: the water straight off the mountain is just perfect. She even suggested ignoring the existing ponds and constructing a larger one close by, but, we think wisely, Joseph Chipeta suggested starting with a pilot using an existing pond (pictured above). We can scale from there. We think the more we can show small projects succeeding, the more “investors” we’ll be able to find (sophisticated donors who understand that a sound plan and some capital up front can yield very worthwhile and sustainable results).
If you’ve wondered whether there are snakes - yes!, though I must say I’ve never encountered one here personally.
Just below the existing fishponds are year-round gravity-fed irrigated gardens producing three crops a year (one by rain, two by irrigation). It’s another project in need of investment: fertiliser, before the next rains arrive in Oct/Nov 2023.
Lower down the site at the Primary School, Rafal and the building team continued the preparation of surfaces for painting, and painting got underway. Before the weekend we approached the Primary School staff, suggesting that their Staff Room could be decorated, too. This morning they got things ready….
What else, as we look to finish what we’ve started? Earlier on Rafal and I and the Vocational Training Centre Deputy Head, Christopher Kademba, selected some hardwood planks from the stores to use as backboards for the climbing wall.
White, a former HOH pupil, drove Christopher and me, and the planks, down to the town in the farm lorry. We had them planed and trimmed at the same timber yard where our team that year made the climbing frame in 2018.
Suitable bolts were to be found in the market place: 30 x 9mm and 30 x 6mm for fixing the “stones” to the boards, and some huge ones to fix the boards to the wall.
Also in town late morning were Ruth and Gillian, on a fabric-shopping foray. Ruth makes items for sale on Etsy in support of girls from Home of Hope at uni, including using Malawian cloths. (Shameless unsolicited plug there by me!)
Meanwhile, I think! (I lost track today of exactly what was happening and when with everyone, and I’m putting this together from what I learned at at our evening “Woo-hoo / Boo-hoo” retrospective and from photos everyone has helpfully WhatsApp’d me)… Debbie again magnetised a group of children to her to sing. It’s been the sound-track of the trip. One of the boys, Precious, has picked up her conducting style and took the lead.
Carolyn sat down in the background to watercolour-sketch the goings on, but soon found herself with a group of lads who wanted to paint. She obliged, and the results were again amazing.
All sorts of other fun on the grass in front of the Guest House:
And elsewhere, near the Vocational Training Centre, netball - a “before we go” promise by Carolyn to 12-year-old Esther fulfilled, with Helen on pitch as ref.
Alysha again spent much of the day in Home of Hope’s on-site government-recognised “hospital” (or Clinic, you might say). It being a Monday, and the weather warm, it was a fast-paced morning as she shadowed the main doctors, Blandina, seeing patients of a wide ranges of ages - from babes-in-arms to the elderly. I’m glad she still finds time to engage with the children in play…
For myself and the other Malawi Orphan Fund members here, an important part of the day was a business meeting with members of the Home of Hope leadership. Better mobile internet allows us to make fairly frequent video calls from the UK these days, but there's nothing like "being there". We using the opportunity of sitting around the same table to share our hopes and dreams, fears and failings, wants and necessities. We've never been closer, as we prepare to leave.
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