Mpekala: Improving Where We Live

I met Sr. Immaculata Mulyei in 2002, on my first visit to Livingstone, Zambia to visit the Mama Bakhita Cheshire Home. She is a small, trim and thoughtful person in her mid-seventies now, highly respected in the community, with a dry sense of humor and an abiding concern for rural women with their struggles. A modest and determined woman, she quietly searches for ways to accomplish her considerable goals: to help small groups of rural women to sustain themselves by adapting their economic endeavors to the changing environment.

Mpekala is her name for this project, meaning “where I live”. In the past she has raised money to supply cows, goats and chickens to ten groups of these women living in the remote Sekute area outside of Livingstone. But changing weather patterns bringing drought have made watering their animals difficult.

Sisal can be easily grown with little water, so a new project is being put forward: the making of woven sisal bags using natural dyes. The goal is to produce their own sisal and to learn how to make handsome shoulder and hand bags of varying sizes.

The bags will then be promoted and sold as fair trade goods of the best order. I myself will offer them for sale in my internet store as well as at my craft sales.

What is needed to begin is $500 dollars of start up money to buy the first sisal, since it will take a season to grow their own, and to hire a teacher from the Zimba tribe who is skilled in this art.

This project is all about sustainability and adaptation. Is there a generous person out there have the where-with-all to take on the privilege of helping this woman start her program?

Thank you.

A Zambian Girl Dreams of Becoming a Doctor

Linda has wanted to be a doctor since she was five years old, which is when I met her. She grew up in Zambia during a time when HIV/AIDS was a silent predator about which no one spoke. A whole generation was lost because shame and self-blame insured that very few asked for help. They preferred to die. Hospitals were afraid to treat the sick and fear of contagion left them on their own to await death. Linda wants a top-level medical training to combat the stigma of this terrible disease and shed the light of compassion and knowledge into the dark areas of a community where every family has lost at least one family member to AIDS.

The AACDP is promoting a GoFundMe page to raise money for her education beginning with a SAT training course in Lusaka, the first step to qualifying for scholarships to the US and UK. Or you can donate right at this site with a note that the gift is towards Linda’s tuition.

https://www.gofundme.com/manage/a-dream-zambian-woman-doctor

Thank You Mr. Griffin Sakala

After sixteen months Nyimba Muzoka, the man who was fired for growing corn in the wrong place at PAMA Meats Farm in Mazabuka, Zambia, is finally getting referred to the Industrial Relations Court of Zambia. If workers at this huge cattle farm had been allowed to be unionized, perhaps someone would have informed him of his rights to appeal a patently illegal dismissal that followed none of the procedures required by law.

But this man, Griffin Sakala, went to the PAMA offices to investigate their records regarding Nyimba Muzoka’s dismissal and found that his suspicions were correct. There was nothing. No letter of warning, no hearing for Nyimba to defend himself, no 30 day notice, no end payments. Just get out of here in 24 hours, take this $100 and get out of here, with your family of eight.

Now we must pray that the Industrial Relations Court will waive the year appeal limit in light of Mr. Mazoka’s and our ignorance of this process.