AACDP, How Did We Get Here From There?

Talks at Two Libraries

20 Years in Zambia

Saturday, April 22, 2PM West Tisbury Library

Saturday, May 6, 2PM Oak Bluffs Library

Stories about:

The Mama Bakhita Cheshire Home

Making Art

The Zambezi Doll Company

Zambezi Communal Farm

In 2021, during the pandemic, we scratched our heads and then rolled up our shirtsleeves and began our most ambitious project to date: a community farm for the families that we have known since 2008.

How did we get there? A serpentine path through 20 years.

The uncultivated land in 2021

Meet Ivy, Zambezi farmer

The maize has dried on the stalks, and is now being harvested to store for grinding into mealie meal for making nshima. The farmer harvesting in the picture above is Ivy, one of the original members of the AACDP group of mothers of children with disabilities who have gone to the Mama Bakhita Cheshire Home for physiotherapy and/or school.

The mother of five girls, Ivy was one of the first Zambezi Doll makers and volunteers to work on Zambezi Farm. Always cheerful and hard-working, she often cooks lunch for the group when they are working in the fields.

Now is a great time to help Ivy and the other farmers get the storage shed for the dry maize completed. There are 2 days left in the GlobalGiving Little by Little campaign - donations up to $50 are matched at 50%, so your gift has even greater impact. CLICK HERE to donate by Friday!

A-maize-ing

Finally a good corn harvest!

Prisca harvests some fresh ears

At about this time last year, our first corn crop ripened. Because there was no rain the harvest was very disappointing, both in quantity and quality - most ears were too small, and there were not very many.

But this year, we had two "new" sources of water. Not only was there some rain, but we also reconfigured the irrigation system to be able to bring water to the high field where the corn was planted. The corn is now ripe, and the farmers have harvested about 100 ears for fresh consumption. The rest will become maize - the ears will be left on the stalks to dry for a couple of weeks, then will be harvested and stored to be later ground into mealie meal, the basis of nshima, the staple food of Zambia.

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Sydney, our Zambian manager chats with two of the farmers, Nophreen and Exhilda, about nshima.

Exhilda shucking