The Dalitso Project
November 2019
11/25/2019
Once again thank-you to all you Dalitso team for your ongoing encouragement and support in our work in Malawi.
Thank-you for your patience with us over the last few months as we have worked on your updates and getting your report cards sorted. - These should be with you over the next couple of weeks. It has been a very busy time for us as a management team both personally and within Dalitso. At Kambilonjo, you may remember that we drilled a new borehole last year and built a solar pump and tank that allows the water to be pumped from the underground reservoir and piped to our healthcare clinic and our residence. This has been a fantastic investment and thank-you to everyone who donated to our emergency water appeal last year. This has also led us to be able to plant a small vegetable garden and grow tomatoes and some other water loving vegetables! We have also found some space next to the residence house where we have been able to plant a small orchard. We have planted mango trees, pear trees, peach trees, guava trees and avocado trees. The only other fruit trees in the area that we are aware of are some fruit trees that the local senior chief has planted in his garden, so some of these are a little bit of an experiment as we are unsure of how they will grow. I’m so excited to see how this pans out in the next few years. As the healthcare clinic at Kambilonjo has progressed it has become the epicentre of life in the local area, it also means that we have ended up coming into contact with many babies who sadly have lost their mothers giving birth in the village. Our baby rescue program has therefore expanded rapidly, and whilst it is nowhere near the scale of our program in Thyolo, it is growing rapidly. Just this month we had 4 new babies join our feeding program. All of these babies’ mothers sadly dying in either childbirth or from post- partum complications. This is a horrifyingly common situation in Malawi and one that we hope we can address partly through post partum care in our current clinic. One day perhaps, we will find the resources to build a maternity ward and provide a maternity service for the women of this region. We talk a lot in the UK about our rights, we feel upset if someone says something that we feel is offensive. What about these women? Women who have no right to healthcare, no right to give birth in a safe and clean environment, who have no right to provide for their children and see their children grow up healthily and strongly. I hope that the work of Dalitso can slowly start to change that. I hope that we can provide some level of basic human rights for the people of Malawi. The container left for Malawi last month, it took a huge amount of packing and organising and a special thanks to everyone who gave up time and energy to pack and inventory all the many items that can fit in a 40 foot high container. Thank-you to all of you who generously donated items for the container. They are greatly appreciated and will be put to very good use! . Hopefully it will arrive in time for Christmas. Our children are excitedly awaiting their Christmas presents and their Christmas party! One item that I am excited to see in use is the Oxygen concentrator that was purchased last year. As some of you may have noticed, Facebook allows you to do birthday fundraiser appeals and last January I decided to do a birthday fundraiser for the dalitso project for my birthday. I didn’t think it would make much money, but thanks to the incredible generosity of my family and friends, an incredible total of £650 was raised, which allowed the purchase of an oxygen concentrator for the clinic. This incredible wee machine takes the room air which is 16% oxygen and concentrates the oxygen to various degrees to provide higher percentage oxygen to a patient. This is vital in the management of many illnesses, partly as it takes the pressure off of the breathing system and partly because oxygen is essential for all organ function and for healing. This is something that most large government hospitals in Malawi don’t have access to, so for us to be able to provide it for our patients, it is really quite incredible! A big thanks also to Dolby the oxygen concentrator supply company who also provided lots of oxygen tubing for free! At Thyolo, our baby rescue program grows month on month. Our latest addition is Jabesi Malefula whose mother died due to post partum haemorrhaging. The extent of the baby rescue program is probably best shown by the photo below. Here is Kiri (Christina Kunsauka) our administrator with Praise and Precious, twin girls who were rescued when they were only a few days old, after their mother died in childbirth. Here they are as happy, healthy 5 year olds! At Thyolo and Kambilonjo we are working hard on the preparation of the fields ready for the planting when the rains begin in Malawi. We are hoping that these rains will come soon as it is important that we plant before the turn of the year in order to have enough time for the maize to grow well. Finally just to mention up upcoming fundraisers.
God Bless Becky
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