The Dalitso Project
June 2018
6/16/2018
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April 2018
4/9/2018
First of all I would like to thank everyone who attended our AGM last month. It is such a privilege to have so many committed supporters who would come on a cold Friday evening to hear about all of the exciting things that the Dalitso project are doing in Malawi! For those of you who were unable to make it- not only did you miss out on some awesome cheese, biscuits and cheesecakes, I’m afraid you missed out on some photos and stories! But I will try to make it up to you! So I (Becky) returned from 2 weeks in Malawi at the end of February – just in time for the beast from the east! Now, my primary role was to visit and assess the new Dochas Medical centre. Like all healthcare ventures the Dochas Medical Centre is a huge financial undertaking and so it was felt that with my knowledge of our cash strapped NHS, I might be able to advise/ identify ways to make our centre more efficient! I also wanted to ensure that we were meeting the highest possible standards of medical care within the Dochas Medical Centre. Fortunately and unfortunately at the same time I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of care and cleanliness demonstrated by all of our staff including the non – qualified staff at Dochas. I was also surprised and pleased by the efficiency of the system that was in place and the focus on public health which I believe to be foundational in any sustainable healthcare setup. Whilst this was great news in terms of the quality of service that we are providing and also in terms of the magnitude of my job out there (whilst on my annual leave from the NHS), it did mean that cost cuts were not the simple solutions I had anticipated. However, as I began to look at the cost of many of the treatments we were offering I could see that most of the treatments were actually incredibly cheap and that many patients were managing to pay for their treatment or at least contribute significantly. (I should explain that at Dochas Medical centre, the staff are all funded by the Dalitso Project, which makes treatment already more affordable. In Malawi, many medications are also sold at significantly reduced rates – reduced through funding of many international charities. So although we do ask patients to pay something towards their treatment (as we believe in empowering people and not just creating a ‘hand-out-culture’), patients are paying for medications at prices which are well below a standard price even in Malawi. Furthermore, all of our own children are all treated for free, and if any villager cannot afford to pay for their medical treatment, they will be given treatment for the price that they can afford to pay). However, the only treatment where patients’ were failing to even pay close to what they owed the clinic, was Malaria. Now Malaria remains one the biggest killers in Malawi and is attributed to 9,484 deaths per year in Malawi (WHO 2014) with an older study suggesting that 40% of the deaths of children under 2 in Malawi are attributed to Malaria. So it is unsurprising therefore that the biggest drain on our resources at the Dochas Medical centre is the treatment and management of Malaria. I have an edit to make from February’s update where I stated that the cost of severe malaria treatment was £12. In actual fact on reviewing my notes, standard malaria costs approximately £12 but severe malaria costs about £25 to treat. Apologies for the error and subsequent confusion. As mentioned in previous updates, our container had a troublesome journey to Malawi this year, and ended up stranded in Durban port when a storm wreaked so much havoc that the port had to be rebuilt before our container could continue its journey. Unfortunately this delayed the arrival of the container until the end of January, but did mean that the kids got to celebrate Christmas twice! It also meant that I was able to observe the unloading and sharing of all the many things that you had all generously donated last year! As well as the many medical supplies that we were able to kit our clinic out with, we were able to send many items to the government hospitals as well as the charitable orthopaedic hospital CURE. We were also able to provide almost all of our staff with a bicycle which means that their commutes to market and to the fields will now be much easier. But my favourite part of the container was seeing all the children getting a new outfit of clothes! It was lovely to see the children getting new clothes and shoes and showing all their friends their new outfits! One of the older boys chose an Arbroath High School prefect blazer as part of his outfit. When I explained to Bonface Moses that this was a prefect blazer from my old high school, he was delighted and started getting the younger children to call him ‘Mr Prefect’! The multitude of clothes was soon distributed amongst our nearly 300 orphans and some needy local villagers. And I was privileged to see this in action when one day up in Kambilonjo we came across a young mother who was out tending to her fields. Now we could see that her maize was failing and had barely germinated, and certainly didn’t have ears of corn like our own healthy maize. When we called over to her, we could see that she was applying fertiliser. Now February was really too late to be applying fertiliser as it is supposed to be applied at planting time in November. When we asked her about this she explained that her husband had sold the fertiliser that the chief had given him and so she had spent the past 3 months trying to make enough money to buy some fertiliser for her crops. Unfortunately, though she had succeeded in buying fertiliser, since she had only reached the equivalent of primary 2 in school, she did not realise that the fertiliser was now next to useless and that despite applying fertiliser, she was now unlikely to harvest any food from that field. This poor, uneducated woman was working so hard in the midday heat, with a baby tied to her back and two young toddlers at her ankles, and yet her hard graft was unlikely to reap her any rewards. My heart broke for the lady and we decided to do everything we could for this wee family. We were able to bring the two children into our daycare feeding and education program and provide the whole family with clothes, provided so generously by yourselves, our supporters- so thank you very much! In fact once they were changed into their new clothes and shoes, I actually had to do a double take to realise that I was greeting the same kids! In other news, the Mary Spink Skills Centre is almost operational and now has a roof. We are so excited about this new venture and can’t wait to see it opened and functional. Hopefully it will provide lots of employment for our children and the local community in the months to come. For now though, now that the roof is on, we have stalled progress pending some more fundraising! So be encouraged that all your fundraising really does make a difference! In Thyolo, progress has been being made with the Ulemu project. This is the project that we set up in January to help our girls with sanitary products. The girls have been busy making reusable sanitary towels which are both cost effective and much better for the environment. In fact they have even begun selling them in and around the local villages near both Thyolo and Kambilonjo. With one of our student nurses even taking a bunch out with her on her clinical placement to sell- she has none left! Thank-you to everyone who donated pants and soap, please keep them coming as we continue to support this venture to get off the ground. We hope that as well as providing much needed sanitary products, this may also be a good business venture that will provide employment to some of our young girls. The wedding dress business has also made a good start with some bookings being made for this coming years wedding dress season. Our very first wedding is next month and hopefully we will have some photos to show you of this new venture! This too is an ongoing project so if you know of anyone who would like their wedding dress to help create employment and income for some of our youngsters, please do point them in our direction! Thanks also to everyone who donated wedding dresses! There will be many women looking beautiful in your dresses! We are hoping that this too will be a really worthwhile and profitable business for some of our young girls to work with! The wedding dress and ulemu project is still operating from our orphan daycare centre as there has been a delay with the completion of the shop that we are to rent. However, we have been assured that the shop will be ready in early May, so hopefully we might have a shop by July! Kiri at Thyolo continues to come up with more and more ideas for this small shop so by the time it is completed we may need a bigger store! The latest idea is about training one of our young boys in shoe making. So watch this space! We may be selling shoes from the shop in years to come! Well I apologise for the length of this update, but hopefully you don’t feel cheated now if you missed the AGM! Many thanks again to you all for all the support that you give- you really are making a great difference! With love and blessings Becky x February 2018
2/25/2018
January 2018
1/27/2018
November 2017
11/22/2017
September 2017
9/23/2017
July 2017
7/21/2017
Hi all
As many of you will be aware a team of 7 have recently returned from Malawi. This proved to be a very emotional trip full of highs and lows. The trip started with some time spent at our partner Aquaid Lifeline’s headquarters and involved lots of admin and meetings as well as lots of loom band making! Unfortunately, during this week Lucy Kawinjo- the headmistress at the Aquaid Namisu school, was taken into hospital and diagnosed with cervical cancer, having spent more than one year complaining of abdominal pain. This brave woman had continued working right up until her diagnosis but unfortunately, her diagnosis came far too late for any operative or therapeutic measures. We were informed that Lucy was under palliative care and whilst we hoped and prayed for a miracle for our dear friend, Lucy sadly passed away a few days later. This is a huge blow to Aquaid, to each of us as individuals and to many from the Dalitso project who have visited Malawi over the last 10 years. Lucy leaves behind a very young family whom she loved dearly and will be missed by all of her own and adopted children. This is unfortunately yet another example of the disappointingly poor standards of diagnostic medicine and the poor treatment options. Lucy had been admitted to the main hospital for the whole of the south of Malawi and yet the hospital had only Paracetamol to offer her as a palliative pain killer. We were forced to buy stronger painkillers for Lucy from a local private pharmacy and still could only access Tramadol. I want to extend our deepest condolences from the Dalitso project to all of Lucy’s family and friends. I personally will greatly miss this beautiful, gentle lady. On the same day that Lucy died we took to a local private hospital Mirriam – the founder of the Dawn Centre (a home for disabled children run by Aquaid). Mirriam’s son has some disabilities and because of this Mirriam had developed a great passion for working with children with disabilities and their families in order to promote their education and independence. This is quite revolutionary for a woman who had rarely left her rural village, in a country where disabilities particularly any impairment of mental faculties is fundamentally ignored and hidden. In Malawi, children with disabilities have very poor access to education, jobs and opportunities. Mirriam was heavily pregnant with her third child and had begun to have some severe abdominal pains. On admission to the private hospital, we were told that she was not in labour and that instead she was experiencing ‘normal’ pain for someone who is heavily pregnant. Whilst this was questioned, we left Mirriam in the faith that the medical professionals at this hospital would take care of Mirriam and we proceeded to our centre at Thyolo. It was therefore, with great devastation that we learned 2 days later that Mirriam Pharaoh, founder, visionary and inspiration had died in childbirth. To this day, we are unsure of the exact cause of her death. It seems that due to the prolonged pain, the medical staff attempted to induce labour and somehow Mirriam then collapsed. It would seem that the staff did not then realise that there was a chance to save the baby’s life and so did not attempt to rescue the baby, who then subsequently died. I cannot find it in me to blame the very inexperienced and under qualified staff. However, it is so painful that such needless deaths should occur when a little knowledge and expertise may well have saved both Mother and baby’s life. Again thoughts and prayers are with all of Mirriam’s family and adoptive children at the Dawn Centre. As a Physiotherapist, with some medical knowledge, it is so hard in these situations not to feel a sense of regret, wishing that I knew more or could have done more for each of these dear women. I had attempted to get a blood transfusion for Lucy Kawinjo through contacts at the hospital but unfortunately there was no spare blood at the hospital. It is so hard not to wonder whether a direct donation could have been arranged. With Mirriam, could we have pushed for a caesarean section? Would that have been enough? It does however, emphasise the importance of choosing the correct staff to work at our own healthcare clinic at Kambilonjo. More to come on that later! The trip continued sombrely, however, with a week spent with our project at Thyolo. This was a great encouragement, as the centre is doing well with the children looking healthy and performing well at school. This year we have had a young new graduate teacher working with us every afternoon, whilst he awaited his government teaching position (which can take 1 year to 18 months after graduation to secure). The teacher (Dick) has been doing a fantastic job and the results of the children has notably improved. Dick has now secured a government posting in Mulanje which is very exciting for him, although notably, in Malawi, teachers teach for the first 6 months for no pay due to the financial pressures within the ministry of education, so Dick will have a tough first 6 months- although we have agreed to help him in thanks for his fantastic work. This year at Thyolo we rented some land Kambilonjo (our other centre- where crops grow much better), this has meant that we have been able to grow enough maize to feed all of our children for the Thyolo centre and will only need to buy maize for our relief program and buy vegetables and meat to go with the meals. This is a great help for the budget this year, especially with the huge rates of inflation causing significant increases in the cost of living in Malawi. We finished the trip off with a school trip to Mount Mulanje where the children were able to climb up the beautiful waterfall and practice their swimming skills. A good day was had by all even though we forgot the plates and cups in the minibuses which made for a very interesting picnic! During that week we were able to identify though our interviews two young sponsor children who needed a little more input. The first is a young standard 4 girl, Regina Wyson. Regina collapsed after receiving her present and was unresponsive for several minutes. On further questioning it became clear that this was happening daily. The centre staff had taken Regina to the hospital but they had been told that there was nothing concerning so usually just gave her a pillow and a cover during these episodes. Obviously, we didn’t agree with the doctors from the local hospital and so we took Regina to the main hospital in Blantyre where she was seen by specialists. It seems that Regina is having a very unusual type of seizure and is now undergoing extensive testing to work out how best to treat this. The second thing that we picked up from our interviews was regarding the eyesight of Vincent Likoswe. Vincent is a highly intelligent young lad. He was selected (in his end of primary school exams) to one of the top government schools in the country 2 years ago and is now in his second year of secondary school and has consistently been one of the top students in his class. When it came to reading his letter from his sponsor, we noticed that he was having to bring his eyes right up to the paper. On further questioning about this, we discovered that he had had problems with his sight since he was a small child and had never been able to read from a school blackboard, instead having to rely on listening to his teachers. We took Vincent to the eye hospital In Blantyre and got his eyes tested- it turns out that his sight is -14 in each eye! There were no glasses in Malawi at that prescription but we were able to order him glasses from abroad that we hope he will have in time for the new term starting! After the visit to Thyolo, we made our way to the centre at Kambilonjo, where we were able to see our new clinic building which is currently in use as a baby vaccination and screening program for the government. It is so exciting to finally see this healthcare facility in use and now that the staff housing is complete we are now at the stage of securing staff for the health centre. Once we have staff in place we can apply for a government assessment and once we have been cleared, we can open the clinic to its full capacity. As highlighted earlier though, we have seen the importance of taking this step as slowly as required in order to get the best staff. At Kambilonjo we also took the kids on a school trip but we went to one of the safari parks instead. We were really lucky to see lots and lots of elephants as well as hippos, water buffalo and impala. The kids were fascinated by these animals and especially by the monkeys that kept trying to steal our picnic! Kambilonjo had also had a student teacher- Eric working with them this year and have also employed a new nursery teacher. This has also had a really positive impact on the educational standards of the nursery/ school. Eric too unfortunately is having to leave us as he has finally been posted after nearly 2 years. He will begin work in September also and will hopefully begin receiving his government salary at the turn of the year. We also wish him all the best for the future. At both centres we managed to meet with each child and staff member individually to find out how best we can help each one and ensure that we are not missing any issues or potential problems. These were really helpful and will form the basis of lots of discussion for the management team! So overall, as always lots of need in the community and so much we could do! The management team will have hard decisions on how to spend our limited resources this year. Lots of positives in how the work is going forward coupled with the heartbreak that is life in a third world country like Malawi. Thanks again to all of you for all your continued support. The Dalitso project will be having a 10 year celebration on 10th September at the Dishlandtown street... we would love to have you all there to hear about what weve been doing, what we are planning to do and how else you can all be involved! May 2017
5/31/2017
Hi all. At Thyolo and Kambilonjo, the centres are continuing to do well with the Kambilonjo crops now ready for harvesting. The centre at Thyolo have grown a few fields of crops in Kambilonjo this year as the rains tend to be better and more reliable there. The Thyolo gardeners have therefore spent the last two weeks in Kambilonjo, harvesting their fields and are now back in Thyolo ready to begin the Thyolo harvest in a few weeks. It should be noted on a very sad note that Wiseman Nota, one of the gardeners based at Thyolo, sadly lost his daughter this month. The young girl took ill very suddenly and was admitted to Thyolo district hospital with an unknown illness and unfortunately was unable to pull through. We offer our deepest condolences to the Nota family at this time. On a brighter note, both centres received material for school uniforms in the container and their hardworking tailors got straight onto the huge job of making uniforms for the 300+ children. These are some of the classes at Thyolo (first two pictures attached here) and Kambilonjo (second two) pictures attached here) and their swanky new uniforms! We hope that this material which was sourced from Texcraft fabrics in Glasgow at a discounted price, will be far superior to the cheap and thin material available in Malawi, which tends to break very quickly. Many of you will have seen the beautiful health clinic that we now have in Malawi. The land for this clinic was donated by an ‘old widow’- how disappointed my Mum was when she realised that the ‘old widow’ was much younger than my Mum! This lady kindly gave up her land, her source of income and her mud thatched home because she believed in the project. We decided that although we were paying her for her land, we wanted to gift her something extra to reward her for her generosity. We therefore built her a small, 3 roomed, tin roofed, brick built house. This house is very exciting because it also has electricity, a bathing space, a cooking area and a toilet (pit latrine – this lady did not previously have a dug / built pit latrine). Here you can see her newly painted house and kitchen in the first picture and her bathing space and toilet in the second. In the background you can also make out her neighbours’ mud thatched houses. The clinic at Kambilonjo is now open for business and has been named the Dochas medical centre. ‘Dochas’ is Gaelic for ‘Hope’. It is our hope that the Dochas medical centre will bring hope in times of despair in the community of Kambilonjo. See the attached picture of he clinic where in the foreground is our very own doctor in training- Chifundo, who has just completed his second year of his medical training at Malawi College of Medicine. Chifundo is a local boy from Kambilonjo and one of the many orphans that we have supported through school and into further education. Maybe one day Chifundo will come back to Kambilonjo and work with us here! For now he is assisting the trained staff in any way he can. A team consisting of 7 people (Cailin Smith, Rebecca Ramsay, Charis Bowie, Sheila Dunphy, Fraser Dunphy, Naomi Dunphy and myself) will be heading out to work with our two centres from late June to late July. We will be able to provide a much more detailed report and update on our return! Until then, thanks for your continued support and please keep the centres and our children in your prayers. Many thanks Becky April 2017
4/30/2017
March 2017
3/31/2017
Hi everyone, A quick update from Malawi. Sheila and Fraser Dunphy returned last weekend from Malawi where they had been on business but managed to pop into both our centres to see how things are progressing. They had the opportunity to see the development of the new clinic in Kambilonjo. The clinic is now partially up and running as a post natal clinic. Here mothers bring their children to be weighed and checked up on by local health visitors. At the moment we are drawing up a Memorandum of Understanding with the government to agree who will be responsible for what.The cogs of the Malawian government turn very slowly but we are still hopeful that we can get it fully up and running by the summer. In Kambilonjo the house mother- Memoy has been teaching some of the boarders how to knit with a knitting machine and how to sew. One of the young boarders- Chikumbutso has shown real potential as a tailor and has begun making some clothes. As usual the maize is growing well at Kambilonjo so this year the decision has been taken to grow most of the Thyolo Centre’s maize at Kambilonjo too. Unfortunately what promised to be a bumper harvest could be devastated by an attack of the American Army worm which has been spreading over the whole of the southern part of Africa. Our centres are treating this and presently this seems to be keeping it at bay but please keep this situation in your prayers. The centres continue to go well and the extra lessons at Thyolo appear to be going well with the students improving in their test scores week on week. The teacher has not only been helping the children but giving help and advice to our 2 nursery teachers. We have had 30 new babies added to our Baby Rescue Progamme at Thyolo over the last month. Sheila was present when a granny arrived with her little orphaned grandson. She was thrilled to receive the baby milk, clothes and blankets (the clothes and blankets came from the container) which she was given. This is such a needed and worthwhile part of our work at Thyolo. Please remember our cook at Thyolo, Jane Andrews. Her husband is seriously ill with skin cancer on his legs. Sheila visited him in the local hospital. They had run out of clean dressings and pain killers! Please never take the National Health Service for granted!!! We were able to afterwards access some pain killers for him. All the contents of the container have been distributed and everyone is so grateful to all the items they have received so thank you to all who provided gifts for their sponsored children and/or provided items for the container. We are presently filling our next container. We especially need children and teenage clothes but are happy to also take adult clothes for our staff and carers. We have been asked to only take clothes up to size 16 for women and XL for Men – Malawians are quite small. Finally just to let you know of our fundraisers over the next couple of months. If possible please try to come along and maybe bring others with you! Saturday 18th March – Murder Mystery. – This is a great night with a 3 course meal served around a Murder Mystery with a prize for the team that solves it. This year’s is called ‘Murder on the Med.’ Cost of tickets £14 and can be purchased from Sheila (07752467654) or from Doris at RS Joinery (07533598464). Tickets can be purchased on the night but places need to be booked in advance for catering purposes. Friday 28th April – Our 1st AGM – to be held at OBs, 19 Westport, Arbroath. Please come along and hear how your money has been spent, get an update on the work and enjoy some food and chat with fellow supporters. Feel free to bring others along to hear about the work of The Dalitso Project. Thanks again for your continued support. Becky |
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