An Amazing Trip – Continued

An Amazing Trip – Continued


Doug’s note
Posting this exactly 2 months from when it was written, I realise theris so much more I could add. I have presented a banner to the the presidents of the student council and the Social Justice Committee in front of an assembly of all students of Royal West Academy to thank them for their dedicated support. The banner was hand-stitched by the women of Makupo and says, “Zikomo. Bwanali / Mlangali. Madzi ndi moyo” which translates as “Thank you from the villagers of Bwanali and Mlangali. Water is life.” On October 19 we will deliver the same message of thanks to OPSEU – the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, who have been consistent and principled supporters of our efforts to help the people of Makupo and the neighbouring region become self-sufficient.

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Therese Foundation

Friday 6 August 2010

It had already been a very exciting day with our visit in the morning to the Therese Foundation also being very charged. Melissa Banda, the coordinator, is a very impressive lady who has done a wonderful job of village based care. It started with agogos (grannies) and orphans and is dealing with an important outstanding need. Roger Roome when he was in Lilongwe had made the connection with Mnjale Village on behalf of his adoptive aunt, Therese Bourque-Lambert, the octogenarian dynamo who heads the Stephen Lewis grannies chapter in NDG, Montreal.

From the modest money she has been sending, the villagers through self-help work have assisted more than a hundred grandmothers in as many as 30 villages. From the beginnings in Mnjale village, the work has expanded to so many communities that when they applied for NGO status they decided to change the name to reflect the greater scope and that is when they decided to honour Therese by calling themselves the Therese Foundation. Many of the grandmothers or agogo had gathered and were waiting for our arrival. Sister Gisele from the MIC order of sisters acted as our guide and when our two vehicles pulled up the women all began singing and dancing towards us in greeting. It was quite overwhelming.

The main focus of their work arose out of the situation of destitute seniors in the area. There are many older women and some men with no-one to support them. For whatever reason their children are not there to look after them. They can be old and lonely and as some get senile they get in trouble because no-one is around to care for them. Others are rejected or discriminated against, especially if they are labeled as witches. Sometimes if there have been unexpected or unexplained deaths in the village, people will accuse them of bewitching the bereaved family and they are ostracized. Others are charged with looking after their grandchildren when their own children have died, The group has used the money Therese has sent for food, clothes and blankets to share with these elders who have no means of support and end up in extreme poverty. Bicycles allow village based health care workers to travel around to see how the different elders are doing. They have also begun to help the orphans and already have a couple of girls going to secondary school who would have dropped out for lack of school fees. They are also building a community centre for their meetings and office.

The real reason for the visit was Alice Abracer. Therese has trouble traveling at the tender age of 88 so Alice was visiting Mnjale as her grandmother’s eyes and legs. They had been alerted to her presence and were extremely excited to show her everything, explain their progress and outline the problems they still face. Their new community centre is going to be very special and the foundation was already laid. Bricks were being prepared for burning as we met and even the oldest grannies had given some time to molding them and would help carrying them over to the construction site.

By the time we left Mnjale we had been emotionally drained but the day wasn’t over.

Well report

As I was posting the last item about an amazing trip, the drill rig from the Ministry of Water had arrived and in less than 2 days had completed drilling the 2 wells at Bwanali and at Mlangali. On Friday, Alice. Alida, Barbara, Katie and I were just arriving back from Lilongwe and Mnjale when Themba had called to tell us that they had begun the drilling at Bwanali Village.

We drove straight into Bwanali before arriving at Makupo and found them packing everything up. However, they weren’t finished. The last step, to the joy of the villagers was to drop an air hose to the bottom of the bright new tube they had installed and using the giant compressor that travels on the back of one truck they blow the tube clear of waste matter and debris. The site is quite spectacular as water shoots 5 metres or more into the air. Many villagers gathered including woman with assorted pails and buckets on their way to the older well. They quickly placed their containers on the ground around the hole to catch the water that was coming up.

Their joy and excitement was evident as they began to sing. One man arrived with a drum and they really got into it. We were all teary eyed by the time the crew finished the job. After 10 to 15 minutes they drove off to Mlangali to begin the 2nd well. In that way we got to see them at both ends of the operation - drilling and cleaning up.

We saw them begin the drilling at Mlangali and came to recognize why these wells are so expensive. Three huge trucks bring in the equipment. One has the huge compressor that pumps air under great pressure to force out the material being drilled. The other has the drilling rig which looks like the ones we see in the movies for oil wells. The third is laden with pipes, length of drill shafts and the other materials and tools needed for the work. They are big, muscular 4 wheel drive trucks capable of traveling over extremely rough terrain.

The drilling is a carefully coordinated, almost military operation. The foreman stands on platform right beside the drill and directs everyone else. All the team members have a role and shafts are put in place, lining pipes are readied and tools are available at exactly the moment they are needed. The compressor and the motor of the drill truck make a lot of noise and the dust of the drill by product blows up straight out of the hole. They record where the first water is reached and continue down to 45 metres. A metal sleeve keeps the hole from collapsing and it is inserted at lengths as the hole deepens. Once the depth is reached they remove the drill and drop a white plastic pipe down inside the metal sleeve. The pipe is full of tiny slits that allow the clean water in. The sandy refuse that the drill has pulled up is dropped down the space between the sleeve and the white tube to act as yet another layer of filter and keep the slits from clogging with finer clay like materials. The sleeve is slowly removed and a short bit of the white pipe is all you see above the ground waiting for the next crew to come and construct the cement footings, drains and wash stand. After the cement has duly hardened then the pump is placed on and the well is operational.

When I gain the skills I will get our website up and running and post the videos I made of the operation.