African Community Project

I have bought my ticket to Zambia today. Thanks Alison at Tier One Travel in Victoria for your splendid service. I will fly to Frankfurt and than onto Addis Abba and than Lusaka. It takes about 32 hours. I will leave Canada on October 6th so I have a little longer enjoying this beautiful fall weather here in Victoria. I will miss Maria and my anniversary; actually I have only been home once in the last 9 years, being in Zambia every year. Sorry Maria but I will be home for Christmas!
I took this photo as a boarded a flight at Addis Abba, the technician (I hope he was one) was pounding something inside the turbine) sure makes you feel real safe!

I am looking at the calendar and saying “wow, where has all the time gone!” I am saying this in more ways than one. Yesterday I got my first ‘old age pension’ cheque, that’s the first 65 years under the bridge. In a month I will go to Africa again and the second trip for 2010. I have lost count on how many trips or how much time I have spent in Africa since 2002. Except for my very first trip I am prepared to face all the challenges and rewards that the trip in October and November will bring. Funding is always the biggest challenge (if I had more funding I could do more) and the biggest reward is to see all the smiling faces of the thousands I have befriended in Zambia and Mozambique. There is sadness too. Like the young boy in the photo below, in 2003, I worked in his village and every time I arrived in the village he would run out to greet me and I would put him on my Honda dropping my helmet over his tiny head. He loved it. His sister preferred the biscuits I would bring her, the bike was too challenging. She preferred sweets. One visit the young boy never appeared. He had died of Malaria three days before. His time had run out much too fast. It is too bad we could not call ‘time out’.

I am still busy at the computer working on the “projects” side of things on the web site. Still lots to do and I am learning to do things as I go. For a break from this I do a little in the garden or the many other chores that I have created for myself around the condo. I had a great visit the other day with friends Bill and Darrell yesterday discussing the future of African Community Project. They are both very committed Rotarians I have met here in Victoria and they have taken great interest in the project. Darrell has even visited the project in Zambia a few years back. There are still lots to do before I leave for Africa in 6 weeks. Funding is still the greatest challenge and it is never ending.  

We all have a first time. Right. This is my first blog entry on our new web pages. When I am in Zambia it sometimes hard to get on the internet let alone adding a new blog. So I need some practice. Perhaps I will try other things on the site.
In Zambia we have reverted back to using the good old ‘physically mailing a letter’. This has its good points: I get my reports first hand, my facilitators also get to improve their writing communications and it is reliable. It takes 20 days at least to get a letter or send one. Felix has just received 2 disposable cameras I sent 3 weeks ago. Not bad. When relying on email there were problems. Sometimes the facilitator would travel (up to 8 hours) to an internet outlet just to find there was no electricity in the town or that the internet was down. And most of the facilitators have no idea how to work a computer let alone send an email; that will come.

I greet you all!
 
The summer is going past quickly here in Canada, in Zambia the weather is dry and cold; not “Canada cold” but cool to Africans who are used to warmer temperatures. Above the Kafue Gorge where I worked in 2003 the community could experience a little ice on their water buckets in the early morning. This time of year in Zambia is a good time to build structures and wells, which ACP is doing. In Eastern Province we have just started a new well at Chisoyo Community School. We are not strangers to this isolated school having introduced reforestation there a few years back and supplied the school with new blackboards and school supplies over the years. Villagers here also have Jatropha seeds that we purchase for distribution through our seed program across Zambia. Flooding earlier this year has caused grief at nearby Mumbi Village; the earth dam at the village was washed away, causing a burden on the three wells in the village. As you remember ACP rebuilt one a few years ago and dug another one a year later. Livestock now must be watered from these wells that barely provide enough water for the 3,500 inhabitants of the village. Other flooding problems toward the Mozambique border have caused us problems also, especially at Nkhola Community School where we dug a well last year and was silted in.

Across Zambia at Mukuni Village in Southern Province things are moving along smoothly. At the new Mukasiamachaka Moringa Orchard the perimeter fence is being built and the main water supply from the village is being extended to the orchard where a 2,500 liter elevated tank is being installed. A caretaker’s house and a classroom used for environmental education and Moringa use is also slated for construction in September/October.
The above projects are funded by generous donations from Seeds for Africa, Forests without Borders, Harbourside Rotary Club, The Problem Solution and many others. Thank you all.
Garry

 
Our new web pages!

Take a look at our new web look at www.africancommunityproject.com Thanks to Reed who has volunteered many hours of his time putting it together. We are very happy with how it looks and the new pages. Lots of work still in progress. One page in particular is very new to us; the Donation page. It is by PayPal and we would like to see if it works. Give it a try. We can always accommodate you in other methods to donate and with a tax receipt too!