Category: General

Care and Share, supported by Abbas Rest, distributed maize in small groups this year to avoid large groups – today 8 OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) from Ntikhe village in the morning (left photo), and OVCs from Lolo village (right photo) this afternoon, then three villages tomorrow, at 8am, 10am and 1pm. Their rule is: no mask, no entry to the compound.

    

Covid cases in Malawi were in single figures most days from early Sept. through to Dec. 17th, but have surged since. Two Cabinet ministers died early on Jan. 12th, and President Chakwera declared a state of national disaster later that day. Cases spiked at 1232 on the 15th, and are currently about 600 a day. The government introduced new lockdown measures yesterday (18th), including renewed school closures, a night-time curfew, and no gatherings over 50 people.

Two posts today – see next item

with both funds and encouragement, as we do what we can within the budget, and plan positively for the future of those we help and the charity itself. In December, Muriel married Amanda and Alan from Glasgow and accepted a donation from the happy couple when they heard from her of the work of Abba’s Rest. The church mis-named in our November newsletter (sorry!) is the Balmaclellan, Kells and Dalry Church – their Abbas Rest appeal raised over £700 – many thanks – many people of the Glenkens are stalwart supporters of Abba’s Rest. And several individual supporters have made donations over recent months. As costs rise in Malawi as elsewhere, these donations help us maintain our activities in Chiringa.

The November newsletter was published this week, and was emailed out to supporters whose email addresses we have. If you wish to be added to our newsletter circulation, please send us your name and email address via our Contact page.

We are delighted that Chikondi Gundo has agreed to be our new Project Manager at Chiringa, starting now. Chikondi is a B.Sc. graduate (in Environmental Health, with Credit) of the University of Malawi. Her last job was with Oxfam. She lives at Phalombe, so knows the area well and is “very happy to work with Care and Share”. We are also very pleased that George Makawa and Blessings Chipoka will continue their good work for the orphans, vulnerable children, and needy of the area.

The AGM in July went well, though we would have liked a few more to have joined us by Zoom! For this year’s review of activities at Care & Share in Malawi, we have engaged James Lusuntha, from Mzuzu in the north – his report will help to decide our future priorities, and we will include comment in our November newsletter. Although our contacts in Malawi have not yet, to our knowledge, been affected by Covid, the schools there have. like ours, been shut, and the health authorities fear that an increase in cases may overwhelm their limited resources. What we can contribute to the health of the community is much appreciated by them.

On June 19th, our Chiringa team told us that  most of our elders complained of feeling cold since we are in the cold months, and told as that the blankets which they received long time back are worn out. therefore, we at once approved that purchase, and manager George and his team distributed blankets and sleeping mats.

The Michesi Water Committee recently (end-March) participated in extra training, organised by Ronald Tsonga, and funded jointly by the Rotary Club of Ayr and Abbas Rest. With the coronavirus being in all the neighbouring countries, some practice at protection was included.

Power is always a problem in Malawi – there has been no electricity in Chiringa for five days now, as the electricity poles fell due to the heavy rains there!

We had expected to launch a gifts page (a recent idea from a supporter), using online shopping. However, Paypal have listed us as based in Algeria (we’re not the only ones relocated to there!) and, once set, the country can’t be changed, so we need to close the account (to restart it), and we can’t do that either (again, others have had this problem) – so our Gifts page – all ready to go – will not be available for Christmas. We’ll let you know when the problems are sorted.

Here we have the fertiliser arriving in early October – Care & Share buys fertiliser and seeds for distribution to the support groups and the vulnerable families that are keeping the orphans as part of empowering them in farming activities rather than waiting for handouts. Since we introduced this method most families are able to harvest maize which supports them throughout the year.