Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitators Following Visit July 2016

Key people: Charles and Janet Chibali

Recent Events

Skills Training Centre

Currently they are running the farming training, a preschool, adult literacy and extra lessons for students at the local school.

After discussions with the Kaishe Orphanage Association (KOA) board, they are going to stop the adult literacy and extra lessons in 2017. The adult literacy class has been declining in numbers as people start the course but then go away for fishing, meaning numbers dwindle to less than 5. The extra lessons have been a source of conflict with the school as the school is having extra-curriculum activities at the same time.

Preschool
This has been going very well and the community and primary school are seeing the results of having children start school who can write some letters, count and know how to hold a book and pen prior to being grade one students. The preschool has been running for three years now. There are normally 40 children who come each day for the teaching and they get a meal to help them concentrate. 

KOA are requesting some help to take these little ones on field trips to broaden their minds. The places to go are Samfya beaches (90km away) and the Kasanka game park where they would see wildlife for the first time. They are also looking into providing some simple playground items that will help the children develop and provide a safe place for play, rather than sitting on the road watching drunk people.

The preschool is run by Cosmos Kamfwa (pictured left).

Farming Training
It was great to see Charles in the middle of a week training course in Foundations for Farming (FFF). Charles and two other members were sent for extra training in 2015 to the FFF center in Mukishi. They used the methods in their fields last season and have seen a good result that the community has been responding too. They are currently in the process of harvesting this maize and cassava.

The training was covering the making of compost and the students were quite amazed at how hot the compost had got after two days. Charles had also set up a demonstration of the benefits of mulch with two containers of soil, one with mulch and one without. Both had water poured on them on the first day of the course. By the fifth day the one with no mulch was totally dry while the one with mulch was still wet under the mulch. Awesome!

They also ran a kitchen gardening course in April, teaching methods of compost and mulch. For the first time in ages we actually saw fresh vegetables at the road side market from the produce that people are growing.

As part of the farming training KOA would like to introduce a nutrition course that would help explain the benefits of other crops such as sunflower and soya beans. The course would train in the growing of the crops but also how those crops can be used to make food items that would benefit the health of the community. 

Bike Shop

The bike shop is currently suspended. The reason being that KOA gave themselves a “red card” or “fired themselves” by spending all the profits on trying to keep some of the other skills centre programmes going, leaving no funds to go and purchase more bike parts.

The community are still coming to purchase parts but there are none.  KOA are wanting to get this programme going again as it was profitable and they have learnt a lesson.

Itci Copu, meaning empty tin, as pointing to head!!

The Farm

This is still a work in progress but now they are focused on growing vegetables. We saw some very good mulch and garden beds that had been made to provide vegetables for sale.

The Mulani trees have grown and they have slashed them to protect from fires. These are a long term project that should be ready for harvest in 10 years time. 

Charles is also experimenting with other crops that may be able to grow in the area, such as coffee (has some seedlings just sprouting) and pineapples.  

Samfya Bible School Church Extension Programme

This programme has now started with the first training courses for the local churches being held in June and July. The course, which runs for two years, entails a Samfya Bible School lecturer (Peter Bobo Chomba ZAM16) coming to the Kaishe area and running a two day seminar once per month. Ex bible school students in the area such as Charles and Caphus (see personal testimonies) also help in the biblical training.

There were over 20 people at the first training but they are expecting up to 40 people from now on as more people have expressed interest since the course has started. There are many denominations represented; Brethren, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, United Church of Zambia and Catholic to name a few.

The course is based on a book called “Knowing and Doing”. The first session covered "What is the Bible", and the second covered “Who is God”. Other topics coming up are “The fall of man” and “Angels and demons”.

The book is very biblically based. The outcome that the KOA board would like to see from this programme is for real truthful Christian discipleship to be in the area, with the love of Christ starting to transform minds out of darkness. 

Personal Stories

Caphus

Caphus was an orphan on the KOA program, being one of the first people in the entire area to finish grade 12. He managed to obtain a scholarship from Samfya Bible School to complete a two year course there. After this course he did so well that they sent him to TEKA Bible College to complete a diploma. TEKA have given him a 70% scholarship and the remainder of the funds are being paid for by a USA donor. 

He is doing well, in the middle of his studies, and comes back to Kaishe when he has a break to help with the SBS extension programme.

Partnership's Influence within the Community

The community is surprised at the maize crops grown with FFF methods given the lack of rain and want to know more.

They are missing the bike parts shop as they have to travel 90km to the next nearest shop.

The preschool is making a real difference to the children starting school. 

Current Issues and Challenges

The biggest challenge at the moment is KOA's ability to follow up people who have been trained in Foundations for Farming and to this end they have requested a bicycle to help with transport issues.

Comments

We did a detailed examination of the accounts and receipts and most was in order other than a few missing receipts due to not always being able to get them from taxis and shops. From this information we created a revised budget based on the activities that they are currently planning to do in 2017.