Missionary Newsletter December 2023
This is just a short note to thank you all for your support in 2023, and to wish you a very happy Christmas and all good things in 2024. I thought you might like an update on the people you have supported this year, so I am including a few words and pictures on the progress of those we help in the Copperbelt. Last week I was in Kitwe, and as well as visiting Jane and Play4all, I saw Kabutu, Caroline, Patricia and Marita. These have all been helped through your kind thoughts and support in 2023.
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Play4All: My little project in Kitwe has been running for well over a decade, and is expertly managed by Jane Mwenda and 11 volunteers. They look after around 60 unschooled kids each morning and try to improve their lives through various aspects of play. Laurenz Koch, a German volunteer from 3 years ago visited Kitwe and fell in love with the kids. He found a new site and built a more permanent structure for us and continues to help by raising money for porridge for the kids every morning, and some extras for underweight and vulnerable children at the weekends which Jane takes to them.
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Caroline: I first met Caroline in 2007, and she had a heart for street kids then. She was going round MEF where I lived, trying to raise support for the 6 or 7 orphans she kept with her family. Today her family has increase to 60; some of whom she has managed to put through university. They all crowd in to a 2 bedroom house whilst she and her husband Chris, are building, bit by bit, a much more substantial house on the same plot. She also takes a lead role with the albino community who are much persecuted for their condition. We have helped with schooling, times of sickness and when she has run out of food.
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I have known Kabutu Kabutu since 2008, when he impressed me with his work with the elderly, often a forgotten community in big cities. He started working in Kandabwe, the most deprived compounds, trying to find shelter for the old people, some of whom slept in pub doorways. 15 years on he is still in Kandabwe, and has opened a small school, but still looks after the vulnerable elderly in the community providing basic food and support. This time of year he cycles for six hours to get to his fields where he plants maize to sell or use for his vulnerable people the next year. He is one of the most hard working people I know, and has won the respect and help from this very impoverished community. We have helped him with rent, food for the elders and kids and farming. We also taught him how to make biochar and briquettes. He is particularly proud of his library and also teaches adult literacy to his elders. Yesterday, 17th December, his wife gave birth to their first child named Ann.
Patricia was quite a demanding teenager in 2007. With no parents or close relatives, she seemed to know how to work the system. My neighbour at MEF, “Dr Ann,” took her under her wing for a year or so till Ann went back to America, and she was still supporting Patricia to train to be a nurse in Lusaka, 14 years later, when she died earlier this year. This year has become memorable for all the wrong reasons for Patricia, her 3 year old son died tragically when he was being looked after by her cousin in Kitwe. She herself became seriously ill with an inflamed pancreas in August, and took her final nursing exams from her hospital bed. Not long after discharge she got a job some distance away from her only relative Cecelia, the cousin in Kitwe, but soon she was hospitalised again with the pancreatic ulcers. Cecelia came down to help her and whilst shopping was killed in a road accident leaving 2 children of around 7 and 18 alone in Kitwe. After discharge Patricia came back to Kitwe, only to find her cousin had left a series of debts over the house, she began sorting these out, but was admitted again, and is now recovering after discharge. Sadly, Yvonne Cecelia’s daughter whom you can just see in the picture was admitted to hospital over a week ago, and was operated on for stomach problems. We hope she will be discharge before Christmas. We have helped Patricia with medical bills, exam fees, an invigilator in the hospital, Cecelia’s funeral, transport and food costs, and are happy it looks as if she is recovering well.
Marita has elephantitis in both legs due to an accident about 20 years ago. She has tried “doing business” off and on, but without much success, and was constantly on the move for one reason or another. Having no stability in her life and losing all the children she looked after either to accidents or malaria, I built her a small house. Although she attends hospital out patients regularly, there is little improvement in her condition, and she lives with her remaining grandson and another dependant boy, in Ndola, trying to eke out a living selling second hand baby clothes. Luckily, the plot we bought is surrounded by churches, and she thinks she can make more money by selling drinks and snacks to the congregations when the come from church. (4+ hour services are not that unusual). She is also renting out one of her bedrooms and keeping rabbits for sale. Poor health and poverty have dogged Marita’s life and we pray that all the help we give will improve it.
Finally I would like to say a word about Jane, she is an absolute asset for Play4all and for me, she is wise and patient and has run things on a shoestring for years without complaint. Last year she asked to go on a nursing course part time and I said no, because I was doubtful she could manage 2 demanding jobs. I see however, that her mind is set on that, and I have no doubt she will be a very good nurse, our resources to pay for the course are low, and since her divorce Jane can’t manage the contributions, so if you think you can help in any way please mail me for further details.
Once again I thank you for helping directly or indirectly in the lives of these people we help in the Copperbelt. Your donations have gone to pay Jane’s wages, and Play4All running costs as well as house rents, hospital bills, transport, food, house repairs, funeral costs, medication, business start ups and so much more. However meagre it may seem, you have helped make Christmas for them this year, and we hope, a brighter future in 2024.
I hope you all have a very enjoyable and blessed Christmas, and wish you all good things for the New Year.
Jenny
Zambia Appeal
As you are aware, we at Bennochy have supported our Missionary Partner in Zambia, Jenny Featherstone for a number of years in the various projects she has been associated with.
Jenny has retired from her position with the Church of Scotland but has decided to continue working in Zambia where she has joined the Choma’s Alcohol and Drugs Rehabilitation Organisation (CADRO).
Working with these individuals brings many heart-breaking challenges particularly with the young and infants, many who struggle to survive and others sadly die.
Jenny is involved with the CADRO Biomass Project where they initially made briquettes out of dry vegetation waste and has now graduated into other products from sustainable charcoal, including biochar which is a soil amendment which sequesters carbon into the soil permanently. Biochar is easily made, effective in crops yields and needs much less artificial fertiliser which contributes towards slowing climate change and helps the farmers profits.
CADRO are appealing for voluntary contributions to ensure that production is maintained and vulnerable people supported.
CADRO have a Facebook page with background information.
The other project which she is also involved with is Play4all which was set up around 2010 to help children who for one reason or another didn't go to school. They have 11 volunteers and a project Manager and cater for between 60 and 400 kids, depending if there is a special event, where the aim to educate through play, ie social, creative, logical and cultural rather than reading, writing and arithmetic. This is aimed at giving them life skills and raise their life chances.
If you feel you would like to support Jenny’s work in Zambia, contributions can be made to her donor account.
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