Remeber the little guy Obdu?
Lloyd just sent an update on that young man. Not only his he growing bigger and stronger. He is doing very good. He has broken off from being a streetkid and attends school regularly now, thanks to the donations of Stan. Obdu now can fluently read.
No wonder his smile is so smug nowadays 😉
If you feel you want to support a kid’s education as well and help a family pay school fees, please contact us about our sponsorship programme!
You guys probably know that we do have our greenhouse and plantations. Right? Right. Up till the end of 2016 those places were located close to Lloyd’s house as to always have someone to watch over them and make sure our plants and belongings are safe.
Now that we started PAF Community Center the idea came up that it makes sense to move our greenhouse and fields and plantations to the Center grounds.
And guess what? That is exactly what we have been doing in the past weeks. Moving the greenhouse is one thing. But clearing the space for new fields and plantations and preparing those for the new planting season is another.
Working this dry and hard soil is a tough job. Everyone helped with that.
So basically our “garden” has now moved close to PAF center. And to make sure all is safe we had to fence the greenhouse and grounds as well.
As soon as we have solved the issue of securing our belongings at PAF Center we will also move the water tank and pipes and set them up there for irrigation purposes. But for now those remain close to Lloyd’s house to keep them safe.
And now that planting season started we can grow our plants at our PAF grounds. Pretty cool, huh?
So lets just say that things have been moving in Chinkonono 😉
As you all know the main objective of PAF is to promote household food security in Chinkonono and the surrounding villages.
It is in this vein that PAF, with the intention of supplementing members’ effort in securing household food security, embarked on a seed and fertiliser support programme. Eleven members who where willing to take part applied and were given 4.000 Kwacha (roughly 400 Euros) from the PAF bank account. This money was paid to the Ministry of Agriculture under FISP (Fertiliser Support Programme). This is a national programme in which farming inputs are subsidised at fifty percent to enable peasant farmers access farming inputs.
Each of the eleven members got three and half bags of fertiliser and one bag of seeds. Hence each of the beneficiaries are able to grow a hectare of maize. The expected harvest for each beneficiary is 75 to 80 bags of maize. Each of these beneficiaries will pay back 400 Kwacha to the project in May. That way we can already raise the money to attend in programme again end of 2017.
Due to this project plus very good rains Chinkonono village is gearing for a bumper harvest. People will have food to eat and the extra will be sold for soap and salt.
We are really loving without borders thanks to all those who contributed to the success of this fertiliser project by contributions and donations.
TWALUMBA 🙂
World over, despite different faith and beliefs, Christmas is a family reunion time.
After the generous donation from RotB in 2015 when we celebrated Christmas for the first time…this year should be very special for Chinkonono kids as this Christmas was for them.
Thanks to our German Mama Africa Bruni we could buy a lot food and even some sweets in 2016 again. About 900 Kwacha were spent on food and drinks. We bought rice, sugar, flour, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, biscuits, one goat and three chickens.
Our ladies spent hours and hours stirring the pots and cooking. What a feast that was. So much meet and different kind of dishes. A truely great day for everyone!
Wesley surprised everyone by homemade bread and buns.
He even created his masterpiece: the Christmas Bread. Cool, huh?
All Chinkonono kids were present: In total 145 kids took part in the feasts. These kids were coming from PAF and non-PAF households.
If you think that was all…well, there were also those yummy Vinkubala that the kids love so much. Not an everyday snack.
The festivities were punctuated by music and dance, lots of jokes and laughter. You can imagine what a party that was and how many sparkling eyes and bright smiles you could see 🙂
In the past Christmas went by without people in the village taking part because it was impossible to celebrate due to lack of food.
All this was possible after PAF members in Germany took it upon themselves to bring joy and make Chinkonono celebrate the birth of Jesus together with the rest of the world.
Finally! Julie made it back to Zambia after 2 years. And guess where she went: Chinkonono Village of course!
Check our awesome new Slideshow to see what happened in the village and what progress we made while Julie was there:
Julie had a big To-Do-List to check 😉 As you know we have been announcing a market place and kitchen for ages. So we planned to get both structures roofed within that week. We managed for the kitchen. So that is good. The market we only could do half because we lacked grass to that the roof the traditional Tonga way. But we are confident that it will be done very soon.
Also our building that houses the library and sewing room for now was supposed to be painted nicely. Unfortunately there was a lot of plastering to do to fix dents and window sills. But Jason and Albert worked hard. So with a slight delay the ladies, Julie, Wesley and many other hands could start painting.
For the rooms we chose water-based white paint and for the lower part white oil paint so we can wash of prints of dirty kids’ hands 😉 Door and window frames are painted in a dark green. For the front wall and pillars outside we chose white oil paint to be able to wash them too. Also Wesley and Julie practiced their sign writer skills and wrote Planting A Future onto the top part of the front wall.
What can I say? It looks beautiful and bright and people can see it from afar. Our members are so proud, especially the women. They say that nobody has a nicely painted wall our house at home. And to quote Media: “Not all men’s work has to be done by men only. We can do that too!”…she refers to the whole painting job, which was very interesting and exciting for our ladies.
But now lean back and take 12 minutes to watch the Slideshow! Please share if you like it! 🙂
Für die Deutsche Version nach unten scrollen!
You can really feel their new selfconfidence now.
Müsst ihr auch grinsen, wenn ihr solche Bilder seht? Ich kann mir nicht helfen. Aber es macht mich glücklich, das zu sehen. Nochmals vielen Dank an alle Spender, die es unseren Jungs ermöglichen Fußball zu spielen! Solche Dinge machen die kleinen, aber feinen Unterschiede im Leben der Menschen in Chinkonono aus.
Ever been attending a book club? Reading a book and talking about it, analyzing it and interpreting it. Well…we do have a PAF reading circle in Chinkonono now. Well…it is probably not quite as professional and conversations might not be as deep. But our kids gather at our PAF Center regularly after school to read books and exchange stories they read.
Thanks to our friends and donors like Murray and Niki those kids finally have access to books and can practice reading, the english language and most importantly kick-start their creativity and imagination. It is amazing to see their sparkling eyes focus on the pages. You can really see them diving right into their stories 🙂
And who knows…maybe some day one of those kids will start writing their own story or book 😉
On a side note: We are still trying to solve the problem of lights inside the library. We hope to raise funds for solar panels so that we can install solar powered lights inside the building and thus enable them to also read inside. We are working on it 🙂
You probably all have heard about those huge African families, right? Well…you should meet Zaire. He is married to 4 women and lives with all of them and their children and even grandchildren. As you can imagine it is not easy for people in the village to provide for all of those people and feed all those hungry mouths.
So Zaire was really happy when PAF decided to donate a few trees for him and his families. We gave him 2 pawpaws and oranges and some other fruit trees in December 2015. Now check out how well he takes care of those plants and how big they have grown already!
Lloyd took us on a little visit to Zaire’s home. So check that video and meet Zaire:
What a happy and lucky man 😉
Please check back on our blog and see how we do it here in Chinkonono. We will keep you posted.
Planting A Future 