Malaikha

An Austrian friend here is impressively and passionately trying to establish and build a school for local blind children in Mazabuka. So far progress has been slow, particularly frustrations with local bureaucracy which gobbles up what limited funding she has allocated to the school. Therefore, on Saturday her organisation held a fundraising event for the school. In the afternoon there was dancing and singing (plenty of miming too), and a fairly well know singer in these parts – Slap D – performed; the girls seemed to know and enjoy his songs. But the main event was the Miss Malaikha (beauty) contest. Lucia, an Italian volunteer here in Maz, gamely agreed to take part along with 9 other local girls who took the contest very seriously indeed; apparently they had been rehearsing for weeks whilst Lucia was a lot less serious. It was all very entertaining, especially as some of the contestants were very attractive.

Gender Day

This will sound all very cynical but . . . another week and along comes another commemoration day. I agree with the message and the need for policies, action and education and so on but I am unsure whether a poorly organised, small event, preaching to people who already work in this area (and not the general community), is the right way to go about addressing the issue. Anyway, here are some photos of the usual banner, t-shorts, dancing and drama.

Back to the Falls

I had not been to Livingstone for months and the contrast from my previous visit to the mighty Victoria Falls could not have been greater; much less of the might now. There was barely a trickle (I exaggerate slightly) of water flowing over the Falls, which meant that it was now possible to walk over the top of the Falls. There was little more that a few puddles of water where once was, and soon will be again, a torrent of water. The Falls still remains impressive because of the size of it but being soaked by the spray is much more enjoyable.

DATF Executive Team on tour

The Mazabuka DATF where I work is often quoted as being one of the best of its kind in Zambia but we can still learn from others. A while ago a team from Chongwe (about 45mins to the east of Lusaka) visited Mazabuka as part of a learning tour so this was the return leg. In passing through Lusaka we visited the National AIDS Council (NAC) – basically our HQ – and met with and questioned the Director General of NAC. For me, little was answered in terms of when our funding would start again (almost five months and counting), and also what further support would be devolved to the district level (decentralisation is the buzz word). Then it was onwards to Chongwe and a meeting with their DATF team. It was interesting hear about: the high level of political support that they enjoy (for example, the District Commissioner would just get up and lead all the other senior officials at an event off for testing); the mapping work that they have done of their HIV and AIDS stakeholders (we will shortly copy this); and also how they have managed to get land which will eventually lead on to their own DATF office (Bishop, Judy and I are cramped into one room). A few things we want to bring to Maz.

Rebecca's birthday party

Stella, and her family, have been an integral part of our lives here so when she asked Andrew and I if we could help fund her daughter’s fourth birthday party it was impossible to say no. To be honest we did very little apart from ordering a birthday cake and turning up to take photos. Most of the work was done by various people from the Sunday School at Stella’s church. So for around 2 hours on a Sunday morning we were surrounded by 40 children, singing Happy Birthday to Rebecca and watching them all devour the birthday cake, popcorn and lots of other sweet treats. Rebecca (the girl in the hat and pink dress) was a little quiet and subdued because of the drugs that she is taking but her mum overjoyed and a very proud parent. The children did not stop talking about Rebecca’s party for weeks.

Strategic planning

The work continues on the DATF Strategic Plan.The meetings can be an absolute pain to organise as I can never be too sure how many people are going to turn up, when they will arrive and also whether they will actually stay for the whole session; you are guaranteed that people will get up an important moments to loudly answer their phone. But when we do get the right HIV and AIDS stakeholders it is fascinating, enriching and almost enjoyable to listen to them discuss problems, ideas, issues, solutions, frustration and so on about Mazabuka. The actual strategic plan is a long way off and will no doubt require much more work but at least the material going into will be very rich.