Visit to Masinja village, Mwase in Kasungu

16th May 2017

Harisen writes:

This was organized by the Youth Act Malawi, a youth organization which has had a big impact on a huge part of Kasungu in areas of youth awareness on HIV, Sending the girl back to school, encouraging youth to take part in community activities and reforestation.

This youth group came to know us through Paul who was working in Salisbury line at Áras Kate and is now working with this group as the Director of the Youth.

In their areas, according to Paul,  they have a big problem with water, few boreholes were installed, education is a problem, kids walking long distances to go to school and also lack of preschool.
The meeting was held at the Traditional Authority Mwase’s residence, with 16 group village headmen in attendance. Also members of the Mudzi bank (village banks) from two groups, Area Development Committee members, board members of the Youth Act Malawi (YAM) and youth including villagers.

I explained what we do at Wells for Zoë, in areas of water and Forestry and Fruit trees. Miriam talked about preschools and Girl child education.

I also talked about what we need from them like; bricks, sand and quarry stones not forgetting digging the well and providing all the labour; and we provide cement and complete pump. I demonstrated the pump and how it works and the pump parts.

They were also told that we need at least not less than 10 pumps per village and all the village headmen welcomed the development.

The group village headman stood up and said that most of the organisations that come to their communities to provide assistance,  just make promises and never come back and still the communities suffer from lack of clean water.  Girls and women wake up very early in the morning to fetch water which in turn result in girls going to school late or not at all.  He also added that in his area the population is 57,ooo served with 67 bole holes and in some areas 8 villages are sharing 1 well.  In his speech he continued by saying that they are very willing to work with Wells for Zoë, in every possible way they can.

I also talked about Forestry and urged the villagers to have woodlots.  They were told that we have seeds which are distributed to villages upon providing a piece of land where to sow the seeds.
The Area Development Committee (ADC) chairman welcomed the idea on behalf of the community and urged the chiefs to take part in this development as in most areas, Kasungu has no trees.  Trees have been cut because of tobacco farming.

Mwase area in Kasungu has been affected badly by deforestation due to tobacco farming. The chairman also added that there is need for an awareness project promoting tree conservation.

When I explained about tephrosia the chairperson in the village savings group was excited about it as they have been using fertilizer and spending a lot of money. Now with training they can use tephrosia to replace the fertilizer, and can save money for use in other areas.

The meeting ended up with a prayer from one of the villagers.