HEALTH

NKHASO (Nkhata Bay AIDS Support Organisation) Maize and Vegetable Garden Project — Progress Is Being Made
Just before the rainy season began, work started on the NKHASO maize and vegetable garden project on a 5 acre plot of land near Chifira. Aram, a RIPPLE Africa volunteer, worked with Chester and Derrick of NKHASO and a group of Malawian volunteers. The aim of the garden was to provide food for orphans and HIV sufferers. Many of these individuals do not have the means to obtain essential nutrition, so this project is a lifeline to these people. As with most of RIPPLE Africa’s projects, this project needs to be sustainable so half of the produce will be re-invested for seeds and equipment for next season and a portion will go to the volunteer workers on the project.

Aram has recently reported back saying that, as well as a large area of maize, there are now 26 raised vegetable beds with zucchini, cucumber, carrots, pumpkin, eggplant, mustard, lettuce, and tomatoes. More seeds will be planted when the rainy season has finished. Rice has also been planted, and 20 grafted fruit trees have been purchased and planted, including orange, tangerine, guava, and pawpaw. We also understand that the group will be receiving six goats made available by Aleke Banda, our local Member of Parliament.

Let’s hope that this is just a start. If members of other communities are really concerned about the welfare of orphans and HIV sufferers, and they are prepared to put the work in, then maybe this could be a model for future nutrition projects. This project will benefit 309 local orphans and 121 positively tested HIV sufferers. The total material cost for this project was under £200.

We originally made money available to Keltone, who was the main director in charge of NKHASO. Unfortunately, he disapeared with the money and has not been seen again! Chester and Derrick, the other directors, came to see us and were still passionate about this garden project. We trusted that they would use the money wisely this time, and this garden is a credit to them and Aram. Chester and Derrick run NKHASO purely on a voluntary basis, and it would be wonderful if RIPPLE Africa could support more of their good work in the future.

Bicycle Ambulances
We have received funding for six bicycle ambulances and have constructed the first prototype. It is a new design by Jessica Vechakul, who is currently a Mechanical Engineering graduate student at MIT. We have selected a local metalworking company to manufacture these ambulances using her plans but, unfortunately, they are working out more expensive than we had originally calculated, mainly due to the cost of the raw materials. We had estimated the unit cost at £150, but it will be closer to £230. We do not have any pictures yet of this prototype, but we will be chasing this up on our next visit.

HIV/AIDS Awareness and Health Education — The Initial Results
Public health education is a vital step to communities understanding health issues. We started our HIV awareness campaign on our previous visit. RIPPLE Africa pays for two Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) to visit local churches and give a 15 minute talk followed by a 15 minute question and answer session. This has been a very successful programme and, for a small investment, there has been an increase of 378 people who have been tested for HIV between July and October. The total figure tested for that period was 578. To show what an achievement that is, the town of Nkhata Bay, which has a much bigger population, tested 328 people in the same period. We need more funds to develop this programme.

New Community Clinic — Work Will Start in 2008
In our last newsletter, we reported that we wanted to construct a new Community Clinic. This will now become a reality after we received a kind donation to fund this project. The local community at Matete will manufacture the bricks in July 2008 so that construction can start between October and December. We have been in talks with the District Health Officer about how the clinic can work and the general design of the building, so now we are looking forward to starting this project.

RIPPLE News: February 2008