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Cyclone Ana brings a lot of damage to Phulanya

It has been a while since you have received an update from One Hope Malawi. We are all doing fine. On October 31 we received a beautiful baby girl named Bethel Chifatso (gentleness). She is doing great. Janien is doing fine as well and has picked up her work for One Hope Malawi again. This was the reason why you haven’t received a newsletter for a while and we has some technical problems with Mailchimp, the program we are using for sending newsletters. Moses is doing great as well. He is busy with our field work in Phulanya and during the weekends he is busy on our field. We have planted soya beans, rice and ground nuts this year. It is amazing to grow your own food! Joah and Shepherd are going to school during the week and they love it. When they are home they either play with lego or outside with our new dogs. In March we moved to another house here on the Zomba mountain. We are enjoying our new house. It has a gorgeous view all over the city. Sometimes you are able to see mount Mulanje!

Cyclone Ana and Gombe

You may have heard about cyclone Ana and Gombe who raged through Mozambique and Malawi. It has caused a lot of damage, also in Phulanya. Around 100 houses have fallen down and many crops are washed away. The people desperately need our help. People are living in camps, school buildings and houses of friends and family. Children get sick from sleeping in wet and cold houses. We provided relief help for all the affected families/households in Phulanya. They received a blanket, a mosquito net, mats made of reed, a thick tarpaulin, nails and a bag of maize. To the people who live in a camp we provided food for 160 people. Our intervention gave hope to the villagers. The government promised to provide relief help, but didn’t come to Phulanya. We thank God that we were able to help the affected families.

Hunger:

The cyclones have destroyed almost all the crops in the southern part of Malawi. In the central and northern part of Malawi the rains weren’t sufficient for the crops to grow properly. On top of this, the prices are rising every day. We were able to buy a loaf of bread for €0,40 a few months ago, now it is €1,10. Secondary schools got the permission from the government to raise their school fees and people are struggling to pay. One of our students has to pay €20,00 extra per term, which is such a big amount for the people from Phulanya. We are trying to help were possible, but we are quite certain that 2022 will be a year of hunger for Phulanya and many other villages in Malawi. Please pray for Malawi!

Agenda

- We will continue with the planting of 5000 trees in Phulanya (we have around 1000 trees remaining, 4000 trees are already planted). To make sure that the trees get enough water, we will dig water wells (5 meters deep). 10 people of Phulanya will be responsible for taking care of the trees and they will get an allowance for their work.

- The nursery schools in Phulanya made a plan for 2022. Our fieldworker Khumbo will evaluate this plan every month to make sure that the 200 children who are attending early childhood education will continue going to school.

- Our local pastor will continue to organize evangelism activities on the Wednesdays. During the other days he will continue to visit the people in their homes for pastoral guidance.

- The newly constructed road in Phulanya has some damage caused by cyclones Ana and Gombe. We hope to fix this in the coming months. We are grateful that the damage is not that much.

- On Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s the secondary school students of Form 2 and 4 (Year 8/9 and 11) will receive remedial teaching lessons. This will be done by local secondary school teachers who we trained for this. The lessons will take place on a local secondary school close by Phulanya. Khumbo and Janien are monitoring this project. remedial teaching lessen. Dit wordt gedaan door lokale leerkrachten die wij daar een training voor hebben gegeven. De lessen zullen gegeven worden op de voortgezet onderwijs school in de buurt van Phulanya. Khumbo en Janien sturen dit project aan.

- In April/May we will start building the foundation of our own nursery school in Phulanya.