Newsletter No. 40, Christmas 2001

Dear Friends of Makeni,  

Time for another newsletter to give you the latest news and to wish you all a blessed Christmass.  

1. A recent assessment of loans owed by settlers in our settlement villages, adjusted for inflation, shows that 173 families, out of 269 families settled, still owe moneys to the Centre for Subsistence Loans, Production Loans and Capital Loans. The total owed stands, as per September 30th, 2001,  at K193 million or £37000 or US$52000 or D.fl 122.000. The average owed per family is US$300. Families are having a hard time repaying loans, and surviving, as the rate of inflation keeps on increasing the amounts owed. The low and slow loan repayments are severely hampering our ability to extend loans to new settler families.  

2. Settlers in Mwomboshi and Chisamba are begging us to sink a further two boreholes in each village. The cost of this will be US$18,800. After that the boreholes have to be fitted with windmills to pump water up, and with water storage facilities. Urgent appeals are being sent out for donations and grants in aid of this project. The boreholes will supply 96 families with drinking water and with water to irrigate crops and supply livestock.  

3. The Cloister Church (Klooster Kerk) in The Hague, Holland, has been the first body of Christians to respond to our appeal for funds for the new HIV/AIDS Prevention Project which is being initiated by Mrs Catherine Oreta, a Ugandan refugee, at Makeni Ecumenical Centre. Those interested in seeing a project description and proposal should ask her to send them a copy by mail. She can be reached at PO Box 50255, Lusaka, Zambia. Tel. 260-1-272437.

The Cloister Church, one of Holland's oldest and most venerable churches, is donating D.fl. 5000 in the year 2002. An American family are supporting Mrs Oreta's salary thus rescuing her from the truly awful poverty she has faced for years.  

4. CORRECTION: In a previous Newsletter (No.39) we wrote that the Mission Department of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands was reducing and phasing out aid to the Centre over the next three years, after supporting it for 30 years with annual grants, and that aid would cease by end 2004. 

This was not entirely correct -- the Mission Committee has said that it may offer incidental grants for projects it considers deserving. This still leaves the Centre itself in a severe financial dilemma because there is now no donor agency that supports the continued functioning of the Centre itself -- i.e. its Christian outreach, its administrative, fundraising, financial, transport, communication and all the other functions it offers to the projects run by the Centre. A further problem will be that projects which we, here on the ground in Zambia, consider vital, are not considered vital by the Mission's experts in Holland -- such projects can then no longer be sustained by MEC, among them the Settlement Project and the AIDS Orphanage. We continue to pray for a change of mind!  

5. "FOR UNTO US A CHILD IS GIVEN...." Isaiah 9:6  

A little Christmass present was delivered early to Makeni Centre...     Mutinta, age one year and nine months, wrapped in swaddling clothes, was brought to our Orphanage Village of St Nicholas, ten days ago, by a nun from Chilanga Hospice, where her mother had died of AIDS.

As we unwrapped the little bundle, we first saw eyes so typical of starving AIDS babies, wide, turning in their sockets, unfocused. Her size and weight were those of a six-month-old. She can not walk or talk.  

Sister Leonia told us that her grandmother, Mrs Nyangu, old and worn down, in despair had brought her to the Hospice where Mutinta's mum had died. She explained that so many of her children had died, and left grandchildren in her care, that she could not cope anymore.

"Mutinta was too sickly, suffered from constant diarrhoea and sores around her mouth and eyes, and cried and cried..." The grandmother was trying to survive by selling little bags of peanuts in the market - she just could not give the intensive care that Mutinta needed.

"Do with her whatever you want," she said.  

Now Mutinta has eleven new mothers -- that is, the nine older girls in our orphanage and the housemothers! There is fierce competition who can carry her next on their backs!   A few days of several meals a day, high protein food and a well balanced diet and medical care, and Mutinta gave us her first smile yesterday! She also stretched out her hands to Mrs Judy Passmore, the chief housemother. That's when we discovered that Mutinta CAN talk - just one word so far, "Amai" -- the best word in our human vocabulary, "Mummy, Mother"!  

So, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a daughter is given," and we thank and praise God for that precious little gift!  

We thank you all for making that sort of work possible in the past year, and we pray that you will have a Christmass as blessed as ours!  

With best regards,  
Yours in Christ,  
Fr Pierre J Dil / Founder-Director Makeni Ecumenical Centre