Home-based care project

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Makeni Webmaster

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Anke Warmerdam,
Marjanka Flamma, Ruud
Amerongen and  Loy
Ebbers visited the centre from Holland and worked with the home-based care project for four weeks in 2008. 

They went with the team to our local compounds: Kanyama, John Laing, Linda and Chawama.

They also arranged for for 24 children from Linda to go on a special trip to Munda Wanga gardens, the first such trip of its kind for children under the home-based care project.

They also distributed clothes to children – always popular!

Thank you for your kindness!

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Piddington and Hackleton supporters

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Makeni Webmaster

DSCF0166.JPGWe have now been in Hackleton, Northants for over seven years, and our home church is St John the Baptist, Piddington.

When my late father, Revd Pierre Dil, first visited us here, he sat next to somebody who seemed vaguely familiar.  “Aren’t you Father Dil?”, the person asked. As it turned out, he was.

“Andrew Knowles”, the stranger said. Except of course, he was not a stranger, but an MEC volunteer from 1980 something…   How odd that my father should have come across the world to visit us and then sat next to a former volunteer at Makeni Centre! We didn’t know he was here either.

St John the Baptist, Piddington, now regularly support us through annual donations, as does Andrew. We thank you….

DSCF2554.JPGI cheated a bit here. A few days ago there was snow, but it has now gone. It is however very cold… -2C or so.

A few Sundays ago we had a demonstration of cooking
mealie meal, which was then sampled by all.  So, while support flows to
Zambia (and Lesotho) from Piddington, a bit of African cooking has come to us too.

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The Voice of Makeni

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Makeni Webmaster

VOMECFronPage.tif.jpgIn the absence of much in the way of news (though, Happy new year folks!) here is an old instead. File under “the way we were”. I seem to be in that kind of a mood just now.

Here is the cover of the 1983 Student Magazine, edited by yours truly. I was just out of school and in my first year at UNZA.

Although it claims to be the first issue, I in fact remember that we had some left over covers from a previous issue, donated by Zambia Printing Company.

The price was 20 ngwee but inflation has doubled it to 40 ngwee (There were 100 ngwee to the Kwacha, for those with long memories).

Perhaps I’ll post some pages from it another day.

So, current students – what are you waiting for? Twenty-five years on, I’m sure the paper is due a revival!

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Computer School

Posted on November 29, 2008 by Makeni Webmaster

DSCF0102.JPGHere you can see our IT trainer Joseph Mumba, and a group of Makeni Centre Primary School children attending computer lessons.

They are using a mixture of computers, some gifts from the Open University in the UK and others recently donated by a college in Holland. Thanks to these kind donations we are now quite well equipped in terms of hardware.

We have limited capacity in this small hall, which was not designed for computer use and is in  need of general upgrading, in spite of previous repairs. For the time being, though, it serves a useful purpose in introducing our staff and students to computer use.

There is plenty of room for expansion in terms of the teaching.  Eventually, I would like to see us teaching the International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL).

There is no connectivity outside of the main office at the centre (which has a dial-up connection). Greater bandwidth is currently outside our reach, due to high trees between us and the Lusaka radio link (I’m told; I imagine we could use a receiver mounted on a water tower, but that would involve further expense), but more problematically because of ongoing costs, which are hard to justify at the moment.

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