Education, Nutrition, Health and Safety to 60 Kids

We now have our very own bakery and clinic!

 Recently a mobile clinic has been visiting us regularly. It is a bus, which is fitted out as a clinic in which patients can come for treatment. Pregnancy and HIV tests can also be done there. The nursing sisters are really caring and friendly and it is good for our children to have this clinic close by. Small accidents always happen and during the winter months the kids catch a cold easily.

Namibia’s Ministry of Health decided that as many people as possible should be vaccinated free of charge against measles and mumps. Over the past two weeks this program ran here at Mammadu with approximately 900 persons daily, including children and babies, being inoculated. I am really happy that the local community responded so well even though it was quite stressful for us at times. There were lots of tears amongst the smaller kids – nobody really likes being pricked with a sharp needle. Our own children tried to put up a brave face and most of them did well. One day we received a donation of 8 large boxes of apples which was too much for us and we were able to hand them out to the children who had endured the vaccination successfully. The result was that they wanted to be inoculated on the other arm as well so as to get another apple. Thankfully the nursing sisters had put a mark on the fingernail of each child that had been injected so that no one could be vaccinated twice. And so there was only ONE vaccine and one apple per child.

We had an opportunity to visit the fire brigade, which was also very interesting for the kids. I take my hat off to these brave women and men. We were shown everything and were also given some demonstrations. The children were allowed to put on the helmets and try on the outfits so that they could feel how heavy they were;  especially those big jaws of life which are used to cut people from vehicles. Most of the kids could not even lift them by one centimeter! At the end Petrus commented that he would certainly NEVER ever join the fire brigade! Far too dangerous! I undertake these excursions with the kids to show them what types of work one can do … well, Petrus at least knows what he does not want to do.

We were also invited to a wedding. One of our volunteers found her great love during the time she worked at Mammadu and she now moved from the USA to Namibia and got married here. We sang for the couple in the church and took part in the celebrations afterwards. The bride was very beautiful. Our children had also groomed themselves to look their best and they were really fashionable and elegant. In a couple of days we are hosting another wedding at our very own Mammadu centre. We are busy organizing and practicing everything and it goes without saying that everyone is very excited.

All the equipment for the bakery has finally been delivered and we are expecting to go ahead with bread baking project as soon as possible. Having a bakery on-site will reduce our costs, as we can make bread for less than we can buy it. Also, it provides opportunities for people in the community to have work, as the unemployment rate is sky-high. We have already identified several employees who are ready for work! The bakery also allows the small stands that are set up like grocery shops in the community to buy the bread for a low cost and sell it to the community members who would otherwise have to travel (most probably by walking about 10 kilometers) to town to buy their bread.  

Now our next goal is to have more classrooms so that we can accommodate more children. The engineers have already started planning and we are busy saving money and collecting donations. We would be really happy if we could start building next year.  

As always I want to thank each and everyone for all your help and support. Our Mammadu family is getting bigger and bigger and it is good to know that you are there for us. 

A big hug from all of us.