Tikondane Community Centre was set up by a German born Australian widow named Elke Kroeger-Radcliffe. Elke originally worked at St Francis' hospital teaching trainee nurses. Upon the death of her husband and using the funds that he had carefully provided for her after his death, she set up the community centre which opened in 1999 and it has been developing ever since. Tikondane means "'let's love one another" and its purpose is to help support the 20,500 people in it's catchment area from the district of Katete (c222,000 population) in Zambia, one of the world's poorest and least developed nations on earth. They estimate that in this district around 80% of people are unemployed, with most people depending on subsistence farming. January, February and March (the 3 months before the harvest) are called the 'hungry season' as supplies have run out from the previous season. Tiko runs a guest lodge which employs local staff, conducts educational workshops for villagers, orphans and vulnerable children to educate them on the basic principles of hygiene, the prevention of HIV transmission , the importance of a balanced diet and regular Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT). The school at Tikondane educates about 500 children and also provide adult literacy classes. Guests are invited to participate in various workshops (weaving, shop making, permaculture), visit local villages and markets and also the local hospital St Francis'.
We spent 3 days at Tiko Lodge over the Easter weekend. On our first night we had a few beers with Edward (Kiwi fella also a visitor like ourselves) and John a VSO worker at the local hospital who is their engineer and supervising the construction and renovation of several new wards. We also met Stan, a pharmacist at St Francis' of whom we were very grateful he had the day off on Good Friday cause he was just a wee bit tipsy!
On our first day, Moses (Mosa) was kind enough to take us on a guided tour of Katete. We hoped on the back of bike-taxis (basically a bike with a cushioned seat over the back wheel that you perch on) and headed the 3km to Katete. The market here was huge and we were glad to have Mosa's guidance! The usual things are on sale here, bowls, plates, cups, jugs, second hand shoes, clothes made in China, spare parts for buses, bicycles and spare parts for them, vegetables and beans, flours, meat, hair accessories, knock-off DVDs and CDs and of course the odd general store and barbers. There are notices at Tiko Lodge advising you of items that would be useful as gift donations, so we purchased a couple of school uniform sets, some second hand shoes, exercise books and pen to donate. Sean also got a hair-cut from a guy that had obviously never shaved Mzungu hair before and couldn't therefore understand why going against the grain wasn't actually cutting his hair. It took quite a while for him to finish the job, but he was certainly a perfectionist!
We then headed back to the lodge and walked up the road to the hospital where John had offered to provide us with a guided tour for the cost of beer in the bar later (VSOs don't earn much he reminded us).
The hospital was actually quite impressive. They had n+1 redundancy on their UPS supplies and generators, enough beds for 380 odd people, surgical wards that provide operations 3 days a week and counselling and testing areas (VCTs). They even had housing for women to reside in before they give birth (for those that live many kms away) and some shacks for relatives to bed down in on mats.
Common ailments here are broken limbs from falling off ladders and out of trees, the affects of physical abuse (especially prevalent on the women) and malaria sufferers.
There was of course also a large maternity ward with so many women in it that they had matresses on the floors, but surprising to us was the size of their premature baby ward. The rates for premature births are high here due to the levels of malnutrition of the women giving birth. There was one western style incubator, but of course this kind donation had long since broken and with no one skilled in repairing it and with the spare parts required not readily available this machine has been gathering dust in the corner ever since. Instead the babies were in rather ingenious wooden boxes with a glass fronted 'flap front'. Inside were heat bulbs to provide warmth. The boxes would remind you of the type of heated cages in which young chicks are kept in (except yellow glow and not red). The room itself was also heated to help ensure the room stayed hot. The mother's of these babies were in a room next door manually expressing milk out of their breasts (this looked an extremely painful procedure) to feed their babies with. Cobwebs hung off the corners of the corrugated iron roof and no hand sanitizer was available. There were not enough boxes for each child, so half the boxes contained two babies and any more new additions would also be required to share. Against all these odds, these babies were fighting and all but one very fragile little chap appeared to be winning the battle.
The hospital also had a TB ward, which was now closed because the prevention of TB in the area has become so successful that it's use as a ward is no longer required.
A new children's ward was in progress of being built. It had started two years ago and they hope to complete it by the end of this year. Funded by the Dutch, this facility will allow more beds (in more private areas similar to those we have in UK hospitals rather than the one large ward they currently have) and will connect through a covered corridor directly to the maternity ward (at the moment there is quite a long walk in the outdoors). The old children's ward will be turned into the 'out patients' clinic. At present there are very long queues in the sun to a very small building and this will allow the hospital to minimize these queues by providing more treatment rooms.
All in all, we were surprised to find such half-way decent facilities here. But it was clear that this was only because of the generosity of the donors and the passion of the volunteers like John that this was possible. John talked about how donors like to see progress on their projects and when he and his team are trying to make the donated money stretch as far as they can by making as much things as they can (bricks, the iron roof - in fact everything except the specialist flooring and door frames) it takes time. They also had to manage their time across this and another project to ensure both progressed enough to ensure the donated money was not withdrawn. Tricky stuff eh?
Our second day was spent in the peaceful grounds of Tikondane, followed by a visit to the village of Graya where we saw where some of this community centre's money is being spent. They have built a pre-school building there (it's pretty sparse on toys or anything remotely educational currently), pigs and chickens with houses of their own and a permaculture garden complete with bore holes supplying water to the village.
In the evening we were allowed to sit in on the weekly practise of the women's traditional dancing. Local men are not allowed to view these practises, but 'white men' are seen as 'honorary women' so Sean and Edward got to sit in. Blimey - this dancing was pretty, erm, fertile I'll say... Edward's face was a picture (he went quite red at times) and Sean was loving it. I got the best lap dance though - sorry chaps! It was really a great privilege to view this dancing and we thoroughly enjoyed it - even if the women were taking the mickey out of us for most of it - they had a wicked sense of humour! I'm sure that my rendition wasn't that bad either.
The following day was Easter Sunday. Before we headed on towards South Luangwa national park we stopped into the local Anglican church to see how they do things over here. It was great fun. Very little preaching, a heck of a lot of singing and dancing, drums and crowd participation and shouting mandatory. Being in church was fun. The service goes on pretty much all day, but we stayed only 45 minutes (I even donned a local skirt for the occasion).
From what we have learned here it is challenging to provide the help required. One example given to us was when a class teaching how to put on condoms was refused the use of a plastic demonstration penis as it was deemed inappropriate and was forced to use a cucumber instead. The students were later seen buying cucumbers thinking that they helped to prevent HIV transmission. The local language also only has numbers up to 5 (6 is referred to as 5 plus 1) making it very difficult for local teachers to teach multiplication as they themselves do not understand it. But the people here are trying and their dedication is paying off little by little.
You too of course can help. And frankly having seen the good first hand that this place is doing it's nice to know that your money truly is helping. Here's how you can help:
Post gift donations of knitting wool for baby sets, educational books/CDs/Videos/DVDs (school text books, atlases etc), soft toys and children's games, second hand clothes/shoes for children and adults, pens and artistic materials, melamine cups, plates, bowls and cutlery (esp teaspoons) to:
Tikondane Community Centre
P Bx 550142
Katete
Eastern Province
Zambia
Africa
Or monetary donations can been made to:
Barclays Bank
Account Name: Tikondane Community Center
Account Number: 2496103
Sort Code 02-11-04
Just 7USD/7AUS/5GBP a month would support a child to attend their Community School from Grade 1-7. 50US/40GBP would enable a child to reach Grade 12 and open up the prospect of university tot hem or it would enable Tikondane to continue supporting their village outreach projects (pit latrine, water supply and solar energy projects). 75US/60GBP a month would provide a family with enough to meet their basic educational, health and well being needs. Visit www.tikondane.org for full information.
Ok, I'll stop preaching myself now and we'll make our way to South Luangwa National Park - the last of my big 5 is a leopard, so we're off to try to 'spot' one of them - hee, hee - get it? Spot! Hee hee!
Here are the photos:
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