Africa not forgotten by local volunteers

Youth Unlimited Pastor Kevin Smith has a heart for Africa and it makes him emotional when he talks about the world's "forgotten continent."

"We've forgotten them because they don't look like us," Smith said Saturday in an interview alongside three of the four fellow travellers who joined him on a recent aid mission to Malawi.

But the good news, demonstrated in that same trip, is that when people do choose to care about their fellow human beings on what was once dismissed as the "dark continent," small things like blankets, mosquito nets and repairs to water pumps can make a life-saving difference.

"We can do something on the ground there," said city Councillor Larry Journal, who hopes to return to Malawi to do more humanitarian work.

Youth Unlimited's ongoing Operation Outreach Malawi continues to support two villages in the small southeastern African country - Hanoke and Chidowola.

Smith and Journal joined Youth Unlimited administrator Joan Childs, Randy Shearer and Amber Woods on the latest aid mission, Nov. 17 to Dec. 1.

The group brought 90 blankets, donated by the Dodge Group, enough to place one in each of the thatched mud huts that Hanoke residents call home, where there is no way to retain heat in the cold season.

They also travelled to the Malawian city of Blantyre to buy mosquito nets and a chlorine product to treat the village's water supply.

Those things are readily available in Malawi and relatively inexpensive for holders of Canadian currency, but beyond the means of Hanoke residents, most of whom don't even earn an income and subsist off the land.

In fact, Shearer, who like Journal and Woods was in Malawi for the first time, at first doubted supplying these things would make a big difference, but has since realized that they are the most effective measures available to save lives.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, kills more Malawians than AIDS, despite the latter's staggering death toll, while dysentery, the result of bad drinking water, is the second-biggest killer of children under five, after Malaria.

The group also bought the necessary supplies to fix three "bore holes," or hand pumps in artesian wells, and helped set up Hanoke's first mini-business.

Using the micro-credit model, Smith said, a local man was given a small loan to buy equipment to set himself up as a carpenter.

By spending the equivalent of $50 on tools, the group explained, the man is now able to build objects such as a window frame. He will then pay a young boy to walk to the main highway outside Hanoke and sell that frame.

Such small steps are sowing the seeds of a market economy in an impoverished part of a country that has only recently begun awakening to the concepts of credit and investment, said Smith.

Once such ideas really take off, growth can begin at a faster pace, since wireless Internet access is already available in Malawi, he said.

For the longer term, Operation Outreach hopes to create a scholarship program for the river valley where Hanoke is located, allowing 1,000 area children to attend "forms," the equivalent of high school.

(In fact, many locals are in their early 20s by the time they graduate elementary school, notes Smith.)

The group would also like to create a scholarship allowing 500 of the area's young people to attend college. They already have the names, pictures and career goals of five area boys and two girls.

In the meantime, Operation Outreach has already built and continues to run nursery schools in both its adopted villages, part of a sustainability project aimed at getting those communities strong and healthy enough to support their AIDS orphans.

Given the huge currency disparities, a little goes a long way. Donations from local residents and supporters across North America are allowing Operation Outreach to pay six staff members at those nurseries - costing the charity, in total, the equivalent of $4,000 Cdn. a year.

HIV remains a significant and deadly challenge for Malawi, a country with an estimated population of 13.6 million, where life expectancy is a mere 42.98 years.

Some 20 per cent of the country's adults are HIV-positive, the group said. Journal could count the number of Hanoke residents over 50 on one hand and name them.

The people this group encountered could not fathom an existence without AIDS. The Canadians were struck by the reaction they received after telling one host family none of them knew anyone who had died of AIDS.

"They just stared at us as if we were Martians," said Smith, adding everyone there has lost family members or close friends to the deadly disease.

"To them, it's like getting the flu, except you die from it," added Journal.

AIDS is draining Malawi of its best and brightest and leaving its children without parents and teachers, the group said.

And while the drug "cocktail" that allows AIDS sufferers in more prosperous countries to prolong their lives is now available there, Malawi does not have enough doctors to administer it.

Shearer recalls a trip to a rural hospital where one doctor worked alongside eight nurses. His busiest day saw 280 patients come through the door, while his lightest day brought him 160 people.

With that kind of workload, he told Shearer, misdiagnoses are inevitable. It also prevents him from visiting area villages to teach people about disease prevention, something the government requires him to do.

Hence, even short-term help from Canadian doctors or nurse practitioners would allow this Malawian doctor to carry out this crucial public health work, said Shearer.

The five local residents have come back from their short stay in Malawi with a different view of what most Canadians consider hardship.

For most Canadians, the stock images of African poverty shown on television have little impact, said Childs.

"Then you go over there and reality hits," she said. "You have to see it to have it really become a part of you."

People who are interested in donating to Operation Outreach Malawi can call Youth Unlimited at 345-4810.