Malawi — MALAWIAN orphans kicked, somersaulted and contorted their way into the hearts of a dazzled East London audience at the Arts Theatre Club this week.
In A Night of Appreciation, 25 orphans from the Amitofo Care Centre (ACC) in Malawi performed martial arts taught by masters from the Shaolin Temple in China.
They are touring the country to raise funds for the ACC, founded by Buddhist Master Hui Li, from Taiwan, in the 1990s.
This was the group’s second time touring the country but their first performance in East London.
Dressed in matching kung-fu outfits the group, aged between seven and 17, thrilled the crowd with daring and dramatic moves using sticks and whips and, just like in Chinese movies, breaking hard objects using their heads, somersaulting and kicking in the air. They also sang in Chinese while some flexed their bodies into weird positions, much to the delight of the audience.
Speaking through a Chinese interpreter, Noel Songwe, 7, one of the stars of the show for his contortionist-like moves, said he enjoys the acrobatics in martial arts because they keep him healthy.
“It helps to keep my body flexible. I have been doing it for a year now and I want to do it for the rest of my life,” said Songwe.
ACC has opened homes in countries like Swaziland, Lesotho and Zimbabwe and has given about 3000 orphans a home to date.
ACC general secretary Frank You said they wanted to open a centre in South Africa but the government was posing many restrictions. “T hey seem to think that South Africa has no problem of street kids. We’ve have been trying for years but nothing comes out of it.”
Brandson Hjunga , a Malawian Buddhist and Chinese language tutor who cares for the orphans, said a normal day at the orphanage started at 4am with a shower and running errands.
“We meditate for an hour between 5am and 6am and this is followed by 30 minutes of learning Chinese. Then we do an hour or so of kung-fu before going to school.”
After school there is another hour of kung-fu followed by refresher lessons of the Chinese they learnt in the morning.
Hjunga said Oriental ways of living complemented the children’s own culture. “We were brought up to respect each other but somehow our African culture lost its glory due to European ideologies. The Chinese culture has withstood that, and teaching African kids about it will only help us retain our humanity,” Hjunga said.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
Malawi ends missionary era with first indigenous bishops
Indigenous clergy have been elected to the episcopate in Lake Malawi and Northern Malawi this week, ending the era of missionary bishops from Britain and the United States leading the church in Central Africa.
The Aug 1 elections of the Rev Leslie Mtekateka as bishop-elect of Northern Malawi, and the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop-elect of Lake Malawi permits the province to elect a new archbishop and ends a 150-year tradition of foreign bishops --- begun by the Universities Mission to Central Africa of selecting British and American priests to serve as bishops for one of the poorest regions in Africa.
Rector of St Timothy’s, Chitipa, Fr Mtekateka was the sole candidate on the ballot in Northern Malawi to succeed the Rt Rev Christopher Boyle, who has returned to England to serve as Assistant Bishop of Leicester. Fr Metekateka is the son of the Rt Rev Josiah Mtekateka, the first African bishop of Malawi, consecrated in 1965 as Suffragan Bishop of Nyasaland, and in 1971 as the first Bishop of Lake Malawi.
Last month, the Rev J Scott Wilson, SSC of the Diocese of Fort Worth withdraw as sole candidate in Northern Malawi, prompting the diocese to conduct an abbreviated internal search for a new candidate. Leaders of the House of Bishops had urged the dioceses to look within Malawi for its new bishops, however this call to Africanize the episcopate had been met with some resistance.
Four years after its last bishop died, on Saturday the Diocese of Lake Malawi elected the Archdeacon of Lilongwe, the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop. In 2007 the election of London vicar the Rev Nicholas Henderson as bishop of the diocese was rejected by the provincial House of Bishops, which found Fr Henderson’s theological views unsound.
As chairman of MicroLoan Foundation Malawi, Archdeacon Kaulanda has been active in bringing microfinance to Central Africa. Pioneered by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, microfinance offers small loans to the poor to help them engage in entrepreneurial enterprises to build the economy of rural and deprived urban areas through self-help and self-improvement.
The Aug 1 elections of the Rev Leslie Mtekateka as bishop-elect of Northern Malawi, and the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop-elect of Lake Malawi permits the province to elect a new archbishop and ends a 150-year tradition of foreign bishops --- begun by the Universities Mission to Central Africa of selecting British and American priests to serve as bishops for one of the poorest regions in Africa.
Rector of St Timothy’s, Chitipa, Fr Mtekateka was the sole candidate on the ballot in Northern Malawi to succeed the Rt Rev Christopher Boyle, who has returned to England to serve as Assistant Bishop of Leicester. Fr Metekateka is the son of the Rt Rev Josiah Mtekateka, the first African bishop of Malawi, consecrated in 1965 as Suffragan Bishop of Nyasaland, and in 1971 as the first Bishop of Lake Malawi.
Last month, the Rev J Scott Wilson, SSC of the Diocese of Fort Worth withdraw as sole candidate in Northern Malawi, prompting the diocese to conduct an abbreviated internal search for a new candidate. Leaders of the House of Bishops had urged the dioceses to look within Malawi for its new bishops, however this call to Africanize the episcopate had been met with some resistance.
Four years after its last bishop died, on Saturday the Diocese of Lake Malawi elected the Archdeacon of Lilongwe, the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop. In 2007 the election of London vicar the Rev Nicholas Henderson as bishop of the diocese was rejected by the provincial House of Bishops, which found Fr Henderson’s theological views unsound.
As chairman of MicroLoan Foundation Malawi, Archdeacon Kaulanda has been active in bringing microfinance to Central Africa. Pioneered by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, microfinance offers small loans to the poor to help them engage in entrepreneurial enterprises to build the economy of rural and deprived urban areas through self-help and self-improvement.
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