In February, Wolfgang’s eldest daughter, Angela, came for one month to Congo and went with him to Mushapo. The children enjoyed her youthful and fun approach and had a wonderful time dancing, singing and interacting with her. We brought two sets of soccer jerseys from Germany for them which they appreciated a lot.
We visited all 10 classes and were impressed with their enthusiasm in teaching and learning. We also spent time with Robert and his helper Laurent, our foremen and overseers of the construction work. This year they concentrated on progressing with the building of the Health Center, the greatest need for the area right now. Here you can see a video about our time in Mushapo.
There is still quite a bit of work in finishing up different construction work for the School and Health Center and setting it all up properly. At the same time we are already planning a new project which needs to be well prepared, way in advance, since such things take longer in Africa. After we returned to Kinshasa from our visit in Mushapo, we made a trip to Nioki, in the Mai-Ndombe Province, about 500 km North-East of Kinshasa, to see if we want to start a future project in that region.
We are considering to build a school in the village Mabala, 7 km from Nioki. This is in line with our overall goal of developing the rural area, the most neglected and needy part of Congo. We are planning to work together with a local NGO (Non-Governmental-Organization) called BBK. Their association members in Kinshasa originally come from the Mai-Ndombe region and they want to help develop this area. Nioki’s wood company SODEFOR was sponsoring our stay there and they want to help us in the future as well.
In Kinshasa, Wolfgang introduced Angela to our local “ADH Congo” members André, Francois and Gilbert, and our other friends and contacts, so she could get to know the different aspects of our work in Congo and can represent us better in any future fundraising.
We also met Jean, our local manager, who is still undertaking his diabetes treatment near Kinshasa. Unfortunately his sickness didn’t allow him to return to Mushapo until today. He keeps overseeing the work by phone communication – with school director Pierre concerning the school, and with Robert concerning the construction work. We are in contact with him by email and receive regularly reports and photos of the project. At the moment Pierre takes the photos with his mobile phone, since our old camera broke. On Wolfgang’s next visit to Mushapo he’ll bring them a new donated camera, so we can receive proper photos again in the future.
By now all the walls of the Health Center are built up all the way to the roof. The outside walls are plastered with a cement mix to protect them against the strong rainfalls which cause a lot of damage in this area. Pierre just lost his house to one of these storms and moved into the last standing house of the former farm SADR where we normally stay when we go to Mushapo. The floors of the Health Center are cemented as well now. Even though Jean is not able to be in Mushapo at the moment, which slows down the construction work, we are thankful for the progress that is being made.
After the summer holidays, the school started with more pupils than ever, 567 in total, 477 in the Primary and 90 in the Secondary School. This is inspiring as it shows that more parents appreciate our school and want to give their children an education which they didn’t get in the past and probably wouldn’t receive without our school.
During our yearly summer round trip through Germany visiting our friends and supporters, we had two ADH meetings. At first we met with our new young members, Angela, Jens and Melanie in Berlin. Rudolf joined us and explained the book-keeping to Melanie who might want to take over this part of the work one day, because he wants to move more in the background for family reasons. After that we held our yearly meeting in Issum with the original ADH members.
Our yearly round trip through Germany went very well, meeting and talking with our friends. Those we couldn’t see, we phoned, informing them all about the progress of our work. Towards the end of this trip we could participate in another interview with our friend and moderator Christopher Griebel from Munich TV which is available here (in German).
The website which Jens and Andrej have been working on added two more languages, Czech and French, another mile stone as our translators – Dieter and Eva with others for French – and Magda, Zuzka and Pavlina for Czech – have been working hard to make this website available for our Czech and Congolese friends in their language.
The new Facebook site which was at first set up by Rudolf, then rearranged by Tiaré and Sebastian, is now run by Rudolf, Angela and Magda. It publishes at the moment short news in English, German and Czech. We hope you ‘like it’. On the ‘betterplace’ donation platform Melanie and Angela set up a special fundraiser for school benches in Mushapo.
Wolfgang is planning to return to Congo in the beginning of 2017 to find the best way to continue with the construction work in Mushapo, in case Jean is not able to return to the hard life in the bush because of his sickness. Besides visiting all our friends and contacts in Kinshasa, he would also like to make another trip to Mabala near Nioki to see how our possible next project could get started.
              
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