Bush Project Gets Rolling
We spent two months in the bush in West Kasai, 1100 km South-West of Kinshasa near the Angolan border, researching the possibility of building a school in Mushapo, a village with ca. 2500 inhabitants and no school. It wasn’t an easy decision but we committed to accept the challenge. Our friend Michel and his company partners from SADR have a large farm there and offered to assist us with the needed logistics in their camp: transport, room and board etc.
Two brave volunteers from Germany, Jens and Melanie, came for almost two months and were a big help in many ways. Together we mapped out a plan for the many aspects of this new project. The first step was to get a piece of land on our own name so no one can take the project away from us later. It can also happen that cheaters try to take away your piece of land later and you have to protect yourself from that. The chiefs gave us nine hectares of land, strategically situated so that in the future children from the surrounding villages can also come there. The land was for free but the registration at the cadaster office was quite expensive. Besides the school we will start again an agricultural project to help get it more self-supported and sustained through the income from the products of the field.
To include the village in the project we founded a school committee with the two chiefs and other village heads. In order to find the best possible teachers we will look in the city Tshikapa, three hours away, and will build simple housing for them so they can move to the school grounds. Michel’s brother, Marc, chief agronomist of SADR, and we will try to find volunteer teachers in Europe to come for a time to help with the school and further train the local teachers. Michel helped us to make a good plan for the school building keeping expenses down as things like cement and iron are way more expensive here than in the capital because of high transport costs.
Some more headlines: Jens, Melanie and their friend Sergio are helping us to create a new website - in German, French, English and Czech. One of SADRs partners manages a TV station in Congo, also present on the internet, and he wants to use this new website to advertise our work there. With the help of some of our friends in Kinshasa we’re starting a local charitable association called “ADH Congo” which will help us with the legalities and fundraising for the school.
We hope that we can soon receive a grant for the building and start with the construction. Later we will try to get more support so we can expand the school to take in more children. In the future we’d like to also teach them different trades like carpentry, agriculture, masonry, sewing etc. so the students can find jobs. If more people would invest in agricultural projects and build schools etc. in the countryside, that would create more jobs and produce more food locally.
Thank you for all your help in getting this new project off the ground. So far we have support for 100 children but there are hundreds more who would also like to go to school. If you could help us to find more people who want to sponsor a child for the school or who want to help in other ways, we would be very thankful for it.