Dear friends, We are now in the season when we have fantastic blooming trees. After five or more months without rain, this is always great and gives hope for a good rainy season to come. According to the long-term forecast, which is mainly based on the water temperature in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the upcoming rainy season should start in October, like last year.
Our parliamentary and presidential elections are behind us. We have had a new government since mid-August. The first steps taken give us hope for a more competent government than the previous one. Economic expectations are so high that the Kwacha exchange rate has gotten about 30% stronger in the past two months.
Schools across the country are back to normal after we have had almost no new Covid cases for weeks. The general schools, which includes the Good Hope Elementary School, will, however, have only two weeks of vacation instead of the normal four to five weeks vacation in December to hopefully make up for the missed school days.
Former Primary School Students
For the past three years we have financially supported two former Good Hope Primary School students studying at university. There is a Numerus Klausus in practically all subjects because we have so many school leavers. The universities can therefore pick out the students with the best grades. Isaac Sakala studied medicine and has just finished, not as a doctor but as an operating room nurse. Isaac is a son of our goat sheppard who could never have paid the university for his son. Choola Mulwani studied pharmacy and has just started working as a pharmacist here in Kalomo. Our “contract” with the two of them stipulates that now that they start to work in well-paid positions, they will repay half of the help provided over time, in order to give others after them the same opportunity.
This is currently very relevant, as Choola’s younger sister has just started her medical studies and we are supporting her from the same „money pot“ into which her brother is now paying something.
Bicycle program at the primary school
I haven’t written anything about this program for a while. Two, maybe even three years ago, friends in Chemnitz had bought bicycles for the primary school in order to make it easier for the children, some of whom were very distant, to get to school. This program is still running. The bicycles are borrowed on Mondays and on Friday they stay at the school, where on Saturday they are checked by two teachers that everything is in order with the bicycles.
To visit Germany, we might have to do it like the English:
10 days to Madeira (apparently a very pleasant quarantine) and then fly on to Europe. Let’s see how we can organize that.
Greetings your Klaus and Christiane