Over the years some of the appliances that have been donated have become in need of replacement. The solar panels we received as a donation from a German solar panel company are in need of a battery replacement and two solar panels have been damaged. Because of this, around 8pm every evening, almost all our lights and appliances go out because we have an electricity shortage. This includes our fridge, which makes it very difficult to store food from the previous days. We are also in need of a big freezer, so that we can prepare and store meals for hundreds of children in the surrounding communities who have no money for food.
Our other challenges include matrasses, schoolbooks, notebooks, pens and the like, pillow cases and blankets, toiletries and towels for the children who are going from primary school to junior high-school. In 2022 there were 11 children who went from primary to secondary school and the children who went to high-school in the previous years have need of new books and notebooks. We would love to give them the opportunity to go to university as well. The total of school-aged children is 400.
An alternative for primary and secondary education where they stay at the school’s living quarters, is to educate them at Mawuse Care International School. This would be cheaper and provides opportunities for teachers in the surrounding communities. In another blog I will tell you more about how this will be sustainable. What we need, however, to open the school is, among other things, cement to make blocks and finish the walls, roofing sheets for to finish the roof and doors. We are also in need of cement to build new houses to accommodate the children. We have built one guest house in our beautiful surroundings which people can rent for a soft price, for example for vacational purposes.
One of the things that are really challenging is this; we have a well, connected to a polytank. The company who dug the well for us dug too deep, so the well brings up salt water instead of fresh. We receive sachets of water from people who support us, but it is difficult to cook with this water, and for washing it doesn’t foam. We use it for showering and washing of clothes, and when the rain water is finished we have to sometimes use it for cooking. The polytank itself needs to be replaced as well, since it has raptured close to the bottom aeveral times. It has been repaired but it remains a weak spot that can easily rapture again.
We could take water from the fresh-water lake a few kilometres away from us, but to do so we need new containers, the likes of a jerry can, to take in the back of our tricycle. This tricycle has proven very useful in bringing people to the hospital on the long and sandy road and in bringing large amount of food stuffs back from the market. Unfortunately it is an old vehicle and I quite regularly find myself somewhere stuck for hours trying to repair it or finding someone who can, unnecessarily keeping me away from my loved ones.
We have more challenges than these, all with their own durable solutions, but these are our major and pressing challenges. If we could solve these, we can solve a lot of the other challenges as well.
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