June 24, 2016

One party after another. Today was the day of the official inaugurations of the wells, the laying of the plates and the greetings. In all the villages there was a big party, some official speeches by the village chiefs, masked balls and a lot of true gratitude. Many villages hoped to party all day with us but it was impossible to please them, the next village waited and so did the next one and so one via the other. Some villages had decked out the well to party! Complete with fence and flowers. In one Agostino and I cut the “ribbon” … we only needed the mayor belt! A beautiful day that passed quickly with the jeep that from village to village was filled with gifts to the incredible extent. This year’s project is over and it couldn’t have gone better.
I like to report some numbers in the midst of which I am more comfortable and which help to understand the extent of what I have done otherwise, in the midst of all my useless words, the sense of this great team project is lost a bit. Some certain numbers and some estimated numbers.
7 wells, 6 villages, 1 hospital. Let’s consider an average of about 50 families per village and 6 people per family. We are talking about 1,800 people who, from this week, will be able to use clean and handy water, without having to travel miles of road every day or, worse, drink from unwatchable streams taking sometimes fatal diseases. To these people we then add all those mothers who will come here to Balaka to give birth to motherhood and those children who will be guests of pediatrics.
Surely among the children of the pediatrics there will be those of the 6 villages for diseases due to dirty water.
The number of shaked hands I can’t even estimate, while the showers in the village were 6. The meters dug will have been about 280, the km by car I don’t know but at least a couple of hours a day on the pick-up. After the two wells of last year, the challenge was to make 3 … we made 7 … I never exceeded my yearly budget numbers as happened here!
If we go to the gifts received, the numbers are embarrassing: 6 hens, 3 buckets of tomatoes, a bucket of corn, 20 kg of nandolo, a couple of kilos of peas, 15 cobs, 1 bucket of peanuts, 5 brooms, I don’t know how many kilos of wood and 15 eggs!
1 article in the newspaper!
And then, like last year, the negotiation pushed with the Indian friend of the auger has meant that we will increase the chicken coop of the kindergarten of Augustine with another 30 hens that, together with those of last year, will make the kindergarten autonomous for eggs.
Also another great little gift for kindergarten: a water purification system (yes, I know, I have a fixed with the water!) to ensure that the kindergarten water is not only as clean as it is already today but drinkable at 100%! And who knows, some other concrete project won’t come out in the next few days …

What can I say more, thank you to all those who participated again this year in the Pozzo dei Desideri project. We really did it all and the result was great!

Finally, thanks to Agostino and Kamamga without whom moving and acting in Malawi would have been impossible. In the photo Agostino and I on the pick-up truck, Kamamga cannot be seen but is slightly below, impeccable behind the wheel 🙂
Goodnight #malawi and thanks to you too.