Project: Mushrooms!

What do mushrooms make you think of? Something to eat? Poisonous fungi that grows in the yard?

Do Mushrooms and Hope belong in the same sentence?  

Oyster Mushrooms

They do now! 

This past week we took a group of people from Maphiveni to a workshop on how to grow Oyster Mushrooms. The workshop was very informative and helpful. Our next step is to visit several homesteads that are growing mushrooms to see how they run their operation. Then we will be able to launch another micro-industry community project in Maphiveni, Project: Mushrooms!

At the workshop, preparing to start. 

Project: Mushrooms! will provide the training and skills necessary to grow Oyster Mushrooms which the people can then sell earning money to help provide the essential needs for their families. This bountiful crop also gives a sense of hope and a different kind of future to look forward too. 

Our instructor, Wanda, explains the hanging bags used to grow the mushrooms. 

Thank you for your generous support that allows us to be able to change the lives of the Maphiveni residents in a very real and practical way. 

Life in Swaziland: Maphiveni

In order to give you a better idea of what we do on a daily basis and a glimpse into the Swazi culture and people, we are going to start a series called Life in Swaziland. We will share photos and stories about all the communities we serve, activities and work we do, and show you the beautiful people that we interact with. Enjoy.

Maphiveni, pronounced 'map-a-vein-i' is one of the settlements nearby where we spend a lot of time. This settlement is quite special to us. It is our hope to eventually build a community clinic here at Maphiveni which would provide holistic care for people with HIV and TB; including counseling, starting and refilling ARV's. Our Chips office would also be at this location along with a center where classes and micro-industries could be held. Right now, there is one micro-industry in operation here in Maphiveni, making paw-paw jam. There is a group of people from this town who are going to receive training on successfully growing mushrooms which would become the second micro-industry project here.

Jubulane (left) is translating for us. 

Every Friday night we teach a public health education class here at the Maphiveni Mercy Care Preschool. This is a good time to connect with the community and to hand out our surplus of vegetables to those in need.  Once a month we have a quiz night and hand out prizes to those who can answer correct questions about the topics we have covered in the past few weeks. There are prizes and it is always a lot of fun. 

The children here at Maphiveni Mercy Care after-school program love action songs almost as much as we do! This is one of the sites that we have done a monthly children's program. 

This sweet baby Kwaneie is 11 months old but is the size of a 2-3 month old baby. She is malnourished and possibly HIV+. She lives on a diet of watered down corn porridge. We were able to provide some temporarily formula and are coordinating with a pediatrician at the hospital to see what type of nutritional supplement we can offer the malnourished children in our area. In August of this year we lost a HIV- baby to malnutrition. Please pray for us as we provide nutritional education and seek to raise funds for our new malnutrition program. 

Jabu#1 and Vusile (age 3) are both enrolled in the Chips program. We have been able to help provide transportation and supplement the costs for Jabu#1 recent chemotherapy sessions as well as medical care/treatment for Vulsile. It is our belief that Vulsile would really benefit  from moving to Hope House (a residential rehabilitation center in Manzini, 1 and 1/2 hours away) and we are currently talking to his father about this. Vulsile's mother died of AIDS. 

This is baby Clement, who at 9 weeks old is a butterball baby. Quite a change from being fed sugar water in his first 36 hours of life. We are thankful that there was funds available to provide adequate nutrition for this sweet baby boy. 

Many Faces of Chips

Newman (on the left). We have recently employed him as our part-time gardener. He has a serious alcohol problem and just started on ARV's. We are praying that Ian and Bonginkosi (our security guard) will be the positive role models that he needs; teaching him about life, gardening, and Jesu. 

*In the three weeks that he has been in our employment, Newman hasn't had a drink! Praise God!

Rose is another Chips patient. She loves to crochet!

Make, she employs Rose. 

Swazi's use the word 'Make' which means 'mother' as a term of respect. 

Baby Clement

 
Clement at 4 weeks old

Clement was born at home in Maphiveni. When we conducted our post-natal visit on Clement he was 36 hr. old and had only received sugar water as nutrition. Funding has been provided to ensure he is receiving proper nutrition, his newborn vaccination, and HIV testing when he is 6 wks. old. We try to encourage mothers in our program to deliver at the Good Shepherd hospital. This guarentees that the baby will receive a prophylactic HIV medication that can reduce the mother to child transmission rate from 11% to 4%. We were not able to get this medication for Clement because it was not available at the local clinic.

There has been a couple of meetings with Dr. Joyce in which we have discussed the options of having a supply of medications for this purpose available at the local clinics and implimenting the latest treatments for HIV+ moms. Another thing that we have talked about is how to educate the Swazi women about the benefits of breast feeding.

However, often the expecting mothers don't want to let us know when they are going into labor because they don't have the money to deliver their babies at the hospital. It is our goal and desire to be able to have designated funds to make a hospital delivery possible for all women and to do what we can to eradicate the transmission of HIV from mom to baby.

Please pray as we try to convince these mothers to commit to a hospital delivery.

Mary and Clement

Meet Mfundo

Mfundo is a new 10 year old Chips patient. He came to live with his gogo (grandma) in Maphivini at the beginning of October. She is raising five other grandchildren.  Mfundo hasn't received any treatment prior to October when he started ARV treatment. He is very sick and now in the hospital with TB and HIV being the major problems. There is a TB hospital in Manzini so please pray for resources so we can transfer him there for more specialized treatment. It's  miracle he has survived this long, Praise Jesu. 




Update: November 17th, Mfundo went home to be with Jesus a couple days ago. It's so hard to lose another precious child. 

Thembi and her children

Thembi is a sweet gentle lady and mother of five kids. She recently became another Chips patient. Please pray for her and her kids, that God would continue to reveal Himself to them in a powerful way and that their lives would be positively changed.