I was just thinking about how things get started, and what does it take to make a difference. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it almost always takes one person with a vision to start change. The Wright brothers are generally credited with having taken the lead towards modern aviation, but I'll bet that only one of them awoke to explain his dream to the other.
And so it was in the case of The Malima Project and the great success that has been achieved. It took one person with a dream of one day establishing her own school in a place in which it was truly needed.
A young woman by the name of Judith Burnett, from Bristol, England had that dream, and found herself in the right place at the right time to receive a request from a resident of the village of Gouria, in the Extreme North of Cameroon, West Africa, asking, " can you help to bring education to our village that has been ignored for so long?"
In 1999 Judith's project began very modestly with a one-room school house on the prairie. When the first classes were held there were far more children outside the building then inside. I have been taking stock of what has been achieved since then. It makes formidable reading.
Judith is now joined by seven other friends, and we call ourselves The Malima Support Group. (MSG).
That one-room building has now been joined by three other double rooms, and will soon be joined by another. The school now has slightly more than 200 regular attendees in elementary education, and a Kindergarten of more than 100 students waiting to enter the mainstream education at the correct age. We hold adult education courses for the parents who never had the opportunity to have an education.
We soon realised that none of our children actually existed from a legal sense as none had birth certificates. That has now be remedied, and parents now routinely register their newborns.
None of our children had been vaccinated, so, a program had to be developed of childhood vaccinations.
As the children gained the ability to read the need for a library arose, and so the village now has one.
Electricity main lines went right overhead the village, but no-one was connected. MSG brought electricity to the village, starting first with the school. That was an earth shattering development as with one giant leap the village is brought into the 21st century. Nothing will ever be the same.
The daily routine of a housewife centers mainly around the need to obtain sufficient water, firewood, and to grind enough grain, a long and exhausting labour intensive task. So, the MSG, through the generous donation of a walking angel arranged to install a Mill, taking advantage of the newly arrived electricity. The hours that will be saved with this device is mind blowing.
Two more walking angels and a Nissan 4X4 was made possible as a gift to the school and the village. Now they have an ambulance, and a general workhorse that can be even more valuable than they are in modern society.
Throughout Africa, there is a problem known as "A failure to thrive Syndrome". This is due partly to a lack of resources and a lack of knowledge about basic nutritional values. We arranged for a class to be conducted in the village for 15 prime candidates who will share their knowledge with other villages in the area. That was an unqualified success.
The proof of the pudding is in the graduation figures. Normally, for the Extreme North graduation numbers are between the 20 to 30% range. We have had two classes graduate from Malima Primary School. For both years the figure was 100% of the children passed their final exams with Malima, and more telling, 100% passed their entrance exams for secondary education.
That's not magic, but it is very close to it!
The women of the village have long been under appreciated. Now they are to have their own center where they can learn new skills and share some serious quality time with one another.
What's next? Water. The eternal problem, or so it seems. If the engineers now probing for an underground lens meet with success, the knock-on effect will be absolutely Huge!
Wish us luck!
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