Key people: Dick and Anita Mumba
Currently Bright Hope World is supporting Dick and Anita for a period of one year while they get established at GLO Zambia Bible College. Dick’s role has been to help with projects that might be able to provide a source of income for the college. So far they have been exploring:
- Funding partnerships, where local Zambian church members sign up to fund GLO an amount each month as part of their tithing
- Use of the chicken run
- Running Camp Reality week long courses for schools
He has also been helping in mentoring the youth on the GAP year program.
Anita has been getting to know the other ladies at GLO and helping out in any way that she can.
They have both been visited many times by people in the local CMML church where they worship. Many widows who are there are meeting with them to discuss how to improve their lives.
Dick attended Foundations for Farming training at Chengelo School in May. He said he was so impressed by the demonstration garden there, but also the way that the internship program works. Each intern works on the demo garden at Chengelo as they learn and apply the new methods of farming. They also go home each week and then apply these methods on their own small plots right in the village's farming areas where they live. Dick saw many examples of excellence in farming, especially from young women. The women said that the village people came to them saying “What witchcraft is this, that you have such good crops from small areas of farming”. That lets the interns have an opportunity to share the gospel and train methods of farming to the local villagers. Dick and Anita are very inspired by this model.
They also have their own garden that they are managing at GLO to help with their support. There are good tomatoes and onions growing that will soon be ready for harvest. Tomatoes are selling well at 200 ZMK (US$22) per crate and Dick has found a good market for onions in the Congo, just across the border from GLO. He is very keen to expand the onions in the future.
Dick has been also training Geoffery, the GLO accounts guy, and teaching him the methods of Foundations for Farming, such as mulch. The picture below shows some mulched cabbage and some un-mulched and the difference is very clear!
All the family is currently at GLO. Jesse and Abram are helping as volunteers. They are involved in the GAP year course and the community programs where GLO reaches out to the local villages. Abram has proved very handy at fixing many things for people, such as phones and computers.
The three girls, Michelle Rachel and Ester, are going to school each day in town. They have certainly grown up a lot after leaving the farm in Chipata for the first time in three years. The problem they have is the cost of transport to town each day to attend the secondary school. They leave each morning at 7am and return after 4pm.
We discussed with Dick that the financial support from Bright Hope World was only for one year so it will be stopping soon.
Dick did take a loan of US$500 from the GLO staff fund and tried to trade potatoes but he got ripped off by the guy buying his potatoes so it has been a total loss. However, he has already started repaying the loan back to GLO.