Project report by Dr Kate Neely (Director of International Programs)
Women’s Bakery School, Sri Lanka
The newest intake of students at the bakery school is progressing well and they have now reached their third week. This semester we have 10 students: Manoja, Avishka, Kumari, Sakun, Mithila, Udeshi, Dilani, Binushi, Lakma and Kalpani.
The students are working in two groups with 5 students per group due to covid health protocols. Each group attends three days per week to minimise the risk. Similarly, the two-visiting chef-teachers teach the groups in rotation.
Githmi from the previous semester graduates has joined the present group as a student supervisor. She is a softly spoken and well-organised young woman who is demonstrating really good leadership skills. She is doing her role brilliantly and helped to organise the two groups.
Githmi is very thankful that she got the opportunity to stay at home to complete her internship as her father is suffering from severe kidney disease, and she was keen to look after him. On Githmi’s behalf, thanks to all the amazing RoundTrip Foundation supporters for making this possible.
We are also happy to note that the young woman graduate who had serious covid has now finished her quarantine and started her internship in a Colombo hotel.
Tikondane Community Centre, Zambia
Clara Mwazima – Mrs. Mwazima has been with Tiko for 22 years. She was a member of the Mothers’ Union of the Anglican church at St Francis hospital, where Elke (Tiko Volunteer Director) worked as a teacher for nurses and they became great friends. On one occasion, at a regional meeting, they both attended, they remember how they started giggling when one of the members did her solo song, but her voice was not as young as it should have been. The whole group ended up almost rolling on the floor with friendly laughter – one of the occasions for Elke to fall in love with the Chewa people.
Clara was born in in 1934 at the Msumba Mission, next to Likoma Island which is situated between Mozambique and Malawi. She married a priest from Malawi in 1955, and they went to Lusaka, then to Chipata and finally to Katete’s, St Francis Hospital. Her husband died in 1994. By then she had had 11 children, and now one of them, Maude, is visiting from Kitwe. Maude is a teacher and hopes to find work in Katete and stay to look after her mother.
Mrs. Mwazima started work for Tiko, when she mentioned that she made mats (on seeing Elke bringing a reed mat from a game park). Elke employed her at Tiko as a mat maker, who also made table mats and – the best part for Tiko – brushes. These brushes not only clean tables, but also brush away everything negative that comes the way of any owner – they are seen by the head of the local witchdoctors. That’s probably why Tiko is still around, even now, after more than one year of Covid. Mrs. Mwazima, at 86 years of age, still remembers the first meeting with Elke over the locally made mats.
A note from Kate: Mrs Mwazima learned to process and weave grass into mats as a child in Malawi. It is not a skill that is common in the area around Tiko. Mrs Mwazima is very generous in showing others how to do this – although I think she got way too much fun out of seeing how completely uncoordinated I was when she tried to teach me! 😊