Newsworthy Nanga

It is a long drive to Nanga from Monze through the Mazabuka sugar plantations but when we finally reached Nanga it was truly worth it. The school environment looked very well maintained. Mr Bweupe, the head teacher, met us with a smile and showed us around his house which HHI had built so that he and his family didn’t have to sleep in the classroom with a cardboard partition. He is very grateful for that. The school has flush toilets, hand wash basins, ramps for the disabled and a new dining room all funded by HHI. We have recently fitted the dining room with solar panels for lighting and computer use which means that the students can now access extra learning on the weekends and evenings.

Mr Bweupe’s house

Nanga school dining hall with solar panels funded by HHI

The house mother was preparing mealie meal and vegetables for the 50 disabled students who board at the school, and they were all patiently seated awaiting our arrival. After explaining who we were with the help of a member of staff signing and translating they sang or signed a very welcome song. watch it here youtu.be/bqiWmB0aqAE

Nanga school children

Nanga staff with Edmund and computers

Edmund handed over the three laptops with Raspberry Pi software which we had brought and spent time explaining the system to IT teacher ( see below) while I was shown around the productive vegetable gardens. The healthy crops are truly impressive because of the irrigation system also funded by HHI. The students are taught to grow and care for crops under the schools Active Daily Learning scheme. Corn, onions, cabbages, bananas, and onions are all flourishing and about to be harvested. The irrigation pipes lie amongst the rows of vegetables and drip water continuously into the soil. It does really work!

Nanga cabbages

More Nanga vegetables

More healthy vegetables

It was sad to leave after such a rewarding day. We signed the visitors book and then surprisingly Mr Bweupe presented us with a gift of beautiful baskets, and we also helped ourselves to some broken wheelchairs to take back to Monze for Robbie to enjoy repairing, back at the HHZ base.

Broken Nanga wheelchairs being loaded to be taken back to Monze

Robbie will repair these at HHZ headquarters

In case anyone is wondering why we put Raspberry Pi software onto the laptops, we were advised to do so as the computers are quite old and unable to cope with modern Windows 10, so we installed Linux instead. The Raspberry software includes a lot of useful options, and we included electronic books to teach children to read, relevant cultural material, a medical encyclopaedia, a version of Wikipedia for schools, and teacher training material designed for Africa. They will also be able to access the Internet if they want to by using their mobile phones as a hotspot. The laptops will have the advantage of using a lot less power that the existing desktops. We also took three Raspberry Pi 400s, which use even less power, to connect to their existing monitors – but the monitors had the wrong connectors (VGA not HDMI) so we are going to have to find new connectors – not easy in Monze!