Kwatukumbuchire and MANERELA+

I’ve been promising to tell more about where we are working – so here we go.

Kwatukumbuchire Malayi is a community centre about 3 kms east of Liwonde, heading towards the national park. It was started about 6 months ago to work with the villages surrounding the area on HIV issues and other things. MANERELA+ (The Malawian Network of Religious Leaders living with or personally affected by HIV/AIDS) work to develop the capacity of individuals to do this kind of work, and Gilbert Momora (our boss) is one of these.

MANERELA+ also exists to promote the SAVE model and anti-SSDDIM.

S – Safer Practices

A – Available medications (lobbying the government for these)

V – Voluntary Counselling and Testing

E – Empowerment (e.g-  women owning land and earning money so they are not dependant on a abusive/ unsafe relationship)

At Kwatukumbuchire – although the initial focus was on HIV there are several other programmes running in the community. Home Based Care – identifying people who are sick or struggling and taking the medication and help they need to them. Community Based Child Care – running a nursery in the mornings, where there are some classes in English, Chichewa and Maths. Adult Education; Malawi has a 49% literacy rate in adults, many drop out of education due to financial or social pressures – this is an opportunity to get back into studying. Support groups where both HIV +ve and –ve can meet to provide social and emotional support. We also work with Youth Action, running sport programmes, dance and theatre and using these as a forum to discuss and educate about HIV prevention.

We have been working in all these areas, we also are making plans to visit several other youth groups run by Youth Impact, along with orphan centres, and a prison.

Part of our work is to promote ‘anti-SSDDIM’. SSDDIM means Stigma, Shame, Denial, Discrimination, Inaction and Mis-action. We hope to collect stories from individuals about their experiences of SSDDIM to be used by MANERELA+ and other groups as an awareness raising resource.

We have just over a month left, and it is hard to believe that we have been here for a month already. We have a lot we hope to achieve in what feels like a very short space of time. We remembered it was Halloween last night so decided to watch a couple of horror films, they were less scary than the bats which chose that night to nest in the trees next to our lodge – or the lightening we could see in the sky. Sadly, no rain for us – but people in Blantyre must be feeling cooler now.