Education, Nutrition, Health and Safety to 60 Kids

Hallo to all my dear friends

We are celebrating the first 10 years of Mammadu

2008 is the year I eventually move to Namibia and the idea to help orphans and children living in poverty gains a sound footing. Initial steps entail the official registration of the Mammadu Trust with the Ministry of Health of Namibia. Quite an extensive process to produce and deliver all the required documents and get them approved, but on 15^th July we are officially registered. Paola Ciarlante, a friend of mine and current Chairman of Mammadu Onlus in Italy designs our beautiful logo.

2009 sees the start of the long road of finding a suitable plot for our center. In the mean time our first project among orphans of creating a rugby team starts and is managed directly by myself until 2012. At that time all donations were saved for the purchase of the land. Bruno Cover designs our website www.mammadu.org.

2010 A dream comes true. The City of Windhoek approves the purchase of a 4700 square meter land in Otjomuise, at that time an unoccupied suburb on the outskirts of the city.

2011 Thanks to the confidence all of you had in the project we are able to build the first stage of our center. One classroom, kitchen and toilets. A special thank you goes to Johan du Toit of Windhoek Consulting Engineers who has supported Mammadu right from the start and to this day with the design of the building plans. The first children arrive at Mammadu at the beginning of September. Some of them (now teenagers) are still with us. At that stage we had NOTHING. The cooking was done with a solar oven and we sat on the floor.

2012 Our sports field (fortified with tyres) and garden are developed and we start our recycling project. The shed for garden tools is made from plastic bottles. It is also the first year of our pre-school project in the mornings and assistance with homework in the afternoons. 30 children in total. Support staff : a teacher who also doubled up as our driver and a cook who also did the cleaning and housekeeping. In the kitchen things also improved; we now have our first refrigerator and our first stove. Also tables and chairs for the classroom.

2013 We bought our first small bus to transport our children to school. It was a second/ third hand vehicle but it ran reliably and we were so proud of it. 40 children in total.

2014 Founding of Mammadu e.V in Germany, Chairman Hans-Joachim Weil and founding of Mammadu Onlus, Chairman Paola Ciarlante.

Addition of two more classrooms is possible thanks to donations from the Province of Trient and the Non-Profit Organization Nadir in Italy.

2015 Our old combi is really at its end and we are able to buy a brand-new Mercedes Sprinter 23 seater bus from donations from Germany. Now we can transport many more children to school. We also start our sponsorship program. Today almost all children have their own patron. A thank you goes to Elizabeth Wallner who initiates our women’s project. The women produce bags and baskets and lost more from plastic and paper, and the sale of the items enables them to support their families. Meme Arisa is employed to take care of hygiene and cleanliness.

2016 Thanks to support from the German Embassy an additional building can be erected. It is designed to serve as bakery under the direction of Pastor Mark of the Coptic Church of Namibia. We also celebrate our first wedding at Mammadu.

2017 Our program is extended even further. Since 2017 we not only have a pre-school class but also a Kindergarde for four-year olds. We now have 5 employees: Meme Dina our cook, Meme Arisa in charge of hygiene and cleanliness, teacher Yolande for our little ones in the mornings, teacher Lino for the supervision of the school children in the afternoons and our bus driver with a Class C driver’s licence who drives our school bus every day. 63 children in total. The idea to extend our program further is born and we continue saving.

2018 still needs to be lived through and experienced and reported on. We however hope to start building again soon because many of the children are now teenagers and have special needs. They require their own venues where they can study without being interrupted continuously by the younger kids. 

Thanks to all of you for helping us all these years and for all your support

Dear Friends and Donors

This year our year end trip took us to the north. first stop Damaraland.

We were able to admire the uniqueness of the Welwitschia, not because it is a beautiful plant but because it can become very old, more than hundred years. It is well adapted to the desert and only grows 7 mm a year.

The petrified forest was more interesting for the children. Enormous tree trunks have been carried by rivers thousands of years ago from Central Africa to Namibia, there they were exposed to a natural chemical process and the wood became stone. The trunks look truly like wood but are heavy like rocks.

After that we visited Twyfelfontein where the kids could see some rock incisions made by the San people. The most beautiful one is a lion with a very long tail. But with an outside temperature of 44 degrees Celsius it was truly hard for everybody to appreciate the beauty of this site. Later the kids were amazed how the body adapts to the heat when they noticed that nobody went to the loo for the whole day and we all had also just been sweating like crazy.

But what was truly stunning for the children were their rooms at the lodge. Nr.1 they had electricity and there was light even during the night. Nr. 2 each of them had his or her own bed with clean white linen and cosy blankets, Nr 3 each room had its own bathroom; and once they discovered that you could have warm and cold water in the shower it was like heaven for the children.

I always ask the kids to leave the rooms in the same way as we found them, meaning we don’t leave a mess behind us, but the kids take me literally and clean and mop the rooms so neatly that the cleaning ladies could lose their job.. Jazu was just a bit worried as she didn’t know how to fold the towels again in the shape of a swan. So she decided to just leave it like it was and place the towel swan on her bed when we left., making sure everything was perfect.

Lukas, our hero even saved a bird from drowning in the pool and Kevin tried to get it back on the tree in his nest but I don’t know if the rescue ended positively for the little bird.

Second stop Etosha Safari Camp from where we visited Etosha National Park. Obviously it is not possible to book the sighting of wild animals in advance, one has to patiently go and look out for them but that is not such an easy thing for children, so while we were searching for the animals the kids played guitar in the bus, maybe that’s a reason too why it took us long to find elephants and lions. Lately the security checks in the park have been increased, thank God ,as poaching is still a huge problem here. Entering the park we were searched for weapons and drones and leaving the park we were searched for bush meat, bones and horns. Obviously we didn’t have any such thing on the bus, just some elephant poop which Josia had collected as there is a belief that it has healing properties. The guards believe that too, so that was not a problem. A band was in charge for the evening entertainment of the guests at the lodge. Our children quickly found out that they too could organize the entertainment and started singing and dancing for the other guests, … Folks you all know, we have experience in the show business!

Last stop Africat – Okonjima. Here many activities were offered to the children in order to make them fall in love with nature. There was just one little drama, we were told that snakes had been found in the toilets a few days before. So NOBODY went to the bathrooms alone.

A big Thank you goes to Gondwana, Damara Mopane and Etosha Safari Camp and Africat – Okonjima. Without their support and assistance this holiday for the kids wouldn’t have been possible. They offered food, accommodation and activities for free to all participants.

A big hug for all of you, thank you so much for your support and your love.

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2018.