A letter from Larry and Inge Sthreshley in Congo
August 22, 2007
Dear friends
It is encouraging to get to see firsthand the impact that the SANRU Project and Project AXxes are having. As director of Project AXxes, a project that delivers health care to 7.3 million people, most of what I have time to see are reports and statistics. But recently, I went to the Kasai region to start a new development aspect of the project and was able to get out and meet directly with people benefiting from the project.
The new six-room health center built by the community of Dibwe dieto through strict money-management techniques.
In the health zone of Lubondayi, a mission station of the Presbyterian Church since the turn of the century, I visited the health center of Dibwe dieto. The first time I went to this health center four years ago it was a two-room mud hut, with hardly any equipment and a small kerosene lamp used when emergencies or births happened in the night. At that first visit, I was traveling with two men from the USAID Washington office who were evaluating the SANRU project. We met with the head nurse for two hours and were impressed with his commitment, but we felt for him working in those difficult conditions with such limited resources.
Dibwe dieto health center CODESA meeting.
At that time, SANRU was just starting to get equipment, medicines and mosquito nets out to the health centers. When Dibwe dieto health center received their materials, the management committee, called a CODESA, put in place strict management policies and saved 50 cents for every mosquito net they sold. They used this money to buy burned bricks and building materials to make a new health center. The bricks were carried one by one by volunteers from miles away. Others contributed their time to do the building. The health zone office used profits from the sale of medicines to give the roofing, and the SANRU project supplied a solar lighting system and medical equipment. Now the community has a nice six-room health center of which they are very proud.
Medi Kanda with the development agent of Lubondayi.
The new health center is about 100 meters from the old center on a large plot of land that allows the CODESA to do income-generating activities to lower the cost of health care for the people in the village. Last year they planted a field of pinto beans. Half of the incom from the beans went to the CODESA members that did the work, and the other half went to charity care for those that cannot afford their medical bills. They are also using some of the income-generating activities to buy more bricks to add a maternity wing. When we asked how far they had gotten with the maternity project, the young CODESA member responsible for the bricks announced that they had “2,320 bricks so far.” It was obvious that the whole group was following this project very closely.
The purpose of my visit was to learn about their local initiatives for income generation and work with the health zone team to develop a system that can support them to do more. The beans that Dibwe dieto health center planted only made them about 200 dollars. With improved varieties and techniques, they can make much more money for the same amount of effort. Project AXxes, the project that has replaced SANRU, is supporting a development agent in every health zone to work with the CODESAs and help them have more effective and long-term, income-generating projects so they can lower the cost of health care and expand health services in the villages.
To do this kind of work successfully takes a great deal of technical know-how and cultural sensitivity. Even though my wife and I have spent over 26 years in Africa, and she has a degree in tropical agriculture, we could not do this work on our own. The person that is making the program work is Medi Kanda, the director of PRODEK (a church-run development project funded primarily through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance). Medi has been working with farmers groups in the Kasai region for almost 30 years. Traveling with him for a week — and seeing his skill, patience and faith in practice — was an inspiration that gives me hope not only for the success of this project but for the future of Congo.
Larry and Inge
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 317
