Namibia Newsletter
Jerry & Maria D’Alton
Well, with 2006 almost a thing of the past, we are looking forward to the new year with great expectations. We put out a handout sheet aimed at grade 12 students and have had a number of responses. We are expecting students from a number of different regions from Angola 300 miles to the north to Windhoek, the capital of Namibia 250 miles to the south of Tsumeb.
Orphans
One of our concerns is for the orphans and abandoned children that we are helping take care of. A special word of thanks to the Ladies Class of the Hillsboro church who sent us such a wonderful consignment of t-shirts for the children.
As we reported in our last newsletter Theresa, the woman who was caring for these children died rather unexpectedly and we now have to find someone to take her place. One of the great needs we identified is proper housing as we cannot care for these little ones in their present poor circumstances. At this point in time we do not have the funds to buy a property as we had proposed at first and we are now looking at a rental property. We will need at least $500 per month to house and feed them.
Bennie
We have sent out an appeal for funds to help us get Bennie, one of our orphans to the USA for badly needed surgery. Bennie has no identification and when we visited his school to inquire whether they had anything, we received a very good report on this boy. He is a hard working dedicated student who in spite of his disability tries to participate in every activity including physical training and soccer. We were very impressed with the response from the Hilldale Church of Christ in Clarksville. They have already secured the services of an orthopedic surgeon who has offered his services for free.
Sad News from Mukwe
We also had some very sad news from the church in Mukwe, on the banks of the Kavango River. When we visited them two weeks ago we found the community in mourning. Four children from that community had mysteriously disappeared and it was feared that they had been taken by crocodiles. These fears were confirmed when the body of the last child to disappear, a young boy of 4, was found in the reeds on the river bank. The children here often have to go down into the river to play, bathe and fetch water and are constantly in danger of both crocodiles and hippos. Incidentally, hippos are said to be responsible for more deaths in the wild than any other wild animal. These communities are totally dependent on whatever water they can get from the river for cooking, bathing and irrigation and this means physically going down into the river and drawing the water from the river with buckets.
Treadle Pumps & Drip Irrigation
John has been hard at work building a treadle pump from a design of a pump built by an engineering student at Lipscomb University that we saw at Healing Hands International in Nashville. This pump will allow the people to safely pump water from the river without electricity (which is unavailable) or gasoline generated energy (which is expensive and beyond the means of these people). 
The frame of the prototype was made of wood and worked very well but there were a few glitches that had to be sorted out to make it more robust. We have calculated the basic cost of the pump, which will now largely be built of steel, at $150. We will welcome any contri-butions for the manu-facture of more of these pumps which will be an integral part of our planned drip irrigation projects.
These projects are very important in giving us a foothold in these communities to preach the gospel. The tribal chiefs who grant the rights for churches to operate in their areas have become very skeptical of fly-by-night operations that bring no advancement to their people and the long-term success of the church also depends on the social upliftment of these communities that are caught up in a vicious cycle of grinding poverty. The Mukwe community is recognized as being the most under-developed area in the Kavango region and sorely in need of such help.
Thank you so much for your continued support!
