There is Hope

01 Feb

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Healthcare at the margins

Refugee camps are a sorry sight – throngs of individuals, young and old, squeezed into a small area where sanitation is a disaster and ideal healthcare is almost close to non-existent. Or at least that is the status quo in Malawi’s Dzaleka Refugee Camp. Healthcare for refugees and asylum seekers in the Camp, which currently is home to over 40 thousand people, is a nasty issue. The Camp is served by a small hospital which struggles to meet the growing demand of the refugees plus additional Malawians from communities around it. Dzaleka Health Centre has always experienced inadequate medication to cater to the large population that depends on it and the advent of COVID-19 pushed the small hospital to the edge.

15 Sep

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

It was all a dream…

When life gives you a lemon, make a lemonade. Archaic as that saying might sound, those who apply the concept behind the adage make considerable profits from the lemonade produced. Ednas Chadzuka is one of the people at whom life chucked a lemon. From struggling with her secondary school education to enrolling at a nursing college with nothing but faith in her pockets, Ednas’ story is a tale of awe, twists and shock.

21 Jul

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

“Better than the average refugee”

We love Kibebe because it renews hope to the less privileged. Thierry is one of the artisans that Kibebe employed. Initially, the only way that Thierry could take care of the needs of his wife and kids was through jobs like washing laundry at random households. When his kids got sick, he would carry them on his back and walk for 2 hours to the hospital because he could not even afford the fare for public transport. That is his past. Now he works for Kibebe.

15 May

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Fighting the invisible enemy

Dzaleka Health Centre is a small hospital that lies at the heart of Dzaleka Refugee Camp located roughly 50 kilometres from Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the health centre caters for over 70,000 individuals within and around the refugee camp. The majority of these individuals – 62 percent […]

20 Mar

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Masking against the unknown

When the first cases of coronavirus hit the world in China in November last year, nobody was sure what they were looking at. Some thought that this disease, like any other similar ones before it, would pass maybe as quickly as it had appeared. It was not to be. It turns out that COVID-19 was […]

21 Jan

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Love and the sewing machine

Loveness comes from Zidunge Village in central Malawi. She is 21 years old and has seven siblings, one sister, and six brothers. When you look at her, she is such a sweet tiny girl. But even with the timid demeanour that African girls are socialized to have as they grow up, you can see she has big dreams. She is the secretary of the Network for Youth Development in Agriculture in her village.

21 Nov

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Then he met Kibebe

Back home in DR Congo, Shabani was a popular musician. He was respected and well known in the city he came from. However, all that changed when the civil war broke out and he decided to use music to attack the ethnic conflicts that the war bred. Shabani wrote a song that rubbed the wrong people the wrong way and he soon realized that he had made a dangerous blunder. Powerful people who were not amused by his song started sending him death threats and tracking his moves.

25 Jun

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

A small skill with a mighty change

In 2009, Abdullah stepped foot in Dzaleka Refugee Camp. He had escaped his home country DR Congo; forced to leave because of a fierce civil war and partly due to a raging family feud that threatened his life. He had not come alone – he was a responsible father with two children, a wife and two of his nephews to look after. Back there in DRC, Abdullah had a decent job as a secondary school teacher and he earned a good salary but that was now all gone and Abdullah’s status changed to ‘refugee’. Survival was paramount and Abdullah knew this but then surviving without any form of employment and no business to bring in money was a big hassle.

10 Apr

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Saving John

Following the demise of his father in 2013, John’s journey to complete his education was hit a sudden blow. Worse, John’s father, a renowned carpenter in the village that John comes from, provided for the family and his death crippled the family’s finances. John’s mother is not employed and her main means of survival was on her husband which meant that she was now left alone to take care of John, his brother and younger sister. Although John comes from a family of seasoned subsistence farmers, they barely made enough money from the sales of their crops to keep the family sustained. Actually, the carpentry business that John’s father ran complemented the family’s small-scale farming but now since he was gone, John’s mother found herself solely relying on the farm.

02 Mar

By Isaac Msiska
Cause in

Making Bricklayers, Saving Livelihoods

Chimwemwe had always harboured ambitions of being a bricklayer. It was his passion, his goal, his dream and he was determined to fulfil the vision. There was one problem though, he had no financial capital to enrol at a vocational training school. His parents could not help either. They are both retired civil servants and [...]

There is Hope