Introduction
The Church of God in Ntcheu was planted in 2003. It is situated in Solomoni village in Ntcheu district in the west of Malawi.
There are about 45 people in the assembly including the chief of Solomoni village. There are 15-20 families in the church. All those who are in the assembly are subsistence farmers. There is one deacon in the assembly, Musa.
General Overview
Location
The Church of God meets in Solomoni Village, a village of approx. 2000 people. It is in a very rural part of Ntcheu district and is approx. 12km (7.5 miles) off the tarmac road. It is reached by dirt tracks and by driving across a stream (with no bridge).
People
The people who make up the church are all subsistence farmers. They are all poor (the average income of a subsistence farmer in Malawi is estimated to be £12/year) and generally have a poor level of education (2/3rds of the women are illiterate in Chichewa).
Health
Health in the area is generally poor with a high incidence of malaria and health problems associated with chronic malnutrition and poverty.
The nearest health facility is the government clinic at Bilira which is 16km (10 miles) away over dirt tracks. This is a 6 hour walk away with no option to use public transport as there is no bus service in the area. No-one in the village has private transport other than a few bicycles. When people are seriously unwell, a stretcher is made and people carry them (running in a relay of teams) to the clinic. This takes about 5 hours and we were told that often the patient dies on the way.
Child immunisations and growth monitoring is carried out once a month in the village by a mobile team from the government clinic at Bilira. This is popular and uptake is high.
The clinic at Bilira has 1 medical officer and 2 nurses/midwives covering a catchment area of 59,000 people. It provides a delivery ward and antenatal waiting rooms for expectant mothers to come and live in close to their delivery dates. In common with government health services in Malawi generally, there are problems with lack of available drugs.
There is no health care available in the village. There is a volunteer who was selected by the community as their community health worker (CHW). She has been given some basic training by the government (for about 4 weeks) on health promotion and treatment of a few conditions including malaria. She was dispensing a few drugs in the community (selling them at cost price) and seeing about 8 patients a day on a voluntary basis up until a few years ago. Then the government programme changed and the clinic stopped supplying CHWs with drugs. She has not been working since because of lack of medicines.
Education
About 12 children in the assembly attend primary school. There are three primary schools in the area. One is a 40 minutes’ walk away but only goes up to standard 6 (primary school in Malawi has 8 standards or years). The other two primary schools go up to standard 8, but are two hours’ walk away. Because children have to walk there, often in weather they consider cold or over burning hot ground with no shoes, this can discourage attendance. Once they get there, they can be too tired to learn effectively. There is a lack of resources at school with large class sizes and not enough books and writing materials. It is compulsory to wear uniform and parents need to provide this. No food is provided at school and this both discourages attendance and affects learning capacity.
The nearest secondary school is 8 hours walk away. It is not possible to commute there from Solomoni village. If pupils do go there, they need to live near the school at their own expense. Three children of assembly families do this.
Adult literacy
The men are mostly all literate in Chichewa, however 2/3rds of the women in the assembly are unable to read and write. This obviously has implications for their ability to read their Bibles, to support their children’s education and to participate in society. In the community, adult illiteracy is high among both men and women.
Agriculture and Nutrition
Everyone in the assembly is a subsistence farmer. Families tend to own their own land, which they cultivate by hand. The staple food is nsima, a type of ‘porridge’ made out of maize (although the consistency is more like mashed potato). It is high in carbohydrates. Some families keep chickens and eat the eggs and ground nuts and cassava are also grown in the area. A number of families are keeping goats (following a successful goat project). This is purely for income generation as they do not produce enough milk to drink. Meat is eaten only at weddings – 2 or 3 times a year. The people reported there are often times of the year when they have no food to eat. They never have surplus to sell and did not feel there were ever times of plenty. There was famine here most recently in 2005 because of drought.
Water
There is a borehole in the village that supplies water for free. This is used by those who live in the area around it. At the other side of the village is a well which is used by those who live there. This does not have water for 3 months of the year. Then they need to walk over an hour to the borehole. A few families who are about a 2 hour walk away from the hall get their water from another borehole which is owned by a school. A yearly fee of about 20p is paid to use this. Women are the ones that collect water for the family. Depending on the size of their families they can make up to 10 trips a day to get water.
