Men at work at the site
By Duncan Mlanjira
A day after learners of Jacaranda School for Orphans temporarily repaired a patch of road leading to Newlands in Chigumula along the road to Thyolo, Blantyre City Council sent workers to the site and properly fixed the spot.
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The school’s founder and director, Marie da Silva posted the learners’ community service on Facebook last week, saying this patch of the road leading to Newlands was heavily compromised by the potholes due to heavy rains.
She mobilized the young minds to just cover them with broken bricks (maduka) as they awaited the city’s road department to take care of the rest of the rehabilitation — and it worked.
How the spot was on a busy road
Da Silva has posted pictures of the repaired road with a comment: “Do you remember last week I posted on potholes that our Jacaranda School students were fixing in our area of Newlands which is next to our school?”
“Well, Duncan Mlanjira from the Maravi Express saw my post and wrote an article. A day later we witnessed road repairs [and the workers on site] told us they were sent by the City Council.”
She had also indicated last week that whilst they were working, they spotted that there was a burst water main pipeline at the site, which was spilling water onto the road.
She reported the fault to Blantyre Water Board hoping it would be fixed in no time — and also helped as she reports that BWB has fixed the burst water main too.
“The power of Facebook and the media,” da Silva said. “Thank you, but more than anything, I thank the students who were the first ones to act when they saw a dire situation that needed to be attended to — they are the champions here.”
The repaired water main
In her earlier post, da Silva reported that each rain season the Jacaranda learners do repair an access road in their village that leads to a Pediatric Physiotherapy Clinic where mothers carry their special needs children on their backs.
“We feel that if we can do something to help a situation using the little resources we have, we should go ahead and do it. Teaching our kids about volunteering and mostly about community service,” she had said.
Her post was well received with congratulatory response while the recent one had one message from Peter Nkata, who joked: “Can you send your students to do the same on my road too, off Viphya Avenue? “I will organise the press and just maybe the City Council could come too.”
Jacaranda School does a lot of community services to inculcate into the young minds towards a positive mind set.
During the forestry season in March last year, they helped plant Jacaranda trees along Chileka-Magalasi Road in response to a call by private seedlings developer, Mapopa William Banda — who had invited the general public on social media to join him in the planting exercise.
Da Silva sent 22 of her learners to take part — a gesture that took William Banda by pleasant surprise and they went on to plant more of the 180 trees he had budgeted for and earmarked from Nyambadwe Filling Station to Magalasi roundabout.
William Banda had requested Blantyre City Council if they could allocate him a place he could plant trees and they suggested along Chileka-Magalasi Road and asked if they could be Jacaranda.
In 2019, Jacaranda School ended their first term for the Christmas holidays in unique style by being presented with trees to plant at their homes in the spirit of inculcating tree planting culture as well as impress on them on preserving the environment.
Each year, Santa Claus visits the school where he usually gives the children sweets and other small gifts, but in 2019 Jacaranda School management asked Santa Claus to bring indigenous trees instead of toys and sweets.
Da Silva had said management came up with the idea to impress the learners of the effects and dangers of climate change around the world and especially in Malawi.
She told the learners that there are fewer forests now due to the cutting down of forests for firewood but there is need to be replacing them since the country over relies on wood fuel.
Jacaranda School plants more than 5,000 trees each year — supplied by Mapopa himself — and for the 2019 exercise, over 428 trees were distributed, representing the enrollment number of learners in primary and secondary school.
Jacaranda also rehabilitates a block of a primary school blocks into a library and stocks it with various academic and entertainment books to inculcate a reading culture.
They are named Mr. Luc’s Libraries after the name of the school’s Executive Director, Luc Deschamps — who is also the French Embassy attaché to Malawi.
Jacaranda Foundation offers free primary and secondary schools for over 400 orphaned learners in Newlands, Chigumula.
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