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Nguutani Parish
Partnership
Nguutani is seeking a partner
community in Ireland. Can you help?
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About
Nguutani
St. Augustine’s
Parish was created in 1986.
It was carved from three old neighbouring Parishes
to create a new parish with 26 outstations (communities
where mass is celebrated once per month on Sundays). The total population of the baptized
Christians is about 10,000, or 20% of a population of about
50,000 in the area.
The
inhabitants of the region migrated into the area back in
1940s in search of grazing land and later cleared the
bushes for crop farming.
However, due to the unreliable rain in the region,
they face long droughts about once in every three rain
seasons resulting in famine and severe lack of water.
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Three
quarters of the parish lies in a very poor region which is
not developed at all in terms of infrastructure and social
amenities like electricity, schools health centres, roads,
telephone network and water.
Women walk between 5 – 10 Kilometers to draw
water. Most of
them use donkeys but the poorer ones carry twenty litre
Jerricans of water on their backs. Children also walk the same distance to get to
the nearest school which lack most learning and teaching
facilities. Most children, especially girls, only get the
basic primary school education due to poverty.
The
following are some of the areas which need financial
assistance to enable the people in the region improve their
standards of living.
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Dispensary
We have two health
centres in the parish run by the Government but none of
them has a laboratory.
Sick people have to walk or be carried at the
back of a bicycle 5 – 10 km on bad roads or foot
paths to the health centre only to be treated without
proper check-up. The
end result is wrong treatment, and sometimes death.
Our
mission compound has two colleges for Girls run by the
Mercy Sisters. We
also have four other boarding and day schools within a
radius of 500 metres from the mission compound with about
1000 students aged between six and twenty years.
It is difficult to monitor the health of these
children without proper check up in a well stocked health
facility. Last
year we lost a student from the sisters’ college.
It was a very frightening and shocking experience
for the community.
We
need to construct a small dispensary within the church
compound to cater for the health of our children. The
sisters will provide us with a sister-nurse who will run
the dispensary and attend the people living with HIV/AIDS.
We have a plot in the compound and this year the
parishioners are making a special collection to start –
off the project. However, due to poverty in the region, we
need some help.
We
need about €20,000 to construct the dispensary. |
Completion
of Churches
To construct a permanent
building is a big burden for the people of this area.
Only people with regular employment can afford to put up permanent
homes. However,
the parishioners have been very generous towards giving
the little they have for church constructions.
Out of the 26 outstations in the parish, 6 have
complete church buildings, 8 have incomplete buildings
(some up to roofing stage, others with roof on but no
floors, plaster, furniture etc) and 12 have no
permanent buildings but use temporary structures of mud
and wood which are very dusty and wet during rain
seasons.
Back
in 1990s, the Diocese used to challenge the Christian
communities to construct the walls of their church and get
help for the roof from the Sacred Congregation for the
Propagation of Faith in Rome. But this grant was stopped
some years ago.
We
need to challenge the Christians to put up the walls and
help them with a roof for completion.
Once they have a roof on, they can start using the
church as they do the finishing.
Six
of the unfinished churches need a grant of €1,000
each to roof their churches.
A
donation of
€5,000 per church can start
off the
construction of the 12 out stations which have no permanent
churches.
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Support for
Catechists
Catechetical
instruction in the parish is done by a team of seven
catechists who also help in leading Sunday Service at those
outstations which are not due for mass at the weekend. The
catechists are indispensable in the area of Evangelization.
Each one covers an average of 4 outstations which
are about 10km apart.
They use bicycles to commute which need replacement.
Also, the parishioners are not able to give them a
decent allowance. They
currently get an allowance of €20 per month.They could do with an
extra €20 per month.
Hence 20 x 7 x 12 = €1,680 per year.
Bicycles
cost
€50
each.
An initial donation of
€50 x 7 =
€350 can get 7
bicycles for the catechists to enable them to get to the
stations.
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Thaana Nzau Irrigation Project and Catholic Women Oil
Project.
Last
year the parishioners and some friends of the parish helped
to raise some money to set up an income generating project
for the parish women. The women bought an electric oil press machine
to extract oil from sunflower seeds.
The project has already been commissioned.
The oil is being sold locally.
The women are also buying sunflower seeds from
farmers and pressing oil for them for a small fee.
The
main problem is how to increase the quality of seeds for
the farmers in order to get high-oil seeds for pressing in
return. The Parish has set up an irrigation project at the
banks of Tana River which is an all-season river with its
source at the slopes of Mt. Kenya.
The parish produces sunflower seeds to support the
oil project. However, we need to enlarge the irrigation
project to provide a larger quantity of higher quality
seeds for pressing.
Specifically
we need to buy quality seeds, set up a proper piping
net-work at the farm and provide initial capital to develop
the farm to enable it to run itself from the produce.
We need to improve it to act as a demonstration farm
for farmers and women on how they can develop kitchen
gardens for vegetables and bananas for home use.
A
once-off capital of about
€5,000 would go a long way
in improving the farm
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Click
to enlarge |
(Left) A catechist teaches children at
Sunday school |
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St. Monica’s Training Centre (Polytechnic) Nguutani
This project is run by
an African Mercy Religious Sister. It aims at giving young
girls hands-on skills in tailoring, dressmaking and
knitting. It was started in 1996 with the help of Irish
government funding. It
involves educating young girls who are unable to continue
with their second level education due to:
- Lack of school fees.
- Low grades in Standard 8.
This could also be due to family pressures e.g.
sickness in the family.
The students are forced sometimes to drop out of
school to look after their siblings, parents or livestock.
- Early parenthood.
Each year the number
of young unemployed girls in the area has been growing. The
project hopes to achieve and has achieved in some areas
self-employment for these young women. It gives them a
feeling of self worth. At the moment we have 80 Girls in
the college.
We
would like to give the girls more skills to enable them
cope with life. We intend to introduce hairdressing skills
but we need some capital for the necessary equipments. We
have already sent a teacher for further training in this
area. If we get some help, we hope to begin giving lessons
by January next year (2008).
We
need the following equipment
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Hair
dryers x 7
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Blow-dryer – 2
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Towels – 2 dozen
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Hair cutter x 2
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Sinks x 3
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Rollers.
A
once-off donation of €2,000 will help us set up a
class for hairdressing lessons.
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MERCY COMMERCIAL
COLLEGE
The
Mercy Sisters established a secretarial college for girls
in the parish back in 1980s. Their aim was to provide
secretarial skills and office management knowledge to girls
who do not make it to Universities. This college has become
very popular in the area as it also attracts girls from
other neighboring Dioceses. The current enrolment is 120
girls.
We
however need to give the girls extra knowledge in
Information Technology. We got some used computers from
friends in Europe but we need to install Internet
facilities to enable the girls get some hands-on knowledge
in Internet browsing and E-mail operations.
A
once-off grant of
€3,000 will enable us to install
these facilities to one or two computers for educational
purpose.
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Parish Dormitory and
Hall for Workshops and meetings.
St.
Augustine’s Parish covers an area recently settled in the
west of Nairobi-Mwingi-Garissa Road hence faith in that
region is pretty weak. Also, in the older village churches,
there is need to enrich the older Christians with the
current trends of the Universal Church. Hence we need to
run workshops and seminars for village church leaders,
catechists, catechumen, youth, men’s and women’s
groups, create HIV/Aids awareness, advise on food security,
etc.
In
the area of social & economic development, the people
need to be encouraged in food production. The region covers
one of the grain-belts of Mwingi district. We need to run
workshops to mobilize and motivate the people in the region
to improve food production and storage in order to tap on
the rich and fertile soil in the area.
The
HIV/AIDS scourge has claimed many lives in the area. Our
diocesan Home Care Programme has done a lot to create
awareness across all the ages but we need to strengthen
this exercise through the parish-diocesan structures to
ensure that the behavioral change message remains in the
peoples’ ears always. Also, we need to continue educating
people on how to care for those living with the virus.
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However,
in order to bring the above groups to the Parish Center for
a few days at a time we
need facilities for workshops and Seminars. It is important
to realize that to attend a seminar, many of the
participants will have walked perhaps up to 30 kms, so
accommodation facilities are essential. These include:
dormitories to house the attendants, a meeting hall and a
Kitchen equipped with the necessary fixtures and fittings.
Some
years back the Parish got a donation to build a new church.
The Parish Council decided to convert the old church to
serve as dormitories for men and women. They were able to
subdivide the church into two main dormitories with seven
cubicles each that can be fitted with three double decker
beds each. However, due to the current famine in the
region, we have not been able to complete the project.
We
have a meeting hall that can comfortably accommodate 30
people. We need to extend it to create extra space to
accommodate at least 60 people.
- We
need about €2,000 to buy 30 double decker beds and
mattresses.
- To
extend the meeting hall to accommodate 60 people will
cost about €10, 000.
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CONTACT PERSON:
Fr.
Nicholas Maanzo – Parish Priest
Tel:
0725 116 764
Postal
address:
St.
Augustine’s Catholic Parish
P.
O. Box 255
Mwingi
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