Lilongwe District

This morning we went to Dzaleka Refugee Camp, about 40km north of Lilongwe. There are "52,678 persons of concern (PoCs) as of 2021. The majority live in the Dzaleka refugee camp located in the Dowa district, some 41 kilometres away from the capital Lilongwe.  

Dzaleka is a protracted camp with a monthly average of 300 new arrivals (62% are from the DRC, 19% Burundi and 7% Rwanda and 2% other nationalities). 45% of the PoCs are women, and 48% are children. The camp was initially established to host between 10,000 to 12,000 PoCs but now hosts over 52,000 individuals.

Of the total PoC population, 21,530 have refugee status, 30,910 are asylum seekers, with 238 others of concern, making the refugee situation a protracted one." Info from United Nations High Commission on Refugees
The camp is noisy crowded and home to over 50000. It is really a small city. There are schools, health clinics, churches, very small gardens, restaurants( someone with a hotplate in their doorway cooking for passersby). Streets are narrow and deeply rutted, filled with people on foot, bicycles, and scooters. A very few cars brave the very rough terrain, including Roberta's. It is an amazing feat to see her navigate places I wouldn't dream of attempting.
We first took the sewing machines to Roberta's friend Grace. Grace has gone through an extensive training course to facilitate trauma healing. After two months of counseling in small groups to process their own trauma, participants are then trained to be Facilitators to teach those who complete the counseling how to counsel and then teach others what they have learned. She currently has about 20 groups of men and women at different stages of the training process. Part of that healing comes by finding a purpose and something to do to keep busy. She has training programs for sewing/tailoring and for cooking so that they can earn a basic income. They have four sewing machines and we brought two more. They were very excited about this gift and how many more would be able to learn this skill. These are actual Singer treadle machines, much better than the ones I used on previous trips. Roberta is helping Grace to write a grant proposal to obtain funding for her organization and they spent time discussing the information needed. While having that discussion, less than an hour, one of the girls made a dress for me! I did not get the picture yet of me wearing it, just you wait! Edited: photo added! What do you think?
Then we went to YWAM Dzaleka where Roberta works with their team. I got to hear the amazing story of how God provided funding for the buildings and a couple to lead the team there, who are regugees themselves. We had lunch and then a women's Bible study led by Roberta. At least a dozen women were there, and translation was from English to Swahili to Chichewa. Usually there are more, but there was a funeral and it is harvest time so many were not able to come.
I was so busy looking I did not take a lot of pictures but we will be at the camp several more times so will get more for future postsRead more