GREGOR & SARAH’S WEDDING

We have been out of circulation recently.

Last Wednesday, we set out as the vanguard of the Waddell Clan’s outing to North Wales and Chester, for Gregor and Sarah’s wedding.

We took over 2 holiday houses near Wrexham for a week. Ruairidh and Lucy had arrived on the Tuesday from Zambia, and caught up with Gregor overnight in Chester before moving to be with us. Fiona had already flown home to Australia. Their second baby is due on 19 September.

Keith, Ida and Mubita left Edinburgh and went through to Catriona’s and Kirsten’s to pick up some of their katundu. They would be travelling down the next day with Stuart and baby Iona and what with prams and other infant impedimenta, their boot would be packed tight.

We continued comfortably down the M6, then M52, and finally to the North Wales Expressway to Rossett. We took a short break at a service station outside Lancaster, where Keith was bombed by a gob of guano from a low flying bird of the air. This we took as a good augury for the forthcoming nuptials!

We met up with Sarah, Gregor, Ruairidh and Lucy, and had a convivial family supper at a local inn that evening.

On Thursday, we got ready for the Glasgow contingent who arrived in the afternoon. Another expedition that afternoon was taking Lucy and Mubita shopping for shoes without the benefit of reins, or the pushchair, which was still to arrive from Dubai. Ida suffered a similar misfortune with her luggage both on the way to Washington and on the way back. So it is not just on the Jo’burg – Livingstone run these things happen.

On Friday, Gregor had the day off, so he came to join us for his last day and night of bachelorhood. It was good spending time in the Church, Northgate in Chester, seeing the creative and artistic way Sarah and Gregor had decorated the sanctuary. We helped to decorate and prepare the hall for the reception. That evening we organized a braai for both families.

On the Saturday, the maids of honour withdrew to Chester to visit the hairdressers and to dress, while the groomsmen and lady arrived at our house to get ready. Ruairidh was best man and Kathy and Anthony, both from Auchencruive student days, were together with Sarah’s sister’s husband, Paul, and the others. It was a kilted affair, reflecting the groom’s Scottish extraction. Other than a thunderstorm over lunchtime and the non-arrival of the groom’s family taxi, the wedding was a relaxed and laid-back event. The Church was full of family, friends and their children, including the confetti elves; Mubita, Leo, Nancy and Lucy.

The service was made especially personal and memorable through the warm message delivered by Brian, the vows led by Dave, the readings by Sally and Keith, and the prayer offered by Laurence and Bethan. This was followed by canapés and champagne while the photos were underway. The Bride and Groom then arrived at the reception for the vegetarian buffet. An English Country Dance Band provided the music for the ceilidh, held in the Church building, after the meal. The cake was cut and served during the interval. The last dance took place, the bride and groom left and those remaining returned the seating in the sanctuary to order for the Sunday Service.

We had a good family time on Sunday, with various comings and goings. After breakfast, Stuart, Kirsten, Iona and Catriona all left for Glasgow. We had Mum and Dad around for lunch, and Gregor and Sarah for supper. The newly-weds left on honeymoon on Monday. We drove Ruairidh and Lucy to Manchester airport on Tuesday evening. They are now safely back in Australia. We arrived back in Edinburgh, a week after leaving.

On Friday we had an interesting lunchtime spot at St John’s Episcopal Church, as part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace. As part of the World Church in Action, we were invited to take part in a conversation about our work in health and education at Mwandi, sharing about our faith and how this was connected to social justice, development and peace. The Convener of the World Mission Africa & Caribbean Committee, Rev Dr Russell Barr, chaired the discussion. We appreciated seeing some friendly faces from World Mission as well.

On Sunday we were invited back to Callendar Kirk. We took part in the service and had the opportunity to let the congregation see how important teamwork was in our work, and the commitment it required to work together with others at Mwandi, in the Church, the hospital, schools and wider community. We were able to show a PowerPoint simultaneously, to reinforce this. It was good to meet up with old friends there afterwards, and enjoy some special fellowship over lunch.

Missing Money, Missing Drugs and Missing Jobs

One of the consequences of the suspension of funding to Zambia by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has been an increasing number of stock outages and drug rationing that has affected all hospitals nation-wide, Mwandi Mission included.

Stock outages at clinics and hospitals have been so far fairly short term, but Central Medical Stores have sometimes run out of stocks for a considerable period as they wait for emergency shipments to arrive. In cases of low stock levels, drugs are rationed.

Regular readers will remember in an earlier blog the covering of the allegations of corruption at the Zambian Ministry of Health (MoH) uncovered by an investigation by the auditor general. The audit found that the ministry could not account for more than US$7.2 million. The repercussions from this are still being felt.

Another audit undertaken by the Global Fund* reported on poor financial management at the MoH, Ministry of Finance, the Christian Health Association of Zambia (CHAZ) and the Zambian National AIDS Network. These bodies used to receive Global Fund monies directly for programme implementation and then pass funds on to other organisations called sub-recipients. The audit found that $10.7 million of Global Fund money was not passed on and, to date, none of it has been repaid. The alleged financial mismanagement includes the purchase of vehicles for personal use, inflated salaries - sometimes more than double the going–rate locally, and funds disbursed to sub-recipients who could not provide auditors with financial records.

The Global Fund only funds CHAZ directly now; the MoH no longer receives funds, its responsibility in this area has gone to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Zambia. Teething troubles with these new procedures have brought delays for us on the ground in receiving funding for our AIDS Relief Programme. We have also suffered two major stock-outs of antiretrovirals (ARVs) recently. Fortunately we had a Hospital vehicle in Lusaka at the time that waited for one of the drugs to arrive in the country. We are relying on UNICEF and USAID who are scrambled to bring in more expensive emergency supplies until the new bodies get their procurement procedures properly functioning. TB drugs have also been in short supply. A week’s supply of the children’s ARVs was borrowed from the District Hospital.

The knock-on effects from this was that we could only give a week’s supply which meant the children and parents having another walk in a week’s time to the Clinic to receive the rest of the month’s supply. This meant further unbudgeted transport costs for the rural poor with an increased risk of defaulting and subsequent resistance.

Those responsible for the misuse of funds are still not being held accountable. It will be up to local courts to prosecute those suspected of fraud or the misappropriation of funds. Civil Society and some NGOs are pressing for this. Patients and clients in this area rely on these funds to provide their medication; if there are no drugs available or they are in short supply they need to know why. They have a human right to universal and equitable access.

Linked to this we have four workers facing immediate redundancy. The Government has recently been recruiting mission workers and has put on their payroll some who were formerly paid by CHAZ through a grant from Government which came originally from outside donors. The Government is keeping that grant to pay workers directly. CHAZ workers who are under 45 years of age and in possession of a Grade 12 School leaving Certificate were eligible to apply. The grant to the Hospital to pay the CHAZ workers is being cut in proportion to the number of workers put on Government payroll and linked to the ‘on paper’ establishment. So we now have four over-aged or under-qualified workers with many years of good experience and loyal service who are about to be thrown on the scrap heap as surplus to requirement. The change-over was supposed to be done over time and using where possible natural wastage. The Hospital cannot at the moment generate enough independent income to pay them or pay their retrenchment package.

Like our clients and patients living with HIV and Aids, these four people are another set of victims of the world’s greed and injustice, their dignity in work destroyed. Wealth that has been given generously is not shared fairly but kept in the hands of a few and misused to promote inequality and injustice.

*The full report can be found by googling 'Global Funding Country Audit Zambia'