Zambia - Koinonia: We Belong to Each Other

Being a missionary is creating brotherhood. Only being together side by side, sharing, and living love can communicate the Gospel; with a language that everyone understands, because it communicates life.

Changing is walking together, in comparison with others. Father “Kizito” Renato Sesana, a fraternal friend, has been following this path since the 1980s, when Koinonia was born in Lusaka, which would then grow further and much more in Nairobi: a unique educational model for effectiveness for children on the streets, through a community experience. A good part of today’s animators were former street children themselves, a proximity that helps in dialogue and in communicating the values ​​and meanings that have matured in them. Despite everything, new people, new stories.

With a territory twice the size of Italy, but harsh, which is home to only twenty million people, Zambia has been experiencing a severe crisis in recent years, with over 60% of its people living in poverty (income <2.15 USD/day). The economy has always depended on the export of copper, which is highly sought after but poorly remunerated.
In 2020, the country went so far as to declare a default on its sovereign debt, which was then restructured with extensions and only small amnesties, but this caused the necessary infrastructure investments to stop.

In 2024, the emergency was a long period of very serious drought, which halved the production of basic foods.
Also generating a deep energy crisis: the large Kariba dam was once the source of 80% of the country's energy, but now only one of its six turbines generates electricity. Precisely from the emergencies of the context, and from a climate change that is upsetting lives already in daily emergency, the urgent need for an intervention to support the Koinonia service arose.

In Lusaka, its action is organized around a 39-hectare plot of land on the outskirts of the city. There is the Mthunzi Centre, which houses 50 children, the St. Columbas Secondary School, a hostel for one hundred students, a farm - with 2 hectares of horticulture that is self-production and a personal recovery path - and the "Laudato si'" Agriculture school, with 40 students. Among the many needs, the water supply is fundamental: both for reception and horticulture. On the land there are three good-flow wells, with relative pumps; however, the strong instability of the network energy has forced the use of generators for pumping for some time now: at a cost that undermines the sustainability of the initiatives.

Technically the solution is not complex. On the one hand, it would be enough to install a photovoltaic power supply for the pumps, strengthened, in terms of continuity, by a capacity to accumulate the pumped water (thus avoiding the need for an energy storage capacity with a set of batteries). An irrigation system to optimize water consumption in those agricultural activities that use it the most – horticulture in particular – integrates the intervention in terms of efficiency.
As always, making the response a reality is made possible by choices of solidarity; in this case, a synergy of sharing between Sermig Re.Te. and several friends of the Koinonia service that also led to the assignment of co-financing under the “Water is life” call for proposals by the Seregno Lions, with the support of other clubs.
Availability and intense work will make the various implementations possible shortly.

Mauro Palombo
NP February 2025