All set for Kenya mission

Kate Borg, a housewife of St Paul's Bay will spend the month of August lending a hand in Mpeketoni, a small village in the south east coast of Kenya.

Marian Poucher, who works at a publishing house and Lisa Cassar, a teacher, shall, like Ms Borg and another 17 volunteers from the Mission Fund, leave their families behind to help build a wing at a school for girls.

The group is made up of other skilled people and professionals - an architect, a carpenter, stone masons, a nurse, a member of the judiciary and even drydocks workers, some of whom will use up all their leave to help others in need.

"We were almost thrown into this. I always wanted to do it but I never thought it would actually come to pass. It is a sacrifice to leave our families behind for a whole month knowing we will not even be able to contact them," was the common feeling of the volunteers.

The group has been meeting every week for the past six months being informed about what they expect to be a rather tough experience. Their main task will be to build another wing at a secondary school for girls, a project that should be completed by 2006.

When completed, the school will house about 500 students coming from an area larger than Malta. In Mpeketoni, secondary education for females is practically non-existent.

A lay movement in the Maltese Church, Mission Fund has supported Maltese missionaries through donations of goods and funds since it was founded in 1984.

The volunteers, together with Fr Marcellino Micallef OFM, the group's spiritual director, called on Archbishop Joseph Mercieca at the Curia in Floriana yesterday. Fr Micallef noted that this was the 13th time volunteers from the Mission Fund will be going to Kenya. The group had been working all year collecting about Lm64,000 in funds and goods for the missions.

Architect Svetlana Sammut, one of the professionals, explained that hand-cut stone will be used, along with wood as building materials. Tools and a generator have already been shipped to Kenya.

Joe Mifsud, the group leader, said people had shown enormous support for the Mission. "It was impressive. When we went to buy building tools and equipment' many shop owners gave them to us for free when they realised what we would be using them for," he said.

In 2000, Mission Fund volunteers built a biogas plant for the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, the Maltese nuns' congregation taking care of a mission in Longata, Kenya. In 1999, Maltese volunteers built wooden beds for homeless children in Longata, Kenya, close to a mission run by the MUSEUM religious doctrine society set up by the Blessed Dun Gorg Preca.

Mgr Mercieca noted that the most important aspect of missionary work was the spirit in which volunteers helped people who had practically nothing, though the work itself was equally important.