{"id":152,"date":"2008-10-21T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T08:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/2008\/helped-the-aged-in-mukuni\/"},"modified":"2009-04-06T10:47:16","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T10:47:16","slug":"helped-the-aged-in-mukuni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/2008\/helped-the-aged-in-mukuni\/","title":{"rendered":"Helped the aged in Mukuni"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first met Davison Simalonga on my recent trip to the Mukuni Cheifdom he was carrying two large, heavy sacks tied to a pole, which he placed across his shoulders.\u00a0I insisted that we pulled\u00a0over to offer him a lift to his home, and learnt that he lived\u00a0in Kamwi Village. I then discovered the burden that this quiet and humble man\u00a0had been undertaking twice a week\u00a0to provide for his family.<\/p>\n

Having lost his own wife and children he married a widow with a family of three youngsters. Every morning Davison walked the couple of miles to his garden in Chise Village<\/a> carrying water from the river to\u00a0nurture his vegetables. No problem with that, until I learnt where he sold his vegetables! Due to much competition\u00a0from other local growers there was no guarentee that Davidson would sell his vegetables\u00a0at the nearby Mukuni<\/a> market, so twice a week\u00a0he carried his\u00a0sixty kilo load, one bag on either side of his shoulders, wearing torn sandals on his feet\u00a0and walked\u00a0all the way to Livingstone, a distance in excess of twenty miles\u00a0earning just \u00a36.50 per load.<\/p>\n

\"kamwi-villager\"
\nPhoto: Davison Simalonga, aged 76 from Kamwi, Mukuni Chiefdom<\/em><\/p>\n

I was horrified even more so when Davison told me that he was born in 1932, a seventy-six year old man, toiling so hard seemed inhumane.\u00a0I immediately\u00a0set about easing his burden without trying to change his life. I arranged for a donkey to be bought, to purchase his vegetables for The Butterfly Tree’s feeding program at Mukuni Village<\/a> and\u00a0included\u00a0his\u00a0children\u00a0in our orphan sponsorship<\/a> program.<\/p>\n

Davison is now a very happy man, using his donkey to carry water from the river and to transport his vegetables the short distance to Mukuni, where\u00a0he can be\u00a0sure of a sale to The Butterfly Tree<\/a> feeding program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first met Davison Simalonga on my recent trip to the Mukuni Cheifdom he was carrying two large, heavy sacks tied to a pole, which he placed across his shoulders.\u00a0I insisted that we pulled\u00a0over to offer him a lift More details ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebutterflytree.org.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}