Dear friends of African Dream,

I send you my most sincere regards and wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Christmas ! Already !... Christmas !
I do not know what this word or festivity raises in your heart or mind. By now, I no longer remember what a Christmas stands for in Italy. My Christmases are filled with sunshine and lots of people … poor people.
Today I celebrated Christmas in one of the Lusaka prisons. 1.100 prisoners, torn apart and undernourished: for them Christmas was celebrated today with a nice plate of rice, a piece of chicken, an apple, a piece of soap and a shirt.
In fact, I accompanied the Sisters of Mother Teresa to this place of pain and misery to share with them the bread of life and love. Of course, my thoughts go to many western families: the clothes, the presents, the laughs (???), the diners…
So, I no longer understand the meaning of Christmas. Better still, I do not know what people are celebrating.

I would like to share with you a Christmas that I spent with prisoners in “death row”.
In the year 1998: a marvelous morning on the equator. At 8.30 I enter “death row”: there are 250 prisoners that are condemned to death. As always, they all smile and are busy washing their own clothes and dishes on the different inner courts. They all greet and smile, also the Muslims and the ones with a different confession of faith. On the inner court everything is ready for the praying that will take more than two hours.
At the end, preparing myself to get my things together, the leader of the Christians comes up to me and asks me solemnly to sit down as there will be a “Christmas Party”!!! Inquisitively I sat down: they bring me a thermos flask of tea, a plate with a handful of biscuits. Then, from under the table they pull out a plastic bag with some biscuit packages. All prisoners sit down in silence whilst one biscuit… I say… one biscuit gets distributed to each single individual.

Each one reaches out and receives with a smile the small big gift of … one biscuit. They eat it with calm and in silence, almost as if they are celebrating a sacred ritual. I can no longer go on with my tea. Seven or eight biscuits are left over: they are crumbled into pieces and the distribution ritual gets repeated: every single individual will receive a crumb… it is the sharing of love and solidarity amongst the poor! End of the Christmas Party!

I would like you not to forget these two facts when celebrating your Christmas. I wish it to be full of joy and love and, whilst you exchange your presents, above all, I wish that you will be able to exchange and to give lots of love.

An embrace, a congratulation and a memory to all of you and your beloved ones.
Thank you for your friendship and for sharing the dream of the African Dream.
Love,

P.Enrico Colleoni

And here comes Christmas

And here comes Christmas.... another year comes to an end.
It is time for wishes and for evaluating our situation with African Dream .

“Our” school continues to grow and we would like to offer you in a synthetic overview what we have been able to realize during the year 2008 thanks to your support and generosity. As you do know already, the school is already operational and has got 130 students.

The actual structure (which is, as you already know, consisting out of a number of classrooms, a library, a bedroom, washrooms, kitchens and a number of small buildings to house the teachers that work at the college) has been expanded this year with a big laboratory and the building of a second bedroom to lodge new students that subscribe for next school year.

Also, at our return from Nebbi last month of May, we realized the need to multiplicate our efforts not only to finish the building of the school, but also to help a number of students that find themselves incapable to further pay their annual subscription.
Antonella launched convocation to “adopt one student” and we got 32 contacts. A great success thanks to your solidarity.
The students ended their exams on November 12 and first investigations show a great result overall,… amongst the best of the district. Final results will be published before the end of January 2009.
The tam tam of these results brings good publicity and the President of our school Padre Raphael Okumu demonstrated great optimism regarding the number of new students and where the parents showed the will to proceed with their registration.
But there is still so much to be done.

The objective is to start and complete soonest the building of a second block of classrooms and to equip all buildings with lighting based on solar panels. This will enable the accomodations, alimentation and education of approximately 300 students, allowing the school by then to be autonomously operational.
Finally, we need to find the funds to install a security system for the school and to purchase a vehicle to be used for the frequent supply travels to Kampala. We will need approximately between 85 and 90.000 euro to complete this first project of our Association.
We count on your help, also for next year and we still believe that it is possible to end all the works as planned before the end of 2009.

Merry Christmas to all of you, also on behalf of all our students. That 2009 may turn our ‘African dream’ into the beautiful reality of what has been realised already thanks to your contribution.

Thank you,
Vincenzo and Antonella.