Malawi is one of most beautiful places in the world and also one of the poorest. Landlocked in south-central Africa it is a heavily agrarian country that is prone to food insecurity (famine) and long-term power outages.
Nancy and I visited Malawi for 3 weeks in May at the invitation of Namikango Mission to explore how Africa Fire Mission could serve Malawi and partner with Namikango as a way to help their mission connect to the community. Missionaries Ryan and Justine had previously served at Missions of Hope in Kenya before moving to serve in Malawi 3 years ago. They had seen the impact AFM and MOHI had on the Mathare Valley and hoped to do the same in Malawi.
While in Malawi, we met with fire service leaders across the country to find ways AFM could minister to them. We learned that in Malawi, a country roughly the size of Pennsylvania, there are only FOUR fire departments and roughly 200 firefighters. Pennsylvania along has over 1800 fire departments. The country of Malawi has never bought any of their own fire trucks or fire equipment. They have relied on aid from the UK and Japan but they wish to change this. They wish to provide the services their communities needs with the right kind of equipment. The leaders are smart and know what it take to move forward but they just need some support and encouragement which Africa Fire Mission will be providing. The fire service leaders were impressed by the CHE curriculum that AFM has developed and were thrilled that we were able to train them and provide them copies of the training so that they could immediately go out in the communities and share the messages of both fire safety and God's love.
Moving forward, as a first step, we have invited the fire service from Malawi to attend the 2nd All Zambia Fire Academy in Lusaka this September. Zambia is a neighboring country and they Malawians a striving to emulate the successes that have occurred in the fire services across Zambia. We are looking forward to connecting our partners in Zambia and Malawi together as we all work to collaborate and provide strong and effective fire prevention and response services that will keep people safe!