Mabvuto (the son of Ethel who runs the hostel where Friends of Mufulira, the MMTA charity hosts our electives) worked for a South African supplier of hygiene equipment in Lusaka for a number of years.He has an economics and accounting degree, he is charming, speaks goods English, and is a hard worker. He is the person who meets our electives on arrival in Ndola and transfers them to Mufulira safely, answers their questions, tells them about the community and keeps an eye on them. But at his work, while the South African employers regularly improved the pay of his white colleagues, they did not improve his. And so Mabvuto resigned and explained the reasons to his bosses. He has set up on his own.

 

Besnart (Bessie) is a relative of Ethel, Mabvuto’s mum. Ethel has suffered for years with impaired health. But, like anyone who has a roof over their head in Mufulira (which Ethel has), she takes in children from poorer members of the family. Ethel was visiting her family in a village in the bush in Eastern Province. As she was leaving, a girl of 12 ran after her and begged Ethel to take her with her, as the girl was due to be sold off in marriage to an older man. Poverty means that such arrangements are common. Elderly as Ethel is, she took the girl back with her to Mufulira. Bessy is now studying to become a health clinician – a Bachelor of Occupational Health and Safety Management – at the Zambia Catholic University in Kalalushi.

 

Friends of Mufulira sponsors four medical student electives per year to attend The Ronald Ross Hospital in Mufulira - the same hospital our trustee Dr Robin Gleek performed his elective in 19977. Our students are bright, heartbreakingly high-minded, selfless, and wonderful as ever. Each cohort brings with it new accomplishments and skills. Last year one elective was from Edinburgh and three from Liverpool. 

 

The above human stories are the things that push us at Friends of Mufulira (the MMTAs charity) to continue to find ways to deliver support. Funding four new electives to spend a month at Ronald Ross Hospital in Mufulira (before graduating to be resident doctors in the UK) is the main job. And understanding this community, we hope, helps us spread the net wider, sometimes giving as individuals, as well as via the charity.

 

The wider problems we see in Mufulira are common to all resource-based communities –  pollution is one with its direct relationship to poverty, poor health and wellbeing. Nothing brings this home more than the February 2025 dam burst at Sino-Tech Leach’s Chambishi plant when tailings heavy with arsenic, uranium and lead poured directly into the Kafue River.

 

It was another example of how people, communities, and the environment so often pay the price for the extraction of resources. In the Chambishi case many in the farming community nearby now have contaminated land - the fish in the river have been poisoned, and water has become undrinkable.

 

These facts are a memo to us all – to take care along the supply chain about how we extract metals – not merely how we sell them. We have the power, in ways large and small, to prevent the excesses of our extractive industry – so long as the will is there.

 

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