ZAMTEF – Zimbabwe Agriculture Malaria Treatment and Education Farms
One of the topics at this four day conference was the introduction of the Artemisia Annua plant which is said to drastically reduce the terrible symptoms of malaria and in many case has been proven to cure malaria all together, so say the people formerly infected by the malaria parasite.
At the conference each of the 100 women received a small plant to take home and nurture. After one year, one women was the star; she continued to nurture and harvest her Artemisia plant. Her name, is Lindiwe Moyo, along with her husband Evans they continued to grow, harvest the leaves, dry and distribute the tea leaves to people in their community suffering from Malaria. Wow, the impact of One plus one has made a dramatic, profound difference in the lives of many in the Victoria Falls and Hwange District. Read the rest of the story.
Over the next years, Lindiwe and Evans documented names, symptoms and the cure rate of those that have come to them for the Artemisia tea drink. The success rate of healing people who suffer from this preventable disease has been documented by the Moyo’s for years. Over the past seven years we have stayed in constant contact with the Moyos discussing many projects and assistance levels.
In April 2014, we were working out in the bush building a brand new Secondary School called Vulindlela. Our builder, Jonas Sibanda, came down with a bad case of Malaria. We immediately contacted Lindiwe and Evans to get the harvested leaves to treat Jonas. Because of this, and other first-hand experiences with this devastating parasite, we jumped into action and created ZAMTEF (Zimbabwe Agriculture Malaria Treatment and Education Farms) a division of The BuyaBrickFoundation.
Our vision for ZAMTEF is to establish a farm at every school and village in the areas of Victoria Falls and the Hwange District. The idea is to expand ZAMTEF into all of Zimbabwe. Each hand-picked ZAMTEF farmer is responsible for the planting, harvesting, drying and distribution of the leaves. Lindiwe and Evans Moyo, our Directors of ZAMTEF, travel to each site provide the training, planting and ongoing assistance to the farmers.
Our first ZAMTEF farm was planted at the home of Jonas Sibanda, our builder at Vulindlela, who came down with a very bad case of malaria while we were in Zimbabwe in April 2014. Jonas reported that he was “strong as an ox” after four days of drinking the prescribed treatment. The second ZAMTEF farm was planted within days at Rabson Sibanda’s home, which is in the village of Simakade.
As of September 2014, we have 16 ZAMTEF farms planted and harvesting time is within weeks, just in time for the mosquito season. Our goal right now is to roll out 3 ZAMTEF farms per month. With a major sponsor we could roll out many more per month. We have the product, the training, the desire, the farmers, all we need is you to donate to this most needed cause. ZAMTEF, saving lives is a community effort, and everyone is part of the Community no matter where you live.
