Saturday May 19 2012
Art & Literature Archive
Village Art & Literature
Art of Africa
Posted on March 16 2010 at 4:42:43 0 comments
Sally Oldaker meets a Barnt Green resident who is raising funds for a Malawi hospital by importing local artwork.
If you’re seeking a piece of artwork for your home or buying a present for an art lover, it can be difficult to find something truly different – but a locally inspired initiative has made it possible to acquire wonderful paintings by African artists, and to help a struggling third world country at the same time.
MalawiArt.net is the brainchild of Barnt Green resident Gordon Cowie, who has been involved in fundraising for the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre, Malawi, for the past four years.
He came up with the idea of selling artwork via an online gallery to boost funds for Friends of Sick Children in Malawi (FOSC), which helps to finance the paediatric staff at QECH and which has been suffering as a result of the global recession.
The artists, Dinga Francisco and Hamban Mhone, each have their own distinctive style, producing traditional and contemporary scenes of colourful African life. Even with shipping costs included, the artwork is inexpensive compared to most original pieces – and each painting is unique, making an ideal gift for the person who has everything!
Gordon had established links with the Malawi hospital during his three and a half years on the Board of Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH), which was looking to set up a project in the third world.
“John Sentamu, who was then Bishop of Birmingham, agreed to fund finding a suitable project in sub-Saharan Africa, and QECH was chosen,” Gordon explains. “The paediatric department, which treats 80,000 children each year, was in particular need of help.”
Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, with a high infant mortality rate and a life expectancy of just 39 years. Some 90,000 children are HIV positive and therefore vulnerable to other diseases, while HIV also causes a high number of premature births.
“I visited Malawi for the first time in 2007, along with my wife, and it was a life-changing experience for us both – it’s almost impossible to describe,” Gordon recalls. “For example, the hospital cannot afford incubators, so local tradesmen make ‘Hot Cots’, which are basically wooden boxes with a little mattress, a heating element and a Perspex lid.”
Gordon spent 2009 raising funds for the BCH-Malawi project, which aims to enable Malawian doctors and nurses to be trained in their own country, thus keeping the skills where they are needed most. At the time, there were more Malawian paediatric doctors and nurses working in the West Midlands than in Malawi itself, because they had come here to train but never returned.
“We wanted to try to help stem the so-called ‘brain drain’ by doctors and nurses from Birmingham going out to train and work with staff in Malawi, and also to supply some of the consumables and equipment which QECH couldn’t afford,” says Gordon.
He adds that it is also a learning experience for the Birmingham staff, dealing with illnesses they may never see in the UK and having to come to terms with the incidence of death where there can be more deaths in a few weeks that they are likely to see in ten years back home.
“However, despite the incredible poverty, Malawians are delightful and friendly people,” Gordon points out. “Although I have now stepped down from the BCH Board, I was very keen to continue helping the Malawi hospital, especially when the recession caused a drop in donations to FOSC.”
The FOSC charity was founded by Liz Molyneux, originally from Liverpool, who runs the Malawi Children’s Unit at QECH. It pays the salaries of the 25 nurses and 25 other staff, at an annual cost of £100,000 (just 10 per cent of the equivalent UK cost).
All the profits from MalawiArt.net will go directly to FOSC, with the result that the paediatric unit can continue its vital work, the artists will gain recognition outside of their own country, and their personal micro-economies will be stimulated – something to put an even bigger smile on your face when you look at the new painting hanging on your wall.
“I’d seen Dinga’s work when I visited Malawi the first time – he creates mini paintings as greetings cards, and even makes his own paper – and so he came to mind when I was wondering how to raise more funds,” says Gordon.
Dinga was actually born at QECH, so has even more of a vested interest in supporting its work, and both he and Hamban crave better art materials to enable them to keep doing what they love. Their work is already finding an audience in the UK – in fact, eight paintings had been sold even before the website was officially launched!
If a client is interested in buying one of the paintings but finds it has already been sold, the artists will happily undertake a commission to recreate it – but of course, as with all handmade items, even a recreated piece will always be subtly different and therefore unique.
To see the full range of the artists’ work, visit www.malawiart.net, which also has links to FOSC’s website where the work of the Children’s Unit is featured and where donations can be made online.
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