Msgr. Dr. Philippe Alain Mbarga
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends!
The start of a new Ecclesiastical year is once again a great occasion to send happy and thankful greetings
out to all of you. Moreover, this gives me amble opportunity to report to you of the many great encounters
and the multifaceted progress that occured last year.
First of all I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and care during my
visit to Europe this year, which – by way of exception – I was able to spend a large part of with the World
Synod in Rome.
It was very empowering for me to experience your help and friendship in such a multitude of ways;
I really am now able to claim Fulda as my second home.
Especially pleasurably for me hereby was the fact that I was able to speak to so many of you personally at our association meeting.
In particular I would like to thank everyone who included me into their prayers after my harsh car
accident on the 29. June, which occurred as I was on the way to give the blessings of a priestly ordination.
Due to the extensive loss of blood I suffered from, during the incident, I had to be treated in the hospital
for a prolonged time and our valuable car got wrecked completely; your eager help and participation
during this time of hardship was a huge consolation for me and my family.
By the Grace most of God our last year Projects at the “Kinderhilfe & St.-Thomas” worked out to our
great benefit, even though the total running costs and amount of necessary investments increased
substantially.
A large role hereby was played by the temporary loss of two of our Sonography-devices, the
replacement of which resulted in a total cost of over 30.000 (!) Euros.
Moreover the continuously increasing number of help-seeking as well as sick people of course also results in higher procurement
costs for the diverse types of medicine, which in turn hindered the already prolonged purchase of our new
X-Ray Machine…
We now employ a total of 23 staff members in our Hospital:
4 Doctors (one general practitioner, one Dentist, one Ophthalmologist and an Internist for Ultrasound diagnostics),
12 Nurses, 2 Laboratory technicians, 3 members of cleaning staff and 2 members of security staff.
Furthermore we can now finally continue our Lessons undisturbed in the recently renovated Mvam-
Zamba-Public School; luckily nothing had to change concerning the daily Routine of the 130 enlisted
school children there; also the Orphanage is well cared for due to the passionate support due to the local
children and Community members.
In the Mvam-Zamba-Infirmary a nurse and Laboratory technician are still holding regular consultation
hours, while one member of the cleaning staff is present.
Meanwhile the medical management remains at the hands of Dr. Elise, who comes into town to treat
and check on heavily sick patients 1–2 times per month.
This year I am especially pleased that Dr. Marion will again hand out the Journeyman Diplomas in our
Nsimalen vocational school: 11 staff members remain here and are employed in the Joinery and the
sewing room.
Here, the opportunity to produce our own furniture and clothing of course greatly helps to reduce the
running costs of our projects, and the Diocese of Ebolowa in general.
We are also proud of our progress concerning the construction of the Hildegard-Althaus-School.
Meanwhile over 450 students can be taught in two languages (French and English) in this secondary
school.
The school programme we offer there is meant to be a lasting contribution to the efforts for
developing a lasting peace and especially tries to cater to children from refugees who suffered greatly
from the devastating civil war, raging in the anglophone regions of Kamerun.
To also include and reach out to children who live apart from the Jungle, we also plan to develop and
construct a local boarding school.
In addition, we were very happy with the 5 Month long visit from Fulda:
Josephina and Celina were passionately involved in the construction of several playgrounds and continued to support us heavily, even
(out of distance) from Germany.
I found it very pleasurable to have both mothers and her cousin Emilia here for such a short time in
Ebolowa–and seeing you again in your Hometown!
As you can see, I have all the reason in the world to thank you all from the bottom of my–and in the name
of the people betrusted to me and my Diocese–heart.
With your continual support we can change a lot of things here for the better, I count on your help!
With thankful greeting, yours sincerely:
Mgr. Dr. Philippe Alain MBARGA
