Good News for Malawi's 'fish and chip babies'
BIG-HEARTED city knitters have created more than a hundred items of clothing for newborn babies in Africa who leave hospital wrapped in nothing but newspapers.
Dubbed Malawi’s ‘fish and chip babies’, many born with Aids, the tots are sent home without a single thing to wear.
Members of Bruce Gardens mental health support day centre’s textiles group have been working their fingers to the bone for the last five months to knit tiny hats, jumpers and mittens to be sent to the poverty-stricken country.
The clothing, including 43 jumpers, 61 hats and three pairs of mitts, were presented to Reay MacGill, a trustee with Inverness-based Highland Malawi Trust, last week.
Bruce Gardens support worker Audrey Goudie said the women were very proud of their efforts.
“It has been a lot of hard work over the last four or five months, they have been really committed to it,” she said.
“We had a presentation and got to hear from Reay about the babies our clothes are going to help and the trust does a lot more in the area. They do everything from building schools and pig pens to sending over unclaimed lost property from schools.”
What is a fish and chip baby?
The term began when it was discovered that often the parents of newborn babies, mostly in developing countries, had no clothes to put them in. Instead, the tots were wrapped in newspaper, like a fish supper, to keep them warm.
News of this reached knitters all over the UK who developed a simple vest pattern, which even a novice knitter could cope with.
It has since expanded to include jumpers, hats and mittens and hundreds of thousands of clothes have been sent all over Africa.
