Chinyingi

Chinyingi is a Capuchin mission and hospital in the sparsely populated North-Western Province of Zambia, on the west bank of the Zambezi River. An estimated 6,000 people live within seven kilometres of the mission. Its hospital has 52 beds and several health outreach programmes, from first aid to services for people with HIV/AIDS, and the mission also runs a school. In the 1970s a Capuchin brother named Crispin Valeri built a pedestrian bridge over the Zambezi, after five people drowned trying to ferry a sick person to the hospital in a dugout canoe; he gathered material from the copper mines of the Copperbelt and used local labour, and the bridge still spans the river, with a pontoon bridge added beneath it for vehicles. The elevation of the mission is 1,100 metres.