Summer in Africa
Monday, September 28, 2009
By: Anne Otterson

A Journal of My Experiences and Impressions of Zambia

The summer of 2009, I spent a month in Zambia and Tanzania with Project Concern International and on a Stanford University Work Seminar. The impact of such a trip is overwhelming, and memories of moments constantly recur in my mind. While in Zambia, I wrote a diary to capture impressions of what I experienced, and some of my consequent reflections of those experiences. Our adventure began in Lusaka where we were met by the impressive team of PCI.

The Worth Project, Microfinancing

Looking back, it is difficult to evaluate which program had more impact on me, but this program which bears many positive overtones, the Worth Program, is a microfinancing project for women. We arrived at a village, a compound with a government school, and various clusters of huts all about. The women involved in the microfinancing program meet at the school after classes. This is a self-initiated program to lend money to women who want to have a small business. The program, the training, and the money come from PCI, but the women run the program. They participate in it from the beginning, being trained in the required skills, offering their ideas and then organizing and maintaining the program. The role of PCI is instructor, provider, encourager, and overseer. One senses the immense pride among the women, who carried themselves with dignity and confidence.

Four women seemed to have been chosen to handle the money of the bank, which is a wooden box with three locks and three keys. The administrator, the lender, and the controller have keys. The treasurer, who does all the record keeping, keeps the box, but has no access or keys. The group presented the banking procedure which is carried out weekly, unlocking the box, recording the payments, and accounting for the finances. All of the women attend. On this day, $70 was deposited, which included the payments and the interest. There was a small gain. Over the years, nearly $2000 has been earned.

As we toured the village compound to see the various enterprises, the women led us, singing lovely songs which unfortunately we did not understand, but exposed beautiful voices and high spirits. I thought how beautiful these songs were, being sung by women who had so little, but rejoiced, with music, in all their simple blessings. Our first stop was at what one might call a general store. There was a small supply of soaps, salt, sugar, grains, and even candies. This was followed by a visit to the candy store, which was very popular, but few had money to make such luxurious purchases. Some in our group bought candies and gave them to our of the PCI guides to distribute. This resulted in a trail of candy-wrappers along our tour route.

We continued to the covered market, where produce, salted, dried fish, and spices were sold. Then we walked to a small compound of adobe huts at which there was a covered wooden corral for goats. We had heard about the woman who bred these goats and sold them at the market with great success. One has to keep in mind that, to make the sale, she took them to market by carrying one at a time, walked down the road for a mile and quarter, then boarded the district bus for the hour or more ride to the market in Lusaka where she sold her goat. Her success had made her (at least temporarily) a rich woman.

Our last stop was a visit to a garden, enclosed to keep out the chickens and night animals. The rich soil yields wonderful vegetables. The water table is high, but there is no money for irrigation. There is only a well, from which the water is carried. On our return walk to the school, we noticed a large circle of men sitting in the shade of a huge acacia, simply doing nothing. Our PCI guide informed us they were probably drunk, as the majority of the men are in the countryside or towns. Unemployment is so astronomical, that one speaks of employment instead of unemployment. . In the last twenty years, the population of Zambia has doubled from 10 million to 21 million, and there are still only the same numbers of jobs, 500,000 in the entire country with no increase in twenty years. It is one of the poorest African nations. Even considering that half of the population is under fifteen, the lack of employment is astounding. Excluding the youth, the number would be about 5 % employment or 95% unemployment. It is a shocking reality which has to be concern to humanity.

The School Program

After an hour or so drive, we arrived at a small three-room building, painted white, standing beyond the light brown savannah grass on the dusty brown dirt. Nearby was a small adobe hut with a thatched roof and behind, a mango grove, and one or two other small groves. No village was in sight. We were met by school children and adults, singing and clapping, greeting us with their exuberant voices. After we were welcomed, they led us into the school rooms. We were invited to visit whatever grade we wished. The first, a very small room, perhaps 8 x 10 feet at most, housed four long desks at which six to seven young preschoolers were learning their A,B,C’s and numbers in English. The children were, at first, very timid, but became bolder and proud. A visit to another room for older children revealed a lesson teaching local botany. These children read for us in English.

Finally, we gathered in one of the schoolrooms while the head administrator explained how the school was formed, its history, its organization and that it evolved completely voluntarily. In contrast to a government school, this is a community school, founded by community volunteers, built by volunteers, and taught by volunteers. There is no nearby government school, and most children would be too poor to attend government schools, as the cost of uniforms and supplies is too much. The community came together and volunteer teachers were found, many of whom are graduate students who cannot find a job. However, they will leave the volunteer position the moment they get a paid job, though these jobs are rare.

In addition to the volunteer teachers, there is a volunteer administrator, housekeeper, handyman and maintenance person. Mothers also volunteer to help where they can. This school began under the trees in the mango grove, and was founded in 2002. A thatched adobe building, built by volunteers, became the next location of the school. Between 2004 and 2006, Project Concern came on the scene and with PCI funding and about $400 per month from the government, the current school was built. PCI added an adobe kitchen, where volunteer mothers prepare the USAID provided porridge to the students each day. For many, it is their only food, and is the reason they initially come to school. The porridge is made in a metal barrel over a wood burning fire, stirred with a clean whittled stick. A pertinent note: there were no books, no notebooks, not even a pencil or pen in the school. The only teaching tools were a blackboard and crayons.

The pervasive, gnawing poverty scratched at us daily, while touring the various projects, but it is abject poverty which one experiences everywhere in Africa. It reached the greatest depths on the visit we had with the street children. At least, at this school in the country, there are no drugs - yet - and the families care for their children, simple as the life is. Many villages did not even have clean water wells; however, the school did have one, another provision of Project Concern.

HIV and Health Education Program

In an impoverished suburban settlement, bordering a lovely suburban area, a maze of red dirt streets and paths, with trees and greenery growing in the rich soil, with adobe brick, one or two room houses along the paths was revealed. At times, a compound of houses provided a unified space for extended families. These families, we learned, did not have blood ties necessarily but were composed of adults, sometimes very young, caring for siblings, relatives, and orphaned HIV babies. They were bonded by poverty and common needs. It is here that PCI has a health clinic which primarily serves women and children. The clinic provides family planning, prenatal care, early childhood health care and HIV care to patients. The office is a simple two-room building with an open palm-covered waiting room. The early childhood program provides vaccinations and nutritional care. Family planning, a primary concern in a country that more than doubles its population each fifteen to eighteen years, is difficult to implement among the uneducated and often abused women. Many girls have children by the age of puberty, and by the time they are twenty, they have six or seven children and rarely someone to support them. By then, they know the problems of feeding, nurturing, educating and they have erased the hope of an improved future. It is a gigantic problem which is pervasive in Africa.
 
For our visit, we were divided into groups of two to accompany a case worker in a visit to a home. Our visit was with a young girl who had five children of her own, and was left at eighteen with eight siblings when her parents died. She supports the family who all live in one adobe hut. Across from the hut, is her small stand where she sells her home grown tomatoes and beans, plus salted fish, packets of sugar and salt which she purchases at the town market. Our PCI worker bought a bag of lovely red tomatoes, making the day for the young woman. A baby was nursing at her breast.

In the yard under the shade of a tree, three young girls sat quietly yet smiling, holding and playing with the seven other younger children. The activity was without vigor. The children all seemed younger than ten. The mother entered the house to bring out the vaccination record for the baby and the younger children. The worker discussed nutrition with her, and how she could increase their intake of protein. The caseworker seems very interested and checked every detail. The mother’s younger brother, in his teens, sat drunk or drugged on a log, looking out into space, losing himself in his inebriated state from the futility of his workless future. I felt that their intense hopelessness and yet saw that PCI was doing what it could to alleviate the burden, as best as it could.

KidSAFE (Shelter, Advocacy, Food and Education)

KidSAFE, a PCI project concept, is the program in which PCI has identified the seriousness and needs of the street children. These are mostly AIDS orphans or children from abusive homes in Lusaka and elsewhere in Zambia. Our visit on this day brought together for me just what PCI is about, and how it operates.

The afternoon visit to the street-children was perhaps the most unsettling, although each visit had its impact. We went to the central market and local public transport center. Here is where the homeless, druggies, and prostitutes, all in their teens or younger, hang out. We had been prepared somewhat for what to expect, but the impact was still disconcerting. We had been warned to bring nothing, to be aware at all times, and not to be too engaging. We were not to shake hands but were to bump our fists against theirs in a friendly “high five” gesture. Contact with hands open has health and control problems, as an open grasp gives them power over you. The street was depressing and the smell was penetrating! The young were filthy dirty, clothes stiff with grime and dirt; bodies, odorous; but with oblivious smiles on their semi-conscious expressions. Their lack of anger seemed amazing, but perhaps it was a result of the drugs.

While talking with one of the young boys - who referred to me as “mama”, being the oldest in the group - I began to cough, and immediately he put his bottle under his shirt, apologized and stepped back. I was surprised at such sensitivity in his drugged state. We briefly encountered several groups and spoke some with them. Some had cell phones, probably the result of pick-pocketing. We had been warned to bring nothing. Each of us was accompanied by a PCI worker. They wore t-shirts identifying them as PCI workers. It was on these streets that they first encounter the children, whom they encourage to drop by the centers, where there is food and a resting spot. Two of our PCI workers who accompanied us - twins - had been addicted street boys, now changed through the program. 

KidSAFE Center
PCI works within the local environment to develop a project, and often integrates the project with local NGO’s to bring the children off the street, providing them with shelter or safe place and food. At this point, further counseling, nourishment, medication, and drug recovery are offered. The program has been carefully worked out, with continual review of results, searching always for the best method. It is a program that seeks partnerships with other NGO’s, and with other innovative incubator groups. Eventually, education and professional training skills are offered, often providing a permanent shelter at the time of education and training. We visited with two local groups that develop programs in partnership with PCI, allowing the children to understand their situation, how to cope with it, and to bring community and bonding. We observed the activities of these two programs, each a part of the structure of the KIDSAFE Project.

Two of the programs that help to sustain kids from the street are Grassroots Soccer, a locally organized group, founded and supported by the professional Zambian soccer players. The other, Barefoot, is a theatrical and musical dance group. The Boy Scout Center supports each with an office, and protected space for their activities. Both programs participate in the KidSAFE Project. PCI trains the counselors and underwrites the program with other partners. At the Center we visited the “studios” of the theatrical groups - that is, where the youths make their costumes, face masks, and develop their drama pieces. The dramas are based on their street experiences and are used as a means to question themselves, where they have been, and where the future could lead.

KidSAFE Shelter
One morning, we drove beyond the suburbs of Lusaka to a country settlement, where one of the KIDSAFE Shelters (remember Shelter, Advocacy, Food & Education) is located. This program provides shelter, food and counseling for kids from the street, either HIV orphans or runaways from abusive homes. For those from the street capable of further education, KIDSAFE provides job training skills and life skills to help merge into a normal lifestyle. The residence center we visited was a female shelter with about eighteen to twenty young girls who formerly lived on the streets. They became participants of the day programs, where often the attraction of a full meal lures them to the center. At the center they are counseled, encouraged, and supported to leave their futile existence on the streets - a life of drugs and prostitution, - and to commit themselves to a change in their lives by living at one of the KIDSAFE Shelters.

It is not easy to persuade these girls that there could be a better life. Most of them were abused at a young age, often within their own family. The street, which appears to be an escape, is another horror. Sniffing glue or kerosene, or taking stronger drugs becomes a temporary comfort. Living on the streets results in rape, and finally prostitution, because it offers them a form of protection and security. It becomes a degrading stage in a vicious downward spiral. However, those who make that choice to change and stay with the KIDSAFE program are incredibly strong and remarkable. Seeing their strength, their enthusiasm, their determination to help others, and their spirited singing and dancing was overwhelmingly humbling.

The girls live and are counseled at the shelter. When they are able, they attend either the community school, a very handsome three-room school with only one teacher for the four grades, or a professional skill-training program. Such a program in tailoring was offered at this facility, run by a lovely Japanese woman who works for a Japanese NGO which prepares young people in trade skills to earn a living. It is just one of the programs with which PCI partners.

At the facility, there is an administrator, professional counselors, and volunteers for various needs. The number of women, often older women whose families are adults, who volunteer in these programs and the community schools was remarkable. The school was very attractive, a note of joy, with colorful paintings on the wall teaching numbers, the alphabet, the animal and the fauna in English. There were no books! Few have pencils or paper. A large chalkboard and chalk were the only teaching tools the teacher had. Volunteer teachers in a community school may receive about $20, the equivalent to U.S. dollars. The public school teachers earn $100 a month.

Postscript:

Weeks have passed since I returned from Africa, and images continue to emerge in my mind. The pervasive poverty in the narrow, soot covered streets of the old market resurrects images of the street scenes in Calcutta seen long ago. I am haunted by the insurmountable problems of Africa. How can we think of peace with the inequalities of simple needs such as water, food, medicine and education? Yet I am touched by the Zambian’s lack of anger, their care for one another, surging optimism, and loving warmth. I recall how cordial, how warm and loving they made me feel. I shall always think of the brave optimism of the women, their pride and determination, and somewhere I know there is hope for Africa. The hope is the African woman.