Zambia day 2 - "And then they gave me a chicken..."
Back from three days in the rural wilds of northeastern Zambia.
Connected to the world again, albeit sporadically (the wireless connection here still sucks).
A little bit of time to recount further adventures.
So on Wednesday morning I boarded a plane for Chipata, one of the biggest cities in the eastern province of Zambia - about 200,000 people, although it doesn't feel particularly crowded. A fairly short flight - a little over an hour. It's very dry and dusty in all Zambia right now, coming out of winter here. Eastern province seems to be especially dusty.
On arrival I was met by a CARE driver who took me to the CARE regional office. There I met Pedros, the head of the regional office. Pedros would end up being my chauffeur, driving me all over creation for the next three days.
After a brief stop at the CARE office, we headed out for the first visit of the itinerary - Michini basic community school on the edge of Chipata. In Zambia the commununity schools are different from the government schools. They're staffed by volunteers and rely on the community and charitable donors for everything they need. The community schools CARE helps out with, like Mchini, place special focus on orphans and vulnerable children. Mchini was literally built by the community. They started holding classes under a tree while community members built the actual buildings out of mud bricks they mqade themselves. From there private donors including CARE helped improve the building and get basic materials. Mchini has now been taken in as a government school, but all that means is the gov't now pays the teachers. It really doesn't do much else to help. Mchini has about 1400 kids now... and 6 classrooms. Eight when the new CARE-funded block gets built. They're running 70 kids to a class right now. Scary.
When I planned the timing of this trip, I forgot to consider one crucial detail - the school year. So in fact there were no children at the school to see and talk to. I ended up interviewing some of the teachers, community PTA members, and school caregivers. The caregivers go out into the community to meet with vulnerable families and gently put pressure on them to send their children to school, and to provide such support as they can to make that possible. I also sat in on a short bit of a training session for volunteer home care givers - people who go out into the community to look after the sick and elderly. They were having a class on how to administer and ensure clients are properly taking their TB and HIV/AIDS medications.
Mchini Basic School. The woman walking in front is the head of the school (ie principal).
View looking out away from Mchini school. Over the hills in the distance, not all that far away, is Malawi.
After Mchini we headed out of Chipata northwards on the highway to the town of Lundazi. I will say this now: if I ever again hear anyone complain about the state of roads in Ottawa, I will laugh in their face. The Chipata-Lundazi highway is a bloody moonscape. It doesn't have potholes, it has cauldronholes. Or possibly craters. Everywhere. Driving that road is one continuous slalom around holes. Half the time we were driving with, if not all four, wheels off on the gravel siding because it was smoother than the road itself. And you can't go fast or you'll hit a big one that you didn't see coming. So a trip that, in Canada, would take a little over an hour ends up taking something like three.
About two thirds of the way to Lundazi we stopped at another community school - Dwankhonzi. This one was far less developped than Mchini. Still bare mud bricks and dirt floors. No furniture. Again the community built their own school with mud bricks they made themselves. It's a very rural area, unlike around Mchini, so all the families are coming from villages where they're still living in mud huts with thatched roofs. Again no kids in school so I met the teachers, PTA, and caregivers, as well as the local village headman. They were very friendly. They showed us around the school, to the mudhole where they make the mud bricks and the traditional brick kilns they make to fire them. Laid out beside the mudhole drying were some 16,000 mud bricks waiting to be fired. The people are *not* lazy.
The mudhole where the community gets the raw materials for brick. Also, frighteningly, where villages often go for drinking water. Even the regional director, who has seen quite a lot, couldn't believe it when he heard this.
The brick kiln. Some 18,000 bricks are piled together, with several openings left at the bottom. The whole thing is coated in mud, then logs are inserted into the holes at the bottom and set alight. Very effective in producing decent bricks.
They also showed me the little garden with banana, tomato, and casava plants that produce food to help feed the orphans and vulnerable children at the school. The school has a little makeshift playground they made themselves. A bycicle tire draped over a log for a tire swing. A teetertotter made of a log balance in the notch of another upright log. At the goading of the other community members the two school teachers hopped on the teetertotter and had fun demonstrating it. Then they showed me some little shallow indentations scooped out in the ground and explained these were used for a game with stones that taught hand-eye coordination. Suddenly the village headman himself is down on his knees demonstrating. Turns out the game in question is just what we would call 'jacks', played with stones. A moment later half the other community members piled in and suddenly there was a full-fledged jacks game underway, with everyone laughing and cheering.
A community game of jacks in Dwankhonzi. The man standing at left in the black and white shirt is the village headman.
As we walked past the school on our way back to the cars to leave, there was an odd animal noise behind us. I glanced back and saw a little grey chicken among the group. We gathered by the car for goodbyes and thanks, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed one of the community members now had the chicken under their arm. A suspicion started to develop as the headman seemed to be launching into a semi-formal speech (he spoke no English). The suspicions were confirmed when they started packing the chicken into a plastic bag, it's head sticking out of a hole. Sure enough, the chicken was a gift to their visitor from Canada. Fortunately two other CARE staff had come along in a separate vehicle, so they were able to take the chicken with them back to Chipata, so we didn't have to figure out how to lug a live chicken around for two more days. In retrospect I'm kicking myself for not showing someone how to use the camera and getting a pic of myself with my chicken.
I really liked the people of Dwankhonzi. I'm seriously considering, when I get back to Canada, seeing about pulling together some simple, educations childrens books and maybe some toys and sending a package through the CARE channels for the kids of Dwankhonzi. They have no school materials right now.
From Dwankhonzi Pedros and I headed on to Lundazi. Another long trip on bad roads in the dark (it gets completely black here by 5:30 p.m. right now.) Reaching Lundazi we checked in at a small guesthouse, then went over to another one for dinner. The guesthouse where we had dinner was clearly once the mansion of a local British colonial lord a hundred years ago. The locals call it "The Castle" because that's exactly what it is. Turrets and all.
The Castle in Lundazi
AT dinner I tried for the first time one of the major traditional Zambian foods - nshima. It's basically a doughy lump made of maize, a little like a dumpling but less firm. You pull off pieces of nshima with your hand, knead them a bit, then use them to scoop up gravy or a local type of relish. It's pretty good actually.
Back to the guesthouse for bed. In my room I found this monster (water bottle added for scale):
While I was pondering what to do about it, it retreated to a high corner near the ceiling. I left it alone and it was gone by morning.
Next post: Day 3 "The Neverending Safari"
When I have time and another window of functioning wireless connection. This may or may not happen before I leave for Zimbabwe tomorrow.
Connected to the world again, albeit sporadically (the wireless connection here still sucks).
A little bit of time to recount further adventures.
So on Wednesday morning I boarded a plane for Chipata, one of the biggest cities in the eastern province of Zambia - about 200,000 people, although it doesn't feel particularly crowded. A fairly short flight - a little over an hour. It's very dry and dusty in all Zambia right now, coming out of winter here. Eastern province seems to be especially dusty.
On arrival I was met by a CARE driver who took me to the CARE regional office. There I met Pedros, the head of the regional office. Pedros would end up being my chauffeur, driving me all over creation for the next three days.
After a brief stop at the CARE office, we headed out for the first visit of the itinerary - Michini basic community school on the edge of Chipata. In Zambia the commununity schools are different from the government schools. They're staffed by volunteers and rely on the community and charitable donors for everything they need. The community schools CARE helps out with, like Mchini, place special focus on orphans and vulnerable children. Mchini was literally built by the community. They started holding classes under a tree while community members built the actual buildings out of mud bricks they mqade themselves. From there private donors including CARE helped improve the building and get basic materials. Mchini has now been taken in as a government school, but all that means is the gov't now pays the teachers. It really doesn't do much else to help. Mchini has about 1400 kids now... and 6 classrooms. Eight when the new CARE-funded block gets built. They're running 70 kids to a class right now. Scary.
When I planned the timing of this trip, I forgot to consider one crucial detail - the school year. So in fact there were no children at the school to see and talk to. I ended up interviewing some of the teachers, community PTA members, and school caregivers. The caregivers go out into the community to meet with vulnerable families and gently put pressure on them to send their children to school, and to provide such support as they can to make that possible. I also sat in on a short bit of a training session for volunteer home care givers - people who go out into the community to look after the sick and elderly. They were having a class on how to administer and ensure clients are properly taking their TB and HIV/AIDS medications.
Mchini Basic School. The woman walking in front is the head of the school (ie principal).
View looking out away from Mchini school. Over the hills in the distance, not all that far away, is Malawi.
After Mchini we headed out of Chipata northwards on the highway to the town of Lundazi. I will say this now: if I ever again hear anyone complain about the state of roads in Ottawa, I will laugh in their face. The Chipata-Lundazi highway is a bloody moonscape. It doesn't have potholes, it has cauldronholes. Or possibly craters. Everywhere. Driving that road is one continuous slalom around holes. Half the time we were driving with, if not all four, wheels off on the gravel siding because it was smoother than the road itself. And you can't go fast or you'll hit a big one that you didn't see coming. So a trip that, in Canada, would take a little over an hour ends up taking something like three.
About two thirds of the way to Lundazi we stopped at another community school - Dwankhonzi. This one was far less developped than Mchini. Still bare mud bricks and dirt floors. No furniture. Again the community built their own school with mud bricks they made themselves. It's a very rural area, unlike around Mchini, so all the families are coming from villages where they're still living in mud huts with thatched roofs. Again no kids in school so I met the teachers, PTA, and caregivers, as well as the local village headman. They were very friendly. They showed us around the school, to the mudhole where they make the mud bricks and the traditional brick kilns they make to fire them. Laid out beside the mudhole drying were some 16,000 mud bricks waiting to be fired. The people are *not* lazy.
The mudhole where the community gets the raw materials for brick. Also, frighteningly, where villages often go for drinking water. Even the regional director, who has seen quite a lot, couldn't believe it when he heard this.
The brick kiln. Some 18,000 bricks are piled together, with several openings left at the bottom. The whole thing is coated in mud, then logs are inserted into the holes at the bottom and set alight. Very effective in producing decent bricks.
They also showed me the little garden with banana, tomato, and casava plants that produce food to help feed the orphans and vulnerable children at the school. The school has a little makeshift playground they made themselves. A bycicle tire draped over a log for a tire swing. A teetertotter made of a log balance in the notch of another upright log. At the goading of the other community members the two school teachers hopped on the teetertotter and had fun demonstrating it. Then they showed me some little shallow indentations scooped out in the ground and explained these were used for a game with stones that taught hand-eye coordination. Suddenly the village headman himself is down on his knees demonstrating. Turns out the game in question is just what we would call 'jacks', played with stones. A moment later half the other community members piled in and suddenly there was a full-fledged jacks game underway, with everyone laughing and cheering.
A community game of jacks in Dwankhonzi. The man standing at left in the black and white shirt is the village headman.
As we walked past the school on our way back to the cars to leave, there was an odd animal noise behind us. I glanced back and saw a little grey chicken among the group. We gathered by the car for goodbyes and thanks, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed one of the community members now had the chicken under their arm. A suspicion started to develop as the headman seemed to be launching into a semi-formal speech (he spoke no English). The suspicions were confirmed when they started packing the chicken into a plastic bag, it's head sticking out of a hole. Sure enough, the chicken was a gift to their visitor from Canada. Fortunately two other CARE staff had come along in a separate vehicle, so they were able to take the chicken with them back to Chipata, so we didn't have to figure out how to lug a live chicken around for two more days. In retrospect I'm kicking myself for not showing someone how to use the camera and getting a pic of myself with my chicken.
I really liked the people of Dwankhonzi. I'm seriously considering, when I get back to Canada, seeing about pulling together some simple, educations childrens books and maybe some toys and sending a package through the CARE channels for the kids of Dwankhonzi. They have no school materials right now.
From Dwankhonzi Pedros and I headed on to Lundazi. Another long trip on bad roads in the dark (it gets completely black here by 5:30 p.m. right now.) Reaching Lundazi we checked in at a small guesthouse, then went over to another one for dinner. The guesthouse where we had dinner was clearly once the mansion of a local British colonial lord a hundred years ago. The locals call it "The Castle" because that's exactly what it is. Turrets and all.
The Castle in Lundazi
AT dinner I tried for the first time one of the major traditional Zambian foods - nshima. It's basically a doughy lump made of maize, a little like a dumpling but less firm. You pull off pieces of nshima with your hand, knead them a bit, then use them to scoop up gravy or a local type of relish. It's pretty good actually.
Back to the guesthouse for bed. In my room I found this monster (water bottle added for scale):
While I was pondering what to do about it, it retreated to a high corner near the ceiling. I left it alone and it was gone by morning.
Next post: Day 3 "The Neverending Safari"
When I have time and another window of functioning wireless connection. This may or may not happen before I leave for Zimbabwe tomorrow.