Day 8

Day 8
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Visits to villages today with two of the students at Tetekela: The first is Mofya, 16 years old, who is in 9th grade, wants to finish high school, then go to college and become a doctor. He took us into the large and very crowded compound called Musenga, where he lives with his uncle, on the edge of Kasama. This is not a traditional African village but a place set aside for families moving into Kasama for one reason or another but who have no place to live. The families build their own small village type houses out of fired mud brick with thatched roofs. Musenga has grown in a topsy turvy way since it was set aside for that purpose. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the way the dirt streets and alleys wind around. Small businesses, including a high number of home brew beer parlors (alcoholism is epidemic.), crowd the streets everywhere. People always are trying their best to eek out a living. No one seems to know how many people are living there but the place is teeming with people. Children are everywhere, especially preschoolers, and they follow us around like pied pipers. We visit a couple of families but not Mofya’s. Maybe he is too embarrassed to have us there. One family is a mother, a widow with several children, who is struggling just to survive and sees no hope of anything better. Another is a grandmother caring for her two grandchildren and her husband who has suffered a stroke that leaves him lying in bed (a mat on the dirt floor) , unable even to walk. Their whole house floor plan could be laid out in our bedroom! Even in this bleakness a type of community emerges but it is temporary. Nobody except the very young were born there. There are no ancestral roots to bind them to that land. If they have a choice of where to die they would probably choose to go back to their home village, but the cost makes that unlikely.
Gift, 10 years old, takes us to Lualuo, his traditional village west of Kasama. He lives with his grandmother and his younger brother. Nobody knows how many generations of their family have lived there but the ruined house where he lived with his parents when they were still alive stands a few yards away. His grandmother brews home beer to sell in order to make ends meet and dreams that Gift will grow up to be a big strong educated man, and to that end he walks every day to Tetekela, a distance of several kilometers, where he is seen by his teachers as exceptionally bright. Maybe he has a chance! A neighbor girl walks by in her school uniform. We chat. She is in 4th grade and wants to finish high school and become a Sister. Is that something she says because there are two Sisters sitting right there translating for us ? Or has she seen the kind of work they do with Gift at Tetekela and that strikes a fire in her heart?
Back at Tetekela we join the staff for lunch and then are treated to an afternoon performance of traditional African dances by a group of girls first and then a group of boys, both of whom are accompanied by three boys beating the rhythms on drums. Each group gets enthusiastic cheers and applause by the other children, returning for encores. Then we are totally surprised and honored when two girls dance forward in their traditional way bearing gifts for us: a gorgeous African dress for Paula and a handsome shirt for me, both beautifully crafted by Sister Beatrice. We are blown away! We don our new outfits to wild applause and Joachim says now we look like real Africans! Then things really get going: the drums keep beating, the whole group starts singing in harmony and everyone gets up and dances, the two of us included! It goes on for quite a while. Then they want to end by singing a couple of gospel songs. I tell you, these kids really know how to party.
In the evening we meet with the Kasama Rotary Club and I have a chance to tell them about Hearts for Zambia and our dreams for the work of the SCJ. I commend them for the two projects they have already done: installing a pipe line three years ago from an upland spring to the Hospital at Chilonga so that the hospital, the School of Nursing, and the surrounding community now have adequate water supply; and the installation of a new pump at Tetekela this year when the original one failed. I then emphasized the crucial nature of their financial commitment to the well project on the new property. At Frank Erickson’s suggestion (he is spearheading the Tacoma Narrows Rotary Club focus on this) I told them that a minimum of $1000 USD would be essential if the matching funds from Rotary International are to be realized. They indicated that they are already committed to the project and that they will take that recommendation under consideration. We took a picture of the whole group, including Sister Baptista, and received two copies of their Club banner which we are to present to the Tacoma Narrows Rotary and Tacoma #8 Rotary. They will cherish receiving banners from those two clubs in return. Following adjournment we were treated to an excellent dinner by Emmanuel, our host.
Bruce and Paula Foreman