I am in love with the people of Zambia. They are so happy, so full of joy. Their smiles are huge, transforming their faces into beauty that beams out at you. I love to walk down the street and smile at everyone I meet to watch the smile take over their face.
Outside of the big cities like Lusaka, life has not changed much for the people of the villages. They live pretty much as they have for centuries. Huts made of dirt walls and a grass roof, water hauled on your head from the well, laundry done in the river. Some homes may have cement brick walls and some of those may have electricity, but that is rare. Food is hard to grow in the hard dry dust of Zambia, but many keep trying. Life is hard.
The statistic is that the majority of Zambians live on less than $2 a day, what you and I would call extreme poverty. So where is all this happiness coming from? I met a social scientist last weekend who explained it this way, “Whatever you have is normal. You do not know you are poor.”
They have very little but they proclaim, “God is good! He has blessed me with much.” And what little they have, they will gladly give to you. They are sincere and generous, warm and welcoming. They laugh loud and often and it is infectious.
Now take everything I just said, and disregard it when it comes to the orphans.
The first day I met the orphans, we had invited them to the church to color and get a little bag of treats. My friends Tim & Katrien had helped me move up here from South Africa and brought supplies which had been donated: toothpaste and toothbrushes from Katrien’s dentist in Belgium, art supplies and girl’s hair accessories from Santa Cruz, California (thank you Sissy and Club Shoreline volleyball!), potato chips from a friend of a friend in Pretoria (thank you Lerina!), and we added in toy cars for the boys. We were expecting to get the same kind of reception we always get at the orphan centers in Shoshanguve. Laughter, smiles, hugs, high fives, excitement and enthusiasm!
You could have heard a pin drop as the children quietly filed in. They were so serious, somber. They were shy and withdrawn. Normally, it is easy to get a child to smile. Nothing worked. When they were coloring, there was no laughter or even much talking. What a difference from the children in the programs in South Africa! I found this encouraging. The children who had been part of a daily program for the last couple of years are more confident, affectionate, outgoing, and down-right happy! They know how to have fun. They are clearly receiving love, attention and given opportunities to be kids!
Here in Mansa, the orphans only come about once a month to receive help in the form of food, blankets, clothing, or school fees. That is because right now only 11 children are sponsored. So instead of a daily program for 11 children, the church here has been taking care of about 75 orphans by prioritizing their needs on a monthly basis. AFnetAid is determined to expand the support base to start a daily program for all 75. That is why I am here.
I started by doing research to determine what kind of a program would work here. How far do the children have to walk to get here and get to school? If it is too far, maybe a daily program isn’t feasible. What kind and how many meals are they getting now? What do the children most need to receive to have a chance at a better future? To help them smile again?
I went on home visits. What I learned was disheartening and daunting. I learned why the orphans are different from the other children and the adults of Mansa, the happy ones I began this blog telling you about. The orphans know they are poor because they sit in the dirt and watch the other children walking past chattering on their way to school. They cannot go because they can’t afford the school fees. They know they are poor because even if they have the school fees, they are embarrassed wearing their rags and bare feet to school when the other children are in uniforms and black school shoes. The little girls wear dresses until they are falling off of them. They know they are poor when they go to bed with hunger each night because they only get one meal a day. They know they are not normal, and they long to be normal children.
I will introduce you to just a few of the children I met on these home visits. This is Christine, she is 16 and lives with her aunt. She lost both parents to AIDS when she was a baby. Flavior is also 16 and lives with her aunt. She has had malaria and tuberculosis so now needs to have her eyes tested. We visited one grandmother who watched six of her own children die and was now caring for eight grandchildren. There are a total of 13 in her house, one of them visibly in the final stages of AIDS.
Susan is 12 and lives with her grandma. This is a picture of me, church volunteer Mathilda, and Susan’s grandma, her eyes clouded over with malaria. Susan was not home. She was in town selling fritters. She had been doing this for the last month to save up enough money to pay her school fees so she could go back to school. What is this exorbitant sum she is working so hard to obtain? $4
Grandma said that they need bedding, clothing, food, and grass for the roof before the rainy season comes. When I asked her what was the most important thing we could do for Susan, she said, “I want you to give her an education because otherwise what will happen to her when I die?” This was her biggest fear.
Then there’s Ester. Ester says she is not going back to school, everybody laughs at her. They make fun of her because she is bigger than the rest of her class. That is because Ester is 13 years old and only in grade 3. Whenever there was not enough money for school fees, she would have to drop out. Each time she would work and save and go back, but she was falling further and further behind. Now she has given up.
If the children were home, I would ask them, “What do you do for fun?” I wanted to find out what kinds of activities they like so we could offer them in the program. They just looked at me blankly. Fun is a foreign concept. You have to give them ideas. Do you like to draw, read, sing, dance, play soccer? Mostly, they just want help with their school work so they won’t struggle so much.
After the home visits, it appeared that a daily program was desperately needed. The children all said they would walk as far as they had to if it meant a second meal that day. But I needed still more information. The children I met all had different school times. I needed to know what schools they attended, what hours they were in school, the ages and grades of the children, how many children in each age group, and so on.
So we had a registration day for a new daily orphan program. 84 orphans and their guardians showed up to register. The orphans attend 8 schools with 12 different starting and stopping times! In Shoshanguve, all the children come to the orphan center after school from 2-4. Easy. Here, each school has time periods based on grade level with times like 7-10, 10-12, 9-1, 11-2, 1-5, and numerous other impossibly overlapping combinations. My powers of organization will be put to the test here!
Registration day gave us lots of helpful information, and also gave me hope! I saw smiles and heard laughter from the orphans for the first time!
We divided the children into three groups. Grades 1-4 started in the registration area filling out the paper work and eating oranges and calcium cookies. Grades 5-7 started outside playing games, with me of course. Those of you who know me well know that I am always in charge of the games!
Grades 8-11 started inside the orphan center and were asked to draw designs for ideas of what to paint on the blank walls inside. Mostly they drew pictures of food, flowers, and brick houses. They sat on the cement floor because we do not have tables and chairs yet. 
Back to the fun part. I thought maybe if I asked them to do silly things, they might loosen up and maybe, just maybe, smile. We did relay races. Remember the potato between the knees game? You put a potato between your knees, walk across a certain distance and then, without using your hands, drop the potato into a pot. It makes you walk funny and YES, the children laughed! They cheered each other on in the marble on a spoon race and the water on a spoon race. Then we topped it off with a rousing game of volleyball over the clothesline, until they popped the beachball in their exuberant whacking of the flimsy thing.
These are my goals - to give the children back their childhood and give them back a future. I think about what the parents must have felt when these children were just babies – the positive dreams they had for their future. The love they felt is evident in the wonderful names they chose for them. Names like Gift, Given, Loveness, Delight, Precious, Blessings, Faith, Hope, Joy, Praise, Savior. Those of you who are parents, can you remember that moment? When you held that new little life in your arms and dreamed of their future…
Maybe the parent’s dreams for their children didn’t have to die with them. Maybe some of you out there will consider sponsoring a child. I know some of you already support me or a child in our programs, or even both! But maybe you are reading this and you are not a regular supporter. Will you think about it?
$35 a month will ensure that a child has school fees, a uniform, shoes, a nutritious meal, help with homework, and time to be a child! At slightly more than a dollar a day, you will barely miss it. But can you see what a life changing thing you will be doing for that child? If you can’t see it, just wait, I will show you! I will show you photos of the children after the program starts, and you judge for yourself.
If you would like more information about child sponsorship, or would like to receive an email flier you can forward on to others, please write to me at Lisa@afnet.org
You can also learn more at www.afnetaid.org
Outside of the big cities like Lusaka, life has not changed much for the people of the villages. They live pretty much as they have for centuries. Huts made of dirt walls and a grass roof, water hauled on your head from the well, laundry done in the river. Some homes may have cement brick walls and some of those may have electricity, but that is rare. Food is hard to grow in the hard dry dust of Zambia, but many keep trying. Life is hard.
The statistic is that the majority of Zambians live on less than $2 a day, what you and I would call extreme poverty. So where is all this happiness coming from? I met a social scientist last weekend who explained it this way, “Whatever you have is normal. You do not know you are poor.”
They have very little but they proclaim, “God is good! He has blessed me with much.” And what little they have, they will gladly give to you. They are sincere and generous, warm and welcoming. They laugh loud and often and it is infectious.
Now take everything I just said, and disregard it when it comes to the orphans.
The first day I met the orphans, we had invited them to the church to color and get a little bag of treats. My friends Tim & Katrien had helped me move up here from South Africa and brought supplies which had been donated: toothpaste and toothbrushes from Katrien’s dentist in Belgium, art supplies and girl’s hair accessories from Santa Cruz, California (thank you Sissy and Club Shoreline volleyball!), potato chips from a friend of a friend in Pretoria (thank you Lerina!), and we added in toy cars for the boys. We were expecting to get the same kind of reception we always get at the orphan centers in Shoshanguve. Laughter, smiles, hugs, high fives, excitement and enthusiasm!
You could have heard a pin drop as the children quietly filed in. They were so serious, somber. They were shy and withdrawn. Normally, it is easy to get a child to smile. Nothing worked. When they were coloring, there was no laughter or even much talking. What a difference from the children in the programs in South Africa! I found this encouraging. The children who had been part of a daily program for the last couple of years are more confident, affectionate, outgoing, and down-right happy! They know how to have fun. They are clearly receiving love, attention and given opportunities to be kids!Here in Mansa, the orphans only come about once a month to receive help in the form of food, blankets, clothing, or school fees. That is because right now only 11 children are sponsored. So instead of a daily program for 11 children, the church here has been taking care of about 75 orphans by prioritizing their needs on a monthly basis. AFnetAid is determined to expand the support base to start a daily program for all 75. That is why I am here.
I started by doing research to determine what kind of a program would work here. How far do the children have to walk to get here and get to school? If it is too far, maybe a daily program isn’t feasible. What kind and how many meals are they getting now? What do the children most need to receive to have a chance at a better future? To help them smile again?
I went on home visits. What I learned was disheartening and daunting. I learned why the orphans are different from the other children and the adults of Mansa, the happy ones I began this blog telling you about. The orphans know they are poor because they sit in the dirt and watch the other children walking past chattering on their way to school. They cannot go because they can’t afford the school fees. They know they are poor because even if they have the school fees, they are embarrassed wearing their rags and bare feet to school when the other children are in uniforms and black school shoes. The little girls wear dresses until they are falling off of them. They know they are poor when they go to bed with hunger each night because they only get one meal a day. They know they are not normal, and they long to be normal children.
I will introduce you to just a few of the children I met on these home visits. This is Christine, she is 16 and lives with her aunt. She lost both parents to AIDS when she was a baby. Flavior is also 16 and lives with her aunt. She has had malaria and tuberculosis so now needs to have her eyes tested. We visited one grandmother who watched six of her own children die and was now caring for eight grandchildren. There are a total of 13 in her house, one of them visibly in the final stages of AIDS.
Susan is 12 and lives with her grandma. This is a picture of me, church volunteer Mathilda, and Susan’s grandma, her eyes clouded over with malaria. Susan was not home. She was in town selling fritters. She had been doing this for the last month to save up enough money to pay her school fees so she could go back to school. What is this exorbitant sum she is working so hard to obtain? $4
Grandma said that they need bedding, clothing, food, and grass for the roof before the rainy season comes. When I asked her what was the most important thing we could do for Susan, she said, “I want you to give her an education because otherwise what will happen to her when I die?” This was her biggest fear.
Then there’s Ester. Ester says she is not going back to school, everybody laughs at her. They make fun of her because she is bigger than the rest of her class. That is because Ester is 13 years old and only in grade 3. Whenever there was not enough money for school fees, she would have to drop out. Each time she would work and save and go back, but she was falling further and further behind. Now she has given up.
If the children were home, I would ask them, “What do you do for fun?” I wanted to find out what kinds of activities they like so we could offer them in the program. They just looked at me blankly. Fun is a foreign concept. You have to give them ideas. Do you like to draw, read, sing, dance, play soccer? Mostly, they just want help with their school work so they won’t struggle so much.
After the home visits, it appeared that a daily program was desperately needed. The children all said they would walk as far as they had to if it meant a second meal that day. But I needed still more information. The children I met all had different school times. I needed to know what schools they attended, what hours they were in school, the ages and grades of the children, how many children in each age group, and so on.
So we had a registration day for a new daily orphan program. 84 orphans and their guardians showed up to register. The orphans attend 8 schools with 12 different starting and stopping times! In Shoshanguve, all the children come to the orphan center after school from 2-4. Easy. Here, each school has time periods based on grade level with times like 7-10, 10-12, 9-1, 11-2, 1-5, and numerous other impossibly overlapping combinations. My powers of organization will be put to the test here!
Registration day gave us lots of helpful information, and also gave me hope! I saw smiles and heard laughter from the orphans for the first time!
We divided the children into three groups. Grades 1-4 started in the registration area filling out the paper work and eating oranges and calcium cookies. Grades 5-7 started outside playing games, with me of course. Those of you who know me well know that I am always in charge of the games!
Grades 8-11 started inside the orphan center and were asked to draw designs for ideas of what to paint on the blank walls inside. Mostly they drew pictures of food, flowers, and brick houses. They sat on the cement floor because we do not have tables and chairs yet. 
Back to the fun part. I thought maybe if I asked them to do silly things, they might loosen up and maybe, just maybe, smile. We did relay races. Remember the potato between the knees game? You put a potato between your knees, walk across a certain distance and then, without using your hands, drop the potato into a pot. It makes you walk funny and YES, the children laughed! They cheered each other on in the marble on a spoon race and the water on a spoon race. Then we topped it off with a rousing game of volleyball over the clothesline, until they popped the beachball in their exuberant whacking of the flimsy thing.
These are my goals - to give the children back their childhood and give them back a future. I think about what the parents must have felt when these children were just babies – the positive dreams they had for their future. The love they felt is evident in the wonderful names they chose for them. Names like Gift, Given, Loveness, Delight, Precious, Blessings, Faith, Hope, Joy, Praise, Savior. Those of you who are parents, can you remember that moment? When you held that new little life in your arms and dreamed of their future…
Maybe the parent’s dreams for their children didn’t have to die with them. Maybe some of you out there will consider sponsoring a child. I know some of you already support me or a child in our programs, or even both! But maybe you are reading this and you are not a regular supporter. Will you think about it?
$35 a month will ensure that a child has school fees, a uniform, shoes, a nutritious meal, help with homework, and time to be a child! At slightly more than a dollar a day, you will barely miss it. But can you see what a life changing thing you will be doing for that child? If you can’t see it, just wait, I will show you! I will show you photos of the children after the program starts, and you judge for yourself.
If you would like more information about child sponsorship, or would like to receive an email flier you can forward on to others, please write to me at Lisa@afnet.org
You can also learn more at www.afnetaid.org
Comments
Post a Comment