We adjusted our schedule with Mwape so that we can start to visit the orphanage Mike and Dave were assigned to, Fountain of Hope. It’s a boys’ orphanage but during the day it’s a school for both boys and girls. Sport In Action has a few sports programs that go on there every day, but Friday is their actual “sports day”. When we arrived, there were basketball, volleyball, and soccer activities going on for the entire afternoon. We felt bad eating lunch in front of the little kids, so on our way there we got a fresh banana each from a street vendor and picked up really yummy treats called fritas. They’re basically just fried pieces of dough but they’re really good, especially when they’re still hot and fresh.
When we arrived, we met with one of the peer leaders, Steven, who has spent many years living at Fountain. He’s 21 now and helps with the sports programs. He’s a great role model for the other boys who are living there. He introduced us to the head teacher, who seemed like a really great addition to the adults working there. Unfortunately, he applied to a government program and was accepted, so he’ll have to leave the orphanage next week and move to do new work in the Copperbelt, another Zambian province that borders with Congo. He seemed really overwhelmed because he hasn’t found a successor yet and needs to document all of his projects and goals for the new head teacher to read (whenever they find one). He also mentioned that the teachers don’t usually come every day. When they skip work, many of the students have no one to teach them, which is especially problematic with exams approaching.
This information seemed to match what we already knew about Fountain. Ivy visits there often and told us that they’re constantly running out of food for the boys. She says the caretaker doesn’t plan ahead and for a couple of weeks they’ll have food and he won’t organize how they’re getting more. Eventually, they’ll run out and they have to tell the boys living there to hit the streets and beg until they can get more. Ivy’s been working on visiting major super markets and bakeries here to speak to managers about making regular donations. Apparently, many loaves of bread are just thrown out every day if they’re not purchased, and many managers agreed to give them to Fountain instead. She’s really excited about it and we’re proud of her for taking the initiative to figure that out J. We also talked to another volunteer yesterday, Shiobban, who said she’d never been to Fountain before but she knew that it almost went completely bankrupt a couple of years ago. Her university had to inject a lot of money into it to keep it from going under. When they investigated the situation, they discovered that a teacher or caretaker there had been laundering money and was suspected of doing, as she said, many “naughty things with the children”. He was obviously kicked out, but it’s clear from all of the stories that Fountain has faced consistent challenges.
Steven gave us a tour of the compound. We saw the classrooms, dorm, kitchen, dining area, and a section where they’re about to finish installing a new water system so they don’t run out of water anymore. There’s an above- and below-ground tank and piping system. The buildings were quite run down and the rooms where they stored food were almost completely empty. We stopped by the medical clinic that they have on site and spoke with the nurse. She said that mothers come every Wednesday morning to get their babies a check up and vaccines. I asked her if I could help and she said that while I have to be a nurse to do some of the tasks, I could probably help with polio vaccines (it’s just a drip, so I don’t need too much medical training). I’m so excited to go next Wednesday morning before our session at Tionge so I can learn about what she does there! Sarah’s going to come Wednesday mornings as well and help out in the classrooms or with sports.
They have a really nice library there, with tons and tons of books that were donated by universities. All of our favorite children’s books were there and Sarah read a group of kids our favorite, Oh the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss. Then they chose other books and read them for her. Meanwhile, I had a really long conversation with another one of the older orphanage residents, Jackson. His story was really intense but I got to learn a lot. He told me that he was born in the Copperbelt, but doesn’t remember his father because he died so long ago. His mother worked as a prostitute.
It’s interesting to note that we studied something called “circular migration” in Dr. Broverman’s HIV/AIDS class at Duke. In many developing countries, the men will leave their city or rural village to go work in the mines (diamonds, gold, and in Zambia’s case, copper) for a couple of months each year to earn money for their families. While they’re there, they might pay sex workers for sex, become infected with HIV, and then return to their wives in their villages. Through that type of migration for work, HIV spreads to rural villages. We actually met someone in a village outside of Livingstone last weekend who goes to the copper mines for work for a couple of months every year. We obviously don’t know for sure that he has HIV or was unfaithful; it’s just an example.
At any rate, I was not surprised to hear that prostitution is common in the Copperbelt or that Jackson’s mother found work through that particular avenue. He told me that he was living on the streets by the time he was 5 years old (many children who work on the streets are actually not double orphans, meaning both parents are dead. Often, their parent or parents can’t afford to keep them and tell them they have to leave. In other cases, children steal money from their parents for food and are forced to leave when they get caught). Like many children who live on the street, Jackson was constantly begging for money or food and had to steal a lot of the time. Ivy told us later that he once spent time in jail for robbing a woman (he said it was one of his biggest regrets because he only wanted money for food but will never forget the fear in the woman’s eyes. Most men will at least fight back, whereas women will just give up their possessions in an instant because they’re scared of getting hurt or raped).
He was also addicted to benzene, a drug that the user sniffs or puts on the upper lip to get high. For homeless people, getting high is the only way to stifle pain or feel warm at night. He left the Copperbelt eventually and came to stay at Fountain in Lusaka when he was 11. He returned to briefly visit his mother at the Copperbelt during the first half of high school only to discover that she had already died of AIDS.
It’s hard to explain that while his story is tragic in a very “typical Africa” way, the people here don’t see it that way. While it’s terrible, they view the situation as a fact of life just like Americans might view dying of cancer or in a car accident as terrible but a fact of life. And just like Americans are determined and forward thinking about curing cancer, ending drunk driving accidents, etc., Jackson is one of many Africans who look for the way to create a brighter future.
He’s in 12th grade now and will take his exams shortly. After he’s completed school, he wants to return to the Copperbelt and open a new orphanage just like Fountain to get children off the street. He plans on starting a car washing business during the week and having a sports program on Saturdays. He’ll travel through the streets, listen to the children’s stories, and invite them to come have a fun day on Saturdays and get a good meal in. Once he’s raised enough money, he’ll start building the orphanage and slowly take in children from the streets. He’s a pretty talented painter, and thinks he can use money raised through his paintings to invest in car washing machines and fund his journey back to the Copperbelt.
It sounds so unrealistic and dreamy but he is so determined, and I have to agree that there is no better person for the job. He knows from his own experience of life on the streets—the desperation, drug abuse, constant hunger—all of it. He understands the life and the challenges in ways that someone like me never could. He told me that it’s been his dream to build an orphanage in his home province ever since he moved to Fountain and got a second chance. He’ll have his high school education and he’s motivated, so I would never discourage him from at least trying. It’s important for children on the streets to have a positive role model, so even if he only serves them in that way, he’ll make a difference. I wish I had a spare 100,000 dollars that I could use to help his plan come to life. I’ll at least be able to stay in touch with him and see how things are going.
After all of this, I rejoined Sarah and the kids and they helped us read some children’s books in Nyanja. They thought it was funny to hear us struggle with super complicated words. If we ever return to Zambia, we’re learning Nyanja because it’s way too embarrassing to know only a couple of words.
We spent the rest of the day outside playing with the kids. We played volleyball for a while and Sarah joined a pick up game of basketball. We had to leave at 4 p.m. so we’d have time to walk home before it got dark. At the end of days like this, we always spend the whole walk home reflecting on everything we learned and talking in circles. There are so many challenges for schools and orphanages here and many of them are interconnected—it’s absolutely impossible to solve the problems without a very multidisciplinary approach.
We rushed to shower and get dressed because we’d been invited to a special dinner. Every year, a large group of students from universities in the U.K. come to work with Sport In Action. Their program works closely with the organization, and the students are referred to as the IDEALS students. Sport In Action prepares a big dinner for them every year so that they can try out Zambian food, and Mwape invited us to come! There was some food we recognized—nshima, rice and veggies, beans, two kinds of baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade French fries, chicken stew, beef stew—and there were also some dishes we weren’t familiar with. These included large, big, dried fish in a mystery sauce, tiny dried fish that you just eat plain (called kapenta), really yummy pastries that were like very flat, rolled up pancakes, and deep-fried caterpillars.
We opted out of trying the fish, but we couldn’t leave Zambia without eating a fried caterpillar—it just felt wrong. So we each took one and wow, what an experience. When you first bite into them, you expect them to dissolve in your mouth because they’re black and crispy, but they’re actually super chewy and took at least fifteen seconds to chew well enough for swallowing. The problem is, after the first couple of chews, you register how unbelievably sour and salty they are and then you start thinking about the fact that a caterpillar is in your mouth and before you know it, you don’t think you’ll be able to swallow without gagging. One girl actually did and had to run outside to spit hers out, but Sarah and I managed quite gracefully. I should mention that we do look really nauseated in the pictures haha. Mwape was laughing his head off at all of us. It was fun to eat and hang out with the Zambians and the IDEALS students, and they made us really yummy Cadbury hot chocolate after! It was a really great end to the week J
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