Today we met Roy at Fountain of Hope to finish our online fundraising project. The internet at Fountain was out, so we decided to go with our friends from Bowdoin University to visit a girl’s orphanage and finish the project in the afternoon. Shazeda first told us about Vision of Hope last week, and we’ve been really excited to visit ever since.
A truly amazing woman named Chitalu founded Vision of Hope. She’s dynamic, intelligent, charismatic and trendy, and so committed to empowering young women. She was in a very abusive marriage before she finally challenged cultural expectations by leaving her husband and taking her young daughter with her. She started out with nothing, but eventually raised the funds to send her daughter to private school and buy the plot of land to start Vision of Hope.
Vision houses girls who are living on the street. Just like at Fountain, Chitalu goes on community and street walks to visit the girls and encourage them to try a new home. When the girls arrive at Vision, they’re given a bed, meals, and an education. There is a classroom on the Vision of Hope premises and Chitalu works together with another woman to offer counseling services. Many of the girls who arrive are pregnant or have young babies. Chitalu tries her best to give them a future and help them make a living by teaching them skills in crafting.
The girls make several products. Their most unique is a rug about the size and shape of a doormat. They use empty plastic cornflower bags as the base. Then, using a bent nail as a hook, they weave strips of colorful cloth into the plastic. The result reminds me a lot of a shag carpet, only colorful, 100% made from recycled materials, and way more exciting. When a rug is sold for 50,000 K, the girl who made it gets 20,000K and the rest is invested in more supplies, food, and other expenses for the girls. Sarah and I both placed orders.
They also make cool gift bottles. They use a local nut that’s very popular here (it’s a lot like a peanut in consistency but a little different in taste—I really like them). They roast or bake the nuts, flavor them with a little bit of olive oil and salt, and then fill empty wine bottles. Then the bottles are closed with the wine corks and sold. They’re actually really pretty and innovative. I can totally picture them sitting on display in someone’s kitchen or out at a party for guests to snack on. I might buy some of those, too J One bottle is 25,000 Kwacha, or $5.
The women also learn how to knit with cotton and weave purses and shoulder bags out of recycled plastic bags they find on the street. I was so excited to see so many 100% recycled goods and woman-made crafts. I was taking tons of pictures! Before we left, the girls let Sarah and I hold their babies and take a few pictures. Sarah even got to try to carry a baby in the traditional Zambian way…by pinching the baby to her back with the long chitenga, a sarong-like skirt the women either wear or use to sling their babies across their backs.
Chitalu told us a few stories that were interesting but sad to hear. She told us that when a girl is to be married, the women of her family sit her down and explain to her that she “must be quiet and strong” and that “Zambian women are strong. No matter what your husband does to you, you must be shhh, keep quiet and be strong”. There is a totally different attitude towards abuse and mistreatment in this culture. Women are meant to be meek and silent. Thank goodness for Chitalu, who is leading the way by crashing through all of those cultural expectations.
She also told us a story about a girl who recently came to Vision. She was incredibly sick with HIV. Her eye was sinking back into her head and she was very weak. It was clear that they couldn’t do anything for her, but Chitalu pooled some money and took her to a clinic anyway. The girl died during the night. Chitalu told us she had been working as a maid for a priest who told her that didn’t have HIV, she was sick because she was being cursed for her bad behavior and a lifetime of servitude to a man of God would cure her. Wow.
We rode the bus home feeling very inspired by Chitalu’s work and excited to visit one last time before our flight home. Back at Fountain, the internet was finally cooperating so we set to work posting the project to the Global Giving website. Sarah had to leave for basketball training at Munali, so I stayed behind and managed to finish in time to get home before dark. We got a confirmation e-mail saying we would receive formal approval of our project in a day or tow. Roy was really excited and said he’d like us to start working on the organization’s website next week. We don’t know that much about building websites, but we’ll try our best.
From Sarah: Today when I was heading to Munali to coach basketball I had another really awful bus ride. You think these will end, and the rude men will stop harassing us, but that simply isn’t the case. The bus took a detour because of traffic and the conductor kept lying to me about where we were going just to mess with me. Luckily a nice man was sitting next to me and explained what was actually going on. At one point they stopped on a dirt road and the conductor said, “Ok, you get off here.” Umm no you asshole I am not getting off in the middle of nowhere. The men on the bus kept saying Muzungu, and looking at me, and laughing. Towards the end of the ride one of them passed his phone back to me and said, “put your number in.” I looked at him as if he were crazy and told him no, and his response was, “I want your number, I want to fuck you.” (side note from Chrissy: It's just not her fault she's so good looking, you know?) You may think that I’m kidding or that I misheard what he said, but no, he said it in English and as clear as day. The rest of the men erupted with laughter as I sat there completely appalled by what he had just said. Thank god my bus stop was only shortly after, but when I got off the bus the conducter grabbed my arm and told me that he would help me get to where I was going. I shook him loose and just ran away. Sometimes I really hate this city.
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