To any and everyone who supported the Maloba Community School Project in one way or another,
In the midst of the unpredictable rain season, a clear, bright sky smiled down on the unfolding scene at the center of Maloba Village in the southern African country of Zambia on the morning of January 12, 2009. Not long after the crescendo of habitual dawn village noises began – a cacophony of rooster call and answer layered on top the steady rhythm of women pounding (thump, thump) cassava with mortar and pestle, short riffs of children’s laughter scattered in between – a soft silence momentarily engulfed and overshadowed the bustling activity of an African village waking up. Lelo ni lelo. Today is the day. Putting behind them countless days of walking, carrying tired feet and tired minds down a narrow path winged by leaning, snake-green grass for fourteen kilometers, to and from, to reach the closest community school, the children came here, under the tallest tree in Maloba – within sight of their own village, their own homes, their own mothers – to begin the new school term.
This is a world where the word “government” means little more than a slightly familiar face somersaulting by bare feet on a crumpled scrap of newspaper, dancing in a warm, afternoon breeze as men with machetes and hoes draped across their tired, angular shoulders and women with baskets full of cassava atop their regal heads make their way home from the unforgiving fields. It is a world where a simple obstacle like distance keeps a child from attending class, increasing opportunity, finding employment, battling poverty. It is a world where the simple factor of where a child just happens to be born determines his or her quality of life and whether that life will be one filled with the immeasurable gift of knowledge.
But on that promising Monday morning, there gathered under a tree a community bound together not just by the extended family ties that run throughout the village, but also by a common drive to give their children the kind of education they need and deserve in order to make a brighter future for themselves and for Zambia. They gathered to make this dream a reality themselves, with their own callused hands, without waiting for a day when those elected to build infrastructure can actually provide education for every Zambian child. They gathered because, through a window provided by the Peace Corps Partnership Program, they would soon have the means by which they could buy the materials necessary for building their own community school, from which further government assistance in the form of teacher training and instructional materials would be provided in the future. They gathered to start organizing classes and to start teaching, even when the only place to do so is under a tree, so that the school would be filled with the sounds of learning as soon as construction is complete. They gathered because contributors in America gathered, raising whatever funds they could for the Maloba Community School Project. They gathered because of you.
I’m thanking you not just as a development worker who happens to live in a foreign country and knows tangentially about the problems facing the poorest of the poor in Zambia. I’m thanking you as a resident of Maloba Village, who talks and lives and laughs with these people every day, who fetches her water at the local well with the mothers of the village in the mornings and hears their hopes for something better, whose challenging days after long rides on her bike in the sweltering African sun are immediately made better by a smile from one of the children who will directly benefit from your contribution. I am thanking you, and so is Maloba Village, my home away from home.
Although raising the necessary funds for the Maloba Community School Project was only the first step, it was an immense step indeed. With your help, enough money has been raised to build a government-standard community school, consisting of two classrooms with a teachers’ office in between. The clearing of the school sight, the laying of the foundation, the making of tens of thousands of mud bricks, the cementing of the floor, the construction of the roof, and the painting of the walls will all be done by community members themselves. This will take months of intensive labor. This is how ardently Maloba wants its children to learn. But without the financial assistance your contribution and so many others have provided, they would still be waiting for their chance to work for development in their community. This is far from a hand-out, an ephemeral act of charity with no lasting effect. This is something that will fundamentally change life in Maloba Village. And on the morning of January 12, I was overcome with emotion at just how quickly and just how drastically it already has. In the now nine months I have been living in Maloba, I have never seen such excitement, such enthusiasm, such curiosity in the eyes of the children I have come to know and love.
On a more personal level, this project has highlighted for me something I have always known to be true but never completely grasped until living in a mud hut in a rural African village. Where I happen to have been born, where I happen to have grown up, the family I happen to have been born into, and the friends I happen to have met along the way are all priceless blessings that I should never, ever take for granted. In more instances than I can count, my heart has threatened to burst with warmth by the support this project has generated from people I know both directly and indirectly back home. So far away from everything I knew for the first 22 years of my life, forced to face the unfamiliar each and every day, you have made me feel connected, comforted, and strong. And for that, no words of thanks are worthy enough.
Lastly, along with all the joys and lessons I have the fortune to experience living in the far-out community of Maloba unfortunately comes a difficulty in frequently communicating with those of you so many, many miles away. Without a doubt, I will do my best to send along updates on how the project is progressing as often as I can from now until the end of my Peace Corps service in April 2010.
Twatotela sana (We are thanking you very much),
Sara Blackwell
Peace Corps Volunteer
Maloba Village, Zambia
Saturday, March 7, 2009
March 1, 2009
Mutende mukwai! (a Bemba greeting of health and peace)
Once again, the amount of time between updates is inexcusable, a fact for which I will more than likely have to apologize for at the beginning of every mass e-mail for the entirety of my Peace Corps service. Rather than launch into an extended apology, however, I will simply plunge straight into brief accounts of the many activities that have composed life here in Zambia for the past 5 months or so and that have, as a consequence, resulted in my recluse-like behavior.
To start, the work side of things has been more hectic and fulfilling than I ever expected. It seems like there's always some new project to start or idea to build on, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been placed in a community that aims to take full advantage of having a Peace Corps volunteer working and living in their area. It is a not-uncommon Peace Corps experience to struggle in finding the kind of motivation and enthusiasm that matches their own within those they are working and living with in the village, but I, thankfully, have more often than not been blessed to work with some of the most determined groups and individuals that I have ever met.
Some highlights from the past few months include a 'VCT Field Day', which I organized in October. This basically involved inviting one of the health clinics in my area to set up 'Voluntary Counseling and Testing' (VCT) for a day so that people could receive HIV testing along with some HIV/AIDS sensitization in the form of presentations by locally-trained peer educators. Acknowledging the power of football (or 'soccer' for all of you people in the States), I invited each of the 8 villages I work with to form their own teams to play against one another throughout the day. All and all, it was a resounding success, with over 300 people attending and everyone hoping to repeat the program every 6 months or so, which will definitely encourage the idea of periodic, continuous testing as well.
Being a LIFE (Linking Income, Food, and the Environment) volunteer, the past months have also been some of the busiest of the year, seeing as Zambia's rain season runs from early November until late March. This is pretty much the most important time of the year for rural farmers (aka absolutely everyone I live with in the village) as they spend all day, every day, in their fields, working for the best yield they can possibly manage, which will, in turn, determine how much income they will generate for that year. The main crops here in the northern part of Zambia are maize, cassava, groundnuts (what we call peanuts), and beans, though many people grow plenty of other things like pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and garden vegetables, mostly for home consumption. With pretty much their standard of living based on the success of each year's harvest, nearly everyone works physically harder during this time than I've ever seen anyone work in my entire life. Let me just say that I will never look at farm machinery the same way again. Farmers here basically take wild African bush and turn it into hectares upon hectares of organized, cultivated land simply with large hoes in their (extremely callused) hands. A traditional technique for generating high yields here is called 'chitemene', which is a slash-and-burn system that is one of the main contributors to deforestation in Zambia and is brutal on the soil. Part of my job is to promote conservation farming techniques that preserve the soil and incorporate trees into the farming system, rather than destroying them. To this end, I organized and facilitated a workshop in November where I gathered members of the many farmers' and women's groups I work with to discuss in detail many of the things we'd been talking about informally for months, such as minimum tillage, seed spacing and storage, agroforestry, composting, and natural fertilizers and pesticides. Not only was it incredibly effective to have many of my counterparts in the same room sharing ideas, but this was sort of a culminating moment for me in terms of how far my language and extension skills have come since the beginning of my service. Following the workshop, I implemented a seed multiplication project with all the attending groups, the basic idea being to give a small amount of various seeds to farmers who will return double the amount they were given of each type after harvest. This increased supply will then be given out to other farmers for the next season, growing and growing each year. In short, these many months have included a lot of time talking agriculture and working out in the fields with my counterparts whenever the pretty fantastic rainstorms don't keep us stuck inside.
After following up with a lot of the Conservation Farming workshop participants, I decided that a similar type of interactive program focused on basic business skills would be beneficial to a lot of people in my area. It may be hard to wrap your head around, but illiteracy and a poor education system overall has resulted in most of the people I work with lacking skills in basic record-keeping of costs/sales, calculation of profit/loss, product-value addition (e.g. making and selling peanut butter instead of just raw peanuts), and long-term planning. Seeing as I'm aiming to start small-scale income-generating activities with a lot of these groups and individuals, these skills are key if the projects are to be successful and sustainable. In any event, another workshop was organized in January and was equally successful, laying a strong foundation for IGAs we hope to work on in the future.
My biggest undertaking above all for the last 5 months, however, has been getting the Maloba Community School up and running. Due to the overwhelming and simply amazing support we received from so many of you in the States, we raised double the amount of funds we were aiming to raise, totaling approximately 40 million Zambian kwatcha (around $8,000). This basically means that we now have the opportunity to build a community school of a standard that will almost guarantee further investment and development from the government in the future. In other words, the sustainability of the project has greatly increased due to the additional funds, a fact that we are all so ecstatic about. Instead of going into many of the details of how the project is going so far here, I've attached a thank you letter I wrote to any and everyone who supported the project in one way or another, so please read it if you get the chance.
Aside from all that, I truly cannot believe that it's now been a little over a year since I left what was once my only definition of home and found an extended one here. This also means that it's now been over a year since I've seen many of you, which simultaneously saddens me and reassures me that, if the last year is any standard by which to measure time, I will once again be seeing many of you before I know it. This past year has brought more emotional ups and downs than I thought humanely possible, but I can say without reservation that it has been one of the most memorable and formidable years of my life. Zambia has truly felt like a home away from home when I needed it most, including through the death of both of my truly heroic grandfathers since I left home. Fellow Peace Corps volunteers and the friends and family I have made at the village level have been such a source of strength and inspiration throughout my experience, for which I am eternally grateful.
I'll end with my routine plea that you continue to send e-mails and letters, which are all read and re-read with appreciation and affection. Any updates are extremely appreciated as I spend many very quiet nights in Maloba Village filing through fond memories and simply wondering what everyone back home is up to and how they are doing. Hoping you are all happy, healthy, and loving life... Love and miss you all madly.
Tukesamonana (We'll be seeing each other),
Sara
Once again, the amount of time between updates is inexcusable, a fact for which I will more than likely have to apologize for at the beginning of every mass e-mail for the entirety of my Peace Corps service. Rather than launch into an extended apology, however, I will simply plunge straight into brief accounts of the many activities that have composed life here in Zambia for the past 5 months or so and that have, as a consequence, resulted in my recluse-like behavior.
To start, the work side of things has been more hectic and fulfilling than I ever expected. It seems like there's always some new project to start or idea to build on, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been placed in a community that aims to take full advantage of having a Peace Corps volunteer working and living in their area. It is a not-uncommon Peace Corps experience to struggle in finding the kind of motivation and enthusiasm that matches their own within those they are working and living with in the village, but I, thankfully, have more often than not been blessed to work with some of the most determined groups and individuals that I have ever met.
Some highlights from the past few months include a 'VCT Field Day', which I organized in October. This basically involved inviting one of the health clinics in my area to set up 'Voluntary Counseling and Testing' (VCT) for a day so that people could receive HIV testing along with some HIV/AIDS sensitization in the form of presentations by locally-trained peer educators. Acknowledging the power of football (or 'soccer' for all of you people in the States), I invited each of the 8 villages I work with to form their own teams to play against one another throughout the day. All and all, it was a resounding success, with over 300 people attending and everyone hoping to repeat the program every 6 months or so, which will definitely encourage the idea of periodic, continuous testing as well.
Being a LIFE (Linking Income, Food, and the Environment) volunteer, the past months have also been some of the busiest of the year, seeing as Zambia's rain season runs from early November until late March. This is pretty much the most important time of the year for rural farmers (aka absolutely everyone I live with in the village) as they spend all day, every day, in their fields, working for the best yield they can possibly manage, which will, in turn, determine how much income they will generate for that year. The main crops here in the northern part of Zambia are maize, cassava, groundnuts (what we call peanuts), and beans, though many people grow plenty of other things like pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and garden vegetables, mostly for home consumption. With pretty much their standard of living based on the success of each year's harvest, nearly everyone works physically harder during this time than I've ever seen anyone work in my entire life. Let me just say that I will never look at farm machinery the same way again. Farmers here basically take wild African bush and turn it into hectares upon hectares of organized, cultivated land simply with large hoes in their (extremely callused) hands. A traditional technique for generating high yields here is called 'chitemene', which is a slash-and-burn system that is one of the main contributors to deforestation in Zambia and is brutal on the soil. Part of my job is to promote conservation farming techniques that preserve the soil and incorporate trees into the farming system, rather than destroying them. To this end, I organized and facilitated a workshop in November where I gathered members of the many farmers' and women's groups I work with to discuss in detail many of the things we'd been talking about informally for months, such as minimum tillage, seed spacing and storage, agroforestry, composting, and natural fertilizers and pesticides. Not only was it incredibly effective to have many of my counterparts in the same room sharing ideas, but this was sort of a culminating moment for me in terms of how far my language and extension skills have come since the beginning of my service. Following the workshop, I implemented a seed multiplication project with all the attending groups, the basic idea being to give a small amount of various seeds to farmers who will return double the amount they were given of each type after harvest. This increased supply will then be given out to other farmers for the next season, growing and growing each year. In short, these many months have included a lot of time talking agriculture and working out in the fields with my counterparts whenever the pretty fantastic rainstorms don't keep us stuck inside.
After following up with a lot of the Conservation Farming workshop participants, I decided that a similar type of interactive program focused on basic business skills would be beneficial to a lot of people in my area. It may be hard to wrap your head around, but illiteracy and a poor education system overall has resulted in most of the people I work with lacking skills in basic record-keeping of costs/sales, calculation of profit/loss, product-value addition (e.g. making and selling peanut butter instead of just raw peanuts), and long-term planning. Seeing as I'm aiming to start small-scale income-generating activities with a lot of these groups and individuals, these skills are key if the projects are to be successful and sustainable. In any event, another workshop was organized in January and was equally successful, laying a strong foundation for IGAs we hope to work on in the future.
My biggest undertaking above all for the last 5 months, however, has been getting the Maloba Community School up and running. Due to the overwhelming and simply amazing support we received from so many of you in the States, we raised double the amount of funds we were aiming to raise, totaling approximately 40 million Zambian kwatcha (around $8,000). This basically means that we now have the opportunity to build a community school of a standard that will almost guarantee further investment and development from the government in the future. In other words, the sustainability of the project has greatly increased due to the additional funds, a fact that we are all so ecstatic about. Instead of going into many of the details of how the project is going so far here, I've attached a thank you letter I wrote to any and everyone who supported the project in one way or another, so please read it if you get the chance.
Aside from all that, I truly cannot believe that it's now been a little over a year since I left what was once my only definition of home and found an extended one here. This also means that it's now been over a year since I've seen many of you, which simultaneously saddens me and reassures me that, if the last year is any standard by which to measure time, I will once again be seeing many of you before I know it. This past year has brought more emotional ups and downs than I thought humanely possible, but I can say without reservation that it has been one of the most memorable and formidable years of my life. Zambia has truly felt like a home away from home when I needed it most, including through the death of both of my truly heroic grandfathers since I left home. Fellow Peace Corps volunteers and the friends and family I have made at the village level have been such a source of strength and inspiration throughout my experience, for which I am eternally grateful.
I'll end with my routine plea that you continue to send e-mails and letters, which are all read and re-read with appreciation and affection. Any updates are extremely appreciated as I spend many very quiet nights in Maloba Village filing through fond memories and simply wondering what everyone back home is up to and how they are doing. Hoping you are all happy, healthy, and loving life... Love and miss you all madly.
Tukesamonana (We'll be seeing each other),
Sara
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