PCPP Thank You Letter

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