DAY 2 - ISC IMMERSION RETREAT

MONDAY MORNING:

We started the day out with morning prayer and then visited Libala High School. It has a student population of over 1500. We were met by the head master and a few of the teachers who spent alot of time answering our questions about education in Zambia.

We learned that there are over 50 students per class and the classrooms are so full that students sit right up to the teachers desk. The students have no books and sometimes even the teacher has no book. The teacher has to write all problems, etc on the board for the students to copy.

The teachers were very dedicated and articulate, but were extremely frustrated by the challenges of the school situation. The teachers had as many or more questions for us on how things were done in our countries and really desiring some solutions to their struggles. The teachers also have to deal with serious behaviour problems as you can imagine. We were told that around 50% of students don’t pass grade 7 and just drop out of school. The government does nothing about these students.

After the school, we visited the Kibwata orphanage, and our host was Mrs. Miyanda (wife of a presidential candidate in this Thursdays Zambian elections). She has 73 children in her orphanage, 4 of them fostered and 69 resident. They come to the orphanage for many different reasons. For example, little Moses is only 4 months old. He was found on the grass in a park when he was two hours old. He was just lying on his back, wrapped in nothing. So he was brought to the orphanage.

Then there is Chanda, an 18 year old girl whose parents died and who was being “cared for” by her extended family who didn’t really want her. She was working as a slave for them. Then she was raped and when she had the baby she was left at the hospital because her extended family didn’t want her. So she ended up at Kibwata orphanage. Her baby’s name is Blessing.

We were having tea in the garden with Mrs. Miyanda when Isaac approached us, so she asked him if she could tell us his story. She said that Isaac's Dad is in prison and then she asked him to lift his shirt and show us his back. It had loads of scars on it where his father beat him with an electrical cable. Mrs. Miyanda said when he arrived at the orphanage you could see his bones through the lacerations, they were that deep.

The priority of the orphanage is to meet the basic needs of the kids (as well as emotional needs as far as I can see). They are given a full school uniform to go to Kibala High school, so that when they go on the street, no one can tell they are from the orphanage.

4 students from the orphanage have gone to University and two are presently in it. She said some of her kids are very poor but very intelligent, and simply have no money to go to school. A past orphan has a good job in a Zambian bank.

Seven kids in the orphanage are HIV positive and are on a lot of medication, up to 20 pills per day, depending on the development of the illness. She mentioned the side effects of the anti-retroviral drugs (ARV’s). One child had gone blind while another has stunted growth. Kids need good food to help with the immunity she added, and that the drugs change yearly as the body doesn’t respond and infection sets in.

Mrs. Miyanda said all the children are a family and the older ones take on the role of parents for the younger ones. The elder boys dress the young boys and the elder girls dress the young girls by 7.30am in time for breakfast. The also help them with their homework. These kids are traumatized kids when they arrive and may have been abused or raped by a parent, older boys, extended family or a neighbour. They are not all orphans. Mrs. Miyanda shared that she has to make many sacrifices of money to bring the kids to private medical hospitals, especially girls who have been defiled and someone has had sex with them when their body is not yet ready. They need surgery and the orphanage pays for it.

They also run an extension programme, for local kids in the community where they buy everything for school and pay the school fees for them.

Some of the children have no names and no birthday so the orphanage has to make up a name and birthday for them. They need papers for the kids for the social services. So the baby in the park was called Moses as the biblical Moses was abandoned in a basket and thrown into the river. Three quarters of the kids that have come through the orphanage have been given a birthday by the orphanages, the older ones being able to pick the date for themselves.

After tea we were shown around the complex and brought to the sleeping quarters. We were then introduced to Gift, a boy of around 17 years old. Mrs. Miyanda asked him to show us his scars. So he took off his bandana and lifted his shirt. His whole back and head was burned. His parents are dead and his Uncle didn’t want him. He was locked in a hut and the hut was set on fire. He had 1st degree burns and Angela paid $2,000 in one night to look after the operations.

MONDAY AFTERNOON:
In the afternoon, we drove on a very rough road to visit the St. Lawrence Mission’s Home of Hope hosted by Sr. Mary Annie and another Mary who lives there 24 hrs. This is a complex where they run a school and an home for street children. They have 23 boys, aged 6 to 18 years old who reside overnight and we met most of them. The home always tries to make contact with the family to establish why the child left the family in the first place. If the situation is too dangerous, then they keep the child, but their aim is to reintegrate when possible.

There are 500 children going to school here from the local compound. This school actually started in the compound in three lorry containers. They were looking for financial support but the government replied that “you help the under-privileged so show us what you do.” So that’s how the containers came about. The government wanted tangible evidence.