Who is visiting Zambia?

“I’ll take International Visitors for $100 please, Alex.”

“The answer is : Visitors to Lusaka in June, 2007”

“Who are: Alex Trebek, Laura Bush, Chris and Katrina Shore and Vince, Stacey, Madison and Carter Boschman.”

"That is correct!"

What a busy week for Lusaka! Our first guests were John’s cousin Chris and his daughter Katrina from California. We enjoyed having dinner with them at our house on Monday night and then at their hotel on Wednesday night. Chris is with World Vision and brought Katrina along to see some of the projects in the area and they will also be visiting Tanzania. We saw plenty of security at their hotel because Laura Bush (first lady of the U.S.A.) is also in town because of her involvement with malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention.

While waiting and waiting for Vince (Charlene’s brother) and Stacey and Madison and Carter, who should come walking out but Alex Trebek (host of TV’s Jeopardy and spokesperson for World Vision)!

It was great to see everyone but only 80% of Vince and Stacey’s luggage arrived. 80% might sound like a lot unless it is your suitcase that didn’t make it. Fortunately for us, all of our goodies arrived from home and we’ve had fun going through it all. We'll have to post a picture of their family soon but Stacey is out shopping for some new clothes.



Speaking of percentages, we are very proud of Danica for achieving an award for academic excellence in her studies in Year 7 at the International School of Lusaka.

My School Trip - by Danica

On Monday morning I left on a trip to Wild Tracks in the Lower Zambezi with 11 other classmates. We left at 8 a.m. on the new school bus. Unfortunately, the bus broke down about 2 minutes into the ride and we ended up having to wait for 2 hours while the bus got fixed. Once the bus got fixed it was a four hour drive including when we had to cross a river on a pontoon.

The accommodations were called tree houses, but they were actually cabins on tall stilts. This is because there are lots of animals there and we even had elephants walk through our camp at night! Other animals we saw were: kudu, duiker, hippo, crocodile and monitor lizard.

During the day we did activities such as fishing, climbing the giant baobab tree and abseiling down, an obstacle course and a walk using a GPS to find geocash – a hidden treasure. We also did lots of teambuilding activities, we watched the sunset from a boat and we had a night of stargazing – did you know that there is no big dipper in this part of the world?

The food was good (surprisingly), although they gave us way too much. Thankfully they didn’t serve any Nshima - the local maize product that’s really gross.

Overall, it was a really fun trip and we wished we could stay longer but I was really tired when I got home.

Ecumenical Peace Building in Zambia

Last week I had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony for the Africa Peacebuilding Institute at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, a city about five hours north of here. MEF was founded a long time ago by the World Council of Churches and the African Council of Churches (I hope I got that right), and is a training center for African church leaders. Once a year MCC sponsors a six week training course in Peacebuilding for African church leaders. This year there were participants from as far away as Ethiopia and Nigeria. The twenty nine people who took the course this year are from a wide variety of church and faith backgrounds, including at least one Muslim participant. Inter-faith peacebuilding is a topic of great relevance as it seems that all you hear about on the international news these days is tension between Muslims and Christians. It’s interesting to note that from our perspective that this doesn’t seem to be as big an issue in Zambia as in other countries, or as big an issue at the grass roots as at a political level.

It was great to meet the participants; they all had very interesting stories to tell and were very nice folks. Peacebuilding is an important subject to study and apply, there are lots and lots of people doing the opposite (i.e. conflict building) in Africa, especially in trouble spots like Sudan, northern Uganda and so on.

What do you get when an American MCC worker, a Tanzanian pastor, a Zambian Nun and a Congolese Professor have a barbeque together? A peace of meat... er ... sorry.

Spot the Canadian with the inappropriate footwear

The Happy Graduates

MCC is placing a couple at MEF in August to continue peace related training there. We took the opportunity of delivering a piano to the house where the couple will live.

Here is a picture of our country rep Siggi making like Elton John before we left. Note the MCC predilection for sandals. (see previous picture as well) Thankfully the piano made it all the way without any problems.

One of the interesting things about driving in Zambia is all the stuff that is sold on the side of the road. This trip showed us that it was watermelon season (heaps and heaps of watermelons, for about $.50 to $1 each,) and sweet potato season. We also saw: bush honey, little red fruits called “bush onions”, lawn chairs, legs of unidentified animals (bush meat) and of course loads of tomatoes, which are always in season here.

People also sell very large bags of charcoal, which they make in the bush. Charcoal is what most people use for cooking (and it makes an excellent barbeque), but it raises concerns about deforestation. The economics of charcoal are very interesting. Far away from the city a very large (50kg) bag of charcoal costs about $8, but in the city it costs about $16, so if you can get a big bag from the country and sell it in the city you can make some money. So, every day you see men on rickety old bikes, with three 50Kg bags of charcoal riding hundreds of kilometers into the city to sell their charcoal, all for about $25 of profit (and of course, they have to ride back). Still, $25 is probably about 10 to 15 days average wage, so it pays. When the charcoal gets to the city, it goes to any one of one hundred charcoal markets, where it gets divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller bags, which are sold for some profit. The final stop is that ladies sell small plastic shopping bags of charcoal, with just enough charcoal to cook one meal, which is typically the most people buy because that’s usually all they can afford. There are a lot of people in this supply chain, and each takes their small cut.

Another big load of material aid reaches Lusaka - by John

Recently we received a container load of material aid from MCC Akron, and have spent the last few weeks sorting and shipping it out to our partners.There is quite a bit of work involved in receiving a container, unloading it, sorting it and then getting everything off to our partners for distribution to the people who need it most.

Charlene and Siggi start the sorting process

Here is a synopsis of what we got and where it went.

AIDS Kits – AIDS kits, assembled by loving hands back in North America, consisting of supplies typically used by someone suffering from AIDS.Some non-prescription drugs like painkillers (Tylenol and the like), topical antibiotics and anti-fungal creams, soap, towels, bandages and so on are all bundled into a cloth bag. These kits are delivered by MCC partners to those suffering from HIV/AIDS in or to those people providing them care.

Figuring out what we received in which box. This is a box full of vitamins, which will be distributed to AIDS care givers.

Blankets: Blankets are also made by loving hands, then bundled and compressed into bales at MCC in Akron, and then shipped to us. In addition to our regular partners, we sent off a bunch of bales to North-Western province, where large scale flooding had affected a lot of people. See this link for the account of Stefan Epp delivering the bales.

Books: we received two pallet loads of school books, which we are in the process of sorting and will distribute to partner community schools. It’s an interesting process, deciding which books are suitable for which grades. Literacy at a higher grade level is not something you can take for granted, so some of the books which would be used in grades one or two in North America may be going to grades five or six here.

Computers:
We received 15 used computers from MCC via a group called Free Geek Pennsylvania.
These computers are well used, and about eight years old.
We blew the dust out and reinstalled operating systems and software, and installed them into two community schools (Aisha and Chimwemwe).<>Zambia. As soon as we set up the computers the students, teachers and even community residents started using them. We have learned that even though these schools are in very poor parts of the city, the people who want to use the computers are not unsophisticated, and are eager to start using email and the web.
Many Yahoo email accounts have been set up, and informal lessons about Spam have started. It was touching and amusing in a way to see one young man get his first spam, telling him that he had been specially selected to get a lot of money from someone in Nigeria. He was pretty excited, but quite downcast when I had to explain that this was a scam and that the people who sent him the email were liars.

Here are some students using the "new" computers.

Bicycles: We didn’t actually receive bicycles from North America, rather we used our budget to buy bicycles that HIV/AIDS caregivers will use when making their rounds out in the country. We bought the bicycles locally because it is much easier logistically, and it supports the local economy. The bicycles are rugged and simple to use and repair (no fancy multi speed mountain bikes here).We sent 100 bicycles to the BIC office in Choma on the back of a big truck with a bunch of the other supplies. It turns out that 100 bicycles take up a lot of room.

That's a lot of bicycles!

We had to use a separate truck to get the bicycles from the shop to the truck depot. We stacked them high!

Of course, after sorting and packing we had to send the goods to our partners. We loaded a big truck full to go to the BIC office in Choma (about 300Km south of Lusaka), and loaded a smaller truck to go to our partner CHD, who are in Lusaka.

This is the truck going to Choma. There was a LOT of stuff on this truck.

Riberia Monde, from CHD was happy to receive AIDS care kits.

Are these supplies making a difference? It’s easy to say that what we receive from MCC in North America is only a drop in the bucket, and in fact that’s true. But for someone receiving a care kit, a bicycle, or a blanket, that drop in the bucket is more like a cool cup of sweet water on a hot and thirsty day. On a human scale, the things we give people do make a difference, even if our gifts have an impact that may not be appreciable until far into the future. Clearly, pure material aid is not THE long term solution, but it is part of a solution.

Making Sausages, the Lusaka Way - by John

This week I was working with the Chiningi Women Development Enterprise (CWDE), which is working with disadvantages women, mostly widows affected by HIV/AIDS, to help them develop small businesses. These ladies generally have no real income, and scrape by, often not having enough food for more than one meal a day. CWDE is hoping to help them develop small businesses that will allow them to get some extra income and reduce their day-to-day struggles.

The first project CWDE has been developing is a small sausage making and selling business. Sausages are quite popular in Lusaka, and in the compounds they are sold in small packages for about $1.25 each (which is generally all you can afford to spend, it might be half a days income). Around CWDE there is plenty of demand for sausages, but generally the complaints are that the local sausage is more filler than meat, textured soy protein being a favorite meat substitute. The ladies thought that by making and selling their own sausages, they could control the quality and command a reasonable price. A group of Japanese ladies generously donated a freezer and some startup capital, and I have been working on the costing model, just to make sure we actually do make some money making sausages. Last Thursday was the big day when all our theories were going to be put to the test.

The first thing we did was to buy our meat. We went to Zambeef, the biggest meat producer in Zambia, and bought ground beef wholesale.

Mmmm, Zambeef

The alternatives, at a place called City Market, were more expensive and a whole lot less sanitary. We bought 40Kg and put it in this nice sanitary plastic bucket, which I insisted on (I’m a bit of a fussy westerner that way).

We've got 40Kg of ground beef, let's go make sausages!

When we got back to CWDE headquarters and sausage making room, we found out that mixing spices and other ingredients into 40Kg of beef is no small task. Good thing we had a couple of good strong young men to do the mixing.

Mixing up the Sausage mixture is hard work, especially if you don't have big enough containers.

After mixing for a while, we were ready to use the locally made sausage filler. Just put 10kg of sausage meat in one end, turn the crank, and sausage comes out the other end!

Filling up the Sausage machine

The first product!

… well, it didn’t quite work, the meat kept coming out of the wrong end. No worries, Zambian ingenuity at its finest fixed that problem with a couple of plastic bags to improve the seal.

Houston, we have a problem!

Trying again, turning the handle and …. The sausage started coming out! Except, the crank was harder and harder to turn, and eventually part of the machine got bent and it didn’t work any more. What to do, we had only used up about 5% of the total meat?!

Luckily, our sausage consultant had an old friend in the sausage business. We loaded up all the meat into the truck and drove down to the local sausage factory.

Now THAT'S a sausage machine, thank goodness for friends in the business

It was a little…primitive, but they had a sausage stuffing machine that worked, and in a little more than two hours we were back at headquarters with the sausages all stuff and ready for packaging.

Our happy sausage consultant and the finished product

An efficient production line was formed and 45 minutes later we had all the finished product in the freezer.

Ready for our costumer, $1.25 per package

The final verdict? After all the production costs, CWDE should be able to produce and sell sausages and make a bit of money. We will have to figure out how to fix the stuffer, or find money for a better one. It will be interesting to see how we figure out the next production issues, but I foresee that this could be a reasonably viable business, particularly since the product is good, and a bit cheaper than in the grocery store.

Chunga Boarding School

We are often asked “What kind of work are you doing?” I want to take an opportunity to explain one of the tasks we have taken on, and show you some pictures.

Our general task in Zambia is to work with local MCC partner organizations, to help them with their general organizational development. This can take very many different forms, it all really depends on what challenges they are facing. The first organization that we have worked with is “Full Proof Mission”, a name taken from the King James Bible (2^nd Timothy 4:5). Full Proof runs a drop-in centre for street kids, called Chisomo, right in the middle of Lusaka. Zambia has a growing street child population, for a great number of reasons, including the breakdown of the family unit due to HIV/AIDS. Chisomo, which is supported by MCC, has a great program for the street kids, including hygiene, feeding, education, and also re-uniting children with parents. . The ultimate aim of Chisomo is to reunite children with their families, if possible their mothers or fathers, or relatives. During the reunification process, Chisomo also tries to provide support for the families, because they are usually very poor, which is sometimes the reason the children left home in the first place. . My job with Chisomo is to develop a cost model and strategic plan and for growth, since they know that there are a lot more street kids out there that they could serve.

On any given day, about 50 street kids attend Chisomo, where they are clothed, fed, washed, and their clothes are cleaned up as well. If they want (and not all do), they can attend school, right on the Chisomo property in one of two classrooms. Some children become regulars at Chisomo, and some of the regulars are fortunate enough to be sponsored to go to Chunga Boarding School. I was lucky enough to go along on a trip to Chunga, which is about four hours west of Lusaka, right in the middle of a national park. The school was originally built for the children of the park rangers, back in the 60s.

Some of the housing at Chunga Boarding School

Now, when I think boarding school, I tend to think of rich British boys in short pants in a very large mansion type place. This school is not like that! First of all, there is no electricity. Second of all, these kids are almost all very poor. The tuition is about 350,000 Kwacha per term, which includes the boarding fee. That’s about C$70. By the time all costs are figure in, it costs Chisomo about 2 Million Kwacha (about $C400) a year to place a child in Chunga. The conditions are a bit primitive.

The “dorms” are concrete block rooms, only some of which have beds, and there are between six and eight kids to a room.

The cooking is typical Zambian fare, lots of Nshima (Maize pudding, like white corn polenta) and “relish”, which is usually something like cooked up greens or cabbage and tomatoes, which the Nshima is served with. (Zambians love this stuff, they eat it two or three meals a day, and declare that they haven’t had a meal until they have eaten Nshima.)

Mmmm..25 KG of Nshima, just enough for lunch

The primitive conditions hide the fact that this school is very successful. Zambia has a national grade seven and grade nine exams, and exam pass rates are a reasonable indication of how good a school is. This school had a grade seven exam pass rate of over 70%, which puts it near the top for Zambian schools, especially government schools. You could tell when talking to the headmaster how dedicated he was to his school, and I guess his dedication also shows in the test results.

Our trip to Chunga was to check on the kids from Chisomo who were enrolled there. They were having a great time, and were keen to take the grade seven exam, which was a very good sign that they understand the value of an education, and also developing goals beyond living on the street. I think the boarding school setting, which is much more structured than living on the street, provides a safe place for these kids to be kids again and to give them a second chance. The kids I talked to really loved it and wanted to stay.

Checking in with the Chisomo Kids.
The older fellow is Aaron Chilunjika, the Chisomo director.

Of course, since Chunga is in the middle of a national park, there are also lots of wild animals (including big cats). After dark, the kids are not allowed to leave the dorms because the animals walk around the campus. I guess that is a strong disincentive to running away.

Not your average school playground

When life gives you lemons…

Make lemonade! Life has given us lemons, loads and loads of lemons but we are not speaking figuratively. We are approaching the end of rainy season and every time it rains we think this might be the last precipitation we’ll see until November or so. This was the week of storms, Monday night was the first time we’ve seen hail on this continent and it was refreshing to see something cold falling from the African skies. Monday’s storm was very heavy but quite short followed by sunshine and a rainbow. Thursday there was another storm also very heavy for a short period of time but we are sorry to say that our lemon tree that has been faithfully bearing fruit for us did not survive the storm. This morning our gardener arrived with a hatchet and proceeded to chop up our tree and haul it away but before he did, I managed to pick any of the fruit that had even a glimmer of yellow on it. This morning was filled with making lemonade, lemonade syrup, concentrated lemon juice, lemon rind and all things lemony. The next item on the menu is lemon meringue pie for tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be able to invite a few friends to join us.

This is the view of Monday's rainstorm from our verandah and the picture below was of the lemon tree while it was still upright.

I still can’t get away from expecting different seasons with appropriately corresponding weather but it just doesn’t happen that way here. Our winter will be here in about 3 or 4 months so this should be fall but every day the temp has been hitting the mid-thirties. My body is craving the feeling of the cosy clothes that are being shown in the stores in anticipation of the cold weather but it just isn’t cooling down.

In other news, next week is the end of the second term of school and Danica and Erin will be off for 2 weeks. No plans as of yet but I’m sure some things will come up. Erin is participating in an end of term gymnastics performance at assembly on Friday. Danica was under the weather for a few days due to some side effects from her anti-malarial medication she was taking. The doctor insisted on complete bed rest, a diet of only carbs and sugar and 5 types of medications. We may not have followed the doctor’s orders precisely but she is feeling fine now anyway. Her valid point was “How am I supposed to lie still after eating all this sugar?” Good question.

Last Sunday was John’s birthday and we celebrated with breakfast in bed, a lunch out at a nice outdoor German restaurant and then company over for dinner.