Kenton Hadley My trip to Lusaka, Zambia, in June 2015

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1 Kenton Hadley My trip to Lusaka, Zambia, in June 2015 I spent the last two weeks of June 2015 in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. I have been there twice before and wanted to visit and catch up with some of the people I ve met there, as well as to see first-hand how the child sponsorship programme I support is working. The child sponsorship programme involves me paying 20 per child per month to a UK-based charity called International Needs and the money goes towards school fees, uniforms, books etc. The children I sponsor go to Kiine School, which is owned by the Evangelical Church of Zambia. I sponsor two children and they are called Dorothy and Innocent and I d met them on previous trips to Zambia. I ve sponsored Dorothy for almost two years and Innocent slightly less. The other school I wanted to visit is Kumbaya School; both schools are partners of Mission Direct. I could ve gone back with Mission Direct, the charity I d been with before, but I didn t think that would have the flexibility I needed. The initial s to get things arranged were sent around last Christmas. I started to liaise with the two schools to arrange a programme with them as well as accommodation and so on. I spent most of the early part of 2015 thinking about the trip and if it was really such a good idea and finally took a bit of leap of faith and booked the flights during April. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and work colleagues I was able to take some pens, pencils and colouring books as well as a total of 172 with me. I split the money pretty much down the middle and gave half to Kiine School and the other half to Kumbaya School the two schools I arranged to visit. The donation to Kiine School (where the two children I sponsor attend) came to a total of 900 kwacha (roughly 80). I ve been told that they used it for the following: ITEM QUANTITY PRICE (K) Ream of paper Chalk Red Pen 1 packet Blue Pen 1 packet Flip charts 2 rolls Brooms Leaf rakes Boom detergent paste 12 packets Mop Toilet brush Bostick glue Rakes Gloves 1 Pair Printer repair Transport TOTAL Kumbaya School put the donated money towards their feeding programme. This is pretty much as it sounds in that they try and give the children a meal whilst at school, but there isn t always enough money to feed each child each day, so they have to stagger the classes 1

2 and some eat on one particular day and some on another. The feeding programme currently runs roughly once a week depending on funds. The food served is a local dish called nshima which is made from flour and water. It s cooked on an open fire and ends up in a giant pot. This is me at Kumbaya School attempting to give the nshima pot a stir! It s a very thick consistency and therefore not easy for a muzungo (white man) like me to move what I believe is called the cooking stick. It was like mixing cement, but fortunately it s worth the effort as it actually tastes pretty good and is normally eaten with some meat and vegetables. The women in the photo are both teachers taking time out from their lessons to help with the food preparation. Their wraparound skirts are called chitenges and Zambian ladies traditionally have to pick two favourite chitenges one to wear when visiting their motherin-law and the other to be buried in or so I read in a Zambian newspaper! The food is soon ready and handed out I visited Kumbaya school four times during my stay and I sat in on some of the classes. I observed an English lesson where they were learning the difference between nouns and verbs. Fortunately I wasn t asked to contribute as I was struggling to remember the difference myself! 2

3 I also gave a talk to the youth group, which included several breastfeeding mothers who certainly weren t shy, where I attempted to answer their questions on everything from life in the UK to whether or not I had any good money-making ideas. I was asked about life in the UK quite a lot whilst I was in Zambia from the young and the not so young. They often hoped that I would have the magic key to resolving their challenges and seemed to think and assume that the white foreigner would have all the answers. Obviously I didn t have all the answers, but I think that they appreciated having my undivided attention. Questions ranged widely: Are there thieves in your country? Is it right that your government gives you a house to live in and supplies you with a maid? I ve heard that hairdressers are really well paid in England, is this true? Are there tribes in your country? Are there crocodiles and hippos in the sea? Black people marry white people over there? Really! What colour are their children? Do you have soil? If you don t eat nshima, what do you eat? I tried as delicately and as diplomatically as possible to explain to them that a move to the UK, even if it were financially viable, would not necessarily solve everything. I said that whilst we didn t have all the issues that they face, we have quite enough to make life awkward and difficult. I also tried to explain that having a stall where they sold the exact same thing as everyone else on the market probably wouldn t bring in much money. I said that their English would need to be excellent if they wanted the chance of decent job in the UK, but as I was speaking through an interpreter a lot of the time, I m not sure how easy it would be to improve on it even though English is the official language there. 3 My main motivation for visiting Zambia again was to see the two children whose education I sponsor through the charity International Needs. Dorothy and Innocent both go to Kiine School and come from the same family. I was able to take them, together with one of their teachers, to the cinema at Manda Hill shopping centre. Dorothy at the Wimpy bar in Manda Hill.

4 It s like any shopping centre anywhere really and although both children had been there before, it was still a rare treat for them to go there and they seemed to enjoy it. Gloria, the Headmistress from Kiine School, came with us and is sitting next to Dorothy in the photo, just out of shot. Gloria was very keen to go to the cinema as she hadn t actually been before. The tables in that part of the restaurant overlook the shopping centre and Innocent seemed very content to sit there and people watch. He was also fascinated by the handdryer in the toilets! The burger and fries that they ate was probably a bigger meal than they were used to, so they ate what they wanted and took the rest home in a doggy bag for later. We saw the film Yellowbirds, which is in 3D, and the cinema was quite empty as not many locals can afford to go. The total cost for two adults and two children to see a film and have something to eat afterwards came to about 35, which for me was quite a bargain. I remember visiting Zambia in 2013 and asking Innocent what he d done with his weekend and he d simply replied nothing, so I was glad that for once he d have something to tell his friends at school if anyone asked him what he d done with the free time. If a Zambian ever tells you that something is just on the next corner or nearby, then that probably means it is at least a mile or two away, so keep this in mind if you re walking! Anyway, after a number of phone calls and a couple of bus rides and Gloria s unflappable assistance, I was able to track down a family that I d wanted to catch up with. I d first met them in 2013 during the home visits arranged by one of the partners of Mission Direct and I finally got to see them the day or so before I came home. The family I was going to see was a lady called Loveness and her grandson, Jailos. When I met them the first time in 2013, Jailos was wearing shoes that were so small and worn out that his toes poked out the end. I left some of the money with Mission Direct that had been donated by work colleagues to buy him some more. When Loveness heard that Gloria and I were on our way to see them, she walked down to the bus stop with Jailos to meet us and stood waiting in the afternoon sun. As the journey there took us some forty minutes, there was a fair bit of standing about waiting for us. When Jailos started getting bored of waiting, his grandmother simply told him to have patience. Not for the first time I was the only white person on the bus (I was getting quite used to the public transport system in Lusaka by then) so at least Loveness and Jailos didn t have any problems spotting me in the crowd. Meeting Loveness again was very special. When I d been the previous time I d left her with some photos of my trip to Victoria Falls in She d never been to the Falls, so the photos were the next best thing. Although I didn t have any more photos with me, I was able to show her video footage of the Falls on my camera that I d taken since seeing her this had been taken during my trip to the Falls with Mission Direct in This was very well received as the Falls were at quite a spectacular stage and Jailos kept playing and re-playing the short video partly as he enjoyed the film, but also he seemed to enjoy just fiddling with the camera. 4

5 I am pictured with Loveness and her two grandchildren who she looks after herself after the death of their parents her son and daughter-in-law. Jailos is on the left. I was introduced to the other grandson, but his name escapes me. I was only with them about forty-five minutes, but we chatted a lot and Gloria said a prayer before we left. I gave Loveness some small gifts and picture of Buckingham Palace, which I signed before promising to visit again next time I was in town. Although Innocent may not have heard of the term selfie, he does take a good one I m wearing a Zambia football shirt which I bought on a previous trip and it always gets me a bit of kudos with the locals. They love their football out there! Two weeks went extremely quickly and even though I was looking forward very much to getting back home, it was still hard to say goodbye. Dorothy and Innocent s grandfather, Mr Bwishi, works as a taxi driver and he took me to the airport together with the children who hadn t been to the airport before. Gloria came along as well and at the last moment we were joined by Eunice a cousin of Dorothy and Innocent so that was four people squeezed onto the backseat of Mr Bwishi s Toyota, which had rather dodgy-sounding shock absorbers and seemed to take a long time to stop! I was told that police checks are common on the road to the airport, so when we were flagged down by a policeman I was expecting the worst. Fortunately, he didn t seem to want to do very much other than have a quick word with the driver or maybe a rug had been hastily thrown over Eunice to make the backseat look less full. Either way we weren t held up! Like most people on the last few days of their holiday, my cash was running out so I wasn t really after a big taxi fare to have to pay for. I was told that an airport run could be anything up to 400 kwacha and that was what Mr Bwishi initially asked for, but Gloria shouted at him (literally) until he reduced his price to 100 kwacha. Anyway, I didn t want to short-change him so I gave him a large tip and told him to sort out his car s squeaky shock absorbers! 5

6 Dorothy and Innocent both wrote very sweet letters for me to read on the plane (they were very insistent that I read them after take-off) and they d also spent some of their own money buying me some biscuits and sweets for the journey. Despite being one of the first people to check-in for the flight home, I somehow ended up dropping off the system and my boarding pass wouldn t scan at the point where they let you into the departure lounge although those of you that have been to Lusaka airport will know that the departure lounge isn t so much a lounge as a row of plastic chairs ahead of a glass door that opens out onto the tarmac and the waiting plane! The woman at the gate kept scanning my boarding pass, but the system kept saying passenger not found! She used her walkie-talkie to summon some help and I made the obligatory jokes about maybe having to walk home or hang off the wing. There was no reaction from her and the queue behind was building. I was then asked to stand aside for a moment whilst the rest of my fellow passengers came through and all bar one of the boarding passes scanned just fine. Although I was glad I wasn t the only one stuck, I was getting a bit of a sinking feeling. I had no English money and had spent the last of my kwacha in the airport gift-shop buying novelty fridge magnets as you do! The Mission Direct team had left the previous day to go to Livingstone, so I was starting to wonder what I would do if I ended up being offloaded from the flight. I had no money and a mobile phone with an almost flat battery. After a rather tense five minutes or so, a member of the ground staff at Lusaka airport simply said that my boarding pass had to be re-printed and casually gave me another one, this time with Business Class on it! I checked that the sudden upgrade wasn t a mistake before quickly heading for last security check before anything else happened. I was now in seat 11F which, despite sounding very near the front, didn t stop a member of the ground staff from sending me towards the back of the plane. All the guidebooks advise against arguing with people in foreign countries that are in any sort of official capacity, so I just thanked her and trudged off with everyone else heading for the back exit door, only for the stewardess to make a joke about me having a bit of a long walk to find my seat! I was just grateful to be on the plane all! I don t think that my tatty tracksuit bottoms and trainers really suited the surroundings of Emirates business class and it was only for the Lusaka Dubai leg of the journey before I was kicked back to cattle class. But check out the legroom! So that s it! I hope you enjoyed a little taster of my trip back to Zambia. Thanks so much for your support in whichever form that took. It really meant a lot. Bless you for reading! Kenton 6