The following, are a series of journals created by Lisa Lapina, a volunteer in global mission.  Lisa is a senior, majoring in Elementary Education at Bloomsburg University, and this experience was part of her senior project.  She spent 4 weeks during June and July in Zambia, at the WellSpring School, and lived with American Baptist missionaries Charles and Sarah West.  Lisa was a volunteer teacher at WellSpring, learning just as much as she was teaching her students in grades 1 – 8. 

 

 

First Day of School

Monday, June 7th

Today was my first visit to the WellSpring School, and it was an incredible experience. I got to the Kalikiliki (kah-leaky-leaky) compound around 10:30am and stayed there until around 1pm. I met the headmaster and the three teachers of the school. The first group I met was the seventh grade class followed by the first/third grade room and then finally fifth grade. Different grades come to school at different times throughout the day and the school runs year round. There are three classrooms in total and the first and third graders share a classroom.  Each classroom has a chalkboard and benches that the children sit at while being taught.

 

The first teacher I met handed over his chalk and simply said, "Teach" when I walked into his classroom. This was really overwhelming at first and I had to tell him that the first day I was really just there to observe. The kids in seventh grade were learning about cattle herds in Zambia as well as harvesting crops. I learned a thing or two about how to keep cabbage and maize during the harvest, as these are familiar concepts to the children but not at all familiar to me. The fifth graders were learning about averages and how to find the average attendance rate of a class. The third grade was learning about the Zambian flag. The first group of students are in school from 7:30am-12:30pm and then they break for lunch.

 

The school was very small and I was told that many children on the compound want to go to school there but there is no room left which is really sad. The children here know that one way out of poverty is to get an education and I just wish that it was possible for all the children here to get a good education. Many of them told me that they want to go to college and even the teachers were telling me how badly they want to move to the US. It was a real eye opener to me because seeing the poverty up close is like nothing I had ever experienced before in my entire life and it really takes your breath away. I keep thinking back to the commercials we see on TV to sponsor a child in Africa and after seeing it in person the effect of poverty really is everything the commercials make it out to be, and so much more.

I went to a graduation here the other night at the American International School of Lusaka and one of the speakers said something really remarkable. He was talking about how there are so many injustices in our world and there are problems that need to be solved everywhere you turn, but instead of constantly fighting the injustices and problems alike, just put as much love into them as you can. And after you put your love into the injustices you see in the world, just keeping putting more and more of your heart out there until you make a change. It makes a lot of sense though, because there are thousands of children in the world that are poverty stricken but by helping them get the education they need, that's a change for the better. WellSpring might only be capable of educating 100 children right now, but for the time being that’s making a difference in 100 lives, and when the resources are there to change more lives, more children will be helped. :)

 

 

Learning to Speak Nyanja

Friday, June 11th

During the first week I learned a lot about Zambian language and culture. The class of first and third graders that I teach does not know much English at all so there is always a lot of translating by one of the other teachers that has to go on while I am teaching. The children mainly speak Nyanga, which is the first language spoken in Zambia. The next most widely spoken language is called Bemba.

 

On Wednesday some of the third graders were speaking French during class and looked up at me to see if I understood. It was funny when I replied back in French saying that I am fine and I speak English. They smiled and I was so glad that I remembered something from high school French class. It is really hard to communicate with a lot of the students when I am on my own because they really don't have much of an idea of what I am saying. I try to use pictures and hand movements as much as I can to get them to understand what I am saying but it is really difficult.

During breaks at school the teachers and I sit outside and the kids play soccer or come sit with the teachers and talk. During the breaks on Wednesday and Thursday they were trying to teach me Nyanga. The kids laugh at me because I have trouble pronouncing most of the words. I learned how to say lizard because one ran in front of me during the break on Wednesday. I think their language is pretty easy to learn so far. Many of the words make sense & are easy to remember... chicken (koo koo). On Thursday the fourth grade class tried to teach me how to say "Hi my name is..." but I completely failed. I tried at least twenty times and could not say it the right way.

 

Thursday was the best day so far with the kids because they finally started to open up to me more so than the other days and they wanted to make sure I was coming back again. I think the hardest part of this trip is going to be saying goodbye. Sarah was telling me that she was thinking of bringing a bag of mealie meal to the school on my last day and having a big picnic for the kids. We would cook them lunch & I could give them the tee shirts, underwear, pens, and crayons I brought for them.

 

Well, I heard wrong the first ten times I was being taught how to say this word.... It is not spelled Nyanga, it spelled Cinyanja or just simply Nyanja. When I hear j and g said with Zambian accent I can't make out which is which so I ended up spelling it the wrong way. I was teaching today and the teacher sharing the room with me was teaching her kids how to say different animals in their language and when she wrote the name of the language on the board I got confused and asked her and she said it is spelled with a j not a g. Again it took me a while to hear the difference when she said it, but it is a j. Nyanja is just short for Cinyanja. They said the words so quickly it is hard to make out the "cin-" in front of nyanja. But the "cin-" is pronounced like "chin". Just had to clear that confusion up. :)

 

Here are some things I learned about Zambia from talking to people that live here:

 If you need help from the police, you go and pick them up at the station and bring them to wherever there is trouble because they do not have cars to drive to you.

 The hospitals here require you to bring your own bedding, food, & medicine.

 The power went out tonight for a while because the company is selling it to other countries near Zambia. They tend to rotate between the towns so that it is not always the same area that loses power.

 Zambians celebrate birthdays in close to the same way that Americans do with cake, candles, singing and gifts. There is something I have heard about a competition of some sort on your birthday but I have not quite figured that out yet.

Every where you go, especially around the cities, people are selling things, you can even buy talk time(minutes) for your cell phone in the middle of a busy road. We did that today. :)

Almost all houses that I have seen except for those on the compound, have walls surrounding them as well as a gate.

There are babies everywhere, and the general population is very young.

 You can pretty much count on the weather being perfect once the rainy season is over. :)

 

 

Miracle Life

Sunday, June 13th

Today I went to a church called Miracle Life. The pastor there is friends with the West family and the church was just recently built on Zambezi Road. The dust was so bad today that the people that were directing traffic along the road were wearing breathing masks.

 

We walked in and the sanctuary was massive. There were two big screens in the front of the room and there had to be at least 300 people in there. We sat behind this group of young boys and I really liked being a part of the diverse congregation. I thought the sermon was great. The pastor started off talking about images and how God made man in his own image. Through the ages we create a God in our own images, but God is God, He isn't something that we can change to fit our own visions of what God should be. God is there to transform us; we aren't put on this Earth to transform Him.

 

During the next part of the sermon, he talked about what exactly we see when we look into a mirror. When we look into a mirror, we get a clear reflection back of what we have on the outside but what is most important exists within ourselves. He made a joke and said, "Now women, this does not mean that you should look into a mirror and turn to your husband or boyfriend and ask them if what you are wearing makes your hips look big. If you were just looking into a mirror and continued to ask that question it is clear that you already know the answer and should not be asking us men what we think because we will have to give you an answer and then have to repent for lying later on in the day." The whole sermon was like this, and he just made so many good connections throughout it.

 

My favorite part of the sermon was when he talked about broken pieces. He talked about how in Africa reeds are used to build many things, including baskets, roofs on a house or hut, chairs, etc. and while picking the reeds out of the water they sometimes break. Humans just take the broken reeds and throw the pieces behind them because it doesn't matter much to them; there are always hundreds more reeds to be picked. This is contrast to our relationship with God because He did not make us into perfect people that will never be broken. The thing about life is, many times you find yourself broken into a thousand pieces and when God finds you broken, He doesn't take you and throw you away. He never throws away the broken pieces because he knows that he can put you back together.

 

The pastor then told us that he would rather have a broken leg than a broken heart, because a broken leg can get put back together, eventually it will heal and the bone will grow back. When a heart breaks, the pieces are not so easily put back together like they are in a broken leg. So when your heart breaks, just look for God in your life and have the faith that eventually you will be whole again.

 

The last part of the sermon was about change. In order for change you need to constantly be looking ahead. Nothing will transform in our world if you are constantly looking at yourself because all of your energy is spent worrying about you and you only when there is an entire world out there that exists beyond yourself. You also can't spend all your time looking back in time, because after all the past is over for a reason and if you are constantly worrying about events in your life that have passed, there is no room for change to happen.

 

One of the problems with the human race lies in that we are always so worried about ourselves and cannot seem to look past our own lives to see the world that we are living. A world full of poverty and suffering surrounds us, and it seems that few realize how many people in our world actually live each day in this abject cycle of not knowing where their next meal will come from or worse, if they will even live to see tomorrow. It’s like the kids I see every day in school here, & seeing the conditions on the compound can honestly break your heart

 

Give a Little Bit

Saturday, June 19th

I wish that life came easy for everyone in the world & I wish it wasn't a struggle for people to eat and stay healthy. I wish that every child born into this world could go to school, and always hold onto that immense innocence you have when you are young. I wish that everyone gave a little more and took a little less. I just really wish I knew why life turns out the way it does sometimes. Why people can spend thousands of dollars on one new outfit or a pair of shoes and there are kids that can't go to school because they don't have any shoes. I just think my heart's been broken in this and after trying to understand the life these kids live I don't think its ever going to go back together. I want to be able to say that I can come out of this experience and understand a lot more about another culture and the poverty that exists in our world, but I think it's just made me more confused. It just really takes you into a realm that you just cannot comprehend at all. Half the time I just really feel pretty lost trying to make sense of it all. Even after being completely observant of all kinds of situations here, there are just things that I will never be able to explain or understand.

I have met some of the most amazing kids in the past two weeks. I asked a couple classes what they dream about. I wanted to know what their aspirations were and I was really just looking for some kind of hope in their hearts. First I wanted to know what they wanted to be when they were older, and some wanted to be soldiers, nurses, doctors, and teachers. I asked them next what it is that they dream about. I didn't get much variation in this answer. They all told me that they dream about food. Food, because they eat one meal a day, if that. They also dream about the US because they hear that it has a lot of food and they want to go there one day.

I asked a few classes of kids about their birthdays. I wish I had not asked about their birthdays, it was just really upsetting. Many of them have no idea when they were born or how old they are. Sounds crazy right? But think of it this way, let's say you had never gone to school a day in your life, and you had no parents to teach you the days of the week, the alphabet, or how to count. Would the date really matter to you? It would really hold no importance to you at all if you had no idea what it was in the first place. Some of the kids here just honestly don't know anything simple that most of us are taught when we are young. Some of them honestly just spend all day fetching water from the well or selling peanuts on the side of the road. I have seen it happen. Day after day after day. One girl sits outside this house and every morning and every night I wave to her. She sits on a rock under a tree all day long selling small bags of peanuts.

This has been the greatest challenge I have ever had & I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Becoming literate is their ticket out of poverty. I have been teaching English almost the whole time I have been here. I am teaching fourth graders, that are fourteen years old, how to read and write. Also, how to tell your right from your left, the parts of your body & the senses. One boy told me that your nose helps you hear. You can't help but smile at that, but its true and he didn't know any better. Education has to be a priority around the world and people have to support it, and over here it really isn't a priority at all. :(


Give a little bit
Give a little bit of your love to me
Give a little bit
I'll give a little bit of my love to you
See the man with the lonely eyes
Take his hand, you'll be suprised

So i'll give a little bit
I'll give a lttle bit of my life for you
So give a little bit
Give a little bit of your time to me
Nows the time that we need to share
So send a smile, we're on our way back home

 

 

Gift

Friday, June 25th

On Friday I went to school around 7:30 and the kids were all waiting outside because none of the teachers were there yet. We went inside when Henry got there and I read Dr. Seuss books with grade 1 & 2 until the grade 2 teacher got to school. She has to walk over 4 kilometers to get to school every morning. Gift came into school today and showed me a big burn that was on the bottom of his foot. He is only five years old and doesn't know any English so when I tried to ask him what happened, Lillian had to translate. He had stepped on hot coals that someone at home had thrown on the ground near where he was playing the night before and was burned really bad when he stepped on them without shoes.

Every time I turned my back for a second that morning I would hear him start crying because the other kids would accidentally step on his foot. They didn't know he had a burn & the classrooms are so small that the kids are always right on top of each other. Gift wasn't wearing socks either so that didn't help the situation any. After a while I just started getting upset so I walked down to Rev. Mulenga's house with some of the 5th grade girls and asked him for the school first aid kits. He keeps them at his house because he was worried they would get stolen at the school. I tried to wrap Gift's foot up with gauze so that dirt wouldn't bother the burn anymore. A girl in fifth grade washed it off for him before we put the bandage on it & it just was hard seeing him so sad that day. I carried him home while two of the fifth/sixth grade girls carried his little sisters.

I was walking through the compound with the girls and the farther we got from the school the more sick I started to feel. I had walked through the compound a couple days earlier when Gift's sister, Maria, fell asleep at school and didn't want to wake up so I carried her back to her house. The poverty just overcomes you & you just get nauseous seeing it up close.

The feeling I got walking through there will never leave me. It honestly makes you ill witnessing where these kids live. I remember carrying Maria and just praying as we walked that I wouldn't have to drop her off at any of the places we were passing. The smell is the worst part, because it just reeks of garbage and sewage everywhere. There is garbage everywhere you turn and pools of filth lining the small roads. What is even worse is that kids sit & play in that garbage every single day. We got to a really awful spot where you couldn't cross the road without walking in the filthy water. The kids I have met live right in the middle of that mess. :( We made it to Gift's house and I handed him over to his dad and just got really sad leaving him. I wish I could always see these kids, I'm not ready to leave them. :(

 

 

Ruth

Saturday, June 26th

There is a little girl in fourth grade that just turned 14 a few days ago. We just found out at school on Friday that she lost her dad. I was told by Lillian and Tasila that Ruth's dad had been really sick and had died Friday morning. Ruth wasn't in school that day and I found out right before I walked Gift home. I never found out exactly what he had died from during the school day but later on Sarah had said that she heard it was malaria or cholera.

I was really impressed with the teachers because they began talking when they found out and called all the students from 4, 5/6, and 7 together in the 7th grade room. They were talking about Ruth and said that we should all go visit her family at her house. The teachers told the kids that her dad had passed away and that it would be important to go show support from our school. They figured out who was going to read scripture, which songs to sing, and who would be leading a message. After a few minutes everything was set, which was so new to me because I definitely thought it would take longer to get something together. The sad part is, the kids are so used to losing people here that it's part of their every day lifestyle. Tasila was funny when she was getting the kids ready because some of them were laughing and she told them that now was a time for crying not laughing and encouraged them to cry. She said that she personally does not cry ever and she said that if any one of them come to her funeral when she passes and laughs she will come back from the dead and haunt them the rest of their lives.

We all got together outside and started walking to Ruth's house. We walked and walked for what seemed like forever. It gave me a good understanding of what it is like for these kids walking to school from their homes every day. We walked through some really rough parts of the compound. Everything is compacted there and the majority of the population here is under 20 years old so there are just children everywhere you turn. I got upset seeing kids sitting in the trash and running through the dirt without any shoes, let alone clothing. Some of the kids just didn't have pants or anything. There are flies everywhere and it just smells awful.

We got to the house that Ruth lived in and the children all sang together walking up to the door. There were lots of people around and one woman just dropped to her knees and started sobbing behind us. It was a really sad experience. The body was not in the house or anything like that, just the family, the body had been taken to the hospital already. Five women were sitting on dirty blankets on the cement floor. The room was about 9'x9' and there was a second room behind the one they were in the same size or smaller. That is all there is to their house, two tiny rooms. Sometimes 15 people are found living in a house that small, I can't imagine.

The kids went into the room, sang songs and read scripture for the family. After the kids had left the room the teachers went in and sat down on the floor. I couldn't understand what was being said because it was all in Nyanja but we were only in there a short time. After we said goodbye we went back to the kids and walked back to WellSpring together. There were people everywhere yelling at me in Nyanja when I would walk by. I didn't pick up on it until we were walking back to the school. I asked Henry, the other teacher from WellSpring, what Muzungu meant & why they were yelling it at me. He told me that it means "English person" or "white person". This was all pretty interesting to me because I had never experienced something like that before. He told me that they are not really yelling to be mean, they are just really surprised when they see me. They do not see any diversity for years and years, so for many of them it is a weird experience for them to see an English person on the compound at all. Muzungu is just used as a term to basically point out anyone who is not like the rest. The other day Sarah told me that it also is used to point out people that may have money so that they can ask for money or food. Some kids were chasing the car andere trying to jump on the back of it on the way home. So now when the kids on the street yell that I just smile & wave so they know that I know what they are saying & they always laugh & run away. :)

 

 

Dear Royersford Baptist Church

Saturday, June 26th

I just heard that VBS was a huge success this year & I am so sad I missed out on it. I saw kids on the compound running around with bandanas and matching tee shirts on for a VBS that was being held at a local church in Kalikiliki & it made me miss RBC. Good job Nancy & Megan & all of the helpers :)

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that donated books &/or money to the WellSpring cause. Sarah & Charles were very happy to hear about all of the support and can't wait to receive books for the rural school.

You should check out the pictures I posted in the album called Into the Bush because it shows what is built so far of the rural school. This building is just four walls of bricks without a roof so far. Sarah and Charles got a piece of land out in Chongwe and are working towards developing it into a community school/orphanage for vulnerable/orphaned children in the area. They are working on being able to provide classrooms, rooms for teachers to live in, a library, and a community center. Their future goal is to be able to create a place where everyone in the community can come learn & grow together. The library, where all of the books that were donated will go, will be used by the kids at the orphanage as well as people in the community that want to come read. All in all, it is an amazing opportunity to be a part of such a big project. I met a lot of the orphans that may end up going to the rural school once it is done being built and it just means so much to them that people out there really are thinking of them. The kids here have lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS mainly and many times the orphans are just passed around to whoever has food for them. The WellSpring school was thought up by Sarah when she was out talking to people here at a church service and asked whose little girl was standing in front of her, someone turned to her and said "Oh she is an orphan, she is just passed around to whichever person here has extra food." Needless to say, that completely broke Sarah's heart and that is when she began developing ideas for a school/orphanage for children.

The rural school will be a place where the orphans can live together and develop life skills. They will be able to get an education, grow their own vegetables, take care of animals like chickens and goats, and live together, building a sense of community. There will be houses that will be built for the children to live in and there will be one house mother for each house of children. I just think it is a great idea that Sarah & Charles are working towards & I hope it turns out to be everything they are hoping for and more. They were also talking about how people in the future could come visit the school, live with the children on site, and work with them whether it be for running a VBS or other educational purposes.

 

 

More Nyanja

Friday, July 2nd

friend: munzanga
house: nyumba
thank you: zicomo
I miss you: nakuyewa
teacher: apunzisi
chicken: inkuku
goat: mbuzi
I'm hungry: injala
I'm thirsty: injota
I love you: nikukonda
brother: mulongosi
This is where I live: apa pamena nikala
Be quiet: nkalazi
toilet: chimbuzi
Welcome: ukubwela
fish: somba
nice to meet you: chabwino nakuona
shoes: nsapato
bird: mbalame
lion: mkango
you are pretty: ndiwewa bwino
quickly: endesa
silly: kupusa
baby: mwana
child: mufana
teenager: mukulu
adult: mukulu

 

The Last Week of School

Friday, July 2nd

The month went by pretty fast, but I'm so happy that I got the chance to work with this group of kids. The kids love hearing Dr. Seuss books read to them, and by now I think I have all fifty pages of Hop on Pop memorized. The grade 1 class knows the alphabet a little better now and we practiced writing all of the letters and numbers from 1-10. I learned a lot of Nyanja through working with that class because they barely understand English, so we ended up learning a lot from each other. They love to sing at the end of class every day. The kids always wanted to shake my hand before they left, it is very big in their culture.

 

In four weeks I never got used to being referred to as 'Madam", I tried to get them to just call me Lisa but they wouldn't do that. :) Every day I would walk into school when it’s all dark outside, the sun is just coming up, and they would be sitting on the little wooden benches in their tattered clothes. They would look up at me, smile & ask if I could read Dr. Seuss to them that day. I'm going to miss those mornings. :(

 

I'm never going to forget teaching grade 7 about prepositions, mainly because I had to review what exactly it was for myself right before I taught it. Ha! Ha! Seeing them understand things as they were being taught is something I won't ever forget. I'm going to miss the grade 7 class a lot because they were always so energetic and full of life, even just sitting in class.

 

The grade 5/6 class was mainly all girls and one boy because the other boys did not show up very often. They were always so nice and had their typical outbreaks of arguments amongst each other. Typical thirteen/fourteen year old girls. :) I am going to miss trying to break them up & failing because they can yell in Nyanja louder than I can yell in English. :) I just would always tell them that their arguing would make me crazy. Sometimes they would stop, other times it would just go on for the whole afternoon.

 

The grade four class was so fun to work with and I taught them about the parts of the body one afternoon. Some of the kids either didn't understand my English or just really didn't know the body parts, but I was told that an ear helps you smell and a nose helps you hear. There was a boy named Edison in the grade 4 class and he was a character. Anytime I would mark his work he always would walk back to me and say, "Can you please draw a symbol of smiling madam?" He loved smiley faces but anytime he would ask me to draw one he would say it just like that.

 

I didn't get to work with grade 3 past the first week because previously they had all of grade 1/2/3 together in one classroom, which was a group of over thirty kids. I tried to split them up by ability level to make three separate grades because the one big group was way too much for any one person to handle. Plus within that group there were kids who didn't know the alphabet or count to ten, and then kids that could multiply and write in complete sentences.

 

The grade 2 class was my class of silly 7 year old boys, Israel, Benard, Gift, Noah, and Soston. The grade 2 class only had one girl, Juliet. They loved getting their picture taken and most of my pictures have that class in it because they always found their way in front of the camera. The grade one class was the class I worked with the most while I was at school. They were just so cute but there was definitely a lot of crying that went on. Some of it I honestly think they just did because they knew I would pick them up and hold them for a while. :) I couldn't help it.

 

I loved working with Juliet in grade 1. I am almost 99% sure she is dyslexic, but it isn't diagnosed and probably never will be. We would sit together and practice writing letters and seeing her be able to write them the right way after a while of practicing was the best experience. Mary and Ruthie were the two smallest girls in the class and they were always smiling and laughing all through class which just made the day better. Matthews always finished last when I would give them something to do because he wrote really carefully so he didn't make any mistakes. Isaac would always rush to get everything done and usually did it right the first time around.

 

Gift was the youngest in the class, and he did not know a single word of English at all but we liked to spend a lot of time together because I would walk him and his sisters home every morning. Shombe always was pushing and shoving people in class so he was a challenge but a good student. Mubanga was amazing to work with because at the beginning of the month he didn't talk at all in class. I really don't think I heard him talk until the third week I was there. He started opening up so much though and would come talk to me and give hugs when I got to school. He was adorable and had the best smile. Ruth was another little girl that didn't know any English but we got to sit together all afternoon on Wednesday outside the school. We shared an orange and she drew me a lot of pictures, it was so nice to get to know the kids one on one. They all have so many talents and I hope they all stay in school. It's a rough world that they are growing up in, to say the least.  I can’t wait to go back to Zambia and see them all!!