Challenges in Zambia
Adventure, Company News, Expedition News, Latest Expeditions | 20th February 2015
I spent a few weeks in January travelling around Zambia, re-visiting our project sites for this summer, risk assessing the itineraries and looking for new activities our teams can do to make the most out of their expedition. Throughout the recce I was completely blown away by the friendliness of everyone I met within this melting pot of over 70 different languages, tribes and cultures.
During a visit to a project site in the Sinazongwe District, a Chief’s son arranged for me to meet some of the Village Elders from Makongo Village. After desperately trying to brush up on my Tonga, I arrived at their home to meet four women sitting in the shade, smoking traditional pipes and sharing their nshima. Nshima is a staple Zambian dish made from maize flour and water, they showed me how to prepare it using traditional wood and stone grinders. Once they were finished laughing at my ‘culinary efforts’, the women began to share their village histories with me and I had my first insight into the remarkable personal challenges they had faced.
Makongo Village is located on the Southern edge of Lake Kariba, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world and provides power for the rest of the country. The building of the dam wall began in the late 1950s and was met with much opposition as its construction would cause the loss of thousands of animals habitats and the displacement of tens of thousands of people.
The women I met were four of the 57,000 people, mostly of the Batonga tribe, who were reluctant to leave their tribal lands. After much coercion and little choice, the women recounted the day the trucks arrived to relocate them to new lands on the waters edge which has now become a small fishing village. The women explained that their family had been separated across the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe as it depended on which truck were assigned to where they ended up.
Despite the severe disruption to their way of life, the women showed no anger when reliving the story. However, they can only imagine the benefits of power generated for the country; their compensation is minimal as 50 years later their patch of home still has no running water or electricity. I hope in the next few years they will begin to see some of the environmental and social issues resolved with the launch of the Gwembe-Tonga Project (Read more at: http://www.zambiatourism.com/destinations/lakes/lake-kariba/history).
A community school was built in Makongo Village to provide education for the local children who could not get to the government school during the wet season as they were separated by the Zambezi River. Chisyabulungu Primary School has 559 students, 7 teachers and 2 classrooms. I had the pleasure of meeting their Headteacher, Mr Mahonko, who was kind enough to share with me some of the challenges that his school face.
The school relies on government funding of which last year they received only one months allowance (equivalent to £100). Among other problems, this lack of resources prevented future building at the school which has lead the 559 students to share 2 classrooms, a tin/brick structure (picture right) and a wooden shelter between them. The tin classrooms can only be used for certain hours during the summer when temperatures rise to over 30°C, heightening their issue of space as more students join every year.
They are blessed however by several incredible teachers who frequently donate a portion of their wages for students to pay £1 per term to attend school, and £6 to have a uniform made. With such inspirational teachers and an extremely hardworking and positive Headteacher, the students continue to receive an education and hopefully improve their chances of employment after school. With the help of our expedition teams, we hope to develop the tin classrooms at Chisyabulungu School to ensure the students and teachers have a learning environment they deserve.
Our expedition teams also volunteer with a Homes for Aids Orphans building project further West near Mwandi Village. This project has been hugely successful and has so far built 140 houses since 2008 for vulnerable people such as HIV/AIDS orphans and their care givers and disabled and mentally handicapped adults. I managed to visit a house one of our teams previously built for an elderly woman who still remembers their kindness (picture below) and we are thrilled more teams continue to take part in this long lasting project.
My time in Zambia was a definite reminder not take for granted what we have access to in the developed world and also how important our teams work is in the developing one. We have no doubt our teams will make a genuine and sustainable impact on the communities I visited and look forward to seeing the relationship develop. I hope to visit Zambia again, a country of such natural beauty and incredible heritage - what a fantastic place for our teams to begin their travels in Africa.
