Leah's Update - Afternoon Projects

Well it is the beginning of our last week in Zambia and I must say time has flown by. I have never experienced days that go so fast. The clinics are always busy in the mornings and I usually get at least one interesting case a day (like a young girl who obviously has broken her arm because the bone is pushing out the skin) so my mornings go extremely fast. To my surprise I have found that my afternoon projects are by far the most fulfilling. I love working in the clinics but they are seldom a happy place. During the afternoon however I teach an adult literacy classes, work with home based care, and I plan and present anti-drugs and alcohol presentations for school kids. I have talked about working in the clinics before so today I would like to talk about these afternoon projects.

Adult literacy is a project that I originally did not want to do. I do not enjoy teaching or having to plan lessons. However over time this has become very rewarding experience. I work with two different classes. One class has the ability to read novels so we are working on skills such as resumes and letter writing. My other class is at the completely other end of the spectrum. They are a very low level class. Because I have had no teaching experience it is much harder to work with the lowest level but it is absolutely the most rewarding. Today with the help of a translator we taught a group of six women the alphabet and the sounds for letters A-L. One of the hardest things I have had to is explain that each letter has a name in addition to a sound. I was then asked what sound the letter X makes. The women that I work with in these classes study every night, they usually have to bring their young children to class with them, and the highlight of their day is when you grade their work. If you put a sticker on their paper they light up. I would like to note that today I work at a new location for our program and it is the poorest area I have been in. During this class I helped an elderly woman named Agnes Ngome write her name for the first time. Our great victory for the day is that when we asked the class to write their names at the top of their papers all six women could do it.

Home based care is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I want to start by saying that there was quite the struggle here over volunteers working in the only hospital in Livingstone. In the past volunteers that have had previous medical experience were allowed to job shadow in the hospital. However they could only shadow and were not allowed to do any hands on work. This year the hospital is demanding that volunteers pay 200 USD to shadow their physicians. I was pretty bummed because I wanted to work in the hospital but I was not willing to pay the money. Plus I was getting hands on experience in the clinics. What really lifted my spirits was the afternoon that I was told I had to pay to shadow in the hospital I did my first home based care. During this home based care a team of local women took me and another volunteer around a poor neighborhood and taken into people’s houses. We sat with several native people who are so poor they are literally dying in their homes. These ‘clients’ can not afford the 1.50 USD to visit the clinic. Every client has AIDS, TB, or both. When we meet the clients the local women translate for us as we do a quick history review. We then do a medical examination followed by our recommendations for improving their quality of life. The only tools we have available are aspirin, an anti-inflammatory, pain-killers, multivitamins, rehydration salts, antiseptic, bandages, fungal cream, and antacids. These tools don’t add up to much when in Zac’s words, “We are fighting AIDS with aspirin.” We can however make very practical suggests especially on dealing with the side effects of their medications. Common side effects of HIV and TB treatments include swollen feet, loss of appetite, and diarrhea. I know that a lot of volunteers do not like home based care because we are very limited in what we can do for the clients. Other volunteers try and give money to the clients, thinking that they are going to save them. The sad truth is that the majority of the clients we see are already dying and no amount of money is going to save them. I personally believe that the point of home based care is just to show these individuals that someone cares about them and is willing to help. Some of the people wait all week for the day that the volunteers come in to their homes and talk about the weather. One very apparent cultural difference here is that people (especially in the medical system) never complain. This means when you ask a patient how they are doing the answer is always good, great, just fine and then they ask how you are doing.

One other project I wanted to share with everyone is a new program simply called Anti-drugs workshop. One of the local schools requested that volunteers set up an anti-alcohol workshop for there students. Apparently the school has a problem with nine year old students coming to school drunk. I and three other volunteers put together a presentation that seemed pretty good to us. When we actually when to the school it became the worst project I have done here. When we started our presentation the kid’s teacher left for the day and the kids quickly became extremely hard to control. Because corporal punishment is regularly used in the schools the students will listen to nothing else. I should also mention that half of the kids didn’t really speak English. To end our program we split the class in half and asked each group to come up with a skit about the harmful effects of alcohol. By this time I was ready to give up on these kids and walk back to town. I took my group outside and tried to explain to them what we wanted them to do. Half of my group went to play soccer or left for the day. I was very frustrated and just before I was going to give up a young boy named Anderson decided that he would take charge. He stood in front of his classmates and explained what he wanted them to do in their local language. He got the remaining students excited and gave each one of them a role. He developed a skit where he as a student went to school drunk and failed his seventh grade exam (the single most important exam in a Zambian’s life). When a student playing a teacher would ask him a question like ‘what is 1 plus 1’ he would reply with a ridiculous answer like ‘Zimbabwe.’ And while the drunk person failed their exam everyone else passed and went on to great things. I was so proud of these children. I can’t even describe how great it was to watch them create this play. Then came one of the most difficult thing that I have experienced while here in Zambia. As we returned to the classroom so the different groups could present their plays to each other a World Food truck pulled up. The men driving the truck came in and demanded that all of the male children help unload the endless 100 pound bags of corn. The students spent the next 45 minutes that we were there caring bags that were bigger then some of the students. They never did get to perform their play and I personally felt so defeated that I wanted to cry. I wanted to share this project with everyone because I think it is so symbolic of what we see everyday. There are so many people here that strive to do good, live a good life, and achieve something and then the reality of their lives and their surroundings tear their efforts to shreds. Whether it is abuse, poverty, rape, marring young, disease, unplanned pregnancy, the demand to provide, or any of the things Africa is notorious for it ruins lives before these kids even have a chance. I would like to note that we have now completed another anti-drugs workshop on marijuana and this one went a lot better. However because the school is very close to a holiday we didn’t have many of the students who were there at the first presentation.

With love from Zambia,
Leah