I’ve become accustomed to the distended bellies caused by malnutrition, the fungal infections that cause the children to lose patches of their hair, and small dusty, bare feet running on chigger-infested soil. It’s become scenery just as much as the tall, thirsty grasses burnt by the relentless sun during dry season. But the death of a child is not something I can get used to. Despite the special cemetery just for children, with unmarked mounds strangled with weeds stretching far into the distance.
Mpundu Kandeke was five-years-old, with chubby cheeks and a bright smile like her father’s, a farmer Chris worked closely with. Sometime on Friday, she went with her twin brother and some other children into the woods to dig for bush rats, so their families could have some meat with dinner that night. She was young and a girl, so the boys told her to sit and wait for them. She didn’t see the spotted puff adder that blended in with the dead leaves and dried grass she sat on. It bit her on the thigh. On Saturday, her family managed to take her to the clinic, although their house is 3 miles from the road, and another 10 miles from there to the clinic, by the only transportation they had, a rusty Chinese-made bicycle. The clinic could do little for her. No clinic in Zambia could; there isn’t the infrastructure to store anti-venom.
She passed away on Sunday morning, nearly forty painful hours after she was bit. That same day, we and her father were supposed to play in a soccer match organized to celebrate the World Cup, which she probably would have watched. Instead, her male relatives were hammering her small coffin together.
In Bemba culture, twins are revered. You don’t wail for one twin if the other is still living. In this instance, though, her twin brother was the first to cry upon hearing of her death, making it acceptable for the rest of the family to mourn.
The morning of her funeral, the Pentecostal Church choir was singing in her grandmother’s yard for the mourners. Inside the small, empty traditional stick and mud hut, her mother, grandmother, and others sat around her body. It’s custom for mourners to sit for a few minutes with the body after they arrive. She was swaddled in a wool blanket, with only her face in view. The hut was dark and quiet and she was surrounded by her relatives on both sides. It was very peaceful, even after her mother began to softly wail, accentuating the melodious voices outside. She could have easily been only sleeping. Later though, as they prepared to move to the cemetery and drove the nails into her small, rough hewn coffin, that illusion was ruined. We were really going to leave this small girl in the ground, alone, away from all the houses in the village. She would become just another unmarked mound among many mounds, just another child lost. A too-familiar tragedy played out in the savage but beautiful landscape of Africa.
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On 30 June, two proposals I’ve spent the last three months working on will be evaluated. The first is for almost $200 funding from USAID to train three volunteer pre-school teachers in curriculum, lesson planning, and learning aids. The Kasama Pre-school Teacher Training College has agreed to facilitate this five-day workshop for free, although such a training usually costs around $400. The money requested is just to cover stationary supplies, transport, and food.
The second proposal is through the Peace Corps Partnership Program to construct a pre-school building. Since 2007, the pre-school has been using a cramped, abandoned general store as a classroom. The problems with this arrangement are many. The shack is located in the center of the village, where the men drink home-brewed beer, there’s always a radio powered by a car battery blaring, and older children duck in and out to satisfy their own curiosity. Adding to the distractions, there are no chairs or desks, and children crouch together on pieces of broken brick. The floor is dirt, and in the absence of a blackboard, functions as a slate upon which to practice writing letters and numbers. There’s no locking door, so the learning aids utilized by the teachers are restricted to what they can carry in and out each day. Finally, the students are orphaned or from families dealing with HIV or other chronic illnesses, so they especially are prone to fall through the cracks. The pre-school functions to instill in them an early love for learning and prepare them for basic school, but it’s difficult to impress upon them the importance of education and their own self-worth when they’re learning in a dilapidated, ill-suited classroom.
The money for this PCPP comes from you, my family and friends in the great United States of America. The community has agreed to donate local building materials, labor, and equipment, but they cannot contribute the necessary $4,000 in cash. As subsistence farmers, each family survives on a mere $40 a year.
If Peace Corps approves this proposal, I can begin accepting donations in 1 – 2 months. There will be a Peace Corps-affiliated website where you can donate. Of course I’ll post further information, as well as pictures. Please, please pass it on to any individual or organization that you think can help. The kids love attending their pre-school and it really has great potential to prepare children for basic school, improve literacy rates, and keep more children in school for longer.
Stay tuned…
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