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Spring, 2011
MCC Representatives Visit
 Changes are in the air! MCC Representatives Eric and Kathy Fast travelled to Southern Province to visit five BIC Schools in three days to discuss shifts in funding priorities for the Schools with the Global Family funds.
There is an increasing desire by the headmasters to see improvement in the overall marks or results of their students. Earlier conversations tended to dwell on the need for more classrooms, housing for teachers and new toilet facilities.
Concerns were raised about teacher/student ratios, about lack of text books and desire for a working library. Additionally there were requests for the Global Family Teacher Mentor program also located in Zambia. The hope is that the program could encourage teachers, improve teaching practices and offer motivation in their influential role as teachers.
The New Year Begins
The school year begins during the second week in January and runs three terms until early December. We met with each of the headmasters of the schools which are supported by the Global Family program to discuss what improvements were possible. We talked about teaching practices, student’s exam results, financial struggles and lack of books, resources, teachers, teachers’ housing, and more. Global Family funding will be a major asset to our plans to move forward. Through our discussions we generated ideas and plans.
Nakeempa wants to get a class set of chairs. They have the desks but no chairs were received with the desks. They have a new classroom block that was completed last year but need classroom furniture. A portion of their Global Family grant will get chairs made.
 Macha Central Basic School struggles with having over 130 grade ones students register but there is only space for 86 students in the two classes. The headmaster said that children are coming from up to 9 kilometers away – walking to school each day.
Hamoonde Basic cut off their intake for Grade one when they reached 63, though the pressure continues to take in ‘only one more’. Hamoonde has only one class for the grade ones, with only one teacher! All the schools want to buy more textbooks for their classes. We learned in Mboole that they had only one English textbook which is to serve the teacher.
Statistically only 14% of Zambian students have access to textbooks! So we plan, we work at getting resources into the classrooms, we resource & encourage teachers, we check on children’s school results, we make adjustments and review with the headmasters in each school term.
Mr. Siachawena
As we returned to Lusaka, the Headmaster from Batoka was very pleased to get a ride with us to visit his younger brother who was quite ill.
As we stop at his school to pick him up he is making some final arrangements for his Grade One teacher’s funeral. She had not shown up for the January school term which launched the new school year. Mr. Siachawena learned that she was not well. Less than two weeks later she died. The funeral was to be on Sunday and he was making this quick visit to his brother on Saturday. He planned to return the 3 hour drive to participate in Lydia Ndlovu’s funeral the next day.
We hadn’t been on the road more than 20 to 25 minutes when he received a call on his cell phone – his brother just died. He was in his 40’s.
Mr. Siachawena shares more about his brother’s story – his first wife had died in 2005. He since remarried but also fell ill in 2009. He had started on ARV’s and was doing well. However, with the regular checkups required and a great distance to the clinic, he didn’t always follow through to collect his ARV’s. Thus resistance to the HIV AIDS drugs built up quickly and he fell ill again towards the end of this last year. Mr. Siachawena is one of four brothers, two of which have now passed away. His remaining brother currently lives in Botswana , so he is the one who is left to care for his brother’s children.
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