The strength of our ZMF-C scholarship boys!

Zambian kids are tough! The training starts early. Babies are shushed during cold baths. Young girls with a baby tied on their back hoe for long hours in the maize fields. Most school kids tell personal experiences of being disciplined (beaten) for breaking a school regulation. Life is very difficult for these kids—parents die; an uncle takes them in; they work hard in and out of the house. If they are lucky they may have an uncle or aunt who can pay for their education. If they are very lucky they may qualify for ZMF-C scholarship (the criteria are VERY tough and opportunities are limited due to the fact that we are a relatively new and small NGO). So... many don't go to school and they try not to cry as they hear they do not qualify. And I try not to cry, as I tell them they didn't make the 2008 list.

Steward has a ZMF-C scholarship at Namwianga Christian Secondary School. He is a bright and very obedient boy. When he's not in boarding school at NCSS he lives with his  granny and mom at Bbell (about a 45 minute drive from the mission on the worst roads you can imagine! At this time of year there is no way I'd even try to drive there, even in a 4-wheel drive truck.

Steward's mom died last week. Steward is the eldest son of two children in the family. Being the oldest male, Steward was in charge of the funeral arrangements—he's 17 years old! We helped him with some kwacha, some mealie meal and by transporting some of the elderly women of the family to as close to the burial place as we could drive. Throughout the ordeal, Steward was as stoic as a rock. We fed him tea and buns and listened to his version of the last few days of his mom's life—no tears were shed, just saddened eyes. A strong, but now double-orphan young man! 

Phineas is a grade 11 boy at Kalomo High School. This week while I was at KHS I noticed he had a dirty piece of chitenge cloth tied around one of his fingers. When I asked him to remove the cloth he revealed an abscess the size of the largest marble you can find—full of puss—on the end of the pointer finger of his left hand. The finger was so infected that the nail was displaced to a horizontal position. Yuck! The skin was pealing off in pieces. So... off to the clinic and David, the clinical officer froze it, drained it and we dressed it. I loaded him up with some good antibiotics and taught him how to clean and dress it daily. He said he'd injured it three weeks ago while on holiday in the village and had been trying traditional medicine. I will check on him on Wednesday. Throughout the  procedure of injecting the lidocane and then poking around and squeezing the gunk out of it, he flinched once. Messy things like this always remind me why I favour psychiatry to medicine! Tough boy!! Now we have a bond!

Kids are tough here. They have to be! I admire their strength, but I have great difficulty with their suffering. Kids can survive having cold baths and working HARD in the gardens, but kids should NOT have to lose their parents; they should NOT be denied going to school, and they should not be hungry! The kids in the ZMF- C are so APPRECIATIVE of the scholarships they receive. They do NOT take it for granted.

One last thing… Hunger is very apparent now. I had spent a lot of time with the KHS kids and some of the other kids in this area prior to their holiday in December. Five or six weeks have passed and now the kids have returned from their villages. They are obviously thinner! There is not much food in the remote village areas where a lot of these kids live and during the holidays many of them have worked hard in the fields. These kids are happy to return to their boarding school where they will receive beans about five times a week (mixed with a few interesting bugs that don't get cleaned out!) and nsima every day.

And one other last note. The maize harvest was a disaster in 2007 and it seems that it will be another disaster for 2008. Too much rain has stunted the growth of the maize and a constantly cloudy sky has provided little opportunity for photosynthesis to occur resulting in yellowish maize that will not produce.

Please remember these kids and this program in your prayers. Kids should not suffer.