Visiting Zambian Schools & Villages

On Tuesday 10/30/2012 Kaitlyn, Lauren, Kaitlin Plache, Hope, and Aubrey were able to go and visit three schools within the Kalomo district and see how they are run, and to compare and contrast government schools to those of mission schools. The woman who brought us is named Ruth Mbumwae and she has an incredible story! She was originally from Peru where she grew up as a runner. She ran in the Olympics for Peru and won bronze for the 10,000 Meter. Eventually she was asked to run at Abilene Christian University in Texas, which she chose because she wanted to run for America. She strictly came to America to run, but certain things fell through and she was not able to run anymore in the Olympics because of a broken Achilles. God completely changed her heart around while in America, after putting her through a lot of pain and suffering, and soon she was no longer interested in running as she once was. She was led to Zambia through a professor at ACU and she has lived in Zambia since 1996 where she married her Zambian husband. Her and her husband, since have had 3 kids and then have worked closely with 65 different churches and 15 schools.

Ruth has a heart for the schools in Zambia. We visited a variety of schools: one was a school on the Seven Fountains mission, one was a government school (Nalubumba), and the third was Good Hope- a technology school. She wanted us to see the difference in teachers and the student’s knowledge from a government school and a mission school. Zambia has a law that in order for every seventh grader to move on to the eighth grade, he must pass the 7^th grade exam. This is a week of testing and most schools do not have classes for any other grade. At Nalubumba, there were classes going on, (the principle was very proud of this), however there were no teachers anywhere to be found. There were 100+ second and third graders crammed into a room where they hadn’t learned anything in the past 4 days.

When it came to working with the preschoolers, many students of the government schools could not write their names even though this is expected of them. When Ruth spoke to the students, it went like this: “Good Morning class!” “Fine, thank you, and how are you?” “Very, very sick.” “Thank you”. It went to show that they don’t know what they say in English. They only know Tonga because it is expected for 1^st graders to still be learning in Tonga. Government curriculum does not start teaching how to read until Grade 3. So when Ruth would ask these questions, it was not expected for the students to know these answers.
In contrast, Ruth showed us that the mission school, Seven Fountains. These first graders were reading from books, and knew a lot of English. Also they were making up books that were filled with words that they knew how to spell and could put into context. It was a vast and very large difference between the two schools- a very shocking difference.

Ruth says the government schools do not require any accountability from the teachers. Teachers are paid whether the students learn or not. Ruth wants all students to have a chance at education, and that is why she firmly supports mission schools. Also, when children experience education from a mission school they are more motivated to come back and be a teacher to give the others the same opportunities they were given.

The following pictures were taken when we visited villages for Outreach.

Hope and Kaitie Wood are kindly demostrating how we sit on the very skinny logs that hurt your bee-hind tremendously. There were around 10 rows of these, and yup. that was the church benches.

Here are Christy, Kaitie W., Molly, and Hope sleeping, while Katie Daggett is wide awake, ready for the day of church! Here we slept, out in the open!

Here is Lauren sleeping, while the women are in the back, already preparing our breakfast for us around the fire. This was on the Outreach. As you can see, we are very public sleepers