'The Seed Will Grow'

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ZAMBIA - 'The Seed Is Getting Bigger'

Immersion 2011 - 6th April - 23rd April 2011

Tionscadal na Zambia

Tá nasc idir mo scoil (Scoil na Mainistreach) agus scoil in Livingstone I ndeisceart Zambia agus achan dara bliain, roghnaítear scaifte ón scoil le dul chuig Zambia. Bhí cuigear déag againn ann idir bhuachaillí agus mhuinteoirí. Bhí an turas go Zambia iontach iontach fada tuirsiúl. Ghlac sé níos mó ná ocht n-uaire Is fiche agus bhí muid uilig scriosta nuair a bhain muid ár ceann scríbe amach. D?eitil muid ó Bhaile Atha Cliath go Londain agus ansin ó Londain go Lusaka agus ansin fuair muid mionbhus ó Lusaka go Livingstone. Lig muid ár scíth ar feadh lá amháin agus thosaigh muid ag obair an lá dár gcionn.

Ar maidin bhí muid ag obair sa scoil, bhí muid ag teagasc agus ag cuidiú leis na paistí, bhí achan duine ar bís le foghlaim agus chuir sé eiteoga ar mo chroí le bheith ag múineadh páistí mar seo. Sa tráthnóna thug muid cuairt ar áiteanna éagsúla mar shampla lá amháin chuaigh muid chug an oispís, áit a raibh neart daoine ag saothrú an bháis ón SÉIF, lá eile chuaigh roinnt gasúraí chuig an phríosún agus bhí said ag teagasc na príosúnaí.

Sna laethanta eile bhí muid amuigh le bunadh na háite, ag cuidiú leo nó ag sugradh leis na paístí. Bhain mé an-sult as, bhí sé iontach suimiúil agus eispearas difriúil a bhí ann. Chonaic mé ganntanas in achan áit, gan dabht ar bith, tá na daoine seo ar an ghanncuid. Bhí muid ag obair le iobairtí SÉIF agus bhí muid ag muineadh na páistí ach bhainfeadh sé deoir as na clocha mar tá daoine ag saothrú an bháis an t-ám ar fád agus tá achan duine beo bocht. I mo bharúil níl an saol cothrom, tá barraoícht saibhris anseo sa domhain forbartha agus níl na daoine seo ag fáil cothrom na féinne.

Thug muid cuairt ar chairéal lá amháin, áit ina raibh daoine idir 5-50 bliain d?aois ag obair 12 uair sa lá ag briseadh cloch lena lámha chun aon dollar in aghaidh an lae a fháil. Tá sé chomh míchothrom go bhfuil a leithéid d?éigeart ann sa domhan. Ina dhiaidh sin is uile, chonaic mé torthaí an airgid a bhailítear in Éirinn ar an láthair.

Mar aon leis an bhochtannas agus an fhulaingt, chonaic muid rudaí iontacha. Thug muid cuairt ar Easa Victoria, áit a bhí dochreidte. Ní féidir liom an gliondar a cuireadh i mo chroí as an radharc sin a fheiceáil a chur i bhfocail.

Dá mbeadh an seans agat cuairt a thabhairt ar an tír sin, glac an seans agus ná bhíodh aiféala ort. Is tír fíor-álainn, fíor-iontach í Zambia agus tá súil agam go bhfillfidh mé ar ais lá éigin.

Séamas Mac Eochaidh

African Immersion

On April 6th 2011, a group of fifteen people from the Abbey Grammar Christian Brothers’ Grammar School left for Livingstone, Zambia; after months of preparation we were ready to start our Immersion Project.

Zambia is a land locked central African country surrounded by six other countries; Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zaire, Tanzania and Mozambique. It is approximately a ten-hour flight from the UK, and around eleven times the size of Ireland, having a population of eleven million. There are seventy-three different tribes each having their own language; in the area we stayed there were the Bemba, Tonga and Selosi tribes. The Zambezi River, which runs through the country, is 2700 km long, about eight times longer than the longest river here in Ireland, the River Shannon.

The preparation started on the Edmund Rice feast day in May 2010 when forty year 12 and year 13 students applied for a place in what would be the fifth trip of its kind from the school. By October from this group, eleven students were chosen. In the following months, we had meetings every week where we arranged fundraising, practised cooking meals (as we would be cooking for ourselves in Zambia) and generally prepared for what would be the experience of a lifetime. It was over these months that we really bonded and became a group.

These months flew by, and it wasn’t long before we were waiting in the Abbey car park on our bus to take us to Dublin Airport. We set off; our slight anxiety at what lay ahead being overwhelmed by our sheer excitement at the amazing journey we were about to embark on. Our journey from Dublin began with a sign. The pilot of our Aer Lingus flight, shamrock 164 was a past pupil of the school. Captain Joseph May navigated our airbus 320 with safety to Heathrow where we waited for a few hours, before boarding our ten-hour flight to Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, the country that would be our home for the next two and a half weeks.

We got off the plane at 6:30 am local time and were hit with a gust of 30-degree heat, our first experience to the hot African heat. Br. Joe Mosley welcomed us at the Christian Brothers’ Spiritual Centre and after a quick breakfast we headed into a local compound, our first real insight into developing world poverty. It was a gracious experience and the smiles on the children have been imprinted on our minds forever. We were given an unbelievable welcome, how many of us would welcome total strangers at 8am on a Thursday morning. We quickly realised we weren’t total strangers as any friend of the Brothers’ was a friend of theirs, a true tribute to the work of the Brothers’.

We said our goodbyes to Br Joe and left for the Irish Embassy. Marylee Wall welcomed us and gave our group a great insight into the work of the Irish Government in Zambia. We left Lusaka and began our seven hour bus journey south. During our journey to Livingstone we were shocked to be the centre of people’s attention. The people were so friendly and would go out of their way to wave and smile at us. In spite of the heat, we managed to get some sleep on the journey but were woken frequently by the thud of the many potholes in the road. We eventually arrived at our destination- ‘Fawlty Towers’, Livingstone. It had everything we needed, and was a luxury compared to the places in which we saw other people living, over the following two and a half weeks. Martin Hearty, a seventh year participant, shares his personal experiences.

It was hard to describe my first reactions when arriving in Zambia but all I can say is that the city Lusaka was a lot better than what I thought it would be, but I don’t know what I was expecting to see, maybe elephants and lions patrolling the streets and poverty and death around every corner. But we had a long 7 hour bus journey in the smallest bus possible, which showed us the true Zambia. There were small stalls lining the country roads selling anything and everything, we stopped a couple of times on the way down to Livingstone to stretch our legs and buy water. It was surreal realizing we had arrived in Africa.

On arriving in Livingstone we set up our home for the remainder of our days in Zambia, a youth hostel called Fawlty Towers. The first day was really just for us getting our bearings and getting used to Zambia life. I got my first real insight into poverty and sick people on the first morning when Mr Grogan, Patrick and myself went over to let Sister Mary Courtney, our main contact in Zambia, know that we had arrived safely. She was a great woman and was glad to see us. She brought us to a clinic down the road in Libuyu compound. Just before we went in Mark told us to be prepared for the smell of concentrated sweat but really nothing could prepare anybody for that. We entered seeing young mothers lining the walls with sick babies dying in their arms. But then we were shown exactly what people would do for money, when sister Mary asked a young paralysed man where was the watch that one of the other nuns gave him, he answered quickly that it was broken, but sister Mary turned to us and said obviously he has sold it. It was quite humorous.

We were all separated into three different community schools. I was in Linda along with Ciaran and Paul. We started off with no pupils but once the word spread that there was ‘Mazungas’ or white people in the school, the crowds steadily increased. I loved the teaching because knowing that you were one of the stepping stones for some of these children to escaping utter poverty. Compared to Ireland it is amazing the children actually want to learn and love going to school. They always are trying to be the teacher’s pet lifting out the books in the morning and wiping the chalk off the board from the day before. We were told that men have no respect for women in Africa and that they would hit the women, so one day at break I caught a lad Rodger in my class hitting other girls in the class and putting them in headlocks so I snuck up behind and grabbed Rodger and held him and let the girls hit him back - there is no child protection over there. The girls couldn’t believe that a man was respecting them and especially a white man.

Over the course of the few weeks that I was teaching, young children only 9 or 10 years of age would come up to me complaining of being sick. I told them that I would get the principal to take them home but they said no very quickly, they wanted to stay, I thought that really showed dedication and love for education. There was a small lad called Jackson in my class who was a real character. I noticed he really wasn’t at himself one of the days. Mark the adult in our school was away on a day-care visit so I hadn’t got him to ask what I should do. So I brought Jackson outside and asked what was wrong. He was slow to reply but he told me that he hadn’t had anything to eat in three days. I froze on the spot, his family hadn’t got the money to provide any food for him. I also asked him where he lived and he told me about an hours walk away, so I realised that this was a boy who was absolutely starving still walked for an hour that morning in his bare feet to get to school. I was gutted, so I reached into my pocket and gave him everything I had in it. At first he refused and that was what struck me the most, but after me restraining his hands and putting it in his pocket, he accepted it and said thanks sir and shook my hand. The next day Jackson came in like a lunatic, jumping around back to his normal self. That’s Poverty and injustice that we say in the Edmund Rice prayer.

In Linda Community School our principal Catherine brought us to see where the pupils from the school came from. This was a great chance to meet their parents and see the living conditions. A real eye opener, and it helped me to relate to the members of my class. I gained a sense of what these people’s everyday lives were really like. The walk itself took us about an hour to reach the last pupil house, away up high in the hills. We were struggling to walk this journey in our comfortable trainers, so I wondered how young Gift beside us was coping in his bare feet, on dry stony ground. These were the types of challenges that the people are faced with. Then we got to their homes. You can only have so much of an imagination as to what these people really live like, until you’re actually standing there in front of them.

A child in my class called Martin, lived in a house with his father and brother, as his mother had died a few years ago from HIV/AIDS. The father, a very proud man, let us have a look around his humble house. Martin slept in a little room of his own, detached from the main house, probably around the same size as a kitchen table. He slept on the hard red soil every night, with a simple blanket to keep him warm. In the rainy season, the roof he told us, would not cope with the rain. The holes in the wall would make the room have a little river, running through it as he slept. We then had a look around the kitchen area, again we stooped low to get in the gap where the door should have been. This area was probably half the size again of Martins bedroom, with the only utensils for cooking being an old spoon and some sort of metal dish.

This is the reality, this is how these people have to live. As I took a step back and stopped to think for a brief moment, I thought to myself, ‘well this is hard to look at and imagine people trying to live like this, but Martin and his family do have to live like this’. This was the everyday reality for him and his family. I felt depressed and for a moment lost. How can there be such a difference in the way people live? Mark recognised his father as a caretaker for Linda school. We, the Abbey, actually pay Martin’s father a wage every month. It was honestly a pleasure to be able to see how our money in school actually goes the long way to help a family in real need out.

On our long walk back towards our school, we met a young girl balancing a huge container of water on her head, and carrying another container in each hand. She had probably walked a few miles to fill up the container and now had to walk back. This was quite hard to deal with, and although we had good craic at watching Paul struggling to fill up the bucket with the pump, it only really hit me when Catherine told us that these were the types of jobs that women were expected to do. We turn on a tap and expect clean water, we waste this water, but these people labour for this water. Unjust world.

Catherine took us for a walk on another occasion and we went to a blind and disabled village not far from Linda school. We came across a blind man, who was the father of one of the students in our class. He was such a feel good guy, and made us feel happy being around him. Although he was blind and lived in squalor conditions, he seemed so positive considering his situation. He played a guitar and had composed a song about HIV and AIDS. When we asked if we could hear it he told us that it was not fully finished and there were a few finishing touches but he would try his best. This was a very moving 3-4 minutes listening to this man sing about the effects of HIV/AIDS but they’re were positives about life as well. To see Mark’s reaction, who has been there lots of times before, showed that even he was moved by this man. He had never experienced anything of this sort previously in Zambia, and I think it had a profound effect on him.

The quarry area was extremely hard to take in. Probably one of the most harrowing things I have ever seen. The people there had a daily routine, which was to get up, break stones all day, go to bed, get up break, break stones, go to bed…..and if they were lucky enough to be a child they might get to go school, somewhere in the middle of it all, for few hours. One particular image that sticks out in my head was old woman whose hands had been worn out by the constant manual labour of her life. She went to work every day with her grandchild strapped to her back, as her own children had died. She would fill wheel barrow full of tiny stones and if she was really lucky she might make 60p. There really was no escape for the people here. They lived on the land beside the quarry. Again we could see the impact of Abbey money. As part of the previous groups fundraising they had provided the means to build a bore hole, water pump near by, something that seems simple to us could be the simple difference between them living or death. This ‘water hole’ provided much needed crops and again meant a 2 hour walk to a water pump was reduced to less than 2 minutes. They were so appreciative towards us. The normally don’t allow ‘tourists’ to take pictures of them and it quickly became evident that we were not viewed as tourists but friends.

Every evening we went to the Lubasi Home, which was my favourite activity in the whole Immersion programme. Lubasi is a children’s orphanage that was founded by the Brothers’. Just simply laughing and playing with the little kids, was unreal. When we entered the Home every day, the children would come running to great us, shouting our names. We brought great joy and hope to them in such a short space of time. A young Congolese boy called Damas was one of my favourites. He was always so happy climbing on up our backs and was always looking a sneaky sweet out of the back of my bag. Basically he was looking to be loved. The story behind Damas, like all of the children, was pretty sad. He was originally from the Congo and his desperate family had tried to sneak into Zambia illegally but got caught and thrown in jail.

Damas and his brother Ali where taken in the Lubasi home. I was told by one of the older girls that their parents have no money to pay the bail to let them out of jail so until then the two boys will never see their parents again. I’m not sure who it was I asked but I mentioned to someone that I would pay the bail because it wasn’t that expensive to let these parents reunite with their children. I was told that the parents have no money to support the children or buy them food, at least in the Lubasi home they have food water and education. They would have a better life without them. It is hard to accept but I know that is the reality in Africa and Damas is very lucky to be in such a safe environment. I knew that our time in Africa wouldn’t change Zambia but just by being there we gave them children something to reach out for. We gave them love and that was humbling for me. No amount of money could do that, these children got much more from us than money could ever give. There was not a dry eye amongst our group the day we left. That was hard experience to live.

At the weekends we became tourists. It was important to get a balance between the poverty of Zambia and the extreme beauty of the country. The first Saturday we visited ‘Musi O Tuyna’ the smoke that thunders - The Victoria Falls. I couldn’t wait to go but I thought that it would only hold my attention for a couple of minutes because let’s face it, what would be so interesting and special about water flowing over a cliff, but by God I was wrong. It is a truly special place and one which I shall never forget. The sheer size and power of the falls are something that is difficult to take in. It is considered to be the largest waterfall in the world. 625 million litres of water per minute rush over the falls. It is a majestic 108m in height as well as being 1708m wide. As you get closer and closer to the falls, things get wetter and wetter, louder and louder and at times nothing can be seen due to the misty spray which rises 1000ft and which can be seen up to 25 miles away. This spray is so large that it is only possible to see half of the falls at this time of the year and basically soaks everywhere surrounding the Falls.

The feeling of being completely drenched and the loud grumble that fills your ears only adds to the experience of visiting this world heritage site along with also seeing breathtaking rainbows in the mist, exceeded all of our expectations. While at the falls we took a walk down to the boiling pot which was another wonderful experience. This walk was through a tropical rainforest climate that has obviously been created by the mist of the Falls and the high temperatures. This was a really beautiful place and something that surprised me because this of the dry environment that is typical to southern Zambia. All in all I was left in awe by the falls and the landscape that surrounded it. We also visited Chobi National Park in Botswana on the second Saturday and although it is not in Zambia it is a true representation of the beauty of southern Africa. It is home to 120,000 elephants so you can be assured we saw plenty of them but we also saw giraffes, hippos, impalas, buffalos and many types of birds and lizards. A different contrast to the poverty based compounds and the struggling human life that we witnessed during the week.

The fact that the people in Zambia enjoy life with what they have, without making a fuss and how they just get on with things, gave me the strength to make the most of the time I had, with the wonderful people of Zambia.

I can remember a quote that stuck out to me from the last group: ‘If you give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime’

I have experienced this, we also got to see first-hand how the money we have raised in the past has helped people. However, no amount of money can give the personal attention we gave to the people who we came in contact with. To see the crying faces of the children at Lubasi as we left for the last time, we had obviously meant so much to these people and given them so much in such a short time. To date we provide education in Abbey refurbished schools, provide water at the quarry, we care for the hospice and have provided a much needed chapel and more. But most of all we have made friends for life in Zambia. They see us as their family and we truly have a family to care for in Livingstone, Zambia.

Blessed Edmund Rice’s seed has grown into something that I don’t think he could have imagined. Ireland at that time was poor and Edmund Rice, as we all know helped the poor and gave them an education. We in turn have learned from him and in a sense have done exactly as he intended.

‘Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world’ Nelson Mandela:

We have used the power of that weapon, in the hope of providing a little relief for our family of Livingstone, Zambia.

Written by a member of the 2011 team

The Immersion Team 2011 - Patrick Burns, Conor Devlin, Stephen Grant, Martin Hearty, Cormac Linden, Sean McCaffery, Ciaran McCartan, Shane McCartan, Neil McDonald, Séamas Mc Geough, Paul McNulty, Mr Mark Grogan, Mr Kevin Brady, Mrs Teresa Fearon and Mrs Mags McGivern

For further information please go to www.abbeycbs.co.uk/zambia

If you would like any further information, please email us Abbey Zambia Project