david vs. goliath

Hey, yall!

I’m finally getting back into the swing of things at VOH after my 2-week respite and, lo and behold, this term’s almost over! We only have another 8 days of school left with the kiddos, which means that us teachers are getting the kids prepped for their performances for their parents/guardians next Wednesday, packing up the tent (i.e. de-sanding everything that’s salvageable and tossing the rest) so we can easily move into the new classrooms (cross your fingers that they’re actually going to be finished by September), and of course, doing student assessments. Instead of taking exams, the students are “assessed” by their teachers on their abilities to write, read, speak English, count, identify shapes, do math...stuff like that. It’s taken all week for Stephen, Jane (another medium-term intern, also from Texas!), and I to evaluate all the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders’ proficiencies, mostly because of the amazing backstories Stephen tells us about each child. Stephen knows every one of these kids as if they were his own, from the village they were born in to who they hang around with after school. 

From a teacher’s perspective, one of the worst things about these kids’ lives at home is that where they sleep, the cohesiveness of their families, their parents’ educations, and the nature of their communities funnel directly into their abilities to learn and perform well at school. Most of the kids who attend Village of Hope Orphan School live with single parents, grandmothers (“kukus”), or guardians in the villages close to Mutoya. Although the Zambians who live in town certainly don’t live in luxury, the lucky few have access to electricity or at least solid walls on their houses or flats. Life for the villagers, on the other hand, is quite different. The best of bush houses are made of mashasha (bamboo mats) and twine, the stove is the fire outside, and in the winter (as it is right now in Zambia), they freeze at night. To really understand the community’s values and what’s considered “normal” everyday behavior in the bush, though, I needed Stephen.

Stephen’s heart cries out for the children who live in the villages communities in and around Mongu. While he’s been teaching village kids at VOH and in other school systems, he’s learned that the communities that the children grow up in drastically affect their performance in class – and unfortunately, in the bush villages, it’s usually for the worse. As Jane and I talked to Stephen about the performance of child after child, we learned through individual stories that many of the students’ “families” were actually congealed fragments, the mom often working two or three small jobs to support five or six of her children, all born of different fathers. Sleeping around was a part of what Stephen called “the order of the day” – and why not? If you need nshima and fish for you and your children, and a man offers you food in exchange for something, what an easy fix that is. If he doesn’t want your kids to sleep in the same house as you and him (mashasha houses often have just one room, but a curtain of extra blankets can act as a divider if you have enough of them), then your children sleep outside. If you depend on him for every type of support, you don’t have to care about your children – so you either send them across the village to their grandma’s (kuku’s) or you let them wander. If you have a boy, perhaps the worst that can happen is he’ll get really good at fighting with the other boys in the neighborhood. If you have a girl, though, her wanderings will make her prey to all the men and boys in the village just as you were when you were young. But what’s the big deal? It’s a part of life. It’s just “the order of the day.” 

Not every family looks like that, but Mwangala’s and Nayoto’s do. Some parents are simply uneducated and don’t know how to help their kids in their studies at home, or they simply don’t care enough to support them in what they have learned. It's simply village culture. A few weeks ago I asked why we didn’t assign the kids homework or at least let them take their workbooks home so they could practice their English and math. Stephen told me that they’d tried that – but the handouts and books never made it back to school. Parents or guardians at home would see the paper and think, what perfect fodder for tonight’s fire for dinner or, I can use that to roll up a cigarette. 

In my past experience, the opposite has always been the norm: home was where my friends and I always found encouragement, love, and enthusiastic support. Our parents (or the government, at least) cared whether we showed up to school or not. Sexual or physical child abuse was something that you only heard about on the news – perhaps a tragic story of some dilapidated family that lived in a town far, far away. Sibling rivalry was bickering over who stole whose favorite tank top, not which sibling’s father was better than the other’s. A decline in a student’s performance was attributed to drugs, alcohol, too much TV, or hanging out with the wrong crowd. Here, it's more likely because a mom is trying as hard as she can to feed her 5 kids with whatever she can get from selling herself or fried bread on the roadside (the commodity depending on the customer). It’s not okay that life in the villages of Africa is like it is when there are millions of good, giving, caring people who have the resources and hearts and abilities to fix it. So what can we do?

I’ve seen pictures of starving African children and I’ve read statistics on how corrupt governments can be. Usually I’m barraged with images and facts in commercials or magazines, and the fix-it-all answer is always the same: “Send money to my organization that you have no vested interest in, I’ll take care of the details, and just trust me that your money’s used to its greatest extent to completely reverse the trajectories of these peoples’ lives.” Quite honestly, that plea might be the most effective way of inciting a response from people who have too much and who live an ocean away from starvation, abuse, and true need. The Zambia Project’s website does the same thing (it only costs $1 a day to provide an orphan with all they need to live and thrive in a loving home, and just $1 more to send them to school). I understand why needs are presented like that – tear-jerking stories and heartbreaking pictures have to be shared, especially when your own heart is so broken from the real thing. Apart from getting people to come to Africa and see the institutional brokenness here themselves, there seems to be no other way to bring actual change to people who desperately need it than to ask for support. 

What I’m starting to see, though, is that money sent in an envelope can only take you so far (this is another one of those “duh, Stephanie” moments). More money funneled into one of these village communities via the Zambia Project will absolutely help build proper houses for families who live under piles of rubbish piled on top of itself (Moonga’s house that I wrote about in my last blog is a perfect example). Money is desperately needed for building materials and construction crews to get the school building finished on time for next term. Money is the primary bottleneck to every project that the Zambia Project takes on, from drilling a well for a village that’s never tasted clean drinking water to building a security wall around the school so the kids, classrooms, and teaching materials are safe. Yes, money is important. But money just can’t fix everything. 

When Stephen and the rest of the teachers teach their students every day, they wage war against the institutional brokenness in each child’s life. Although a check can buy much-needed teaching resources and help build a school (which is AWESOME), it can’t erase every barrier that keeps kids at VOH from reaching their full potential. When I’m trying to teach Mwangala how to write her name correctly, I push against the permanent damage that her mother, father, and community have done to her. We’re swimming upstream, fighting against what malnutrition at a young age has done to these kids’ brains already and what their current hunger is doing to them now. We physically combat the terrible examples that their communities have taught them by being the best examples of God’s love that we can be. We teach in “Kid Power” that physical and sexual abuse is wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated, while we know that half the students’ lives are directly affected by it and they really have no power against it. At parent-teacher conferences next Wednesday, Stephen will sit down with guardians who don’t care whether their kid shows up for school or not, much less how they’re doing in math.

It’s critically important to remember that it is not the people in these communities who are the problem. What Jesus said hits the nail on the head: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Evil is real here, and I see its effects in the kids’ eyes every day. Sin and corruption worm themselves into every aspect of these kids’ lives, just like the sand gets even under their fingernails and in their noses and between their toes. Mongu doesn’t just need a check or a wire transfer. It needs more willing Christians to invest their lives into its people, teaching them how to walk in the light, the Way, the only real way to live at all. We need to do what Christ told us to do – “go” and feed the hungry, house the homeless, visit the sick, teach the orphans, and fight like there’s no tomorrow against the values of this world and what’s considered “normal” in the villages of Mongu. That’s how we wage war.

There’s just so much fighting we have ahead of ourselves, though. What’s helping me make it through is remembering that Jesus has already conquered the world. This world and its desires are passing away, yes, and it’s also taking along with it its pain, sickness, hunger, hiding, and darkness. But while we still see real suffering in the world, we as Kingdom people are called to bring a little bit of God’s Kingdom down here to earth. Sleeping around with men for food and money might be efficient and practical, but we need to teach that true rewards come to those who are faithful to God. We just need to trust that God will fix the world, and he’ll use our faithfulness to do it. When I look at the battles Stephen and Margaret fight in teaching these children every day, I marvel at how they can even bear to go on – don’t they know how much institutional brokenness they’re fighting against? But they are making a difference in these children’s lives, and God will use their faithfulness in serving Him to further his Kingdom and to bring himself glory.

Discussing kids with Stephen and Jane took all week, but now I feel like I know these kids more intimately than I ever thought possible. So although I sometimes would honestly rather just stay in the shade at the bottom of the hill all day rather than hike up to the tent, breathe in dust and dirt, and try to teach with little to no resources, I know that my faithfulness matters more than my comfort or cynicism. For some of these kids, school is the only consistent thing in their lives, and it’s the only place where they feel safe and valued and loved. It’s such an incredible feeling to walk to the bus stop and hear a child running up to me at ramming speed, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Teacher Stephan!” Maybe we as medium-term intern teachers at VOH don’t feel as though we’re making much of a difference in these kids’ lives – the battles we wage are so huge, and we’re only here for a blink! – but maybe God’s got this after all.