Naturally, our adventures have been wrought with educational moments and realizations about privilege – ours and otherwise. Some big, some small, some expected, some genuine educational moments. We thought it would be important to share some of these moments with you from our time at Chishawasha.
Picky Eating
We knew we’d be in for an education when it came to food. Every night we eat with the families and they have a rotation of set meals each night. Each dinner includes nshima and usually lunch does too. If asked what their favourite food is, most of the children will reply nshima. Nshima, as we’ve experienced it, is usually served with some vegetable (cabbage for the most part given it’s the end of the dry season – sometimes pumpkin leaves or sweet potato leaves or cassava leaves), a form of protein (beef, dried fish, beans, or chicken), all topped with some form of gravy or relish. It’s been delicious and very filling. We’re told that if you serve a meal without nshima, your guests will come home saying they haven’t eaten – because a meal without nshima is not a meal, and a home without nshima is not a home. This lesson was courtesy of Miriam the teacher =). But when people (usually shocked that we had never previously eaten nshima) ask us ‘What is your staple food in Canada?’ we have no real answer. Some families may stick to meat and potatoes, others various cultural foods, but we have come to appreciate the diversity of our food and the choice. Choice is such an incredible thing – and we often take it very much for granted. One day we were cooking a pasta lunch on a weekend. We had bought it because it was one of the cheapest things for us to make. We realized then that what is one of the most ‘affordable’ meals at home is still expensive by standards here. Why buy pasta and a can of sauce when you can get a bag of mealie-meal (corn powder used for making nshima) that’ll last a month when combined with leaves from the vegetables in the garden and some simple additions like tomato bits or ground nuts? And just so you know, the children here eat very well. We’re told some of the children from the communities around that also come to school here, may or may not have eaten since they were last served lunch (which is provided to the students and staff at the school each day – usually with nshima). So you can imagine that even the regular rotation of meals at Chishawasha may seem like a diversity of food compared to the regular diets in some of the subsistence farms or villages nearby.
Oh, and one other small moment about food. We bought some 2% milk - which was hard to find (they usually use pure milk or long life milk). We were all excited for our Maize Flakes (a local no-name cornflakes) and we discovered our milk was bad before its expiry date. We were sad and had a moment of silence as we poured the milk down the drain. When we told Philip about it, he explained their use of milk and then got excited as he asked what we did with it. Right then we knew we were in trouble. We abashedly told him we poured it out and his eyes widened in horror. Note: Never throw out food – however bad or gross you may deem it without consulting a local first! Apparently one of the tribes (of which a number of the children and a few staff belong to) love to have curdled milk chunks with their nshima. We felt so wasteful – we really should have thought to ask first. Philip got a good laugh out of it though =).
Movie
On Friday night (two Fridays ago, actually), we had the opportunity for a special treat: Philip’s and some of the kids’ church was holding a movie premiere fundraiser for youth development camps (an important experience for the teenagers here), and we attended it along with several of the oldest children from Chishawasha. It became clear how rare and precious an opportunity the outing was for them when we saw how carefully they chose their outfits and groomed. Later, they all told us that it was their first time ever seeing a movie in a theatre – how cool for them, and what a revelation for us, who see movies whenever we feel like it. The movie was “Surrogates”, which is about people using robots essentially to replace them in all of their daily tasks for safety purposes. No one ever left their homes. It’s a disturbing concept, and we could tell that the kids had been pretty affected by it when they asked us if we had robots like that in Canada. We assured them that no such thing existed, and we hoped that it never would! They were very relieved.
Gadgets
One evening in the second week of our stay, a group of children came to visit us, and we had a great time playing music and games with them – as we often do on the weekends here. They really enjoyed trying out our guitar and drum, and when we pulled out our cameras, they got even more excited. They absolutely loved taking pictures – of each other, of the landscape, of anything, really – and we think it’s pretty awesome that some of our pictures will show how the kids see their world. At the same time, it’s yet another illustration of how something we take so much for granted, like taking pictures, is such a novelty for these children. The point was driven home even more strongly when a few of them followed us into our room when we went to put our instruments away. Until this point, none of the children had been in our room - we weren’t thinking. Our belongings were strewn about all over. One girl first noticed the velvet bag that our engagement ring came in, and she asked if she could have it. Although we certainly wouldn’t mind parting with the bag, we realized that we couldn’t give it to her because it would be unfair to the other children and would very likely create conflict. Unfortunately, the situation escalated from there. The children were examining our belongings – before we realized what was among our mess, they were looking at or playing with our iPods, cameras, Game Boy, and other simple things like decks of cards and our travel-cribbage board. Taking the first girl’s cue (which was innocent enough), they began to ask if we’d be leaving some of our toys with them when we depart – which soon turned into half-joking comments like ‘I’ll take this’ or ‘you can leave this with me’. We had done such a good job of being sensitive – culturally, economically, etc. And here we were having to tell them ‘no, that’ll be going with us’. We couldn’t help but wonder what this must look like to the children. This incident really threw us for a loop. We’d been very careful until that time so we hadn’t had too many ‘foot in mouth’ or ‘ignorant tourist’ moments. Our collection of things must have looked like extravagance in their eyes, and we are realizing that, in fact, it really is. It was an uncomfortable realization for several reasons: first, how superfluous a lot of our possessions are, and second, what kind of impact this moment could have with the children. Now, certainly they recognize that some people have things that others don’t – one child has managed to work enough doing side jobs here and there to save enough money for a PSP and a number of the older children have cell phones. Still – this moment definitely betrayed our ‘low profile’ and certainly could have changed the way some of the children saw us. Our biggest worry was that we may have alienated ourselves or, worse, that the children might want some things that they just couldn’t have. Fortunately, in the end, our actions speak louder than our possessions and we’re pretty confident that it was a fleeting moment. Needless to say, we’ve been a lot more careful about our room and our belongings since =).
Education
We all ‘know’ that education is a privilege, but our time here has shown us just what that means, in a number of ways. Every single child here recognizes that education is one of the most incredible things that they have here at Chishawasha. When we ask what their favourite thing about living here is, many of the children reply immediately ‘education’. And many more anticipate the end of holidays so they can get back to school the way the kids in Canada anticipate summer break. To see students appreciate their education this way is humbling. For these children, education is more than a means to an end. Most of these children recognize that education is not only about a better future but also about safety and citizenship. It appears that the education Chishawasha is offering is very good. There are a number of stories of students here going to other schools and being placed in higher grades. There are also a number of high-school students who are succeeding very well academically and have gotten themselves into excellent private schools and some, like Thokodzile, John, and Wisdom are even prefects.
The impact of education here is deeper than we could have anticipated. Even in Zambia, where public education is largely ‘free’, something as simple as paying for a school uniform can be prohibitive for many families. And for teens the pressure is especially complex. A number of the teenagers have expressed the difficulties that many of their peers have. They talk about an ‘old mindset’ that people have – the idea that wealth is shown by how many children they have – and so many people will have more children than they can support (we heard similar things in Zimbabwe). The students explain that some people think that if they have enough children, the children will take care of them and they won’t have to work. True or not, the pressure for a teenager to bring home an income is very real. At very least, many report that if you are a boy and are a teenager then you are expected to provide for yourself if not for the family. Where does that leave a 16 year old boy who wants to go to school if he can’t afford his own uniform? School or subsistence? They have night schools for older young adults or adults who wish to catch up with school, but even that is only semi-functional. If you are working to bring home dinner and then have to go to school, how much can you really concentrate and learn? What if you have children – which it seems many older teens and twenty-somethings have? And with the significant scarcity of jobs in Zambia, how many teens sell things on the street or have to turn to crime? Maybe this seems dramatic but hearing it from the children and seeing it on our occasional trips through compound areas to town have made it all too real. And so education is more than about getting a good job. It’s about learning a new way of thinking, an alternative way of life. It’s about learning life skills. And so Chishawasha is so much more than an orphanage with a school. It’s a family, a community, a sanctuary and a privilege that these children both understand and cherish. It is truly moving.
Much Love,
-Jimi and Jenny
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Moments In Between, Part 2
The Gardens
One day last week we needed a break from workshop prep and the sun was shining for the first time since the rains had started full-swing. We decided to go for a walk around and check out the gardens behind the houses. The gardens are beautiful, and as the rains have picked up, they have gone from dusty and dull-green to lush and flourishing shades of deep greens in only a few days. Cabbage heads and tomatoes dominate the gardens with a helping of maize and a smattering of other veggies like peppers, cassava plants, and a few others. Some fruit trees line the areas and are just waiting for enough rain to inflate their respective mangoes, peaches, guava, and bananas. It was a beautiful walk and between the mummies, gardener, some of the children who were off school, and uncle Philip, we were able to identify most of the plants. We spent some time marveling at how banana trees work and observing the bunches in mid-bloom. But what really took up our time was when Jimi spotted a chameleon perched on one of the tomatoes. We were told they were very friendly so we had him in hand in moments. He was beautiful – about six inches long head-to-tail and he instantly changed colour when he climbed onto Jimi’s arm. We marveled at him for a while as we watched his two eyes move in different directions. Before long, one of the mummies pointed out another that had coloured itself like a snake and had scared her. We went to investigate and found a second beautiful chameleon. We spent at least half an hour with our two chameleons – the second being very adventurous and fearless – snapping her tongue at a fly from the palm of Jimi’s hand and climbing all over Jenny until she needed a quick rescue from Jenny’s hunched-over back before she ended up in Jenny’s pants! It was such a cool break from our planning! Before long we put them back and watched them disappear into the long grass and tomato plants, shifting colours as they moved like leaves blowing in the wind.
Rain-Rain-Rain
Whenever we seem to think we’ve seen the true ‘rain’ of the ‘rainy season’ we’re quickly shown otherwise. This week it has rained for nearly three straight days – stopping only briefly enough to give you the false sense that you might actually be able to get some laundry done. Needless to say, we’re running out of underwear fast and have resigned to hanging it to dry inside tomorrow! Sometimes the rains are beautifully refreshing and warm. The other day during one of our sessions we noticed that it was lightly raining on one side of the school but not the other – we could see rain out the windows to the left and yet it was dry to the right. After five minutes of this we stuck our hands out the windows to make sure we weren’t imagining it – we weren’t. It stayed that way for about 20 minutes before gradually drifting on. Often the storms come quickly, without notice, and with much ferocity. After our first ‘flood’ we’ve gotten better at keeping the water outside, but some nights the rain comes in droves, intensifying and relaxing and intensifying again, to the point that we can’t get to sleep or wake out of paranoia that we need to double-check our water-proofing. The nicest nights, however, are those that come with rain falling gently on the tin-roof all night long, drumming you softly to sleep. We hope for these each night. And every morning the greening world around us is deeper, taller, thicker, and more and more alive. The transformation is remarkable.
Night Times in the Houses
As our dinner traditions continue, we’ve expanded our repertoire of helping with reading, homework, dance lessons and card games to include a few new treats. We started bringing our guitar and drum to dinners for some after-meal jamming. Some nights this has us playing songs for them and singing ‘Amazing Grace’ together, while others are a trade – song for song with the children. It is such a thrill to hear their beautiful voices in chorus. Other times it turns into a raucous jam session. The other night a few songs turned into a virtual ‘stomp’ show in the dining room, and Jenny began arming the family with found objects from the kitchen and we showed them how interesting sounds could be produced from anything. By the end, every person of every age was playing something – drums, guitar, spoons, tables, chairs, water-jugs, scrub-brushes, bottle-caps, glasses, even a box of kapenta (tiny dried fish). It was a blast and the rhythms were incredible. It’s like every child here is born with the ability to keep a beat. What a highlight!
We had also decided that we needed to bring some Robert Munsch and other Canadian stories with us and have had a wonderful time reading to the children. Everyone, little or big, gathers around as we share some of the favourites form our childhoods. “Thomas’s Snowsuit”, “I Have To Go”, “Mortimer”, and “Jonathan cleaned up – then heard a sound” being some of the bigger hits. We also had a great moment the other night when we read “The Hockey Sweater” by Roch Carrier. At first we weren’t sure how well they would relate to it, but as soon as we opened the pages we realized it was a great fit. While once upon a time (and still in some places) Canadian life was all about the school, the church, and the hockey rink, much of Zambian life (Chishawasha in particular) is spent in three places: The school, the church, and the soccer pitch. I think this story was particularly enchanting to the older boys who seemed to have a deep appreciation for the trappings of the story and for Roch’s plight. It was an excellent feeling that immediately connected our seemingly alien worlds in some very basic and true ways. Maybe the world isn’t so big after all.
Much love,
Jenny and Jimi
One day last week we needed a break from workshop prep and the sun was shining for the first time since the rains had started full-swing. We decided to go for a walk around and check out the gardens behind the houses. The gardens are beautiful, and as the rains have picked up, they have gone from dusty and dull-green to lush and flourishing shades of deep greens in only a few days. Cabbage heads and tomatoes dominate the gardens with a helping of maize and a smattering of other veggies like peppers, cassava plants, and a few others. Some fruit trees line the areas and are just waiting for enough rain to inflate their respective mangoes, peaches, guava, and bananas. It was a beautiful walk and between the mummies, gardener, some of the children who were off school, and uncle Philip, we were able to identify most of the plants. We spent some time marveling at how banana trees work and observing the bunches in mid-bloom. But what really took up our time was when Jimi spotted a chameleon perched on one of the tomatoes. We were told they were very friendly so we had him in hand in moments. He was beautiful – about six inches long head-to-tail and he instantly changed colour when he climbed onto Jimi’s arm. We marveled at him for a while as we watched his two eyes move in different directions. Before long, one of the mummies pointed out another that had coloured itself like a snake and had scared her. We went to investigate and found a second beautiful chameleon. We spent at least half an hour with our two chameleons – the second being very adventurous and fearless – snapping her tongue at a fly from the palm of Jimi’s hand and climbing all over Jenny until she needed a quick rescue from Jenny’s hunched-over back before she ended up in Jenny’s pants! It was such a cool break from our planning! Before long we put them back and watched them disappear into the long grass and tomato plants, shifting colours as they moved like leaves blowing in the wind.
Rain-Rain-Rain
Whenever we seem to think we’ve seen the true ‘rain’ of the ‘rainy season’ we’re quickly shown otherwise. This week it has rained for nearly three straight days – stopping only briefly enough to give you the false sense that you might actually be able to get some laundry done. Needless to say, we’re running out of underwear fast and have resigned to hanging it to dry inside tomorrow! Sometimes the rains are beautifully refreshing and warm. The other day during one of our sessions we noticed that it was lightly raining on one side of the school but not the other – we could see rain out the windows to the left and yet it was dry to the right. After five minutes of this we stuck our hands out the windows to make sure we weren’t imagining it – we weren’t. It stayed that way for about 20 minutes before gradually drifting on. Often the storms come quickly, without notice, and with much ferocity. After our first ‘flood’ we’ve gotten better at keeping the water outside, but some nights the rain comes in droves, intensifying and relaxing and intensifying again, to the point that we can’t get to sleep or wake out of paranoia that we need to double-check our water-proofing. The nicest nights, however, are those that come with rain falling gently on the tin-roof all night long, drumming you softly to sleep. We hope for these each night. And every morning the greening world around us is deeper, taller, thicker, and more and more alive. The transformation is remarkable.
Night Times in the Houses
As our dinner traditions continue, we’ve expanded our repertoire of helping with reading, homework, dance lessons and card games to include a few new treats. We started bringing our guitar and drum to dinners for some after-meal jamming. Some nights this has us playing songs for them and singing ‘Amazing Grace’ together, while others are a trade – song for song with the children. It is such a thrill to hear their beautiful voices in chorus. Other times it turns into a raucous jam session. The other night a few songs turned into a virtual ‘stomp’ show in the dining room, and Jenny began arming the family with found objects from the kitchen and we showed them how interesting sounds could be produced from anything. By the end, every person of every age was playing something – drums, guitar, spoons, tables, chairs, water-jugs, scrub-brushes, bottle-caps, glasses, even a box of kapenta (tiny dried fish). It was a blast and the rhythms were incredible. It’s like every child here is born with the ability to keep a beat. What a highlight!
We had also decided that we needed to bring some Robert Munsch and other Canadian stories with us and have had a wonderful time reading to the children. Everyone, little or big, gathers around as we share some of the favourites form our childhoods. “Thomas’s Snowsuit”, “I Have To Go”, “Mortimer”, and “Jonathan cleaned up – then heard a sound” being some of the bigger hits. We also had a great moment the other night when we read “The Hockey Sweater” by Roch Carrier. At first we weren’t sure how well they would relate to it, but as soon as we opened the pages we realized it was a great fit. While once upon a time (and still in some places) Canadian life was all about the school, the church, and the hockey rink, much of Zambian life (Chishawasha in particular) is spent in three places: The school, the church, and the soccer pitch. I think this story was particularly enchanting to the older boys who seemed to have a deep appreciation for the trappings of the story and for Roch’s plight. It was an excellent feeling that immediately connected our seemingly alien worlds in some very basic and true ways. Maybe the world isn’t so big after all.
Much love,
Jenny and Jimi
Monday, November 23, 2009
Workshop 'til ya drop!
We have to apologize for seriously neglecting our blog lately. As promised, the less we’re blogging, the busier we are doing awesome things, and the past couple of weeks have been especially busy and awesome! When we last discussed our activities at Chishawasha, we were preparing to deliver a series of workshops to the mothers, teachers, and other staff members here. We have since conducted a fantastic professional development program over the course of four days with the Chishawasha staff, which we had a great time doing and which they absolutely loved... so much so that we’ve been asked to do one more afternoon session on our last day here (tomorrow! Can’t believe it!). We’ve also run a short workshop series with the middle age group of children, a career development and visioning program with the oldest children, a “playshop” with the youngest children (hilarious and so much fun!), and we’re currently running a girls’ group and a boys’ group to discuss important issues in the older children’s lives. We’ve been facilitating something every single day for the past several weeks, and our free time is spent preparing for whatever is coming up next (also cribbage games... but our laundry has been seriously neglected... we blame the weather).
First off, the staff workshops. The mothers and teachers here are such wonderful, passionate, caring women, and it was such a pleasure to spend some good time working with them and getting to know them better. Since the Chishawasha school has many students of various ages who are going to school for the first time, the teachers have the daunting task of managing classrooms in which the students are a wide range of ages and learn at completely different paces. Their proficiency in English also varies a lot, but even with these challenges, the teachers here are providing quite a high quality of education to children who would likely not otherwise get one. We really admire what they achieve every day. Since they are all elementary school teachers, we prepared a workshop for them about working with adolescents, as well as several sessions about some of the groundbreaking theories about intelligence and learning, and how to recognize and support a child who may be dealing with a learning disability. It was a pretty enormous amount of information to unload on them in a short period of time, but they assured us that it was extremely helpful and that they were thirsty for more.
The mummies, as they are called, are so clearly experts at their jobs: Being mothers and raising children. Many of them raised families of their own before building new families at Chishawasha, and some are juggling both at the same time. Their commitment to the children is amazing to us, and we couldn’t help but feel completely inspired hearing Mummy Martha talk about how God brought her to be with her children in House 4. Just like all parents, these mummies are often baffled by the inexplicable behaviour of their teenagers, so we spent quite a while with them discussing adolescent psychology and strategies for working with teenagers – which seemed pretty exciting and informative for them.
(At this point, we’re sure our parents are laughing their heads off at the thought of us educating people about dealing with teenagers. Jenny’s parents in particular like to tell everyone how she was like the girl from The Exorcist when she was 14, and they really hope Jimi knows what he’s getting himself into. We figure our parents are waiting for Karma to jump up and bite us when we have our own teenagers, and THEN we’ll see just how much we know about dealing with them!)
Aside from teenagers, we did sessions on active listening, conflict mediation, and community building with the mummies. We suspect they are already experts at all of the above, but perhaps we offered them some ways of explaining what they do intuitively. At any rate, they were very engaged and asked many questions, especially about teenagers, and they were so excited about everything they were learning. We got some great reactions from them – and many were eager to tell us how much of a difference it made for them. We only wish we could tell them how mutual that feeling is.
With both the mummies and the teachers separately, and with the whole Chishawasha staff together, we did leadership development and teambuilding, which involve a substantial amount of silliness and very active learning. We thought it might be difficult for these professionals to take us seriously if we began our sessions with funny icebreaker games, but it turned out to be absolutely hilarious to see how much they got into it! They had so much fun and we all laughed until we cried. They really loved the team initiative tasks as well, which begin as challenging but essentially meaningless activities, but then turn into incredible ways of looking at team dynamics, communication, problem-solving, etc. Our favourite: The Blind Rope Square, where the group has to make a perfect square out of a rope while everyone is blindfolded. We had some fantastic discussions about how they can all work better together as Chishawasha staff, and what it means to be successful as a team. Afterwards, Mummy Miriam told us we had “brainstormed” her. We’re not sure exactly what that means, but we think it might be the best compliment we’ve ever had on our facilitation skills!
Finally, we did a session with the whole staff on shared vision, values, and strategic planning. This session might have been the best in a series of really amazing sessions because by this point the group had become comfortable enough with each other to be really open and honest. The staff were able to discuss frankly and constructively what their weaknesses and insecurities were and what they could do to improve, and we think it’s safe to say that everyone left that session with some really valuable insights and an excitement for how they can move forward. Overall, they were an absolutely wonderful group to work with, and we had an incredible time. We’ve had some really encouraging and positive feedback on the sessions from everyone from Philip to the Chishawasha driver, Peter (really great guy with a beautiful family), so we’re holding out hope that they might be willing to let us come back someday to do more workshops!
While we hope that people learned something from us, there is no doubt that we learned more from them than we can ever express. We’re so grateful for how freely they share their culture, from patiently teaching us Nyenja and traditional dances to helping us understand their distaste for owls (apparently a sign of witches in Zambian tradition... not what we expected when using owls as an example of good leadership qualities!). Mummy Christine has even promised to teach us how to cook nshima tomorrow... we can’t wait!
Our three-day workshop with the 10-13-year-olds was also a total blast, but a bit more of a challenge. We wanted to offer them some of the same leadership development lessons that we facilitated for the older children, and we struggled to find a way to make it accessible for them. As usual, we had a great time playing games with them, and worked in some good lessons on trust and leadership in between. The third and last session on teamwork was definitely the most powerful. We did some tasks with them that look very simple on the surface, but require a really high level of cooperation in order for a team to be successful with them. The kids went through a very challenging process to get to the point of understanding not only why they needed to cooperate, but also how to do so, but ultimately all of the struggles resulted in some really impactful learning. What was most exciting for us, aside from these learning moments, was seeing the kids come out of their shells with us and show us who they really are. Through the workshops, we got to see the true colours of some of the kids who had been exceptionally shy with us previously, and it was amazing! They are all such wonderful people, and we’re lucky to be getting to know them.
Our career development and visioning workshop, on which we worked particularly hard, was looking to be a bit of a bust at 9:30 AM last Saturday, half an hour after the designated start time. Then we saw one gentleman, Lazarus, heading in the direction of our classroom, and we asked him if anyone else was coming. He explained that everyone was busy doing laundry, which we immediately understood. It was the first day in quite a long time during which the weather was good enough to hang clothes out to dry (we probably should have taken advantage too... but we were preparing workshops...). Jimi investigated the situation with the kids, who looked sheepish when he asked if they were coming when their laundry was done. We had planned for an all-day workshop, but that would conflict with the Zambian national team’s football game at 2:00 PM! Since football trumps pretty much everything else around here, we quickly adjusted our time frame, and managed to deliver a very useful workshop based almost entirely on self-reflection and still get the kids home on time for the football match! It was amazing to see how engaged the kids seemed to be with the challenging personal reflection questions we gave them. They were so focused... or maybe they just wanted to make sure they finished before the game started... But career decisions and envisioning the future are clearly on the minds of the oldest children. They will have a significant transition when they finish high school and have to leave the safety and shelter of Chishawasha, and much as they are ambitious and look forward to their future, they know it won’t be easy. Their adjustment to living independently will involve more change and more learning than most other young adults’ departure from their homes, and they want to take advantage of every opportunity to make that transition easier.
For the youngest children, we decided to engage them in the purest form of learning: Play! Last Sunday afternoon, we spent about 2-3 hours with them just teaching them some of our favourite games, and it was so much fun! Just like with the 10-13-year-olds, the kids’ true personalities really came out throughout the time we spent playing with them, and they got more and more comfortable with us as well. Jenny was definitely immobilized for about 3 minutes straight, by children when our game of ‘everyone’s it tag’ turned into ‘everyone get Jenny tag’. She loved it! The kids here all have designated chores and they are all ready and willing to help anytime something needs to be done, so it’s wonderful to see them having fun as well. These kids will be amazing older brothers and sisters one day if the way they treat the youngest ones is any indication. There is one young boy, James, who is several years younger than any of the other kids, and he’s the only one who’s too young for school. He just arrived at Chishawasha a few months ago, so he’s been pretty quiet and nearly avoidant of us most of the time. In the last few days, however, we’ve gotten a few waves and smiles from him which made our days! James came to our ‘playshop’ - he speaks hardly any English so far, so he couldn’t understand any of what we said. The other kids, especially the ones from his house, made sure he was always included and having fun, and really wanted him to be part of everything, which was really heartwarming. Otherwise, it’s a pretty amazing feeling of acceptance when a young child wants nothing more than to hold your hand every chance he or she gets, and there was plenty of that during the afternoon.
Our last big project is the girls’ and boys’ groups we’ve been running since the middle of last week. It’s Jimi’s first time running something like a counselling group, and he loves it! And Jenny’s very excited to be getting back to her counselling roots. It has been amazing to see what happens when you separate the boys and the girls and give them the opportunity to talk about whatever they want. The insights we’ve gained into how these kids look at their lives have been unbelievable, and we’ve been amazed and humbled by how freely and openly they are sharing with us. Hopefully we are able to give them an opportunity to talk about ideas and issues that don’t normally come up, and answer a few of their more burning questions along the way.
Through our work here, we can feel ourselves becoming more and more a part of the community. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute as much as we feel we have, and to have gotten to know everyone here so well. We cannot believe how quickly our time here has flown by, but we definitely feel like we have given the best we could to Chishawasha. We have one more group session left and one more staff workshop, and then we’ll be off on adventures on our own, but we are feeling deeply how much our departure will affect us. We asked Philip if we could come back again someday, and his response was that we have no choice but to come back as soon as possible. We couldn’t agree more.
Much love,
Jenny and Jimi
First off, the staff workshops. The mothers and teachers here are such wonderful, passionate, caring women, and it was such a pleasure to spend some good time working with them and getting to know them better. Since the Chishawasha school has many students of various ages who are going to school for the first time, the teachers have the daunting task of managing classrooms in which the students are a wide range of ages and learn at completely different paces. Their proficiency in English also varies a lot, but even with these challenges, the teachers here are providing quite a high quality of education to children who would likely not otherwise get one. We really admire what they achieve every day. Since they are all elementary school teachers, we prepared a workshop for them about working with adolescents, as well as several sessions about some of the groundbreaking theories about intelligence and learning, and how to recognize and support a child who may be dealing with a learning disability. It was a pretty enormous amount of information to unload on them in a short period of time, but they assured us that it was extremely helpful and that they were thirsty for more.
The mummies, as they are called, are so clearly experts at their jobs: Being mothers and raising children. Many of them raised families of their own before building new families at Chishawasha, and some are juggling both at the same time. Their commitment to the children is amazing to us, and we couldn’t help but feel completely inspired hearing Mummy Martha talk about how God brought her to be with her children in House 4. Just like all parents, these mummies are often baffled by the inexplicable behaviour of their teenagers, so we spent quite a while with them discussing adolescent psychology and strategies for working with teenagers – which seemed pretty exciting and informative for them.
(At this point, we’re sure our parents are laughing their heads off at the thought of us educating people about dealing with teenagers. Jenny’s parents in particular like to tell everyone how she was like the girl from The Exorcist when she was 14, and they really hope Jimi knows what he’s getting himself into. We figure our parents are waiting for Karma to jump up and bite us when we have our own teenagers, and THEN we’ll see just how much we know about dealing with them!)
Aside from teenagers, we did sessions on active listening, conflict mediation, and community building with the mummies. We suspect they are already experts at all of the above, but perhaps we offered them some ways of explaining what they do intuitively. At any rate, they were very engaged and asked many questions, especially about teenagers, and they were so excited about everything they were learning. We got some great reactions from them – and many were eager to tell us how much of a difference it made for them. We only wish we could tell them how mutual that feeling is.
With both the mummies and the teachers separately, and with the whole Chishawasha staff together, we did leadership development and teambuilding, which involve a substantial amount of silliness and very active learning. We thought it might be difficult for these professionals to take us seriously if we began our sessions with funny icebreaker games, but it turned out to be absolutely hilarious to see how much they got into it! They had so much fun and we all laughed until we cried. They really loved the team initiative tasks as well, which begin as challenging but essentially meaningless activities, but then turn into incredible ways of looking at team dynamics, communication, problem-solving, etc. Our favourite: The Blind Rope Square, where the group has to make a perfect square out of a rope while everyone is blindfolded. We had some fantastic discussions about how they can all work better together as Chishawasha staff, and what it means to be successful as a team. Afterwards, Mummy Miriam told us we had “brainstormed” her. We’re not sure exactly what that means, but we think it might be the best compliment we’ve ever had on our facilitation skills!
Finally, we did a session with the whole staff on shared vision, values, and strategic planning. This session might have been the best in a series of really amazing sessions because by this point the group had become comfortable enough with each other to be really open and honest. The staff were able to discuss frankly and constructively what their weaknesses and insecurities were and what they could do to improve, and we think it’s safe to say that everyone left that session with some really valuable insights and an excitement for how they can move forward. Overall, they were an absolutely wonderful group to work with, and we had an incredible time. We’ve had some really encouraging and positive feedback on the sessions from everyone from Philip to the Chishawasha driver, Peter (really great guy with a beautiful family), so we’re holding out hope that they might be willing to let us come back someday to do more workshops!
While we hope that people learned something from us, there is no doubt that we learned more from them than we can ever express. We’re so grateful for how freely they share their culture, from patiently teaching us Nyenja and traditional dances to helping us understand their distaste for owls (apparently a sign of witches in Zambian tradition... not what we expected when using owls as an example of good leadership qualities!). Mummy Christine has even promised to teach us how to cook nshima tomorrow... we can’t wait!
Our three-day workshop with the 10-13-year-olds was also a total blast, but a bit more of a challenge. We wanted to offer them some of the same leadership development lessons that we facilitated for the older children, and we struggled to find a way to make it accessible for them. As usual, we had a great time playing games with them, and worked in some good lessons on trust and leadership in between. The third and last session on teamwork was definitely the most powerful. We did some tasks with them that look very simple on the surface, but require a really high level of cooperation in order for a team to be successful with them. The kids went through a very challenging process to get to the point of understanding not only why they needed to cooperate, but also how to do so, but ultimately all of the struggles resulted in some really impactful learning. What was most exciting for us, aside from these learning moments, was seeing the kids come out of their shells with us and show us who they really are. Through the workshops, we got to see the true colours of some of the kids who had been exceptionally shy with us previously, and it was amazing! They are all such wonderful people, and we’re lucky to be getting to know them.
Our career development and visioning workshop, on which we worked particularly hard, was looking to be a bit of a bust at 9:30 AM last Saturday, half an hour after the designated start time. Then we saw one gentleman, Lazarus, heading in the direction of our classroom, and we asked him if anyone else was coming. He explained that everyone was busy doing laundry, which we immediately understood. It was the first day in quite a long time during which the weather was good enough to hang clothes out to dry (we probably should have taken advantage too... but we were preparing workshops...). Jimi investigated the situation with the kids, who looked sheepish when he asked if they were coming when their laundry was done. We had planned for an all-day workshop, but that would conflict with the Zambian national team’s football game at 2:00 PM! Since football trumps pretty much everything else around here, we quickly adjusted our time frame, and managed to deliver a very useful workshop based almost entirely on self-reflection and still get the kids home on time for the football match! It was amazing to see how engaged the kids seemed to be with the challenging personal reflection questions we gave them. They were so focused... or maybe they just wanted to make sure they finished before the game started... But career decisions and envisioning the future are clearly on the minds of the oldest children. They will have a significant transition when they finish high school and have to leave the safety and shelter of Chishawasha, and much as they are ambitious and look forward to their future, they know it won’t be easy. Their adjustment to living independently will involve more change and more learning than most other young adults’ departure from their homes, and they want to take advantage of every opportunity to make that transition easier.
For the youngest children, we decided to engage them in the purest form of learning: Play! Last Sunday afternoon, we spent about 2-3 hours with them just teaching them some of our favourite games, and it was so much fun! Just like with the 10-13-year-olds, the kids’ true personalities really came out throughout the time we spent playing with them, and they got more and more comfortable with us as well. Jenny was definitely immobilized for about 3 minutes straight, by children when our game of ‘everyone’s it tag’ turned into ‘everyone get Jenny tag’. She loved it! The kids here all have designated chores and they are all ready and willing to help anytime something needs to be done, so it’s wonderful to see them having fun as well. These kids will be amazing older brothers and sisters one day if the way they treat the youngest ones is any indication. There is one young boy, James, who is several years younger than any of the other kids, and he’s the only one who’s too young for school. He just arrived at Chishawasha a few months ago, so he’s been pretty quiet and nearly avoidant of us most of the time. In the last few days, however, we’ve gotten a few waves and smiles from him which made our days! James came to our ‘playshop’ - he speaks hardly any English so far, so he couldn’t understand any of what we said. The other kids, especially the ones from his house, made sure he was always included and having fun, and really wanted him to be part of everything, which was really heartwarming. Otherwise, it’s a pretty amazing feeling of acceptance when a young child wants nothing more than to hold your hand every chance he or she gets, and there was plenty of that during the afternoon.
Our last big project is the girls’ and boys’ groups we’ve been running since the middle of last week. It’s Jimi’s first time running something like a counselling group, and he loves it! And Jenny’s very excited to be getting back to her counselling roots. It has been amazing to see what happens when you separate the boys and the girls and give them the opportunity to talk about whatever they want. The insights we’ve gained into how these kids look at their lives have been unbelievable, and we’ve been amazed and humbled by how freely and openly they are sharing with us. Hopefully we are able to give them an opportunity to talk about ideas and issues that don’t normally come up, and answer a few of their more burning questions along the way.
Through our work here, we can feel ourselves becoming more and more a part of the community. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute as much as we feel we have, and to have gotten to know everyone here so well. We cannot believe how quickly our time here has flown by, but we definitely feel like we have given the best we could to Chishawasha. We have one more group session left and one more staff workshop, and then we’ll be off on adventures on our own, but we are feeling deeply how much our departure will affect us. We asked Philip if we could come back again someday, and his response was that we have no choice but to come back as soon as possible. We couldn’t agree more.
Much love,
Jenny and Jimi
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