Building Walls Builds Hope –
New Photos from Kachele Primary School

Angela walks by a future classroom

“I have a dream – because everybody is allowed to dream – of a school for orphans and vulnerable children in my neighborhood of N’gombe Compound. The school will care for children whose parents have died from AIDS and whose caretakers struggle to pay for food, clothing, and school fees.”

These words came from the determined mouth of Mrs. Angela Malik, a Zambian woman working tirelessly to care for children in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Along with three other visitors from the U.S., I sat listening to Angela’s dream that night in March 2006, wondering if and how I could help.

A banana tree, one of many crops planted on the Kachele land

Three years later, Angela’s dream is almost a reality!

I visited Lusaka again this March and saw the foundations for the new school being dug and the pipes laid for the water system.
By July, the cement block walls were up, waiting to be covered by metal roofs. Lots of finishing work still needs to be done, but if all goes according to plan, the school will open in January to first and second graders. The school will be called Kachele -the name of a local fig tree with large leaves that provide comforting shade.

Walls going up in July

How did this dream become a reality? Thanks to your generosity, and that of more than 350 contributors across the U.S. and CANADA, the Temwani Children’s Foundation raised $33,000 to help build the first three classrooms and $15,000 for boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. Annual World Food Day events in Cincinnati, Des Moines, Flagstaff, San Diego, San Jose, and Tucson have raised funds to provide breakfast and lunch daily to the students at the Kachele School.

As an old African proverb says,

“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”

Your partnership with the Temwani Children’s Foundation joins you with hundreds of supporters in the U. S. and Canada and our partners in Zambia to create a strong focused campaign for making real and lasting change in the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in Zambia. Together we can accomplish great things.

Panorama of classroom area

I am proud of all that we have achieved together and humbled by how much more work there is to do. Please continue your support of our partnership with the Kachele Primary School. Your help can ensure a healthy, educated, and happy new generation of children in Africa!

You helped provide clothes and toothbrushes to over 90 kids this year!

Recently, two Temwani Officers, Regan Murray and I , made the trek to Lusaka, Zambia to check on our projects and meet face to face with our key partners.  We want to report that your donations are having a real impact on children there!

Our objectives for the trip were ambitious — we squeezed in meetings and volunteer opportunities in the mornings, afternoons and evenings!  We intended to give real-time updates during our trip, but our busy schedule and short times at the internet café just did not give us the opportunity.

We have so many stories to share that we will feature them in depth over the next few months.

I know many Temwani supporters are anxious to hear about the trip , so here are some brief highlights with photos of the Angel Project, Kachele School, Blanket Project and the Braille Printer!

Angel Project 08

Luckily, all of our baggage arrived (after a few days) and we were able to distribute over 100 pounds of shirts, pants, socks, toothbrushes, crayons and other supplies to all 90 children at the Kondwa Day Center for Orphans and their teachers.

We are grateful to the students at the University of Zambia Service Learning Center and our friend Paul Schwengels for helping us that day!  Dressing the children, taking photos and getting it all done in a few hours was quite a challenge, especially since a member of the Zambian Parliament also visited that day too, complete with news crews.

The clothes for the appropriate ages were big for many of the kids, emphasizing that even thought they are fed well at Kondwa, they still come from impoverished backgrounds and need all the help we can give.

Regan Murray and the Kachele architect.

Kachele Primary School

Construction has begun! We were very excited to visit the land of the new Kachele Primary School, meet the construction Site Managers, and take photos and video of the building in progress!

The first 5 classrooms, dining hall and bathroom foundations were dug, and a block of three classroom foundations were built.

Workers at the Kachele land site build classroom foundations.

Assuming construction proceeds on schedule, a special group of 1st graders being schooled by teacher Sheila at the Kondwa Day Center for Orphans will move into Kachele this Fall and start 2nd grade there in January 2010.

The building will be completed in phases, and funds are still needed to complete the school buildings for next year and all 7 grades!

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Bevin Dunn greets families during blanket gifting.

Singing praises for the blankets.

Blanket Project 09

On our first day in Lusaka, we went to a shopping center where we could purchase warm Zambian- made wool blankets. The shop keepers gave us a volume discount and we purchased 200 blankets with money from blanket fundraisers.

We met the guardians of the 90 children at Kondwa Day Center and gifted two blankets to each family. Many guardian women were dressed in colorful chitenge fabrics and their beautiful African songs filled the air at the end of the day.

Other blankets were given to the teachers at Kondwa and to a special home for abused girls.

Braille Printer for HAITA

Over the past year we have been fundraising to help buy a business speed Braille embosser (printer) for a special group that translates HIV/AIDS materials into Braille for visually impaired students and adults in Zambia.

We were impressed that many of the HAITA (HIV/AIDS Info Tech Africa) staff are also visually impaired. They answered our questions about learning Braille and the need for the printer was evident, as a simple one page pamphlet takes upwards of 30 12×12 printed pages when translated!

Not only that, the printed materials need to have covers added and be spiral bound.  We hope to finish this project soon with the purchase of a new and much faster printer and help them purchase a paper cutter and binder as well.

Thanks to private donors, Kachele Primary School already has a home for its foundations. Below you can read an update written by one of our 1st session 2007 Summer trip volunteers. Trip participants also planted a living fence around the land perimiter.

Kachele – Gardens for a New School
July 2007

A plot of land, 1.7 hectares in size, awaits the trampling of 420 feet. Once the Kachele Primary School is built, 210 students will fill its seven grades. But while the planning for the school has started and the buildings will follow, the land itself has already been put to productive use.

As part of their school, students at Kachele will learn how to garden, so in laying out the site, space was set aside for the gardens and orchards. Already the garden plots are filled with the winter crops: Chinese cabbage, onions, rape, tomatoes, cabbage, maize, green peppers, an okra. The new trees planted, bananas, mangos, avocados, papaya, and lemons, will soon begin to bear fruit.

The process establishing the new gardens has also been important. While the Kondwa Day Centre for Orphans arranged for a tractor to roughly plow the fields and hired a caretaker, Hameja, to watch over the land; much of the garden work has been done by the orphans’ guardians and caregivers. With the assistance of Hameja, the guardians have been shoveling, hoeing, planting, weeding, watering – all hard work done under the hot African sun.

When harvest time comes, the produce is gathered to provide vegetables and greens for Kondwa, and the excess, especially tomatoes, is sold in the local markets to benefit the school and the garden.

It soon will be time for spring planting in Africa, and whether it will be the new school called Kachele, or more gardens, the little plot of land in Zambia will bear fruit.

Photo: KCF Board Member Shea Van Rhoads and Kondwa Day Center Administrator Angela Malik visit the site of the future Kachele Primary School. Summer 2007.