Report from BHW Zambia Partnership Facilitator Following Visit

Key people: Roy and Sarah Nyirenda

Recent Events

Activities

Ukusenaminwa has now become a registered NGO in Zambia which provides them with a lot of protection in working with vulnerable children in the community. Any child that comes to them first has to be assessed and consented to by Social Welfare. The government has a strategy to help give children back their childhood focusing on banning early marriages and stopping child abuse and dumping of unwanted children.

In the house there are now 47 children living with Roy and Sarah. They have a three bedroom house and another dormitory constructed to house the older boys.

They have been continuing to help support the family by farming, growing maize (100 bags from 2 ha last year), vegetables and livestock (chickens, pigeons, ducks and six cattle). This helps a lot, i.e. the 100 bags of maize is enough to feed the house for 10 months of the year. They have also made eight beehives where bees come for 10 months of the year. They harvest honey twice a year from the hives, with Roy just wearing a rain coat. Last year they got 40 litres of honey.

Just this week someone stole the solar bore hole pump which has caused them and the community big issues to get clean water. Many people would come to collect water from their tank but now they can’t. The community has gathered together and is trying to find the people who did this but it is likely that the pump is long gone.

Education

Costs have been steadily rising for school fees. Currently they are supporting 30 children into primary schools, six into secondary schools and 13 are in higher education programs at various places around the country.

Getting an education is making a big impact in the children’s lives, especially the deaf children, mainly because it is giving them a chance to communicate with the community. 

Employment

Eight of the deaf children have recently gained employment in Kabwe. They had to sit tests with the employers to prove they had the education and skills to communicate with the people involved in the business. A South African lady, Rochelle, who lives in Kabwe has been spending time training them in hospitality to make sure they can pass these tests.

Businesses have been very happy to employ these hard working people and have found them very good to have. The businesses are:
• Fig Tree Café
• Choconella Restaurant
• Local fuel station

With these jobs also comes medical insurance as part of the salary package.

Peter, who has his own shop now, has also got one of these jobs and then employs another deaf child to work in his own shop, just overseeing the work.

Community Transformation

“We will not leave this place the way we have found it”. This is the motto that the sport groups who are having football and other sports organized by Roy and Sarah are saying. Three days a week they have 55 children come to play sport, receive mentoring and have a bible study. They have a volunteer coach from OM who helps in this. There are two groups, ages 5 to 15, and then 15 to 25 years old.

Instead of playing football they also at times decide to go and help the community by working on the road or visiting some older people to help clean up the house, cook for them and so on. Sarah is amazed at how much these young members of the community look forward to going to help other people out and she can really see them living out “it is more blessed to give than receive".

They realized that all the work they have to do for all the 47 children is too big a burden for them so they do have two other ladies, Edna and Grade, who volunteer and live with them in the house. They also have many ladies who come saying “please give me some money so I can send my child to school”. Instead of this they have started to give these ladies jobs such as the laundry, where they come and chat away doing the work, and get a little money to help with their own households.

Another empowerment program is to invite people who can teach skills to some of these ladies in the community such as sewing. This is still a work in progress as they have to buy material, teach and then make some goods that can be sold.

Recently they have put up an nsaka, which is like a meeting place for the community. They hold meetings there to try and sensitize the community in relevant issues that they face. They sometimes get 150 people coming to discuss issues.

Sarah also has the work of going to various places to run training seminars to teach people about the value of young people. She has the support of the government who are clamping down on early marriages, child abuse and abandonment. She ran two of these courses last year in Solwezi where three of the deaf children are boarding.

Personal Stories

Due to some of the information in these stories we are not going to put names or pictures of the children.

One young girl who is 7 years old had been found by OM Mercy Mission and had come from an abusive household where the grandfather was abusing her. The mother and father knew but did nothing. She was such an angry young girl and very violent. OM came to Roy and Sarah because they knew they couldn’t help the girl. They decided to have her at their house and see if anything could be done. They spent a lot of time with her one on one, just talking and counselling the girl, explaining that the things done were not her fault. They read the bible and used skills taught in the counselling and trauma classes that Sarah had attended.

She has now been at the house for more than four months and her broken little heart has been transformed into a sweet young girl. Her behavior is now fine.

A young boy was found on the streets of Kabwe having lived there for six years. His father died and his mother remarried but her new husband didn’t want the boy in the house so kicked him out. He was 6 years old when this happened. He was there on the streets with his 2 year old brother and they lived by begging and then sleeping in little shops on the side of roads when they closed for the night.

Roy and Sarah got Social Services involved and found the family to prosecute them as dumping of children is illegal. The younger boy is now living with the grandmother and the older boy who is now 12 is staying with Roy and Sarah. He is having some struggles but is responding to the love he is being shown.

A 16 year old girl has been rescued from an early childhood marriage. She was married off to an older man when she was 14 years old. Her parents basically just sold her for a good dowry so they didn’t have to look after her.

The government is really frowning on this now and when Sarah met the girl she decided to act. So they took the girl to their home and then went to tell the husband and the parents what they had done. The parents have said nothing as they know they would face jail time if they did.

The girl was addicted to drugs, alcohol and smoking when she came to the house but after a period of intense counselling she has really changed into a very responsible and helpful girl. Sarah says what they want to do is give the girl her childhood back.

Prayer and Praise Points

1) Prayer for transformation in the children's lives who are shown so much love and hope for their future
2) Pray for the bore pump to be returned and installed 

Comments

The current budget is a struggle for Roy and Sarah with the rising costs of school fees being the main issue, in addition to having many more children living at the house. The total numbers given to us for all programs are:

Education - boarding and local  -  147,000 ZMK
House expenses  -  373,000 ZMK
Training programs - Sarah  -  14,000 ZMK
Total  -  534,000 ZMK (US$50,000)

Note that Roy is a paid worker for Zesco and this is where a lot of their own money goes. They receive some funds from other sources amounting to about US$5,000 per year. These numbers also don’t take into account all the food they are producing at the farm. The education budget includes 30 at primary schools, six at secondary school and 13 in higher education and includes all vulnerable children not just the deaf.

My recommendation would be to increase some funding for the education of the children given the need for them to be able to communicate with the outside world.

Pump

The pump they had was from a USA missionary who is no longer there and was a very good quality solar unit which is not possible to buy in Zambia normally.  I called a contact from Waterfor who has a pump available that would suit for US$1,500. Given the impact this pump has on the community at large I would recommend BHW looks to fund this as a one-off as well.