Dear All

Last time I wrote in June, I mentioned the cold weather.  Now in October we are experiencing the hottest weather since last year in November, and are sitting sweltering during the day.  For a Northerner used to the gradual changes of season in Europe, it is still strange to experience how Zambia can move from cold to hot season with almost no transition period.  Last month we were still experiencing temperatures of 10 degrees Centigrade at night, while just now as I type, it is 35 degrees outside.

I meant to send this letter a few weeks ago, but I lost my list of people who wanted to get the newsletters, so I had to try to recreate it from the Address Book on the computer.  So if you receive this, and do not want it, please let me know so I can delete you from the new list.  Also if anybody knows of other people who should be on the list, or would like to be, please inform me so I can add them.

On the family front we have enjoyed a more peaceful 3 months than previously, and we were also able to take a family holiday in August and have a trip to Cape Town – my favourite holiday destination.  This was made possible by the kindness of Joy Mackenzie and two of our “experienced” volunteers Abby and Becky.  Between them the formed a formidable team and planned to let us escape for 10 days.  We had a wonderful break and rest, and were able to catch up with our good friends the Barrows and the Rasmussens as well as spend time with each other as a family.  When we came back we were delighted to hear that the boys had behaved in exemplary fashion and had treated the “ladies” like gentlemen.  I was teasing them about it afterwards and they said “It didn’t seem fair to misbehave to Auntie Joy.”  So Joy, Abby, Becky, thank you so much and maybe you should teach us whatever you did to produce such a considerate attitude in a bunch of teenage boys. 

Shortly after returning to Zambia, I made a trip to Nairobi and was able to take Nicholas and Mulenga.  It was their first time to visit, but many of you will know that Christine and I spent 3 years there between 1992 and 1995 in our first visit to Africa.  As well as doing business I was able to fit in a visit to the two Kenyan boys we supported to school many years ago.  They are both grown up now, and it was very wonderful to see them again.

I also made a business trip to Rwanda and spent 3 days in the capital Kigali. While I was there I visited the memorial to the genocide which occurred in 1994.  It is a museum type with pictures stories and videos, and is built by the site of a mass grave where 258,000 bodies were buried.  It was almost unbelievable to see the stories and hear the survivors’ testimonies.  1 million people killed in 100 days for being from the wrong tribe – that works out at 7 per second, every second for 100 days.  And there is no doubt from the evidence shown that the roots of the problem lay in the behaviour of the colonial powers and the church.  They taught that the Hutus were an inferior race to the Tutsis and were descended from Ham and therefore additionally cursed by God.  The Tutsis, who are lighter skinned and have more European style features were promoted as “superior blacks”.  Before the white man arrived, both tribes lived peacefully together side by side.  When I see, as I often do in Africa, the lasting harm and cruelty done by the white man to his brothers and sisters of different colours, I wonder if it is we, and not Africans, who are additionally cursed.  One of the sections of the building is given over to other genocide events, including the Nazi holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks (this latter killed over 8 million people in early 1900s and is still officially denied today by the British and US governments.)  It seems we never learn. I just cannot reconcile the hatred manifested towards others by so many Christians with what we profess to believe, or even the simple injunction to love our neighbour as ourselves.

On a happier note, Sarah has started Senior Secondary, and she is able to be home every night as it is just across from the Italian school where she went before and where Rachel is.  She seems to have enjoyed her first weeks, and is already involved in the Music and Drama activities.  The school puts on a production every year in November, and she has already been picked out to perform either on the music side or as an actor.  She is talented in these areas, and is blessed to be at a school where they do so much to encourage the children to make the most of their abilities.  Rachel is enjoying being back home with her friends and has started year 4.  She has developed a mischievous sense of humour and really likes to tease people – as one of the volunteers said “well she IS your daughter Don”.  It is so funny seeing yourself in your children – and rather sobering sometimes.

As far as the boys are concerned, Nicholas, Lucky and a number of others have big exams in November; some to get into Junior High School and the older boys to get to Senior High so there is some hard work and desperate studying being done. The stress of this along with the hot weather is fraying tempers, and I feel very sorry for them all.  I remember how bad exams used to be even in the temperate climes in Scotland.  What it must be like when the thermometer is reading 35 in the shade, I can only imagine.  One of our oldest boys, Cleopas, got word today that he passed all his exams for his second semester, meaning that he has successfully negotiated his first year in University.  His lowest mark was 78% so I reckon he deserves credit for a very good effort.

Little John and Jeremiah came back after being away for 6 months.  They tried to come back much earlier but we did not allow them to as we wanted them to learn a lesson.  It seemed to be working and they were behaving much better than they did before they went.  However a couple of weeks ago, they set off to school, and only John came back.  He had some strange story about walking along the road when a car stopped and it just happened to be Jeremiah’s mother, who decided to take him with her.  It seems similar to saying “Jeremiah was abducted by aliens”, but at least John came back.  He is determined to stick to his story and in fact we knew that Jeremiah’s mother had married someone who did have a car, but did not want Jeremiah, so I guess it is possible.  Humphrey and Kenny, the two orphaned lads who joined us just as I wrote my June letter have now settled in and become part of the family, while their sister Sibeso is working hard at boarding school and sits her leaving exams in November in order to join University.  Eunice, the desperately poor woman we met recently has been able to go back to her village with her children and we have given her a grant to begin a small business selling fish, so we hope that her problems are being dealt with.  On the farm, the crops are growing well under irrigation, and we have a glut of tomatoes so Christine and her kitchen crew are busy cooking and preserving as many as possible and we sell or give the rest away.  The rest of the ground is baked dry and hard and the grass burnt to yellow.  We had a scare a couple of days ago when we run out of water and thought that the bore hole had run dry but mercifully it turned out that the pump had been lowered too far and had stuck in the mud at the bottom, so once that was fixed we had plenty of water.  The new dormitory we are building for the boys is making steady progress but seems to be taking forever to complete.  The boys are very excited about their new house and cannot wait to move in, though once we finish the building we will need to furnish it.  Bernard is with us again and is getting the house painted and the roof fixed in preparation for the coming rainy season.  In fact it seems like we live in a permanent building site as there is always some repair or construction going on.  The one thing we never seem to get started on is the much longed for swimming pool.  Especially in the hot season we all long for the chance to cool off, but there are always other priorities much to the boys’ disgust.  They would much rather have a pool than worry about things like school fees.

On the farm, Phil’s experiment of planting crops under irrigation during the cold and dry seasons has worked very well, and we have a good supply of vegetables and salads to supplement our food budget.  We have also had a good harvest of maize which can be eaten as sweet corn rather than ground for mealie meal, though the cost of meal has gone up sharply, making it difficult for many poor folk to make ends meet.  Doctors and missionaries in the rural areas tell us that between now and December they will see many people at starvation levels as they wait for the next crop to be harvested, and many people will survive on eating mangoes and wild fruit.  Phil has also been able to erect 2 large polythene tunnels thanks to the generosity of a church in England.  These are used during the rains to grow vegetables such as tomatoes which would otherwise be destroyed by the heavy downpours.

We also had a number of interesting visits over the past few months.  First, we met two teams from a group called Mission Direct, who came from UK to help in construction of a primary school nearby.  We think this is a very good idea as it allows church folk at home to visit the areas where their money goes and see for themselves the progress being made in the project.  This means they can be sure that the work is actually being done and that the money is going to help rather than disappearing into “overheads”.  There is so much corruption in the mission and aid businesses that this sort of involvement has now become essential in my view.  Unfortunately, the Mission Direct Teams brought us a donation of football shirts for the boys – English football shirts!

Then we had a visit from a group called Toccata.  They are a group of musicians and singers who bring stage performances to developing countries.  They organised a tour in Zambia, giving concerts to raise funds for orphans and vulnerable children.  The artists all give their time for free, and spend time rehearsing with local school children who then take part in the show.  The singing was amazing, and one of the performances was put on entirely for the orphanages at no charge so over 1000 street kids and others got a chance to see it, including our boys.  They enjoyed it immensely and recognised some of the songs from Oliver, Phantom of the Opera and other musicals.  We spent the following week listening to adolescent male voices giving uncertain renderings of numbers such as “Who will buy my sweet red roses” and “Any dream will do”.

On a national level, Zambia’s President Levy Mwanawasa died in August.  He had suffered a stroke a number of years ago, but seemed to have made a good recovery.  The nation was shocked, and in my view and that of many others, he had done a very good job in difficult circumstances, and the economy had improved remarkably while he had cracked down on corruption.  His death left a vacuum and now we are the grip of another election, which has meant people are holding onto their cash and waiting to see what happens.  This has made life in the hardware business very difficult, and now we are being buffeted by the financial chaos in the banking systems in the West, which has resulted in the cost of our essentials such as food and fuel rising steeply.  It seems incredible to me that people get off with all these kinds of activity in the name of high finance when the rest of us would be jailed for a fraction of it.  And it enrages me that Africans who have no control over any of it suffer because of the greed and mismanagement of the “developed” world.  Just consider one statistic.  70% of Africans live on less than 1 US Dollar a day, while the average cow in the EU receives $7 subsidy every day.  So we value our cows at 7 times the worth of an African child.  Something wrong somewhere surely?

In the middle of it all, we get strength from the fact that we continue to have the care and support from so many good people all over the world, and that God has never failed us in anything we have tried to do here.  We also get encouragement watching the progress made by the young men who have trusted us to care for them.  It is by no means a straight line of progress but mostly the movement is in the right direction as they struggle, sometimes against terrible difficulties, to change their behaviour and habits and do something worthwhile with their lives.  We continue having to turn boys away – most recently a poor retarded lad called Clifford who seems to have no-one asked to come and stay but we have no space nor the resources to deal with his special needs, and so he is left to carry on fending for himself in a world that doesn’t care.

As an illustration of the difference a caring family environment can make to these boys as individuals, I attach a copy of two photos of one of our younger boys, Simba.  The photo on the left shows him on the street aged 10/11, while the one on the right shows him now aged 13.  If you look at the strain and the evidence of his grim reality on his face before, and the relaxed pose now, you will see why it is worth it to try to help.

For now, all the best from us all

Love

Don, Christine and all the kids

Dear All

Lusaka is in the grip of winter right now and we are all shivering in the mornings and evenings as the temperature drops to levels normally only felt at the end of June. It is still not cold by Scottish standards but when our houses are not heated it can feel quite chilly.

As some of you know I managed a quick visit back to Scotland at the end of April/start of May. I wanted very much to see my parents and spent a very nice time with them in Inverness and Dornoch while also managing to catch up on quite a few visits including speaking to groups at New Restalrigg church in Edinburgh and East Church in Inverness. My visit home reminded me as always of the generous support we have for what we are doing amongst family and friends, and even those we have never met, and it was good to realise that we were not alone even in the middle of difficulties. Special thanks to Martin and Trish Sinclair and Joy Mackenzie for putting me up (and putting up with me) while I was in Edinburgh.

Time flies and reading my last letter I can see we were then in the centre of a storm, which thankfully has abated somewhat. The biggest issue we faced at the time was the problem with David and his attempts to kill himself. Thankfully since then he stabilised, and had been receiving some counselling help from Prosper – a social worker I mentioned to you some time back. Prosper is working as a hotel worker until he can find full time work as a social worker. Some of you have helped to pay about half his salary so he is now able to help us and other centres part time. He is very good with the boys and we wish we could have him around the place all the time. Following their discussions, Prosper told us he thought David didn’t really want to change, and that until he did there was little we could do to help him. He had actually moved out for a couple of weeks before this but was coming to work at the farm. However the “work” consisted of watching TV in the servants’ quarters and quarrelling with people. Then he began to give us another set of problems, this time by being aggressive and in some cases violent towards the other boys in order to get what he wanted. This reached a peak in April while I was away in Scotland when he threatened to kill one of the boys – Rommy – and then later on threatened Phil with a hammer. I returned home on Thursday 9^th May and said I would speak to him on Friday but he got into another fight and beat up one of the younger boys quite badly, leaving him with a swollen face, and then walked out. When I eventually saw him on Saturday I had to tell him that we could not allow him to stay or work with us as his violent behaviour was a threat to the rest of us. He said he didn’t want to stay anyway but just needed money to set up his own business. I would have helped him again but Christine and Phil were of the view that he was just trying to take advantage and that he should not get any money unless he works for it. Mr. Banda also agreed with them, and on balance I think they were right – I just find it very hard to say no to the boys when they need help. So anyway, out he went and we did not hear from him for a few days, then he turned up for work saying he would behave, but of course it didn’t last and we had to tell him there was nothing more we could do for him. Mr. Banda assures us that what he needed was a shock and to realise that we were not going to give in to his threats by giving him money. Needless to say I feel rather foolish as I had always hoped love and understanding would have had the desired effect, but I am glad things have settled down and now I know that we did all we could to help him. One of the hardest things I find about working with the lads is the fact that so many people here seem to regard attempts at kindness as a form of weakness which can be abused and taken advantage of.

We also said goodbye to my cousin Christina Macritchie who spent about 9 months with us in total. Christina blew in on a flight one day, settled into life in Africa, and quickly became part of the family, sharing our trials and tribulations and the good times, and becoming a friend to all the boys. She was particularly good to Sarah, who enjoyed having an older sister for a change and who misses her terribly, as we all do. Meal times are slightly more peaceful now, as I have nobody sitting beside me who can without any warning, drop a plate or knock a glass of water over me, but on the other hand there is nobody to jump up and make the coffee after dinner so I reckon we are quits. God bless you Christina, you are in our hearts and I hope we see you again soon. We now have some other visitors, including two young ladies who have been out before. Isla is Christine's niece and Katie is an SIM volunteer who is studying to be a mission worker in the US. Both of them have fitted in well and spend all day and most of the evening helping the boys with school work and supervising the running of the house with Christine. We also expect Fiona Nea soon. She visited last year with her cousin Hugo. Since they first came out to visit all of them have been active in raising funds for the boys. One of the things I was asked in the various talks I did while in Scotland was how best people could help, and I was able to point out that even a brief visit can be very helpful as you can spend time with the boys, helping some of them to read and do their homework. Doing so makes them feel very special as this will often be the first time anyone has shown enough care for them to spend time with them. Giving them a sense of worth in this way is a great gift that cannot be over valued. We also have Bernard Blendell staying with us again. He is a mission worker in North Western Province in a very remote part of Zambia. He is a plumber by trade and when he retired in London, he came out to Zambia to set up work amongst rural orphans. He is in Lusaka for a few weeks and has been a terrific help in sorting out plumbing and other jobs needing done around the farm.

The boys seem to be in good heart most of the time. They are busy working at school as usual, and apart from complaining about the cold, are occupied all of the time with lessons, homework and games. A couple of lads who have been working on apprenticeship schemes have now decided to move out and live on their own so we will see how that will work out for them. There is no shortage of children to replace them or indeed to add to our number. Although we do not go out looking for abandoned youngsters, there seems no end to those who either pitch up at our door or are referred to us by other people. While I was visiting Scotland, Christine met a poor woman in a desperate position. She is HIV positive, widowed, and has 4 children aged 8, 12, 14 and 17. She was walking round Ibex Hill looking for piece work at the farms in order to get some food. She had her two youngest boys with her, and was sent to see us by one of our neighbours who could not help her. When she arrived, she poured out her story to Christine and Yvonne, and finished by saying if we had no work she would go, but could she please give us her boys as she could not bear to see them suffer any more. I cannot imagine how desperate she must have been to offer to hand over her kids. Yvonne went to see where she lived and came back in tears. She said they would have been better off living in our pig shed. The house is a derelict old one room building belonging to a neighbour who cannot afford to pull it down. It is down hill from the river and the earth floor is constantly wet. They have absolutely no furniture or cooking utensils; in fact the only things in the house were a straw mat which the mother and 2 children slept on plus a blanket they shared. They have literally only the clothes they wear, and when they wash the clothes they wrap themselves in the blanket until their clothes are dry. There was no food in the house, and they have survived on food given by neighbours who are poor themselves for the 2 years since the husband died. Yvonne was so upset she bought them some mealie meal and meat. When the boys saw the meat they did not know what it was, and tried to eat it raw. The poor mother just sniffed it in disbelief and said she had not seen meat since her husband died. The 14 year old child is a girl who has been selling herself on the streets in an effort to get enough to eat, and the 17 year old boy had disappeared. Faced with somebody in such a situation, what can you do but agree to help? We gave the poor woman some work to do on the farm. She walks here every morning with all her children. Beatrice and David – the two oldest – heard that someone was helping and came back home, hopefully before either have contracted HIV, while Obadiah and Joshua are very cute though malnourished little guys. They come every day and play while Mum and David work on the farm, and Beatrice helps in the house. The joy on all their faces at having full stomachs and the prospect of hope is heart breaking to see, and I feel tears of compassion and frustration when I think about it all. How can we allow our fellow human beings to suffer like this? What is wrong with us? Where has basic humanity gone? And why is it that this woman’s neighbours – below poverty level themselves – helped to feed her, while the “developed” world and its counterparts here in Zambia have shut our hearts to these people and their cries for help? It is not a question of Right or Left but a question of right or wrong, and this is just plain wrong. God save us all from our evil actions and their just consequences.

We will keep the family together, provide work for the mother whose name is Eunice, try to teach the children at home, and then enter them into our program. David the oldest boy will probably study a trade, and the others will go to school. It looks as if they will be joined by another family of three children brought to us by the lady who brought Mulenga and Lucky and Memory to us. She is a teacher in a Catholic school in Ngombe – one of the poor compounds in Lusaka – and she arrived in my office yesterday with another very sad story. She has been teaching the children in this family, and their mother – who had been a teacher in one of the international schools in Lusaka - died 2 months ago, leaving them orphaned. Nobody is interested in helping the children, and they have been living together in the rented house since she died. The oldest is a girl on Grade 12 (about 17 years old), and the 2 boys are on Grade 9 and Grade 7 though I do not know their ages yet. They are all in exam years at school, and after their mother dies the nuns agreed to teach them for free and have been trying to feed them. Now the money has run out, and the rent is due and they are about to be evicted from their home. Mrs Mutinta – their Good Samaritan teacher – felt she couldn’t leave it to happen so came to us to ask if we could take them. Squeezing the boys in somewhere will not be a problem. I have told our own boys about it and they are willing to make room and welcome them. The difficulty will be finding somewhere for their big sister as we really do not have facilities to keep both sexes. Still I am sure we can find some space somewhere. So it looks as if our family is about to grow again after being stable at 30 for many months. Oh well – nothing else for it but to get on with it and go forward, even though we often feel paralysed in the face of so much need.

Christine also came across a good work being done in Lusaka by the YWCA. They run a small refuge for little girls who have been sexually abused and are awaiting the trial of the case against their abuser. The little ones are lovely, but sadly many are HIV positive. Christine has been consulted on a number of cases as a doctor, and felt she wanted to do something for the refuge. Again it is shocking to see how little they have to help the girls with, and we would like to appeal to anybody who feels moved to help with paying school fees for some of the little ones. Since the cases are still to come to court, the girls live in danger of being abducted to silence them, and the centre has to operate very quietly and anonymously. The centre is called and we would be grateful if you would pray for the little ones who are there. Christine managed to send one little girl to school, and she was so delighted to go. Her little friend said “Ah thank you auntie I being so happy. We being so boring colouring all the time”. What a sad world we live in when such wee souls suffer at the hands of those meant to protect and nurture them. And spare a thought for the bravery and compassion of the ladies in the YMCA who run such a worthwhile enterprise in spite of threats and physical danger.

On the farm, the crops have been good this year and the animal contingent has grown again with baby goats and pigs, more hens – now 200 – and geese, sheep ducks and turkeys. That part of the work gives very few problems thanks to Phil’s expert management and dedicated work. I don’t know what we would do without him as a colleague, friend and counsellor. We have finished construction of a farm managers cottage and Tuesday Banda – or Mr Tuesday to distinguish him from the original Mr Banda – has moved in with his family, so that is also a great help. We continue construction of the new dormitory for the boys, and when that is finished we will have a much quieter house. Maybe that is where we can fit in some girls.