The Wig Party
Points Of Light project in Zambia

"Trip Report november 2009"

CRUSAID & WIG PARTY
MONITORING & EVALUATION VISIT

For more background information on our work in Zambia, click here

In September 2009 Josh Rafter (Wig Party Chairman) and Steven Inman (Crusaid Head of Programmes and Partnerships) flew to Zambia to meet with the communities on the ground that was going to be supported by the Wig Party’s generous  support and to visit new proposed projects for the coming year.

The first half of the first day was a chance to meet the significant players in Zambia.  Meetings were held with the national coalition for people living with HIV and AIDS as well as government and voluntary agencies who represent community needs across the area that we have identified to support.  From here we attended a meeting with the Director of ZNAN who recently undertook a fact-finding visit to support the projects work.  At this meeting she was able to present her findings and provide reports of the community and the focus groups work held on our behalf.  To round off these meetings we met with the Country Director for Action Aid to look at a partnership working in the region and plan the best way to maximise our long-term investment.

The second part of the day was more hands on, and a real chance to meet the people we are hoping to support.  We journeyed out to meet James and his wife Nahlia.  James is a lab technician in an HIV clinic in Lusaka, with facilities and resources to support 50 people a day. However in reality they actually test and support 300 people every day, 6 days a week.  Nahlia is a nurse and she provides home visits to local people too ill to make it to a clinic or hospital.  Together they have turned their house into an orphanage.  They started by taking in a child whose parents had both passed away suddenly to AIDS and now they have 23 children in a small cramped space.  They use what money they can pull together to feed and cloth the children and to pay for a part time teacher to ensure the children do not fall behind on their schoolwork.

“The only hope children in Zambia have is to get an education.  They will be the future of our country, if we are to have a future” - Nahlia

The biggest problem for the house is that they have a small two ring cooker, limited clean water and no real storage facilities.  Three of the children now need to take HIV treatments themselves and there is nowhere to store the medicine efficiently.  The first thing that strikes you about the house, as indeed everywhere you travel in Zambia is that through the adversity, the poverty and the devastation HIV and AIDS is reeking on the community, everyone smiles. As James said “Life is too short to be miserable".

Crusaid and the Wig Party were looking to see if we could replace their kitchen with a usable and safe stove, storage facilities, a fridge and a water filtration system.  Small steps but making a significant difference.

The journey from Lusaka (Zambia’s capital) to Katete, is approximately 6 hours by car along roads which in places are well maintained but on the whole are worn out tracks with well hidden potholes.  Along the way you pass countless shells of cars and trucks which have fallen victim to the poor road infrastructure.  This unfortunately is the same system that people must use to access legal meetings, employment, healthcare and economic survival.  A real challenge for one and all!

Once in Katete we had a number of visits to make.  We spent time with the staff and directors of Tikondane, a residential community site that is at the centre of the community.  Tikondane provides schooling and adult learning classesdas well as income generation projects and cultural teaching programmes.  Discussions were held around the ways in which we might support their growing HIV responses in a way that best suits the community.

We visited St Francis hospital, a large mission hospital which does tremendous work across a vast area but in harsh circumstances.  We met with the director and discussed her biggest fears for the future.  Perhaps the saddest of these is the need for schooling for the ever-growing number of children orphaned by AIDS and facing a bleak future.  It costs just £80 to clothe and send a child to school for a year.  During 2009 Crusaid and the Wig Party looked at how to set up an educational response as part of their Points of Light scheme to put a significant number of these children through school and thus secure them and the area with a brighter future.

The main emphasis of the visit was to spend time with the numerous landowners, contractors and communities who will become the backbone of the Katete Point of Light project.  We spent time with the children and their families, talked though what they want to see, what they need, what are their dreams for the future and how we can we help them to achieve those dreams.  We met with the local Zambian Network for Positive People and discussed with them the security of our project and the setting up of income generating schemes so that the programme can become self-sustaining and grow to its full potential. Finally from here we went to meet with the District Health Commissioner and the UNAIDS Director for Zambia.  This was the chance to get political and government approval and support for our programme.  They were more than happy to endorse the programme and even cancelled meetings so as to travel with us to the proposed site and meet the community members.

Now back in the UK and starting the task of making these plans a reality we continue to be struck by the joy and the “true community” of Zambia.  Gone are the images of bygone days where charities pushed photos of children with distended stomachs, barren fields and adults dying in the street.  Zambia is indicative of a new and vitalised Africa.  Communities ready to step up to the plate to educate, learn and build sustainable futures for existing and new generations.  The only thing they need is support.  There is a will to succeed that hits you from every angle and makes you both excited and proud to be a part of their journey.

Every penny donated before 2010 went to support Crusaid's Points of Light campagin in Zambia, and became an investment in the communities’ future and one which having visited first hand we know was not wasted.

HIV & ZAMBIA

Although the HIV epidemic has spread throughout Zambia and to all parts of its society, some groups are especially vulnerable - most notably young women and girls. At the end of 2006, UNAIDS/WHO estimated that 17% of people aged 15-49 years old were living with HIV or AIDS. Of these million adults, 57% were women.

The impact of AIDS has gone far beyond the household and community level. All areas of the public sector and the economy have been weakened, and national development has been stifled. As Zambia's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper acknowledges, "the epidemic is as much likely to affect economic growth as it is affected by it".  According to the Zambia Business Coalition, 82% of known causes of employee deaths are HIV-related and 17% of staff recruited are to replace people who have died or left because of HIV-related infections.

Children have been much affected by the AIDS epidemic in Zambia. In 2007 there were 600,000 AIDS orphans in the country. Thousands of these children are abandoned due to stigma or to simple lack of resources, while others run away because they have been mistreated and abused by foster families.

"In the days before the full impact of the HIV and AIDS pandemic, street children were a very rare sight in Zambian cities and towns. Now they are everywhere … sleeping under bridges, behind walls, and in shop corridors." - Dr Mannasseh Phiri.

“The Zambian people are a resilient people, however every nation has its breaking point.  My country does what it can to manage the rising impact of HIV and AIDS but without help we are desperately limited in our long term ability to beat this thing” - Bishop Foyder Mwanzii

For more information on our past Zambia Appeal, click here