I live in a guest house, which has four other tenants, and I am on the same property as Byron and Diane (CAN) The room is pretty nice, and very spacious. Not a bad place to spend three weeks!
While I am here, I am supporting the Kitwe Service Center and learning all I can about their CBOs. Kitwe supports nine communities. Seven of them have established CBOs and six have been matched with international donors. My week began with the Monday morning prayer meeting: Hands operates on essentially the same schedule no matter what country you are serving in. After that, it was time to travel to our CBO in Chibote for a budget meeting. I met all of the care workers briefly before the meeting began. The main purpose of the meeting was to analyze their previous budget and project what their spending will look like in the future. Many of our CBOs in Kitwe are doubling the amount of children at the feeding point as of July. We consider start up cost for additional supplies that will be needed to feed the additional children, and make sure we can provide our children a nutritious meal while staying within our budget. The budget meeting takes place at that CBO. That means the building is a basic African structure, typically brick walls and a metal roof. It is crammed full of Service Center staff and the care workers for that CBO. The meeting is primarily conducted in the local language: in this case, Bemba. And it is hot! The barriers in language, context, and comprehension definitely give me a new appreciation for the work the long term volunteers have to do! The budget meetings are so important because we do our best to encourage the CBOs to keep all receipts and records of what they have purchased, so we can show the donors how their donations are being used effectively. The concept of keeping receipts is foreign to most Africans, so this is definitely a challenge, but it is worth it when we can provide our donors with statistics on the impact their donations have in our communities!
When the meeting was finished in Chibote, Byron went with Lynn to meet the lawyer in Kitwe and we picked up Diane before heading to another budget meeting with the Mulenga CBO that afternoon. We got to Mulenga while the children were still eating, and while we were waiting for the care workers to be ready it started to rain! Most Africans do not like rain, so once the sky began to look suspicious, most of the care workers went home as fast as they could! Our group from the Service Center waited out the storm with a few of our precious girls. It was great to spend time with them, but the budget meeting never happened!
On Tuesday, Byron and Diane dropped me off at the Service Center(SC) before they had to take care of a few things in town. I spent the morning with the SC staff learning about our nine communities, where they are all in the Hands process, and what that means in practical terms. When Byron came back, we discussed a few budget things with the staff (evaluating what we really need and pending expenses.) We filled out our weekly bank withdrawal form, to ensure that the Service Center has sufficient money to meet it's needs that week. Then we drove to Zimba... We drove to the new care point, only to find out that the care workers were at the former feeding point. When we all got into the Surf to drive to the other care point, we found out we were stuck!
We eventually got unstuck and made it to the new care point for the budget meeting there. It had originally been scheduled for 10am and we arrived at 1pm: TIA! These budget meetings are interesting. They help you learn a lot about that CBO and you see how differently the individual CBOs handle things. Again, language, context, and comprehension are huge barriers. This meeting lasted over three hours and we didn't balance the budget, so the SC staff has to go back again! Once we got back home, I walked into the guest house and was invited to dinner by one of my housemates. She had prepared nshima, sweet potato leaves, and meatballs. It was nice to have an Zambian meal - and it was delicious! We watched the news, and Grey's Anatomy. Africa really is not so different from back home!
Wednesday began with small group, and then Diane was working with our bookkeeper, Mary, on petty cash requisitions and bank withdrawal form procedures. This day we stayed at the SC, so I had time to learn more about the SC and CBOs from Byron. We worked on collecting information on the nine communites we work in to relay back to the Regional Support Team (RST) in Luanshya. This was nice to see because it involved getting information we don't necessarily have in mind each time we are out with our children, and it provided me the chance to get a well-rounded picture of our communities. The staff caught up on some emails, and then it was time to work on quarterly reports to submit to the RST. We also worked on the SC budget for Celebrations and community profiles.
Thursday morning we spent devoting a few minutes to the 40 days of prayer, before continuing to work on quarterly reports. We also had to work on project proposals to submit to the RST. These in particular were larger projects to occur in communities that have already received funds from an international donor. In order to keep everything transparent and accountable, The SC must fill out project proposals with anticipated costs and it must be submitted and approved before the project funds can be dispersed and the work can begin. That afternoon we went to Amlew to meet with the CBO there. Anywhere we go, people get excited but when we walked into the care point the children just started screaming with excitement! We were able to walk the community and go to home visits with two of our precious children there. It was an amazing experience! We went back to the care point and I helped the cooks pass out the meals. We had a chance to talk with the care workers before we left.
When we went back to the SC we worked on finishing the community profiles for our quarterly reports. I had a chance to type of two of the stories we had collected from our communities. It is a long process though, because often when we sit down to write these stories, we realize we don't have enough information. I jokingly told Clement that I had no problem typing, but that I would need a lot of help with the details. I wasn't kidding! I kept asking Clement to call the care workers to get more details for our stories. Eventually we finished the profiles though, but the SC still had to update the work plans. Diane was delayed, so Byron and I spent some extra time at the SC. Finally it was time to leave and we were off to Towela's house for dinner! She was going to help us on our technique for stirring nshima...
I'm not a pro just yet, but dinner was delicious!
Friday morning we all traveled to Mulenga for Village Prayer. On the way, we picked up Clement and Mary. That morning was some of the craziest traffic I have seen since being in Zambia. Once we arrived in Mulenga, we went to Village Prayer. Once every three or four weeks, the RST travels to different communities to meet with all the Hands staff/volunteers and care workers, along with anyone else they can get from the community (preachers, teachers, etc), to pray and worship together, in addition to hear stories from the care workers. The care workers are often not that much better off than the families they care for, but because of their optimism and willingness to care for others, we sometimes forget they struggle as well. Hearing there stories helps us keep things in perspective. The care workers are there to support the children and their families, but Hands is ultimately there to support the care workers. At the Village Prayer, Tawonga decided she should style my hair. I didn't mind, and it kept her (mostly) quiet and out of trouble during the end of the prayer meeting. After the prayer meeting was over, the Kitwe SC traveled back and prepared for more budget meetings. I, on the other hand, jumped into the boot of Adam's buckey. (That is what we would call the bed of a truck.) We were bound for the Kachele farm in Luanshya. Dave and Russell had landed in Ndola the day before and were getting settled in at Kachele. That afternoon the three of us went with Adam, along with Gideon and Kennedy, to Ndola to take care of some business. After we dropped off Gideon and Kennedy, we ran a few errands before heading over to the complex that has Pick n Pay. We got Subway and stopped for gelato - which is probably the real reason Adam planned the trip into the city in the first place. We did some shopping, and Russell got more gelato.
We eventually made it back to Kachele. I spent the afternoon playing with Tawonga. She is only two years old, but has the run of the Kachele farm and has everyone wrapped around her little finger. We spent most of the afternoon watching the cows. She still isn't quite sure what to think about Uncle Russell or Uncle Dave, but Uncle Dave came with us on one of our jaunts to see the cows who live on the neighboring farm. She gradually started to warm up to them, and eventually started throwing money at Russell. She thought that was a swell game! Eventually, we took her home and the three of us went on a walk with Adam to see where the large cobra lives on the edge of the farm. When we got back, Tawonga was ready to play again and we sat in the yard keeping her entertained until she couldn't avoid bath time any longer. The rest of the evening we spent inside, having grown tired of dealing with the mosquitoes. We all made dinner and sat around the dinner table. Russell was playing his ukelele, Dave was playing his guitar, and Adam blew our minds with a magic trick until it was eventually we all caved and accepted that it was time to go to bed.
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