Today was such a full day! We started with a tour of the city of Lusaka. We saw the upscale parts – like a mall that could be in America and even has a Pizza Hut. We saw the completely bereft parts – like a trash city and a compound called Chiasa.
I’m not sure I can adequately describe the compound to you. First of all, there is trash everywhere in Zambia. There is literally no trash program. Once in a while, people will just pile up trash and burn it. It’s a huge problem.
Second, there are people everywhere. 30-50 people live in what would be the size of a 1 bedroom house here, though there are several small, separate apartments for each family (5-6 people would live in each tiny apartment). That means there is zero privacy, which means that when the adults want to have sex, they do it right in front of the children. Also, they estimate that 90% or more of the girls that we see at Camp LIFE have been raped…and we’re talking girls as young as 6 years old.
One of the shocking things in the compounds is the number of children versus the number of adults. Many of you have probably heard me say that there are 13 kids for every 1 adult, but you can’t appreciate what that means until you see them with their eyes. They were everywhere in Chiasa. One of the most shocking things was that there were girls who looked like they could have been as young as 6 years old that were carrying around babies on their backs as if they were adults. We called it babies carrying babies. By the way, because of the stunted growth due to malnutrition, those 6 year old could have been 11 years old, but I’m telling you that if they had been in America, you would have thought they were 6.
The most amazing thing about Chiasa, however, was the school that Family Legacy has opened there. The land and buildings that they have acquired for the school used to be a bar and functioning brothel. They have taken it over, cleaned and painted parts of it, and destroyed and rebuilt other parts with more plans for expansion in the future. They have taken a place where girls – and yes, I mean girls as young as 14 – would lie on beds in tiny rooms waiting for their next patron, and turned it into a functioning Christian school.
We got to meet a classroom of first graders. Now, keep in mind that all the children in the school are sponsored by Americans like Perry and I. We sponsor two girls at different Family Legacy schools (they have 18 total in Lusaka). When these children get sponsors, they could be 5 years old, they could be 11 years old, and they may have never been in school. So first graders may not be 6 years old – they could range from 6-8 years old.
Anyway, we walked into a classroom of first graders, and they immediately greeted us IN ENGLISH. They were adorable and smiling, as you can see below. Their classroom was amazing. It was a small room, yes, but they had the same posters on the wall and information on the white board that you would see in America. I don’t know why it shocked me, but to see them receiving an education just like our American kids was so fulfilling to me. I care a lot about education, and to know that these Zambian kids are learning science, math, English, business, everything they need to get a phenomenal job…it’s just so awesome what Family Legacy has been doing for these kids.
I don’t have any more words to describe what I saw and learned today around Lusaka. There was so much. I swear, if you haven’t travelled to a truly third world country and toured where they actually live, you need to go. It will change how you view the world. I didn’t believe that when people told me, but I can tell you tonight that words are not sufficient for what is actually happening here in Africa.
When we returned from Lusaka, our children were already lined up and waiting for us! My 10 girls are absolutely beautiful. Their names are (in order of how they are lined up below): Blessing, Ruth, Veronica, Regina, Gift, Sylvia, Abigail, Joyce (orange), Ida, and Dorcas. You will also see in the picture below my translator, Martha, in red, and at the back of the line of girls, our helper, Kamara.
We only had a couple of hours with the girls today, so it was difficult to get to know them. They are also kind of closed off because most of them have never been to Camp LIFE. The other problem I had was that I was nervous and closed off. Please be praying for me. I need to let God work through me, and the Devil is doing his very best to stop that. It’s been a struggle. I need to ask the hard questions about their family situations, if they have been raped, if they have problems. I am here to bring them to Jesus, but also to meet their needs.
Pray for the two girls that I met with individually today: Ruth and Gift. Ruth was nervous and completely closed off. I think she may have lied to me about her answers, and I want to meet with her again, as does Martha. Gift was much more open, but she had never heard about God before. I didn’t ask either of them the hard questions, and I need to. I hope to have time to meet with both of them again after I meet with the 8 other girls individually.
After the kids left, and we had dinner, we heard about the medical situation in Zambia. People, you don’t understand. I didn’t understand. It is completely dire. There are only 861 doctors in Zambia, a country with million people. To put that in perspective, there are 10,935 doctors in Alabama alone. Zambia has 3x more people than the state of Alabama. In the best hospital in the country, there are 75-80 patients per nurse.
Holly, the Vice President of Family Legacy, gave a testimony today about what she saw in the best hospital in Zambia. One of the little boys she sponsors in the Tree of Life children’s village got very sick from HIV, and while Family Legacy has a medical team on staff, they did not have the facilities to treat the boy. They are working on that by building the River of Life Medical Center. ;)
Anyway, Holly went to visit her boy, and found him in the isolation ward. This ward was filled with beds of children with communicable diseases that were lying on mattresses without sheets that were only 1 foot apart from each other. They had no IVs. They also had no food or water. The hospital doesn’t feed their patients. Can you believe that? While Holly’s boy was there, he watched another child die right in the bed in front of him. From what Holly and the Family Legacy medical staff say, he only needed an IV. Unfortunately, in the hospital, the Family Legacy doctor can’t treat the children.
There are kids lying in hospital wards dying because they can’t get something as simple as IV fluids. When they are close to death, flies land on them in anticipation. As the Family Legacy doctor said, “The flies know where to go.”
After the medical briefing, we had to watch a documentary made by an African from Sierra Leone called, “Living with AIDS”. It was filmed in 2005 in Zambia. The big message from that movie wasn’t about how many people contract HIV, how they are treated, how many die, etc. No, the big message was that the culture is getting in the way of treating the HIV epidemic.
They interviewed young men about whether or not they would use condoms. Almost all of them said, “no” because they like “skin to skin”. When asked about HIV, one of the men said he already had it, and so he didn’t care anymore. The filmmaker yelled at him about spreading HIV, and asked if he would appreciate it if his sisters got HIV from unprotected sex with a man who did not reveal that he was infected. The Zambian with HIV didn’t care; he said that if something like that happened, he would do nothing. He also said that he was already dying, so every night he gets drunk and has sex with “any girl”.
Two prostitutes were asked if they insisted on using condoms with their partners. They are paid less if they do so, so they said that they do not. When asked about HIV, they said that sex was the only way they could take care of themselves. They had no respect for their own bodies.
HIV is also a huge source of shame in Zambia. If a person has HIV, they are usually shunned by their family, and even told to kill themselves by their own siblings. So many people do not seek treatment for HIV or do not get the correct treatment because they hide their condition.
One of the things we were asked to teach our kids this week is about proper sexual conduct, and to teach them about HIV transmission. Part of Family Legacy’s mission with these children is to change their culture of promiscuity. One of the things we will do this week is allow our boys and girls to mingle in respectful ways. The boys will serve lunch to the girls, kneeling lower to the ground than the girls to take on a nontraditional role of respect. The girls will stand over the boys, and pray for them. We’re trying to teach them godly ways of respecting each other as well as meeting their needs and teaching them about Jesus.
Family Legacy’s mission goes so deeply that they are trying to take care of every part of the lives of these children. They have just recently started graduating kids to universities, and now they are planning to find ways to ensure that the kids have proper jobs. They take them from orphans living in the slums of Africa to fully qualified workers for their own country where they can also change Zambia.
I’m not sure I can adequately describe the compound to you. First of all, there is trash everywhere in Zambia. There is literally no trash program. Once in a while, people will just pile up trash and burn it. It’s a huge problem.
Second, there are people everywhere. 30-50 people live in what would be the size of a 1 bedroom house here, though there are several small, separate apartments for each family (5-6 people would live in each tiny apartment). That means there is zero privacy, which means that when the adults want to have sex, they do it right in front of the children. Also, they estimate that 90% or more of the girls that we see at Camp LIFE have been raped…and we’re talking girls as young as 6 years old.
One of the shocking things in the compounds is the number of children versus the number of adults. Many of you have probably heard me say that there are 13 kids for every 1 adult, but you can’t appreciate what that means until you see them with their eyes. They were everywhere in Chiasa. One of the most shocking things was that there were girls who looked like they could have been as young as 6 years old that were carrying around babies on their backs as if they were adults. We called it babies carrying babies. By the way, because of the stunted growth due to malnutrition, those 6 year old could have been 11 years old, but I’m telling you that if they had been in America, you would have thought they were 6.
The most amazing thing about Chiasa, however, was the school that Family Legacy has opened there. The land and buildings that they have acquired for the school used to be a bar and functioning brothel. They have taken it over, cleaned and painted parts of it, and destroyed and rebuilt other parts with more plans for expansion in the future. They have taken a place where girls – and yes, I mean girls as young as 14 – would lie on beds in tiny rooms waiting for their next patron, and turned it into a functioning Christian school.
We got to meet a classroom of first graders. Now, keep in mind that all the children in the school are sponsored by Americans like Perry and I. We sponsor two girls at different Family Legacy schools (they have 18 total in Lusaka). When these children get sponsors, they could be 5 years old, they could be 11 years old, and they may have never been in school. So first graders may not be 6 years old – they could range from 6-8 years old.
Anyway, we walked into a classroom of first graders, and they immediately greeted us IN ENGLISH. They were adorable and smiling, as you can see below. Their classroom was amazing. It was a small room, yes, but they had the same posters on the wall and information on the white board that you would see in America. I don’t know why it shocked me, but to see them receiving an education just like our American kids was so fulfilling to me. I care a lot about education, and to know that these Zambian kids are learning science, math, English, business, everything they need to get a phenomenal job…it’s just so awesome what Family Legacy has been doing for these kids.
I don’t have any more words to describe what I saw and learned today around Lusaka. There was so much. I swear, if you haven’t travelled to a truly third world country and toured where they actually live, you need to go. It will change how you view the world. I didn’t believe that when people told me, but I can tell you tonight that words are not sufficient for what is actually happening here in Africa.
When we returned from Lusaka, our children were already lined up and waiting for us! My 10 girls are absolutely beautiful. Their names are (in order of how they are lined up below): Blessing, Ruth, Veronica, Regina, Gift, Sylvia, Abigail, Joyce (orange), Ida, and Dorcas. You will also see in the picture below my translator, Martha, in red, and at the back of the line of girls, our helper, Kamara.
We only had a couple of hours with the girls today, so it was difficult to get to know them. They are also kind of closed off because most of them have never been to Camp LIFE. The other problem I had was that I was nervous and closed off. Please be praying for me. I need to let God work through me, and the Devil is doing his very best to stop that. It’s been a struggle. I need to ask the hard questions about their family situations, if they have been raped, if they have problems. I am here to bring them to Jesus, but also to meet their needs.
Pray for the two girls that I met with individually today: Ruth and Gift. Ruth was nervous and completely closed off. I think she may have lied to me about her answers, and I want to meet with her again, as does Martha. Gift was much more open, but she had never heard about God before. I didn’t ask either of them the hard questions, and I need to. I hope to have time to meet with both of them again after I meet with the 8 other girls individually.
After the kids left, and we had dinner, we heard about the medical situation in Zambia. People, you don’t understand. I didn’t understand. It is completely dire. There are only 861 doctors in Zambia, a country with million people. To put that in perspective, there are 10,935 doctors in Alabama alone. Zambia has 3x more people than the state of Alabama. In the best hospital in the country, there are 75-80 patients per nurse.
Holly, the Vice President of Family Legacy, gave a testimony today about what she saw in the best hospital in Zambia. One of the little boys she sponsors in the Tree of Life children’s village got very sick from HIV, and while Family Legacy has a medical team on staff, they did not have the facilities to treat the boy. They are working on that by building the River of Life Medical Center. ;)
Anyway, Holly went to visit her boy, and found him in the isolation ward. This ward was filled with beds of children with communicable diseases that were lying on mattresses without sheets that were only 1 foot apart from each other. They had no IVs. They also had no food or water. The hospital doesn’t feed their patients. Can you believe that? While Holly’s boy was there, he watched another child die right in the bed in front of him. From what Holly and the Family Legacy medical staff say, he only needed an IV. Unfortunately, in the hospital, the Family Legacy doctor can’t treat the children.
There are kids lying in hospital wards dying because they can’t get something as simple as IV fluids. When they are close to death, flies land on them in anticipation. As the Family Legacy doctor said, “The flies know where to go.”
After the medical briefing, we had to watch a documentary made by an African from Sierra Leone called, “Living with AIDS”. It was filmed in 2005 in Zambia. The big message from that movie wasn’t about how many people contract HIV, how they are treated, how many die, etc. No, the big message was that the culture is getting in the way of treating the HIV epidemic.
They interviewed young men about whether or not they would use condoms. Almost all of them said, “no” because they like “skin to skin”. When asked about HIV, one of the men said he already had it, and so he didn’t care anymore. The filmmaker yelled at him about spreading HIV, and asked if he would appreciate it if his sisters got HIV from unprotected sex with a man who did not reveal that he was infected. The Zambian with HIV didn’t care; he said that if something like that happened, he would do nothing. He also said that he was already dying, so every night he gets drunk and has sex with “any girl”.
Two prostitutes were asked if they insisted on using condoms with their partners. They are paid less if they do so, so they said that they do not. When asked about HIV, they said that sex was the only way they could take care of themselves. They had no respect for their own bodies.
HIV is also a huge source of shame in Zambia. If a person has HIV, they are usually shunned by their family, and even told to kill themselves by their own siblings. So many people do not seek treatment for HIV or do not get the correct treatment because they hide their condition.
One of the things we were asked to teach our kids this week is about proper sexual conduct, and to teach them about HIV transmission. Part of Family Legacy’s mission with these children is to change their culture of promiscuity. One of the things we will do this week is allow our boys and girls to mingle in respectful ways. The boys will serve lunch to the girls, kneeling lower to the ground than the girls to take on a nontraditional role of respect. The girls will stand over the boys, and pray for them. We’re trying to teach them godly ways of respecting each other as well as meeting their needs and teaching them about Jesus.
Family Legacy’s mission goes so deeply that they are trying to take care of every part of the lives of these children. They have just recently started graduating kids to universities, and now they are planning to find ways to ensure that the kids have proper jobs. They take them from orphans living in the slums of Africa to fully qualified workers for their own country where they can also change Zambia.
all the things we take for granted here...
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