Feeling Sorry for the Kiddos!

Those of you who follow my blog may recall other posts in which I talked about the challenges of the Zambian educational system or the rough road that school children face when trying to get an education. I hope you are not too weary of this theme, because I feel inspired to post on the topic again. I wish that this post had some solutions in mind, but I’m afraid that isn’t the case… just venting I guess. Enjoy the pretty pictures as they go along. I’ll explain them at the end!

Here’s the first bit: Zambian government high schools are not free, but the schools do their best to keep the tuition low (less than $100 per pupil per year) so that moderately low income families can manage to pay the bills. However, the schools don’t receive much funding from the Ministry of Education, so their needs exceed what the pupils bring in. So, they often have other costs that they require of the pupils in order to avoid raising the tuition. For example, pupils are required to bring a ream of paper each year to the office and pay fees for the science lab (and some of our schools recently added a computer lab fee to help pay for the internet). Then there is usually some item that the grade 10 pupils are required to bring with them when they first report to school. My first two years here I mostly saw pupils bringing gardening tools. Last year, though, one school decided to have the grade 10s bring paint for the campus – a full 20 liter bucket! I saw several mothers and sons struggling to carry the paint from the bus stop to the administration building. This year another school has taken it a step further and required each grade 10 pupil to bring a 50 kg bag of cement! These will be put to good use for several school construction projects, but I am sure the families are struggling with the transportation for these bags in addition to the cost (about $13 for the cement itself). I observed one father trying to pay the school directly instead of having to collect the cement and the head teacher refused, explaining that they didn’t want to have to do the accounting for the funds and/or trust an employee not to steal the money (corruption is a perennial problem due to the low wages).

Here’s the next bit: Computer lessons are still not a part of the normal school day since there is no official government curriculum yet for computer user skills. So at the three government schools that I work with the pupils are taught computer skills off of the regular time table. Students who have their regular classes in the afternoon come for their computer lessons in the morning and morning students come for their computer lessons in the afternoon. This plan generally works well, but there are various reasons that the schedule gets disrupted. At one school the lab manager recently complained that a teacher had put the class she was supposed to be teaching “on punishment” for a whole week, meaning that they were told to stay late and do work on the grounds and thus couldn’t come for computer lessons. The next week lessons again were disrupted because the entire school was busy preparing for a sports day and the pupils were told to practice various sporting events. At another school a laptop was recently stolen and the culprit was not identified. The head teacher decided to stop computer lessons until all of the pupils who used the lab on the day of the theft made a payment towards the purchase of a replacement computer. While I applaud the effort on the part of the school to take responsibility for the theft and replace the computer, I don’t know how realistic it was to ask the pupils to pay. It is now a month after the theft and classes have yet to resume!

Here’s one more bit: The pictures you see here are from the national Women’s Day holiday on March 8. A few women I know were marching in groups like the ones shown in the pictures here. It was a very festive occasion that included marching, singing, dancing and speeches. The president (Rupiah Banda) was on hand after the marching to observe various ceremonies and I was very surprised at how close we were able to get to him for a picture! I loved seeing how well the different groups (schools, ministries, political parties, etc.) dressed, and was inspired by their enthusiasm for the occasion. The experience was tarnished for me, however, by the realization of how much this was costing the local schools. One school had given each of the roughly 35 women on staff 6 meters of chitenge fabric and also paid for them to have it tailored. They also paid for them all to have lunch after the event. This cost about $25 per staff member, whether they showed up to march or not! Does the power of these festivities outweigh the expense? I’m not sure. At least I can be happy that the women ended up with beautiful outfits that they will wear again.

P.S. I am pleased to report that my computer has been virus free since not long after my last post. A combination of three different free anti-virus programs seems to be doing the trick!