Another Great School Today!

Just when we were really beginning to get bogged down in adjustment to new culture issues, and day to day life details seemingly slamming us one after another, today we followed a little lead that turned out to be wonderful.  It is Chiwiledi Community School, run by…..you guessed it….the Catholic Church, again!  It is small, under 20 kids, but every single one of them has an intellectual disability!  WOW.  It was bright, cheery, upbeat, and, true to what we had seen and heard before we came, had very little resources.  It actually has a ‘bus’ which is unheard of for schools in Zambia.  The bus, gas, and driver are funded by one patron who covers this for all the students.  There seem to be two classrooms, a playground, a therapy room, and a kitchen/eating room.  They have no Physical Therapist, no Occupational Therapist, and no Speech Therapist.  They want to learn more, and invited me back tomorrow to train them for their hour break at lunchtime.

One of the reasons I went to this school was to see if it is a good school, first of all, since Mubanga, a fellow I wrote about in a previous post attends school there.  We have been doing some caring for/supporting of his family, which includes his mother and two brothers.  I call her Amake Mubanga and she calls me Amake Sam.  It means Mother to Mubanga or Mother to Sam, and I don’t even know her given name!  Amake Mubanga told us this school is free, has a bus, and takes children with intellectual disabilities, and we truly couldn’t believe it.  What a find!

Another reason I wanted to visit and check it out is that we have two other children we are looking for classrooms for: Bedson and Evidence, whom you should remember from posts from our first month here.  This school is close enough to their compounds that I think it would work, so I thought a visit would be good.  We heard about it in early December, and Zambia schools take a month off from December 6th-January 6th approximately, so we couldn’t visit until now.  It still remains a possibility that Bedson could attend this school, but probably not Evidence.  This school has only 5 adults working there with the children and young adults, so they don’t have the manpower to take children who can’t walk.  Evidence can’t walk.  Bedson currently can’t walk, but he is in braces that are making his legs stronger. So, he may walk.  So at 2 pm tomorrow (14 hrs, as they say here, and I am doing my best to switch over!), we are headed back to the school, after training the teachers from 11:30-12:30.  We will go on home visits with one or two of the teachers from the school to see if it is at all a possibility for them to attend.  I am, as always, the eternal optimist.  If we lose hope, what do we have?  So, I hope that it will somehow work out and these two who are confined to their small, dark homes can be welcomed into a school where they are loved, their brains are stimulated, and they will have friends.  I will let you know.