Here's the latest from Maarten – a sombre note after a difficult day
From Lusaka, greetings.
It remains hot. Yesterday I set out for a walk in the morning (the clinic did not start until 1400) and I eventually found myself being given a guided tour around the National Assembly of Zambia (the parliament). I was in the chamber of deputies; the library - basically, got a complete tour. That took care of the morning. In the afternoon, we went to Flying Angels. Between Dr.Brian and myself, we saw another 105 people - I saw about thirty; Brian saw the rest. Worms, back pain and chest infections were the order of the day.
This morning, it was off to Kondwa again. Home visits - a man with Kaposi's sarcoma - in pain; unable to work; no food today; wife doing piecework to scrape together money for food; a woman and her child, both HIV positive, on ARV's; husband gone, no food, brother living on the other side of the compound, no contact. Another family, everyone HIV positive, on antiretrovirals. The houses are basic. Total square footage - about 180; 2 rooms, or a single room with a curtain divider for five people. No glass in the windows. Breeze through openings in the wall. Slanted tin roof. The food gets cooked outside; the privy is a pit latrine; water is carried in from water points. In some of these cases, the only thing missing is hellfire. Angela told us there's worse, but did not elaborate except to say that one family whose children had gone to school last year lost their father. All three children then left school, presumably to help Mom make ends meet by selling stuff on the streets.
One of the teachers from last year at Kondwa died yesterday of AIDS. (She did not teach this year.)
Angela has a couple of hectares of land about 4 km from Kondwa. Good soil; contaminated water for irrigation comes from a nearby creek. This is where she wants to build her school. Grew enough maize (corn) last year to feed Kondwa for six months. Has planted orange, lemon, papaya trees; also cassava, tomatoes, cabbage (hundreds ready for harvest now). A gardener lives on the property in a modest 2 room building.
The rich live well in Lusaka. There is, essentially, no middle class. There are the poor, and there are the destitute. N'Gombe represents the last. 50% of the children there do not attend any kind of school.
One of the people we met at Zebra guest house told me things are improving here, compared with what they were like three years ago. It's going to take a little more time...As Angela states "We live on hope".