Kiambi

Kiambi stond al een tijdje op ons wensenlijstje en nu eindelijk is het ervan gekomen. Een beetje bang gemaakt door een collega van Paul, die het er vorig jaar rond deze tijd zo warm had gehad dat ze het ons afraadde er in Oktober naar toe te gaan, was dit mijn verjaardagskado (naast een mooie Zambike)! Wat een plek om je verjaardag te vieren.

We maken een prachtige tocht over de rivier en zijn diep onder de indruk over het aantal olifanten en nijlpaarden. Wat kunnen we dichtbij komen en wat zijn het toch een prachtige beesten.

Zambezi district – September 2013

Zambezi district is part of North Western province, situated close the border with Congo and with Angola in particular. It is not so populated but vast in size. The capital of North Western province is Solwezi, a booming dusty frontier mining town. An Australian or Canadian company is preparing the opening of what will be the biggest copper mine in Africa. This increasing economic activity already attracts numerous migrants, businesses, and Solwezi has known a chaotic expansion over the past years. When I asked whether this would also provide opportunities for the province’s local population, including people from Zambezi district, the answer was negative. The big mining companies require a minimum level of education and migrants from other towns or Lusaka are more likely to respond to that profile than the still largely illiterate populations in the province. Again, it shows the importance of good quality education. Yet, when I visited some villages in Zambezi district, the harsh reality remained that the scarcity of schools and teachers lead to situations where some 150 Grade 1 pupils have to share one teacher, which means that during one day they will be at school in shifts of about 50 pupils, each for about 3 hours. Hard for them and hard for the teachers. The Zambezi River divides Zambezi district in a West-bank and an East-Bank: both parts have their own Chief and their own language. The district administration in everything it does has to strike a fine balance between the two sides. That is also true for the programme we came to visit. The initial 20 communities that could enter the programme were equally divided over the two sides. The West Bank in particular is difficult to reach when it rains. Some parts are cut off from the outside world between January and June. There are no roads on the West Bank, just sand paths: this makes even bicycling difficult. Teachers who work in the villages in January bring supplies for a couple of months. Poverty is striking. Productivity is low and during the so-called lean season many families are depleting their maize or cassava stock and have to rely upon informal support mechanisms. There are few other income earning opportunities – also given the low level of economic activity, the difficult access to markets, and the poor state of agriculture. Few families cultivate rice as a cash crop and are able to earn something through this. It is hard to find what we would call a ‘normal’ family: parents with children.

First, many or even most children do not live with their father: Either because the father is living elsewhere for economic reasons or with another woman or because the father passed away. We also met several families where grandparents were caring for their grandchildren, orphans in many instances: the impact of the HIV pandemic seems an important contributor to this situation. It is hard for grandparents to take care of grandchildren who are often forced to drop out of school to help out at home – girls in the first place. Where poverty is widespread the solidarity of the extended family or the village is not an obvious safety net. Children who live with a disability are extremely vulnerable to neglect. We met a 14-year old girl who lived on her own as she was chased away by her family. We also met a grandmother who was caring for her mentally (slightly) retarded grandson who never went to school and clearly was in an extremely fragile nutritional state. It was very difficult to hear the stories of these families and the hardship they endure.

The mother, I wrote about

The Government programme that I advise identifies these poor and vulnerable families and provides them with a monthly allowance of about 12 US dollar. For a family of five this is roughly enough to purchase an extra meal a day: A significant change for families who tend to live on one meal per day. Yet, the money is also used for other purposes: clothes for children, soap, some fish perhaps, to pay for cost of schooling, and also to by seeds, fertiliser, or to start a small business. We are managing a four-year impact evaluation to demonstrate the impact of the programme and the findings we released this year are impressive – including on poverty. We also found that local economies benefit: every dollar generates 0.7 dollar in local economy multiplier effects. The Government is now considering this as its flagship programme for poverty reduction and increased the budget significantly for 2014, meaning that across the country some 200,000 families will be able to benefit. We argue that a country such as Zambia, where tax revenues continue to increase on the wave of high global copper prices and the growth this creates, can afford much more: better education, better infrastructure, more support to agriculture among other things.

On the way back to the district capital where we stay we meet one of the village teachers. He is walking back to the village and in his bag he has this month’s allowances for the families who benefit from the programme in his area. He walked 15 kilometres to the bank in the district town and the same distance back to his village. He receives an allowance to spend the night in town but not more than that. Still he is very motivated to play his role in the programme, like hundreds of other teachers across the country. Fantastic.