October Update from Rob and Kate

October UPDATE from Rob and Kate
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Greetings, from the supplier of your household plumbing: Kitwe, Zambia. It is great to know that we have contributed here to such a basic and essential thing in your house…..your copper pipes. Kitwe’s only claim to fame is its massive production of copper. The mines have been booming here since copper prices have hit an all time high. Unfortunately for the local Zambian this hasn’t trickled down into jobs for the average worker. Unemployment is high, and poverty is everywhere. Having said this I am amazed at how different life here is, 10 years after our first visit. The shops have food and clothes, supplies are coming in all the time, small business is everywhere. It is a good season for Zambia and for us.
We are feeling more settled in Zambia as we near our first month anniversary. We jumped right in with teaching classes, preparing the farms for the rains (which came today YaHH!!). What has complicated things is Cameron getting malaria, which has taken 2 rounds of medicine to cure and Simeon spreading Impetigo to all of us, who incidentally are benefiting from topical antibiotics. It takes a lot of energy battling stuff like this so far from home. As for work, there is no shortage of things to do. Training in just basic things is so badly needed here. I can’t tell you the number of pipes held together with rubber bands. Picking your battles and being at ease with the fact that everything will be just a drop in the bucket, makes life bearable and sleep possible. As we begin to figure out what it is we really need to do here, there are a few holes we feel really need to be addressed and we need your help to do it. There are 3 projects we would like to begin as soon as possible, which is when the funds come in.

The TTC playground: Operation get the kids off the water tower.
I feel so Canadian realizing that my first pet project is a playground. In North America we have privatized play. Many people I know don’t even go to public parks, but have the play grounds in their own backyard. This makes play safer, convenient and very different from here. In Zambia every toy is precious, especially for us because we didn’t bring any. Toys are shared and fought over. There often aren’t many to go around. You can imagine when every extra is going into paying for education our family students there isn’t a lot of toys at home. What’s more is that most kids are just left to make play for themselves. It isn’t normal to play with kids, to make an effort to notice them. Our kids are making do with what they find, which unfortunately is a leaky water tower and our farm equipment- the tractor is a favorite.
On our grounds there are several families that are studying here, at present that accounts for 20 kids. This has provided an instant play group if not a constant one. Imagine 20 kids in a small area sharing a few toys-crazy! Or 20 kids with no unsupervised safe place to play….no backyard, except an equipment yard- Dangerous! The number of kids swells at conference time and our training classes. We would love to make some simple structures, a swing, a monkey bar, a slide. This is about more than just play space it is also to help the families here imagine and model play with their kids. It is an opportunity for them to turn towards their kids and focus on them. Our goal is to look for recycled materials, and creative things that can be reproduced in the slums that surround us.
Playgrounds are places to earn your stripes as a kid-they are places to imagine and dream. It is on playgrounds that adulthood is formed. We in a very, very small way want to help model this here. If you would like to help we are trying to raise $2000 to build a sweet structure that will also employ some people. Better yet come and help build it. Hopefully this is the first of a number of structures we can build here and in the surrounding neighbourhoods.
BE A ZAMBIAN HERO- PLANT A TREE
The rate of deforestation in this country is ALARMING! We see evidence of land burning and trees being cut everywhere. The question I heard a missionary raise lately was, ‘I wonder if anyone is planting trees to replace them?’ The question stuck in my head. The likelihood of a trees being planted somewhere in my experience seems absolutely remote. It has been the hardest thing to try to teach people to value trees- why? Well because in a culture that doesn’t expect to reach old age they have never seen the value of a tree grow. Never appreciated the shade a planted tree has brought. In a culture where everything is about surviving today, a tree that will produce fruit 6 years or shade in 10 years is just too low on the priority scale to notice. I came up with this slogan and I want to make it into a t-shirt, ‘be a hero plant a tree.’
I don’t just want to plant a tree though. I want to plant 1000 trees. 1000 trees in the next 2 years. This year’s goal is 500, next year I want to have started a nursery to plant the rest. You can see the pictures of the farm where we are developing. I notice 1 thing……where are all the trees? When I see people wilting in the hot sun I think, ‘where are the trees?’ When I see a malnourished baby with a distended belly just outside our gates in a country that has trees that can produce fruit 365 days of the year, ‘where are the trees?’ I want to pack every available space with a tree, for soil conservation, for shade, for water retention, and for fruit! A tree costs $3. Help me plant some trees, buy the whole orchard and I will name it after you. The nursery that we begin this year will become a seedling bank and enable us to get trees to vulnerable families.
100 orange trees
100 banana trees (300 more next year)
100 papaya trees (which will produce fruit this year)
50 mango trees
30 avocado trees
50 guava trees
70 ornamental trees (maybe some grapes if I can find them)

Come and be a part of our SKILLS TRAINING
We have a building currently under construction that will house what will be a new shop for trade development. When someone says to you here, ‘I know how to fix that-car, a bike, a leaky tap’-BEWARE! We know as Canadians duct tape can fix anything, but should it? By early next year we hope to have begun training in a variety of simple trades each of the 200 bible college students. We hope that all of them graduate knowing how to exegete scripture and work with their hands. Everywhere around us though is opportunity to pass along help. I asked a group of adults, ‘can you tell me what compost is?’ NO ONE could. The wealth of knowledge we have as Canadians is unbelievable. You could be a help in many, many ways…..so come!
Just to encourage you more. We could use:

• plumbers
• carpenters
• farmers
• concrete guys, tillers
• nurses/ doctors/ nutritionists
• food service people
• friendly people
• pastors

What could this look like: We can accommodate people coming on short term teams-anytime. Guests would stay with us on the college campus and get a feel for living in semi rural Africa. Depending on your skill and what you would like to do we can customize an amazing, life changing trip for you, or your team.
Spend time here training the future church leaders of Zambia at the college. Bring your skills to the people in greatest need by training community and business leaders from the poorest neighborhoods of Kitwe. Go off in your downtime and visit rural churches, or head out to the lake to fish, and when you are totally spent- head down to the Zambezi River and visit Victoria Falls, or head to see some animals on a safari.
If you want to think about coming, let’s start talking and planning. Send us an email.

Keep up with our travels on our blog: www.withkidsintow.blogspot.com

PLEASE NOTE: If you would like to contribute to us or the projects we want to get started:
We have streamlined our donations to Loads of Love. Loads of Love is the Canadian Charity that is directly involved with this project in Kitwe and will transfer funds directly to us.

www.loadsoflove.ca
please designate all donations to: Kitwe Zambia Community Development Project.