Blogs from Kitwe, Zambia, Africa

This blog entry is actually coming to you from St. Bonaventure College in Lusaka - the place we started when we first arrived. But we have just landed here after a 5 hour drive from Kitwe. We left the celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart at Sacred Heart Parish in Kitwe early so we could arrive here at a reasonable hour. So, let's start with in the celebration and work backwards. Mass started this morning at 8 am, sort of. Like so many things in Zambia, time is not the most important consideration and it is certainly not the obsession it is in the US. We arrived at the parish from our lodging place at about 5 til 8 only to learn that mass was not at the parish, but at another location and ... read more

It's hard to believe that we are down to our last couple days here. Over the last couple days the progress continued happening on the washrooms and on the painting in the existing building. The work here is a slow process because things seem to take way longer than they need to and we are often waiting on materials so the work can continue. We continue getting to know the children and spending time with them and playing with them during our down times through the day. I find this to be the highlight of my days here. It's a blessing to see their smiling faces each day as they run to greet us each morning and the mob that waves and even chases after us each day when we leave. One of the things I ... read more

Lots to say but just want to upload pictures as they speak louder than my words ever could!... read more

I suppose it’s time I introduce my home and host family. Chibote is a peri-urban village about 11 km outside of Kitwe - Zambia’s second biggest city and the location of ZATAC’s regional office. I met my host family, the Kalombwanas, through my work in the community with ZATAC. They have been incredibly welcoming to this naïve muzungu from Canada. The size of the Kalombwana family changes. A lot. There have been as few as six and as many as twelve of us living in the home. It has been a very new experience for me. I don’t think that I have ever lived in a home with more than three other people before, and that was with three other guys my own age in a home easily six times larger than our home here. ... read more

Working with Engineers Without Borders, one might expect me to be designing solar ovens or installing wells or developing new technology for Zambia’s development. But that’s not how we roll. We focus on building the capacity of local organizations. This essentially means that we help organizations who are already on the ground do their jobs better. In my case, EWB has partnered with the Zambia Agribusiness Technical Assistance Centre Ltd., a legally registered, independent, non-profit Zambian private organization. It may seem to be a misnomer that ZATAC is both a private organization and non-profit, but this is in fact the case. ZATAC doesn’t have shareholders who take in the company’s profits as a typical private company would, but it has guarantors who oversee the organization, but do not take any financial gain from their involvement - ... read more