Just A Chance by Jennifer Cho Salaff
Friday, July 20, 2007

Our team began the day with a visit to Jorazu Christian School in the Kanyama province of Lusaka. Kanyama is a shantytown-- hundreds of homes made from concrete slabs with aluminum siding for roofs and dirt floors. The striking thing—besides the obvious poverty—is the number of children you see living in these communities. I saw toddlers with bare bottoms and only a shirt on their backs running around the alleyways, often by themselves. Women were washing laundry in plastic buckets. Men, most of whom are unemployed (Zambia struggles with an 80 percent unemployment rate) sat on steps to the front of their shacks; some smoking, some engaging in conversation with one another, many just watching life pass them by.

 On the way to the school, we passed Soweto Market, a huge marketplace where everyday Lusaka residents come to buy green vegetables, tomatoes, cooking oil and grain.  You won't find any tourists here. The market vendors sell their products from "booths" made of mottled wood—wood not fit to build anything, really.  It looks brittle, decayed and nobody in the US would use it. There are hundreds and hundreds of these booths in Soweto. Throngs of people walk past them. Most of the vendors are just waiting, hoping to sell their products.

When we got to Jorazu Christian School, all of the children were outside. Today was their special assembly. They performed dances for us, recited poetry and sang songs. Most of the children were between the ages of 3 and 12. They were so excited when our blue mini-bus pulled up.  So precious, each any every face we encountered.

The school is the first one in the Kanyama province. Most of the children in this part of town would not go to school if Jorazu was not there. In fact, all of the children at the school are the first ones in their families to be educated.  

 A group of seven students recited a moving poem about being an orphan.  They wrote the poem themselves and performed it beautifully.  I felt like I was watching a drama troupe in New York.  They performed with so much passion and emotion. I had so much fun with the children.  Many of them came up to me and wanted to sit in my lap, shake my hand and say hello, and wanted to "high-five." They were fascinated with my sunglasses and kept pulling them off my face and trying them on.  They passed the glasses around to their friends. They also loved taking pictures, being in pictures and were fascinated with my camera. “I want snap,” a little girl told me. So I took many pictures of her and her friends.

When we left Jorazu, it was on to the Chisomo Day Centre, a place where street children come to take classes, play sports, sleep and get meals. Here, I met a wonderful young man named Twambo.  His friends call him "Chips" because he sells chips (what we know as French fries) on the street.
           
Chips went back and forth from his mother's house to his father's house until he was finally committed to the streets because his mother could not afford to pay for his schooling.  He is 15 years old and is desperate to return to school.  He told me he desires to finish school so he can eventually become a doctor. "I want to make my parents proud,” he told me. “And I want to take care of my younger brother and sister." Chips is a bright boy with great potential. We hit it off at the community center and I felt like he had a good story to tell. I asked him if I could visit him where he lives and he said he would show me.

Later that evening, Chips took my teammates and I to Soweto Market. When the marketplace shuts down for the night, the kids come in off the streets and set up camp. There is no electricity at Soweto. The moonlight was our only source of illumination. It was like a ghost town. The dilapidated wood market stands looked like skeletons. Devoid of life and breath.

It was dark when we made our arrival in Soweto. I saw the silhouettes of children crowding around a fire. We were about 100 yards away from them, yet I could smell the burning of the fire and see the ash rising up.  A group of boys were standing around a small fire pit, huddled close together. Most were barefoot and many didn’t wear jackets. They were between the ages of 9 and 16. They saw us approach and greeted our group.  They seemed happy to see us (of course they were, when do they EVER get visitors?  Especially American ones?). They left the fire one by one and came over to talk to us.
           
Most of them were high from sniffing glue.  I could smell it on their breath and on their clothes.  Some of the boys were so high they were stumbling, slurring their speech and giddy with laughter. The boys burn glue in plastic water bottles and inhale the fumes. It's primarily done to keep themselves warm.  But it's also a way to escape the poverty, loneliness and despair. 
            Chips told me he doesn't smoke glue because he doesn't like the way it makes him feel. 
            "It will make you crazy," he said. "Most of the boys, they fight with each other. They get very violent."
            I asked the boys where they slept.  They pointed to the market stands.
            "We sleep underneath the tables," one boy said to me.
            "Do you have blankets?" I asked.
            "No," said one of the boys. "We sniff the glue to keep warm."

We've probably all read and seen stories about poverty-- in the New York Times, in Newsweek, the LA Times, CNN, National Geographic, etc.  I've read tons of stories. I've interviewed many people who have lived in poverty, who have struggled in our country and others. I've seen documentaries about street children.  But nothing prepares you for actually being there, seeing it for your own eyes, and talking personally to those affected.

We handed out bread before we left Soweto that night. The boys were so desperate for food.  One boy started tapping my shoulder, asking for bread.
            "Hey, I met you at Chisomo," he said of the community center where I had conducted interviews earlier that day. "You said you would give me bread." The tapping quickly turned into near pushing. He was very high and very hungry.

Following our visit to Soweto, our team headed to Nipa, where Chips lived.

Alot of these street children will tell you they want to go to college and become a doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc.  Sometimes, you're not sure if they're just feeding you a line, or if they are being genuine. With Chips, I knew he wanted to truly rise above his circumstances.
           
He took us to the chips stand where he lives.  Then we got there, the police told our team to wait in the mini-bus so they could scope out the surrounding area.  There is rampant crime in Lusaka and the slums are especially dangerous at night.  I'm sure the last thing the police wanted was an awful headline in the newspapers about the American press getting in some accident in the slums.

We were told only one person could accompany the police. So I went.

Nipa is an area where there are lots of vendors and everyone knows it’s the place where you go to buy french fries (or as Zambians call them, “chips”).  We (myself, the three undercover officers and our translator, Du) walked through the empty vending booths to where Chips lived.

It’s a ramshackle of a restaurant by day, and a makeshift home by night. After working a full day clearing off tables and washing plates, Chips rests his head on the dirt floor in the corner of the chips stand. He has no blanket. The only warmth to comfort him at night is a small fire in a pot. He has to do his "business" in a ravine next to the booth. It’s the same ravine where he washes dishes. When he wakes up at the crack of dawn, he starts making french fries. If he's lucky, he'll make about a dollar that day.

It's such an awful, appalling situation. You have this boy with an amazing mind and heart, and dreams of becoming somebody, and he lives in such a destitute situation. My heart hurt, it ached. It aches every time I think of Chips, and all those boys we met at Soweto that night.

There are billboards all over Lusaka, but a few in particular always catch my eye. There is one that says, "Stop child ABUSE!" and another that says, "Having sex with me will not cure AIDS." These signs tell you the climate here in Zambia. Children are used as street labor and sex slaves. They are exploited in pornographic films. They are treated as the dregs of society. Parents and extended relatives, stressed by the economic depravity, often take it out on their children-- verbally and physically abusing them.

The situation here in Zambia is at a critical mass, as one pastor we interviewed shared with me. With 45 percent of the population under the age of 14, there will be an entire generation without someone to look up to. There are already thousands of children raising themselves.

 The children we met and had the pleasure of getting to know all have dreams of becoming “somebody” someday. They all have hopes, aspirations and envision themselves living a better life. They just need a chance. 

 

Jennifer Cho Salaff's column about motherhood runs the third Thursdays of the month. Contact her by e-mail at jennifer.cho@dailybulletin.com or write her at Jennifer Cho Salaff, Features Dept., Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 2041 E. Fourth St., Ontario, CA 91764.