From Gertrude

Early in the morning of International Women’s Day, I was sleeping, I just wanted to sleep in.  But then someone began knocking on my door, and I got up to answer it.  I found there was this old, old lady.  She was carrying this big sack on her back like a baby.  I said, “Ah, Sylvia, what are you doing?”

“I’m coming from Mandevu.”

“What were you doing there?  Visiting your relatives?”  It was so early in the morning, I imagined that she must have left there very early to get to Ng’ombe at this time of the morning.

“No, no.  I left early from my house this morning.  I went to buy some groundnuts because I know that I am owing Chikumbuso some money.  Now that my son’s funeral is over, I want to start selling so I can start paying again on my loan.”  Sylvia, like many older Zambians, believes that if she is owing a debt on earth, she won’t be free to die.  At 104, with all she has seen, you can imagine how this grips her.

“So,” I asked her, “how much do you have?  Have you started selling by this time?”

“Yes!  That is why I’ve come!”

I had her scoop out the groundnuts, bit by bit; she looked up at me in the eyes, “Is that enough?”  “No, keep counting.”  She counted until they were all out.  The total price was 10.50 kwacha, with a profit of 1.5 (about $2.10 in total, profit about 30 cents).  She was very pleased and grateful for the money and turned to go.

“No, no, Sylvia, you must stay and have breakfast with me.  It’s International Women’s Day.”  During breakfast we talked about her plans to earn some money for her loan and I shared the story with my children who would easily look down on working so early and so hard for such a meager profit.

After breakfast, she turned to go.  “No, no, Sylvia, you must stay – I will get your clothes washed and pour you a nice bath.”

After we had washed the clothes and ironed them and she finished her bath, she turned to go.  “No, no, Sylvia, the day isn’t over yet.  You must stay for tea.”

By the time Sylvia went home she was very happy – she’d eaten three meals, sold all her groundnuts and her clothes were nicely ironed, folded and back on her back in the big sack wrapped with chitenge – these are clothes that she will sell to pay back her loan and now that they are clean and ironed, they will be much more likely to sell.

She was happy, but I found I was even more happy.  Sylvia is a very old woman and her last child was just buried and yet, she was up very early in the morning, out and about, trying to make just a little profit to get herself going again.  And not only that, all the time she was here, she was smiling, laughing, even giving us a small dance – I thought, “Would I have that courage going through all these problems?  I kept thinking of her – what if she were my own umbuya (grandmother) and I wondered at her courage when she’s all alone.”

At the end of the day, I was so very happy I’d spent my day with her, celebrating a Grand International Woman.

Wow!  We have been so blessed by Mama Linda’s visit.  What a great few weeks!  Too short, but wonderful and with the promise of another in April 2013.

When Linda arrived, a VIP came in on the same flight.  A police escort awaiting the VIP, but that was nothing compared to the greeting Linda received!  Forty dancing and singing widows, tears of joy and laughter filled the small airport lounge.  The students and staff prepared a wonderful assembly at Chikumbuso – songs, poems and skits welcoming Mama Linda home to Zambia.

Big hugs at the airport!

Many of you know we are in the process of purchasing a piece of land adjacent to Chikumbuso.  It has been wonderful to have Linda here with her wisdom and vision.  We are working hand in hand with our seller and attorney to get a clear title and will keep you updated on the progress.

The new Off Site Safe Haven has been progressing nicely.  We had hoped to open while Linda was home, but it wasn’t meant to be.  Our official opening will come in the first weeks of January, where we will be transitioning some of our older girls to the new site and taking on some new girls in the On Site Safe Haven.  This is going to be a tremendous help in keeping girls in school!

New Off Site Safe Haven for Older Girls

Linda encouraged us to send out more requests for local assistance and it paid off quickly with National Milling offering an ongoing monthly donation of roller meal and rice for Chikumbuso.  The ladies were thrilled when the first donation came in – lots of dancing with bags of mealie meal!

Dancing for joy

We have a new intern just in.  Carly Buehler has been involved with Chikumbuso from the beginning.  She has been to Chikumbuso twice before and will be with us for a whole year!  She’s just completed her Masters in Education.  We are so happy to welcome her!  Carly will be updating the Chikumbuso tweet – so please, if you aren’t a follower already – be sure to follow us and keep up to date on the latest at Chikumbuso.  Believe it or not – it’s very important to have Facebook and Twitter followers when we apply for grants!

Carly!

Finally, we closed our time with Linda at the big Zambian Art and Design Show where we displayed our new bags combining chitenge material and plastic called the Khala Pamodzi, combining ‘all together’ the widows and STARY youth.  The designs were well received and we had a great sale day – about $3600.

Awesome sales ladies

What a great time!

As Thanksgiving Day closes, we find ourselves most grateful.  We have had challenges that have been overcome, great sales, loads of laughter and some tears – but most of all we are grateful for all of you who love Chikumbuso and support the work being done here.  We count ourselves most blessed.

With thanks and prayers for a wonderful holiday season for everyone,

The Ladies of Chikumbuso

October 13, 2012

Chikumbuso is light in a dark place.  Darkness doesn’t like to be displaced.

Just before Linda returned to the US, she said to me, “Watch out for jealousy.  It’s a terrible thing here.”

People can be jealous anywhere, anytime, this isn’t something endemic to Zambia.  But I’ve discovered that in a place where people aren’t sure that justice is always going to be fair to them or to others, jealousy can move beyond a feeling into actions that are meant to exert power over their ‘enemies.’  A Zambian friend told me, “Jealousy here drives a person crazy until they can push the person they hate into the streets and insult them and make fun of them in front of the whole community.”

We are so very fortunate at Chikumbuso to have leaders whose integrity is available to be seen any time by any one.  If ever an accusation has arisen of not performing their tasks and responsibilities to the letter, they have been willing investigated by their peers in the group and over and over found to be blameless in all their work.  What a rare and beautiful thing!

However, as we have grown, jealousy has grown right alongside the good things that God is doing – educating orphans, giving women a chance to have community when they are HIV positive and work alongside each other with encouragement.  Some in the community have celebrated this, but others have thought, “Why should some do well and be happy?  They should remain poor and lost just as we all are.”  To push everyone to the lowest common denominator is sadly a reason so many communities can’t shake poverty – material and spiritual.

This has eaten away at someone’s heart until they decided to take action this past week.

An arrangement was made by a local community member to divert meal being delivered to grandmothers by our students and then have the local police confiscate it and arrest Maureen.  This was done.  On returning from the immigration office on Wednesday, I found the entire Chikumbuso community standing outside flabbergasted at what had happened.  Police were waiting to take me and Gertrude to the police station.

We had an entirely strange and un-Zambian encounter at the police station.   The demand was to fire Maureen or face further consequences – up to arrest of the leadership and government shut down.  We refused to comply on such scanty evidence.  God miraculously was at work and we left with our meal and dear Maureen.  But we all felt we hadn’t heard the last of it.

On Friday morning, the same community member came to Chikumbuso and insulted all the widows and warned, “By tonight, Beauty, Maureen, Mary and Gertrude will be in the cells.”

Shortly after, the police came and arrested our day guard, Mr. Banda.

We prayed like crazy.  We called our local board member to come and assist.

This is when things began to change.  The head investigator of the station came upon all this happening and took over the case.  He went to Chikumbuso and searched Gertrude’s house.  Beauty offered to have him come to her house.  Mary offered to open her house.  Mind you, the police here have to produce a search warrant; our leaders, full of the integrity that Christ has grown in them over the years, offered to be searched though the police had no right to do so.

At the end of the day, the head investigator congratulated us on the good work happening at Chikumbuso, cleared Chikumbuso of all allegations and released our guard.  He also gave Gertrude his personal cell number in case she has any issues.  He said, “Many people give lip service to their faith, talking, talking, but here Jesus’ work is being done.” Our end was much better than our beginning.

But here is the troubling thing.  A community member has been this jealous of the leadership.  This jealousy has only been thwarted, and is most likely growing in anger rather than congratulating us on avoiding their plan for a second time.  This is where we can use help.  We need your prayers.

Many think that when someone says, I’ll pray for you, it’s just an excuse to do nothing.  But I personally agree with Ghandi,

When every hope is gone, when helpers fail and comforts flee, I find that help arrives somehow from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else unreal.

All this comes at a time when our leaders are feeling under tremendous pressure in personal circumstances.

Maureen, HIV positive for over eleven years, raising all her nieces and nephews, taking care of her sick mother for ten years – this and more has taken a toll on her health.  She was just out of the hospital with extreme high blood pressure when all this happened.  She said, “If I had gone into the cells, I know I would have died.”

Gertrude has lost way too many family members this summer.  Her beloved niece, Precious, is experiencing heart trouble.  Precious is a Chikumbuso graduate – she is young at 25 to be experiencing such things.  The doctor told her the other day, “I can’t tell you when you are going to die, but you could blow up any time.”  So much for bedside manner.

Mary’s brother, one of our tailors, Hassan, has been in and out of the hospital with aggressive TB.  There has been much strain on her as the breadwinner for her family and the caregiver to her last remaining sibling.

Chikumbuso widows and our tailors constantly face many challenges.  They are extraordinary in their ability to bear suffering and sorrow.  But the level of challenge they’ve been under the past two months seems beyond even what is ‘normal’ for Zambia.  But today, we are all alive, un-jailed and praying.

Please pray – not just for us to be safe and well – but please pray for the community, pray that jealousy can somehow be displaced by love.  Please pray specifically for peace with this community member and with our Ng’ombe neighbors.  Pray the widows, students and grandmothers can continue to come to us for medicine they can’t get from the clinics as the clinics have empty shelves and food for their families.  Pray for our students to continue to focus on their education and to see in themselves the possibilities of their own future leadership in this country.

We all feel very sorry that the good work that God has done and is doing at Chikumbuso has driven someone to such lengths. However, we continue to give back to our community, we continue to remember to do for others.  This challenge isn’t going to stop us from surrendering to God and continuing to be available to him so that light continues to shine out in Ng’ombe.

Thank you, all, so very much for your friendship, prayers, sponsorship, and support!

Lisa Veitenhans

Executive Director, Zambia

Rosh Hashanah surrounded me yesterday in the streets of Brooklyn and in Prospect Park as the Jewish community celebrated their new year. I loved it. The energy of family photographs in the park, children dressed in holiday best, and the anticipation of what a new year may bring resonated with my own hopes for this new year that we start as a family in Brooklyn.
Associated with these aspirations, and never far from my heart, is the Chikumbuso Project as it continues under the direction of women like Lisa, Trudy, Beauty, and others. Over these past six months I have seen growth in their daily determination to work hard, love, and give back. Hearing from those at the project and seeing photos of all that has taken place over these past six months brings my heart’s thoughts to peace, to Shalom, and all this word incorporates. Shalom is more than a greeting of peace, it is a wish for wholeness in the lives of those who receive it. In Ng’ombe it is wholeness brought to these women who struggle daily to feed their families, keep them healthy and send them to school. Chikumbuso has brought wholeness and balance to the orphan children as they attend our free school and learn to heal by confronting their losses and moving on in hope. The presence of Shalom brings a freedom from injustice as young adults pick back up their lives through learning to tailor and cook knowing that facing stigma can empower them to become part of something so much bigger than themselves. Receiving and giving back on a daily basis to the community has healed the wounds of so many at Chikumbuso. This gift of wholeness, that you are giving as you continue to be a part of Chikumbuso, through your support and love, enables each member of our community to stand on their own and to stand together as one in love.
In this “new year” of Brooklyn my worries for Chikumbuso have been alleviated by your willingness to carry on as I transition to a new role, trusting that Chikumbuso is so much more than a project to those in Ng’ombe. It is their life, their reality and I am assured that they will never let it go. And I will continue to help Chikumbuso grow by creating and growing our Chikumbuso community here, for just as in Ng’ombe, our mission statement in the US is: To remember those who have died, to remember where we come from, and to remember to do for others. Please reach out to me if you are interested in having me come and speak in your community, or if you’d like to become more involved in the coming year. There will be many new opportunities to grow your relationship to this whole and loving community.
So I leave you with a Rosh Hashanah blessing, “ shana tova u’metukah” may this be “a good and sweet year“ to come. Blessings on each and every one of you.

Mama Linda

Over the past couple months, we’ve asked for prayer for several of our widows that have been ill.  Here’s an update on how they are doing.

Inelly, who had a botched surgery on her foot, is continuing to receive treatment at a private clinic as she prepares for a skin graft.  She is in much better spirits and the doctor is really happy with the way things are progressing.  She’ll have a long recovery, but because she is HIV negative, she has a good outlook for the future.

Emory has been treated for intense leg pain.  She is feeling better, but is struggling a bit still.  Please continue to pray for her.

Brenda, suffering from similar symptoms, received the same treatment and is doing much better.  She has so many children in her house, she says she has to get better fast!

Gertrude went to visit Annie, our librarian, in the village last week.  She has been fighting TB and has been off for some time.  Thank God, Gertrude found her feeling much better.  Her family said she’s been very sick and is just coming around to the corner.  We sent along some good food and Gertrude brought her a lovely dark blue dress that looks great.  She still has a long way to go, but we’re just thanking God for how far she’s come!

Thank you, friends, for your prayers!  And special thanks to all the people who bought health cards last year!  Your generosity has literally paved the way to life for these ladies.  May the Lord bless and keep you all, giving you his perfect peace.

Thanks to Pawcatuck Middle School and Skoll Foundation for your help providing   blankets for our students!

Check out this short video from Gertrude!

Florence came to us one day and told us a sad story.  Her nephew was living with relatives, an aunt and uncle, in Livingstone.  The caregivers of this nephew – Webster – called Florence one day and said they were through caring for him.  Shaking her head, she said, “And now they’ve chased him from home.  The school has called me to see if I will take him in.”

Florence arranged transport for the boy to come to Lusaka and took him in.  She can barely sustain herself and her own children, but the commitment to family in Zambia is strong.  It’s unfortunate that when so many family members are so poor, often the orphans do ‘get chased’ to another relative to share the burden.

Once Webster arrived in Lusaka, Florence came to us again.  This time hoping that we could do something to help send Webster to school.  She brought his results from last year – and they were all Ones (or what we’d call straight A’s in the States).  Chikumbuso sends a lot of kids to school; in the past few years, we’ve seen a number of our students do really well, getting great grades and going on to further education and jobs.  This is what we strive for.  So when we see a student dedicated to learning and striving to get good grades for his future, you can bet that we all want to be a part of helping him.

But, where does the money come from, we have to reasonably ask?  We agreed to pray and ask Jesus about this boy and about bringing some money to add him to our group of Grade 8 students that attend Ng’ombe PTA.

Jesus was so good!  He brought in an undesignated donation that we were able to apply to adding Webster to our roster.

Now we’re praying and asking again…

God has been good to the students of Chikumbuso.  We have nearly all of our girl students sponsored for education and many boys, too.  The focus worldwide on the gender gap for girls has prompted many to sponsor girls for education and micro-enterprise all over the world.  We celebrate this and do everything in our power to see our girls succeed at school so they can ‘rise up’ after high school.  However, we also know that things can’t totally change for girls, if their peer boys keep the same old attitudes about women and their roles in the family and workplace.  Our girls’ lives won’t be changed significantly if we don’t continue to educate boys and keep them out of poverty by giving them an education and life skills.  And, maybe most importantly, we continue to create an environment where we talk about issues and model behavior toward women that is life-giving and affirming.

We currently have 39 unsponsored boys in Grades 7-12.  Would you consider sponsoring one of them at $250 per year? Would you consider that through sponsorship of these boys what a difference your voice and letters make in a young man’s life?  I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a teacher here… he was explaining how a student lacked motivation.  It wasn’t what I thought, though – it wasn’t motivation to work hard – it was motivation to dream a different dream.  To dream of a different life than the one experienced in his orphaned life, in the compound, in poverty.  He was longing for the motivation that can only come when a young man has someone to look up to, admire, and emulate.

We need sponsors like this for our young men that will inspire them to dream new dreams.

February 2012

In the many opportunities that I have been given to speak about Chikumbuso, I am repeatedly asked, “How did this project start?” Yet I have come to realize what people are really asking is how did something so lovely get off the ground.. how did I overcome my own fears to reach out and start something so grand?  My reply has always been “I just stepped out to help one widow.”  It happened through one person at a time.  This stepping out in obedience has got to be one of the best things in my life!  Over the past seven years Chikumbuso has been able to bless and unite a beautiful community of people in Love. It has built women who have hope and purpose in life and in response to this love these same women bring light into their community. Many children have been given a chance to learn and grow and now turn so freely to give that same opportunity to a neighbor or a friend.  As the founder of Chikumbuso, there is nothing that pleases me more than to see how Jesus blesses this project over and over again because of its commitment to do for others. You are part of this commitment and an essential part of the growth and steadfastness of this project. Whether you have given financially, supported us through prayers, sponsorship, or volunteering, Chikumbuso Project would not be where it is today with out your unending love and support.

So it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that I will be leaving Zambia this year. The Chikumbuso community is also my community. It is where I hang out, where I have found friends, soul mates, healing and love. It is where I have grown as a woman, teacher, and leader. It is the place of my renaming.. “Mama Linda.” What an honor.  It is the place where I have come to know all of you and where your support and love has played into my life. The good news is that I am leaving Chikumbuso in the hands of many capable women, names you are all so familiar with – Gertrude, Beauty, Maureen, Jane, Vera, Catherine, Emory, Mary, and all the very capable teachers. So many women and men that have grown through the challenges over the years and are now ready to stand on their own. And my gift to Chikumbuso is that I leave to these women, Lisa Veitenhans, who, over the past year has grown to love them enough to guide and direct them, cry and dance with them.

My husband has taken a job in NYC and Isaac and I will follow him. There has never been a time in my life when change has been easy. I struggle with new surroundings. I struggle with emptiness; streets that have no names, unfamiliar faces, and the general disconnect from daily life that when you are in the midst of it seems to go on forever. And this time is no different. I am fearful but I take heart in a quote by Pascal which says, “Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.”

I fear, but where Christ says, “Fear not” (John 14:27) I will seek to be alert and trust that there is one more place to step out and help one more…

God is with us wherever we go, in the days, weeks, and years of our lives.

Linda Wilkinson

Founder Chikumbuso Project

Chikumbuso Women and Orphans Project