Life,Light,Love
Thankful Ladies
Light, Life, and Love.
Five years ago I left Zambia where I had lived for 8 years and moved to CT. In moving I left behind one of the healthiest communities I had ever been a part of. Why is it so healthy? Because it holds three essential components; light, life and love.
Chikumbuso is a community where children are fed every day at school, where single moms get a yearlong sewing class, and where widows have grown to be leaders in the community at large. It is where each member has learned to defend Life, share Light and live their lives out of Love.
Chikumbuso is located in the compound of Ng’ombe and is home to 100,000 people living in poverty. This community is where our 35 widows have lived for 40 years or more, raising their babies and becoming an integral part of the community. However, the community fell apart when its culture clashed with the coming of AIDS.
Widowhood in Zambia brings with it abandonment and AIDS brings avoidance. Not only do women lose their husbands but then the man’s family comes and takes all of their belongings. Severe poverty and a helplessness overwhelms these women as they struggle to feed their family and take in week by week their nieces and grandchildren as their siblings and children die of AIDS. From one day to the next they find themselves living “alone”. Out of the family they knew, out of their circle of friends, out of the lives they once lived. No one is eating and no one is in school. Many despair of life itself.
As they are cast out a darkness sets in.
Trudy, our school principal and the co-founder of Chikumbuso speaks of the culture when she says, “Here there exists a school of darkness. At this school we are taught from a young age that secrets are to be kept . These lessons last well into adulthood. So those who are impoverished, stigmatized, or those who are shamed have no outlet. AIDS and all that it entails becomes a dirty secret that eventually gives into death.
This past year one of our widow’s , had a daughter die a long drawn out death due to AIDS. She could never get medicine because her husband did not allow her to get tested. He was too well known in the church and although he had already died the shame that this truth would impart would be too great for his family. This dying daughter kept this secret from the man who had infected her and our widow kept the secret for the daughter’s sake all the while fearing how she as the grandmother would support the four children left in her care. And because there was no answer to this question she began to secretly starve herself to death. The widows of Chikumbuso had no idea.
To live in such an impoverished community you must have hope and if you have hope the light will come in followed by a full life and lots of love.
Initially Chikumbuso’s focus was on the widows. Each of our widows, when I met them, was without hope but as each began to earn a bit of money through the bag micro enterprise and as we bought the old bar and brothel a hope grew inside them. This then freed them to open up about their health status and about themselves. Together we would sit on the carpet in the work room sharing stories of pain, of property grabbing, of how our children were being treated by their husbands… The women learned about their rights as a widow. And their light began to shine. Over the years Chikumbuso has become known in the slum as “the brightest of lights “. As the ladies lives changed they had confidence to look out in the community and see the needs of others.
Trudy says, “ Although we are a small group we don’t just help ourselves. We expend our love to our neighbors or even those passing by. When one woman came by the center looking for transport money to the village after an extended stay in the hospital the ladies pooled the little they had to send her home. We didn’t even know her name.”
And so this healthy community continues to grow. Bit by bit Love spreads into the lives of others. We started a women's’ micro enterprise making bags with 12 widows and now have 35 empowered women each one a healthy part of their community , we started a school for 30 orphans and now have 500 children who are off the street and getting an education. We bought a bar and brothel and turned it into a bright light that became our community center housing a K-7 school and a safe haven for 17 girls. We started a yearlong training program for 20 single moms which enables them to care for their own children and have now taught over 60 how to sew.
Our light also shines through our students whose grades compete nationally.
Our light shines through our students who go on to college, striving to bring a better life to their families.
Our light shines through our sponsors who take on our students costs and offer them a monthly feeding program.
And lastly our light shines through our widow who lost her daughter. She, along with five other widows, was given the gift of property by Chikumbuso.. Now with her own place to raise these four grandchildren her hope has been reignited and she has chosen Life.