Zambia Day 5 – A Parachute for the Community

Today we visited the Chikumbuso Community School and widow’s project.  At the school we were supposed to do activities with the students which we had planned over the course of the week, and gathered materials for before we left for Zambia.  My partner Brandon  and I decided to do parachute games, and had planned a few activities to do with the children.  We had also decided that if the students didn’t understand the concepts of the parachute we would play catch with the balls we had brought to play with the parachute.

Once we met the class we would be working with we walked out to the field where we would play, and started to unfold our parachute.  Although they had never seen a parachute before the children were all excited when they saw  the many colors, and as we started to spread it out they began to get more and more excited, we then began playing the games with them, going under the parachute, bouncing balls in it, and  climbing over it like a mountain.  Despite the fact that we went through the games quickly, we kept coming up with different activities that the kids could do, and later in the day during the afternoon session, played soccer with the kids first, before playing parachute games.  The kids all enjoyed the activities, and we even had kids from the community who do not attend school, coming over trying to play with us. At the end of the day when we left Chikumbuso, I could tell that the games we had played would be memorable for the children.

I found that while the Chikumbuso students enjoyed our games, the community children who had been playing in the field before we got there loved the parachute, and played with us too. Although these students didn’t belong to the school, they were able to integrate calmly, without disturbing the group, or lessening the experience for the Chikumbuso students. For me this was a big contrast from the US, where students would not have mingled with the different groups of children, and would have kept their activities exclusive.

Although this is a minor difference, it gave me greater insight into the Zambian culture as a whole. All the children had grown up with very little, and the parachute was something completely different from daily life, an altogether extraordinary experience. Yet it seems to me that the Chikumbuso children were able to recognize this better than even I could, and instead of keeping the other children away, chose to let them have the same experience. Despite all the hardships these students suffered, they were still willing to share what joy they had, and this is something that I will bring back with me to the US, recognizing that if something makes me happy, it can make others happy too.

Henry Altman