July 6, 2016 – Our day began a lot calmer than most of the days we have had in Zambia. Unlike the normal Greenpop wake up drum at 6am, and the Lusaka alarm clocks that have been going off at 7 am, when we woke up to go teach more than 60 kids from 9 to 3, today we were able to have a long rest and woke up close to 10. We got on the bus and Mr. Zulu drove us 10 minutes away from our neighborhood, which has become something like a makeshift home, to a “compound” which is the slums here. It was drastically different from anything I had very seen before, it was different from the homes that we have been living in Lusaka, and even more different than 6th Street back home. The N’gombe compound is the same place where we have been teaching for the last two days.
Just like all of our days in Zambia, we have experienced something completely new and impactful. As we drive on the bus, all 18 of us and Mr. Zulu, we could feel the ride change from smooth on the city roads to bumpy as the bus swayed back and forth on the dirt roads of the compound. The streets were filled with cars and people at 11am on a Wednesday morning. We could see children walking to school, others driving and walking to work and the markets built from scraps were filling with food, clothes and customers. In our big white van filled with foreigners all eyes began to look at us as we drive up to Ms. Gladys’ home/school for many of the children in the compound. Ms. Gladys stepped out of her home and we stepped down from the bus to meet her and begin our small journey. There we were, a group of Americans speaking a different language and taking photos as we walked. It wasn’t the first time I noticed it and it wasn’t the first time others commented on it but the difference was that it was for an extended period of time. All the other times we have gone through any compound has been for two seconds and we usually have been surrounded by the metal and glass of the bus. The feeling of being an outsider is such a contrast from our experiences working with the student or talking to any of the Zambian people who have been so warm and opening to us. In the compound we were clearly the tourists and outsiders looking in on a way of life while others watched us with confusion. We walked through the compound for about an hour and got a short lesson on the life there through observation and from Ms. Gladys explaining N’gombe. She gave us facts about the older section of the compound, explaining that is a very undeveloped and overpopulated area with over 95,000 inhabitants. She named it the largest compound in Zambia and even with such a large population there is little to no development, which ultimately means only one poorly run clinic and few schools. This was the moment when I understood what the purpose of Daughter’s Vision. Ms. Gladys continued to explain the reason that so many kids were running in the streets, saying it was because there was no place for them in primary school. In Zambia grade 1 through 7 are free and with no space kids are simply being turned away from the schools. They are left to run around in the streets and this causes one of the most serious issues that youth in Zambia face: smoking and drinking at too young of an age. With such easy accessibility to such harmful things I saw how much damage such things could cause to a young community. Ms. Gladys has been working for a few years now to try to prevent as many of the children as she can to stay off the streets and create a better life for them.
Ms. Gladys has a dream and a hope to be able to help even just a small part of the community that she has become a part of in the in the compound. What she does in opening up her home and spreading warmth and knowledge to so many young girls is inspiring. She made a young American girl feel at home in Zambia. She opened my eyes to a whole new way of like and a new profession, teaching. All I can say is thank you Ms. Gladys for showing me a different section of our world. You have made a little Washingtonian pop the bubble that I have lived in back home. I want to thank you again for what you have done for so many girls and how you have opened them up to so many professions, such as doctors, nurses and lawyers. You have given them so much knowledge. It gives them whole new possibilities for their own lives away from the compound of N’gombe. So once again thank you Ms. Gladys.
Sending love from Zambia,
Martin C., Washington International School