Thursday, June 28 – Today, we fell in love. We deeply fell in love with the children, gap year students and the heart of Chikumbuso. Although today was not the first time we went to the school, today was the day that we really got to know the students and gather insights into their lives and society. We took the the gap year students through three activities today. Each activity allowed LearnServe to understand and help both the male and female groups in the Zambian community. We took them through Gender Boxes,* Gender Split Talk,** and a rape case,*** which all brought up different morals and values of the students.
I led our group and the gap year students through the Gender Box Activity. With this activity, I felt very confident. We wanted to understand what students thought of themselves and their opposite gender in order to identify the roles of women and men in their community. I was interested to see how the Zambian Gender Box is different from the American Gender Box. The vast majority of the characteristics they listed in their gender boxes were describing the personality traits of both the men and women. Whereas in America, I think the male box would be about the women’s appearance, but the female box would focus mainly on the men’s character. When we asked male students from Zambia if they judged the girls based on their looks, the answer was a resounding, “No.” According to them, the only exception to this was when a man has no values. Then he focuses on how a woman looks. This new information changed the direction of our lessons for the day because we knew that we did not have to discuss the idea of men objectifying women based on appearances.
The Zambians we met were very different from Americans in how they value humans. With the Gender Split talk, I cannot attest to the female group’s discussion, but I imagine it was productive because of the detailed and effective questions they came up with to ask the boys. In the male discussion, we talked about their relationships with each other and with women. The boys were very open and I felt like they really trusted us with their inner feelings. A very intelligent student named Choza claimed, “These inner feelings that I am sharing right now are not welcome in the presence of a woman.” The Zambian men quickly agreed to his comment. When the women entered the room from their talk, sparks flew. The women came in with precise and meaningful questions, but the men answered in a way that the girls, even the from LearnServe, did not like. The men took the group talk way less seriously than they did when we were split up by gender. The talk was very effective nonetheless, but I’m almost 100% sure that the women’s group would have liked better answers to their questions. The women asked very serious questions like why men would abuse them if they reject their proposals for dating. Men on the other hand asked questions like, “Why do girls cheat?”. These questions sparked intriguing debates and gave each gender insight into how the other thinks.
The final activity was the rape case that Gabby lead. It struck both our group and the Zambian students. The rape case involved lots of drinking which made deciding if the defendant was guilty a lot harder. We acted as the jury for the case after we were presented with the full story. Before voting, it did not seem like the Zambian students believed that the accused rapist was guilty, but after hearing a number of different arguments – some from myself – a lot of the students were persuaded that the defendant was guilty. This created a verdict of 20 “guilty” votes and 4 “not guilty” votes.
Directly afterwards we were led on a tour of the compound. We saw much of the compound yesterday so that gave us a good idea of what to expect on the tour. The big thing that surprised us was how unsanitary the markets were. Here they view flies as harmless. I saw more flies at the market on top of the food than I have on the trip so far. Coal was also a concern for most of us because it is a known fact in America that coal is bad for you, but there was just so much of it that we were all deeply concerned. Other than that, we were greeted with the usual smiles and kindness of the compound by the people, especially the children.
As soon as we arrived back from the tour, the children of Chikumbuso were singing us a goodbye song. Listening to all the words in detail, I was very moved. We were also moved solely by the fact that they took the time out of their school day to prepare something for us, leaving us with absolutely no question of how much they appreciated our visit. We then quickly participated in a series of chants saying thank you to Chikumbuso, and then had a dance party with all the kids. After so thoroughly diving into the personal lives of the students and really warming up to each other, the dance party goodbye was the best way to leave. We taught them about themselves and about each other, but most importantly, they taught us.
We learned that an entire community can value the personality and character of a person more than their appearance, which is something people in America can only dream of. We learned their roles in the community, slang, concerns, and so much more. Chikumbuso was an open book that we all loved reading.
Footnotes
* Gender Box: An activity where students describe and analyze the norms for both the males and females in their community.
** Gender Split Talk: Splitting the groups up by gender to talk about issues that they do not feel comfortable talking about with the opposite gender present.
*** Rape Case: This case involved the story of a woman who was given many drinks at a club on a college campus. The woman quickly became very drunk, so the man giving her the drinks helped her home. The two later had sex and the woman did not recall any of it. She then took him to court and accused him of rape. The jury had to decide if the sexual intercourse was consensual or non consensual based on the chain of events.
Chayse B., School Without Walls