Family Business

This past week has been a tough one.

Not for anything that I’ve gone through, but in experiencing some of the deeper issues underlying life out here.

My host sister got her mid-term results last weekend from school. Out of all 8 of her classes there wasn’t a passing grade in any of them. She is 17 and this is her second attempt at grade 9.

After hearing this it’s easy to see that she doesn’t care about school and to write her off because she’s not putting any effort. Especially for the fact that the ‘mother’ she is staying with is actually her aunt who has taken her in from the village to her get through school in hope’s of a life with choice.

That being said, our host ‘mother’ was upset (to say the least) about her niece’s grades. Given such a great opportunity, she could not understand why she wasn’t showing effort, and instead spending her time watching tv – and as a result she was even thinking of sending her back to the village.

But after speaking with our ‘mother’ I convinced her that we should try to figure out what the underlying issue in all of this was.

I soon found out that my ‘sisters’ real mother was still alive. The only thing was that the father had passed away at an early age (quite common in Zambia as there is a huge generation gap from poor healthcare systems) and the mother could not afford to stay with her daughter. Instead she was sent to the village to live with the grandmother (another common thing to see in the village, where the grandparents are left often to take care of 6+ grandchildren).

A week had passed and my host mother had tried many times to communicate and figure out what was going on but my sister did not want to speak about it. She also did not seem like she was trying any harder at school. Her real mother was not showing any interest either in trying to reach out to her daughter.

Nearly out of the house, I figured there was one last chance to fix the situation. Otherwise, it would be literally be inevitable of the type of life my ‘sister’ would live – growing up in the village with no real parental support and no education.

That in mind, last night I joined in on the very difficult discussion to get to the root of what’s going on and to show her that there was support. After some initial silence, my ‘sister’ eventually opened up that she needed help in math…and after a bit more prodding, that she is actually having difficulty understanding what she is reading.

So with that I offered to help in any way that I could and told her that I can tutor her in all of her subjects. With the next round of tests starting again in mid November the hill to climb is high, and we have an extremely long way to go to get her passing grades, but today we start with day one and go from there.

Underlying this entire story there are so many issues at play here.

The fact that there is a missing generation from the health problems the country has faced. And that this missing generation has caused many broken families with other family members (who are already resources strapped) having to act as guardians for these children.

That the school system in the country is broken. I hopefully will be able to help my ‘sister’ over the next few months but how many more youth are in the same boat as her. A situation where community schools in the village are not supported by the government and are forced to be 100% funded by the village, which more often than not, does not have enough money to pay teachers. And so the good teachers leave to go to the big cities, and the village is forced to volunteer people as ‘teachers’ in the village.  In turn, children will basically have their future decided for them to grow up and spend their future in the uneducated village, as the gap between urban and rural continues to grow.

The fact that people around the world have a hard time asking for help. I’m torn between wondering if it’s an ego thing to not show weakness in front of others or if it’s a lack of trust that people will support you instead of ridiculing you?

That it’s such an easy thing to judge a person and a situation for the face value. We truly never know what each other have gone through. At the end of the day we all are the person we are today as an accumulation of the experiences and the environment that we’ve grown up in – and without asking those questions and finding the root issues that someone is facing – we potentially are passing up an opportunity to help them.

Lastly, a realization that when I was 17 I had finished high school and was just about to embark on an engineering degree – that eventually would lead me to be a part of Engineers Without Borders here in Zambia…A life in Canada with the environment to provide amazing opportunity and privilege – hopefully something I can contribute towards for people in other parts of the world to have as well.

In the meantime, wish us luck over the next few months and I will update you all on how the studies progress!