HIV and Aids: A Brief History

Aid's first reared its head in Zambia in 1984 and for many years knowledge was kept hidden away from the people in the country and from the world by the government at the time. A notably exception, in 1987, was the then president/dictator/leader whatever announcing that his son had died from the disease. There was no mention of the disease in the countries press and the word on the street wasn't heard.

By the 1990's however, up to 20% of the country were infected with the HIV virus as the epidemic took hold, at which stage the World Health Organisation got nvolved and a National Aids Advisory Council in Zambia was set up.

From 2000, political attitudes changed and the problem of Aids, along with other sexually transmitted diseases, made,  or forced its way up the political priority ladder. It had to. People were dying on the streets and in the bars, left right and centre, rich and poor, young and old, men and women. The opportunity for  a legally formed body to apply for world bank grants didn't do any harm. There again, in some ways, arguable it did. Although the organisation in the fight against the disease began to take shape, discussion increased and millions of pounds were got obtained and spent, the rate of infection and death didn't really change. Corruption, on many levels, didn't and still doesn't help.

Today, stabilization is mentioned and the word banded around but this is notoriously difficult to count and calculate with confidence and I suspect is sometimes rhetoric tailored to fit political agendas, whatever they happen to be at any given time, in Zambia and the rest of the world. Aids is widespread, indiscriminate, but as is always the case, some areas of society suffer more. It's like that goddess of wealth, Lady Luck again, spreading her wares with abundance. Urban dwellers, the poor in the compounds, women and vulnerable children, those not able to read and write, it's the same old story with new infections.

There is a load, a countryful/cultureful, of issues related to Aids, its prevalence, victims, consequences and the struggle to protect people from it in. I've been busy filling in forms for Goal Zambia over the last month or so in a effort to get to the point whereby I can start raising some more money for the affiliated football academies over there. Much of their work involves Aids and promoting/educating people in ways to avoid infection. Hopefully Goal Zambia can play a part in that, or at least lend a hand in the future.

HIV/Aids Centre-one of many-many closed down

Getting Kit there



Handing over Chainda Pitches first goal nets

The logistics of getting football kit to Zambia are challenging and expensive. At present it is not economically viable for Goal Zambia to transport it and the only way we have manged to get kit there previously is to take it ourselves, limiting significantly what can be delivered, as well as what we can ask for and store in this country. Although what has already been donated and delivered is fantastic and most welcome by the affiliated academies, it remains a drop in the ocean of demand and need. The charity is contantly reinforcing to Goal Zambia the need for more shirts, shorts, socks, bibs and especially football boots.




New Kit in Zambia, at last

Goal Zambia will continue to research ways of transporting kit the 6000 miles to central southern Africa in cheaper and more efficient ways but it is more beneficial to spend and invest money over there. Kit is available in the country, readily, the problem being that it is simply unaffordable for the majority of the people living and playing football there. A 25kg bag of equipment would cost approximately £300 to deliver. The economics simply don't make sense. Money is a lot easier to tranfer. Goal Zambia aims to set money aside to finance small enterprises over in Zambia and support academies to buy their own kit and provide for themselves. Money can be made to work for the academies in the longer term and avoids the dependancy problem.

Goal Zambia will divide the donated monies into different "pots". The largest proportion will be used to invest in sustainable academy related and run projects in Zambia, another pot will be reserved to raise awareness of health, social issues and promote the importance of a basic education and the third will be made available for the immediate material needs of the affiliated academies; shirts, shorts, socks, football boots and such equippment. People want to donate equipment and if possible, we want to get  it there. The difference it makes to the lives and enjoyment of football for the children and young adults of the compounds is immense and difficult to describe.


New Shirts donated by the Brixton Tigers, London

Disabilities in Zambia

The academies that Goal Zambia is affiliated with welcome individuals with disabilities, of which there is over 2 million in the country, something that does not always happen with social stigma often directed towards them. This includes physical, sensory, psychosocial and intellectual disabilities and, although it is difficult to build a team football team for those with difficulties, the academies we work with make a concious effort to encourage them to attend training on the pitch and provide support for them. Perhaps one day there will be a team available for them to join. Diseases and conditions are prevelant in a country with high levels of extreme poverty and these include Schistosomiasis, a waterbourne disease, blindness from lack of vitamin B in some localities and polio, to name a few.

Those with physical difficulties also face major consequential challenges across Zambia, particularly in relation to HIV prevention, testing and treatment and their access to services is not on an equal basis with everybody else. There are a similar number of people with physical difficulties as those that are HIV positive. Girls with disabilities also face increased sexual partner intimidation and violence and restricted access to information concerning these dangers, leading to a greater potential for infection and re-infection with HIV. Access to educational facilities and subsequently lower level of literacy also leads to greater poverty and greater risk of sexual and physical abuse. Interviews with people in Zambia have revealed that negative attitudes towards them also restrict their opportunities to marry and have children. People assume that those with physical difficulties are not sexually active so question why they even need access to HIV treatment. Hope fully the academies we are working with will continue to encorage inclusion of those with disabilities and introduce an acceptance of this at the community level.

The same is true for children with difficuties in the country. School access can be difficult or denied and with it access to primary sources of information that can mean the difference between life and death. Families can also harbour their own internal discriminatory attitudes that don't eleviate the problem. Often those that are HIV positive and have manged to get antireviral treatment are reliant on another family member to support them to access this, which may not, for this or that reason, always be forthcoming or consistent. Those unable to attend appointments as a result are often labelled as defaulters by service providers, who thereafter require them to attend more frequent appointments and limit their supply of medicines. There is a lack of health information produced in formats such as simplified versions, braille, large print and sign language symbols, suitable for those with sensory or intellectual impairments.

Helthcare worker and providers of HIV services also lack the knowledge, training and experience to work and communicate effectively and address the needs of children and adults with physical and learning difficulties.

The government of Zambia has signed up to a number of international and regional treaties agreeing on the equal treatment of those with health difficulties, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and it's own 2012 Person's with Disabilities Act yet the good intentions and strategies to provide services have not always come to fruition. Dispite an awareness of the situation, international donars and the United Nations have also fallen short of helping much.

Goal Zambia aims to encourage academies to continue to work towards inclusion of all children and young adult members and provide support for them to achieve this.

Zambia: Where is it then?

The bottom half of Africa



Chop the continent of Africa in half at around the equator and Zambia is sort of in the middle of the bottom half. It's landlocked, so the Bantu don't bother learning to swim and open their eyes wide in amazement when you try to describe the sea, and bordered by Conrad's massive Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Tanzania in the north and Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to the south. Malawi lies directly east across the nearest thing to the sea, Lake Tanganyika, where the Zambians get a lot of their fish. The Zambians like fish, especially the little ones called Kapenta; they provide a cheaper source of protein than meat or caterpillars.

The country is big, with a total area of 752, 614 square kilometres and is drained by two major rivers, the Zambezi, the river the country takes it's name from, bordering Zimbabwe in the south and the African Queen Congo flowing north. The sprawling Zambezi basin covers three quarters of the country, the remaining quarter the basin for the Congo. A number of rivers flow across the Zambezi basin; the Kabompo, Lungwebungu and the Luangwa and Kafue, the confluence of which marks the Zimbabwean border. In the southwest of the country, near the former capital Livingstone, the waters of the Zambezi drop over 100 metres at the site of the famous Victoria Falls, whence it flows into Lake Kariba, site of the infamous dam.

The Zambezi across to Zimbabwe



A landlocked country creates it's own dynamics and is important in the history of the nation, the past and present day economics and in the well documented and devastating spread of pandemics, notably HIV and Aids. It also means there are more that usual  big match football derbies for the Chipolopolo national team. Little excuse is needed for a national football tournament with neighbours at any level, at any time of the year. The stakes and interest are always high and even the Seventh Day Adventist find ample justification to gather in front on the television for the Saturday matches.

Radio Interview

In this interview, originally broadcast live on BBC Radio Leicester's Afternoon show with Jeremy Vine on 30th January 2014, Steve Baker, coordinator of Goal Zambia, discusses some aspects of the project in Africa and the wider personal motivation behind it.

Video

 

Players from the under 14's boys team train on the pitch in Chainda compound. This was the first kit they had ever worn and was donated to the academy by the Oadby Owls Football Club, Leicester, England. They won the subsequent match 4-1 against a team they had never previously beaten. I think the kits helped. You could tell by the look on their faces.

Kelly's Expenditure

Manda Hill shopping centre

In a land of extreme poverty, there is extravagance but not for 80% of the population. You can see the extravagances in the gleaming tinted windows of the 4x4's parked up in the car parks of the two major city shopping centres and in the shops window displays within. Most signs of personal material wealth are kept securely hidden behind anti-personal high voltage electricity and razor wire topped ten foot garden walls, in the affluent leafy tree lined shady suburban city tarmac streets and out of bounds and minds of the people of the compounds.

It's difficult to comprehend how in a land where the price of food is comparable to the UK, families of rarely fewer than 6 or 8 live on less than the equivalent of £2 per day. At first glance you assume the cost of living must be cheaper and at second glance it just doesn't add up. Third glance brings a sort of feeling akin to despair. Despair doesn't feed the families though. I suppose it's a question of removing the extravagances of life, at least those that we are used to, and by that I mean myself.

Boy

Much of life without extravagances involves survival and I suppose that despite our western extravagances and luxuries, we too in the west simply survive. Our survival generally is arguably easier, although that detracts from people who have to exist hand to mouth in the UK too. This website isn't about them though. There is absolutely no system of social security or unemployment benefits in Zambia. The poor are left to beg, borrow, grow and most notably, share between themselves.

I didn't visit Zambia and asking people I met how they spent the money they had raised each day so I don't know how they did it. Family and tribal ties and values are very different in Zambia and southern Africa and this is conducive to feeding the those in extreme poverty. It means people don't starve to death and the consistency of the rainy season in Zambia has avoided any agricultural and subsequent humanitarian crisis' in recent years of memory. Political issues surrounding the production, cost and distribution of mealie-meal continue to have consequences in the country. If the rains don't turn up or are erratic the food situation is fragile. Starvation is just around the corner. Malnutrition is common, somewhat normal.

Shopping centre fast food place

Kelly Mukuka, the Head Coach of the Dynamic Stars Academy and founder of the Dynamic Ministries Football League provided me with a insight into his monthly expenditure. He is by no means one of the poorest in the compound and he has an extended family and different ways and means of an income but his circumstances give some idea of life in the country. He sells clothes and shoes to friends and neighbours.  I think it's somewhat frugal and it needs to be. Kelly raises money for the academy and takes 20% for his own daily/monthly necessities. These can be broken down as follows:

• Accomodation - he needs a two roomed house, essential for secure storage of the football equipment he has accumulated for the academy. This would cost in the region of K700 (£70-£80)  per month, including electricity. He doesn't have one at the moment as he was forced to leave his last residence after the landlord put the rent up. He now shares his aunties 12x10 foot  windowless shed and single bed with his 18 year old nephew, Emmanual. Emmanual doesn't mind one bit and they get on well but there is little room for the equipment which is stacked up along one wall on top of a bit of furniture brought from his last house. He's a pastor, an unpaid position, at the weekends at one of the hundreds of local churches and so he has an old suit. He's proud of this and likes to hang it up on a coat hanger on the far wall. At the foot of the bed is a table housing a small and, i suppose broken would be the word, television. Houses can be found for £30-£40 per month but these would not have electricity. 
• Food - he needs 1 bag of mealie meal a month (15kg?) at K70 (just over £7). This would give him nshima once a day. Kelly eats in the evening, after the sun has set and it's too dark to play football any longer. 
• Charcoal - the electricity is good but it's unreliable and goes off several times a week. Something i don't really understand to do with surges. You hear people talk about it but not in a way they are bothered about. It just happens like the sun going down. It remains a luxury one can and does live without. Many people either can't even afford it or make do without it - it's less hassle that way. An extravagance with electricity for the rich is having your own generator. A supply of charcoal for the month costs K50 (just over a fiver). If you have time but no money for charcoal there is always bits and pieces to be found and gathered from rubbish at the sides of the road or landfill sites. Electricity has hidden costs aswell. If you have a supply and want to uses it, you also need a cooker. Some people just have one of the electric spiral metal hob rings detached from a cooker and resting on a breeze block with two wires attached. It's ok but you can't cook scones and thing like that on a hob; myou need an oven. Ovens are ezpensive and as a result, often communal. I have a story about an oven for another time.
• Spending money - Kelly finds that this adds up to K20 (£2) daily and is used to add beans to his diet, transport to the city costs or to provide fritters for the academy children at the pitch following training.
• Misc - K20 (£2) monthly. This covers such extigencies as candles and some matches to light them. He needs pay-as-you-go credit on his mobile phone but never has that much. You can buy 20p Talktime scratch cards from the little shack shops.

Chainda Compound shopping centre

His total monthly expenditure amounts to something like £150. In my opinion that's pretty frugal in a land where the cost of living, to reiterate, is not that much different from the UK.

Decky - Dynamic Stars Academy

Decky

This is Decky aged seven and the coach asked him to stand where you see him so I could take his photograph. An understandably shy boy, when faced by a strange bloke with a camera from a incomprehensible land he knows only in his imagination, he lives in Chainda compound with his father and unspecified other members of his extended family. I hope he gets to see the photograph of himself there one day. On the Chainda compound pitch with the Dynamic Stars Decky plays out of his skin in midfield for Manchester United, Zambia and most of all himself. He would love some boots or better still trainers and then he could wear them all the time. If he went to school he would proudly wear them there.

Mary Mwanza - Dynamic Stars Academy

Mary 

Mary is a 13 year old who lives in Chainda compound, Lusaka with her birth mother, her five brothers and two sisters. Her father has died. She has a very beautiful wide awake smile when she stands there and talks and she laughs a lot. She joined the DSA in 2013 after hearing about the academy from her friends and now plays as a central defender for the girls team.

Mary explained to me that if she was not playing football then she would be working selling fruit on the local village market stall with her mother, a job I imagine, with that smile, she is very good at. She doesn't attend school. Although she did complete a year in Grade 5 she didn't pass the end of year tests and now her mother has no money to pay the school fees. They are around £30 per year.

DSA lasses team

Many girls of Mary's age and in similar circumstances get married. There are rules but these are not always strictly followed or enforced. Girls in the compounds commonly become sexually active from as young as 10 years old and marriage is a way to relieve the poverty on the family and relatives they live with. None of this helps with the Aids and HIV situation and often exacerbates other health and social challenges facing those in extreme poverty in urban Zambia. Many girls and families are faced with little or no alternative.

Mary told me that she really wanted to go back to school and asked for some money to do so. Her favourite subjects there were English and Maths. Everybody, or so it seems, likes English and Maths. She explained that the academy needed jerseys, boots, footballs and stockings. Her favourite teams are her own Dynamic Stars and the Zambian national team.

I hope she goes to school again because I could really tell she wanted to when I sat and s[poke to her.

Pule - Dynamic Stars Academy

Pule

Pule is nine. He lives in Chainda compound with his mother and father and six brothers and sisters. One of the younger children in the Dynamic Stars Academy, he plays as striker, at number nine, from where he enjoys putting his homemade ball in the back of the proverbial net. He has a self-proclaimed talent for it. The academy have areal net now. I don't know if the mam and dad are his birth parents but, like his trousers that are far to big for him, it doesn't matter an inch.  He attends Lifeway Primary School for in the compound, another school for orphans and is in Grade 1. I spoke to Pule on the football pitch at Chainda but I didn't get much out of him. He was excited, busy, full of confidence and full of life. He supports Zambia and Zambia alone.

Pule again

Joel Simwanza - Dynamic Stars Academy

Joel

Joel is 16 years of age and lives in Chainda compound with his grandparents.He never knew his parents, both having died of "the disease" when he was very young. He is an only child, unusual in Zambia. His grant parents have other children whom he also lives with and will refer to as his mother and father. He plays in Central defence or midfield for the Dynamic Stars under 17's team.

Joel used to attend a boarding school, which saves the family money on food, but was forced to stop going after Grade 10 (Year 10 - UK), early in 2013 due to lack of means to pay the school fees. He really hopes to start again if his grandfather, a primary school teacher himself, is able to find more money. With large extended families not all the children can go to school at the same time. Often older children have to give up to allow their younger siblings to attend and get a basic education, or at least the start of one. Secondary school fees are generally more expensive that primary so the younger children will attend leaving many older children with nothing more than a primary education. If they are lucky enough to complete Grade 12, there aren't any jobs to get anyway. Fees for further education and universities are beyond most families means. To do Grade 11 would cost Joel's family about £50 a year. His favourite subjects at school were English, History and Civics/Politics. Schooling in Zambia is all in English although outside of school Zambians will speak their own Bantu tribal language. There are 76 first tribal languages in Zambia, the most common in Lusaka being a new evolving "urban" Nyanja and more traditional Bember.

Joel has been playing for the Dynamic Stars for 3 years after he met the Coach Mukuka on the pitch one day and joined the academy with some of his friends. He feels the academy has helped him in his life in different ways, notably with the quality of the football coaching provided as well as the encouragement to return to school and life skills he has learnt. He feels that the academy is vital in protecting children and young adults from damaging pastimes, bad behaviour and habits such as drinking, playing cards and gambling. He highlights the academies need to obtain their own transport to get them to away matches across the city.

Ultimately, Joel would like to make it as a professional footballer. Football is his passion, especially the national Chipolopolo team and Manchester United. He names Gareth Bale and Tevez as his favourite players.

The Greatest Hula-Hooper in the World

The greatest hula-hoopper in the world

This is a lass playing on the field outside Packachele Primary School and feeding centre. It's playtime and all the teachers have buggered off leaving me alone with one hundred and fifty ophaned children for four and a half hours. It was a new kind of fun of my own making after declining to chair the interview panal for the recruitment of a new teacher, something I honestly felt I wasn't really able to do. This situation was somehow and suddenly thrust upon me and I had little time to think about it or what to do if it happened. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

There I was in the field with the kids with the sun and my camera. It was alright though because the school is relatively rich with a number of admittedly dog-eared text books in each class, a computer, seven hula-hoops, a basket ball with court to bounce it on, one football and plenty of poisonous toads and snakes to excite and to share around. It is like the Aladdins cave of recreational time activity equipment in comparison to other fee paying schools I've experienced. The kids even have a pencil each and an occasional ruler can be spotted. The school is for primary age children orphaned from Aids, with or without the HIV virus, and other children deemed vulnerable for other reasons, whatever they may be. There are as many reasons as vulnerable kids.

 The school follows the Zambian primary syllabus (more or which another day) from Grade 1-6. As the Grade 6 class finish and progress to Grade 7 another class room is constructed by local labour to accomodate them and so on. A logical way to work and one that the foreign donars seem to like, although, as elsewhere in funded organisations in Zambia, it's a constant and time consuming challenge to apply for, get and then justify donations. And this girl, well, I don't know her name but at playtime she was the greatest hula-hooper in the sunny field and the whole wide world. Maybe. So she seemed it to me.

 

Breakfast at Packachele School and feeding centre

Aids is popular in Zambia,  more than the Victoria Falls, amoung the people who live there and has been hanging around getting to know people in the country since it introduced itself to other more familiar longitudes and latitudes in the western world. The disease was first identified in the mid-1980's or something like that, when doctors at a Lusaka hospital noticed that people with formerly treatable and curable diseases,  such as tuberculosis, seemed to be dying. Since then there has been no looking back and Aids has gone from strength to strength. It's difficult to get reliable figures for the countries infection rates; some people are not counted such as the street kids in the cities and others don't want to be counted or refuse to take a test or accept that they may have the virus. Hundreds of others slip through a somewhat tattered medical net. It's certainly a complicated business. Nowadays, Aids is still the big killer in Zambia alongwith Malaria and respiratory infections. People, unknown to have HIV and dying of other diseases are often found to be HIV positive thereafter. It's still devastating and the after effects are equally, perhaps more, so. They are the things that affect the living.

I find that many people I discuss Aids/HIV with, in Zambia and here in the UK, seek, perhaps inadvertently, to simplify the situation. They cite clear explanations; particular religious denominations, racial groups, sexual orientation, moral issues, poverty, witchcraft, economics and long distance lorry drivers, amoung other factors, for the rapid spread of the virus in Zambia but in my opinion they miss the point completely. In fact there is no single point and it's foolhardy to approach the challenge from that standpoint. Certainly, as with any disease, factors, particularly those of poverty, exacerbate its transmission but it is the incredibly complex amalgamation of these that leads to a pandemic. The virus, a living being in it's own right (if viruses have rights), needs to live and has found that the breeding ground of Zambia and southern Africa is one hell of a place to do it decadently and get away with it.

Grade 3 lasses

Treatment is more complicated in a country like Zambia, facing the challenges it does. It's not straight forward. Zambia and the people who live there are different. The culture and the way people exist in the world are different. Being alive is different for the Bantu, as is dying. Sex and relationships in the society are different. Hiv and Aids is different. It means a different thing and most of the ideas about treatment and preventing re-infection (a massive factor) are driven by medical minds from the west. Whilst this is effective in one way it doesn't account for many of the differences that exist. Ideas exported from the same west have also helped the spread of the disease.

Many, can I use the word westernised, Zambians, die each year from Aids because the Lord the majority proclaim to believe and trust in has apparently healed them. Approved Government literature still to this day reinforces this possibility. They don't connect improvements in their condition and health as due to the anti-retroviral treatment (ART) but due to the Lord making the drugs effective. The drugs work (they do), they thank the Lord in prayer, and then stop taking them. Another belief prevalent is that if you have hiv and you sleep with a virgin, you are cured. Yes, people still believe that.

Grade 3 lasses shortly before getting done for not wearing uniform

Thousands stay in their homes afraid of the taboo that infection can bring with it and the shame attached to open treatment and there in their homes they get sick and die or travel back to their native tribal villages in the bush to do so. Nobody, barring thier families, ever knows. Traditional beliefs and witchcraft, another much distorted part of Bantu culture in many christianized western psyche, plays it's part, as does alcohol. Sometimes, so it seems to me, Zambia is often simplified, pitied for it's poverty and patronised for it's culture. People go to Zambia and take what they want from it, load their guns or cameras, point either at an elephant or waterfall, fire, bugger off and stick the trophy up on their wall or in their holiday snaps zip file. Night safaris are as popular with the tourist as Aids is with the natives. You drive across the black African bush with a guide in a Land Rover to where you can see the car lights blazing in the distance. When you get there you park up in any gap you can find in the circle of 4x4's and while the guides shine the spot lights on the pride of sleepy lions in the centre, you shoot away to your hearts content. It's the same sort of thing with the hunting too; just swap the film for some lead.

It's a simple country with native Africans that look good in reed skirts and holiday photographs and the elephants look good. You can buy traditional tribal wooden masks that don't really mean anything to you at all which you can take them home and tell visitors to your house that they are traditional african tribal wooden masks and then sit down to dinner before going through your trophy photographs. It has a waterfall and when you see the old colonial buildings in Livingstone, they're weird, apparently, and slightly uncomfortable but reassuringly, they and those times, the time of exploitation, has nothing at all to do with you. Tourists don't visit Lusaka, unless they're passing through, or sidetracked backpackers with maps looking for the international bus station and a quick exit south.

HIV/Aids clinic/drop-in centre

It is a place where people live, as anybody lives, and then they die. It is a place where people feel, where they make love, argue, try to survive, hope, celebrate, fight and cry. They grow food, eat it and laugh. It is a place of life and all that goes with it. A place very much of today with apprehensions about tomorrow, This manifests itself in a thousand different wonderous ways but that's only my view as an outsider. It's difficult for me to see how I could ever understand how my own complicated country and society works and ticks along, nevermind a country in southern Africa. People, the millions of Bantu included, are a billion different things and to simplify them and the way they live is a path strewn with dangers and pitfalls to any sense of understanding, to any feeling of empathy.

Some people say that the Aids situation is improving in Zambia. Whether this means that the instances of the disease are declining or that less people are being identified with having the disease is up for debate. It is in the interest of those that run the country that things are improving, especially as they hope to be the African country of tourism next year, or maybe this, I can't remember. Aids, like most things, has it's targets, it's objectives to meet. It's important that the figures add up. If the target is to have only seven people with the disease and there are ten, then just count seven and Bob's your uncle. Most statistics are official ones and their the only ones that people want. If Aids is increasing in one sector of society then don't count them; it improves the overall figures and avoids additional embarrassment. Being selective is good economically and you don't want to scare the tourists with their cameras away. Tourists don't want photographs of young mothers dying of Aids at the side of tarmac roads. It's indecent. That's the way it goes.

Lads at playtime practising being men

So it's not just the disease and the dying that are devastating. That's the easy bit, the straight-forward bit in one way. The consequences that death leaves for those alive don't go away and most of these consequences fall upon the young children and those that care for them. There are approximately one million orphans due to Aids in Lusaka, one third of the city population. There could be more but there are basically too many to count. The school I worked in accomodated one hundred and fifty. They and those like them in similar establishments are the lucky ones. The proportion of lucky ones to unlucky is miniscule. There is a queue a mile long to get a place at such schools but there are very few such schools because there is no money in the country to pay for them. Packachele school is funded almost exclusively on foreign (mainly Dutch/Canadian, I think) donations. They get a little mealie meal from the Departmant of Agriculture or at least some financial savings on it. The school, like the 80% of Zambians, survives on a hand to mouth basis. Year on year is spent applying for more foreign grants by justifying those of the previous year. When I was there the headmistress, a wonderfully ebulliently alive woman called Angela had to photograph the schools' new born chicks one day to prove to the donars who provided the money that she'd spent the money on them. She didn't have a camera though.

To attend the school requirements have to be strict. People will try to get around them, such is the demand, and corruption is not uncommon. Pastors will forge letters and death certificates stating that a child's parents are deceased. Parents, buried in the bush outside tribal villages hundreds of miles away are difficult to identify. The kids in this school are a drop in the ocean of the vulnerable, abused, exploited and orphaned children that just want to learn and play and be but with the cards that have been dealt them, they just don't have the time. Their's is a different and short path to adulthood, a different and often tragic life that nobody sees or hears about. The lucky ones, take nothing away from them, at Packachele and like establishments, are the exception.

Child with sibling

The big gap in the country demographic is the people who were having sex and procreating in the 1980's and 1990's. Many of those are dead now and what they have left behind are children. These children are now the heads of their households and the chief sources of family income and now have parental roles It is they who need to get married, often for economic reasons. Early marraiges are the norm as are active sexual relations from the age of ten, particularly in the compounds. Extended families, with children sleeping in the same beds as distant uncles and relatives, are open to abuse and childhood pregnancy and sexual abuse are more day to day occurances than here. Aids is a great proponent of equal opportunities and doesn't let a chance pass it by.

Very beautiful twins

And what about the orphans and the people of Zambia? What about the orphans and the children with HIV or with the responsibility for raising, as principal carers, their young siblings? What about the four year olds who have to spend the whole day, from sunrise to twilight, breaking rocks into smaller rocks to put into a basket so that they can sell them at the side of the road - a days' solid hard work for 20p? There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children that are not children for long. Their wonder of the world is short-lived and life becomes something only to survive from day to day.

But then people live and the people in Zambia live. They play games at the side of the road and they laugh at winning and at losing. They laugh when they hit the crossbar with a cracking long range effort from the edge of the box. They crowd into the open top lorry they've manged to get hold of that leaves from the football pitch to take them to another funeral and they sing songs loudly, in beautiful tune, from the flatbed back, as they set to Leopard's Hill cemetery again, leaving behind it another cloud of dust that clears to leave the kids training and the noise of the pitch behind. People live with Aids, they live with HIV. It's almost like a cancer that you might get if you live your life as normal and are unlucky. Life is there to be lived and death is always the consequence.

Women with stuff on their heads

And so there I was and the lass with the hula hoop in the field was just one of those that were alive. I don't know much about her and I don't know her name. I don't know if she is HIV positive or whether it's her mother or father or both that are dead. I don't know the story of her life and I didn't speak to her about it, but when I watched her there, at playtime in the sun, swinging her body beautifully, dancing, with the hula hoop a blur in the air around and belonging to her, I felt that she was the greatest hula-hooper in the whole world, and from the look of unrequited joy staring out of her face and out of her own world, I assumed that she felt something along those lines too.

More about football: the league structure/membership

Chainda Pitch

The rules of football are the same in Zambia as they are in the UK and the structure of the league teams and academies likewise. Goals are the same and getting them is just as good. There are the same ecstasies, the same agonies, to drag an overused couple of words up screaming. The main difference is that access to technology is difficult and too expensive and as a result organisation and coordination is more time consuming. This doesn't really matter but it's interesting to see. Much is recorded, pitchside, by the written word and this is another responsibility, on top of actually hands-on coaching, of the Head Coach Mukuka, in the case of the Dynamic Stars Academy (hereafter DSA). This information, if it relates to registered teams,  has to be taken by bus or foot to the Football Association of Zambia (hereafter FAZ) offices in central Lusaka every couple of weeks. To do this, some grasp of the written word from schooling is a prerequisite.

There was originally a K5 (50p) annual membership fee for those wishing to join the DSA but this was discontinued because it excluded too many children whose families were unable to afford it. Membership is now free and open to all standards and currently  numbers stand at 120 boys and 25 girls, approximately. The academy includes a large number of children vulnerable for a large number of reasons. Some have suffered a poor, unspecified,  upbringing, subject to family problems or abuse, physical, emotional and sexual. Extreme poverty presents many challenges to families in the local community and children do not escape these. Aids creates its orphans and infects its victims whose numbers are not recorded and who miss out on the medicines where available. I haven't met anybody in Zambia yet who has not been directly affected by the disease. To do so is a rare event. A number of the DSA members have physical difficulties. Some are visually impaired or live with physical difficulties from birth or childhood diseases such as polio. Respiratory diseases seem common and most of the children are malnourished.

There are two major leagues that the academy teams can register and play in. This depends on whether the academy/teams can afford the fees. The lower/cheaper league is the Dynamic Ministries League (hereafter DML) which is organised and run by the Kelly Mukuka and the higher, more expensive leagues are those organised by FAZ. For teams of 22 players to register for a season with the DML  the costs are as follows:

• Under 17's - K80 (£8.50)
• Under 14's - K70 (£7.50)
• Under 12's - K50 (just over a fiver)

Kelly is hoping to develop a team for the younger members as he has a large number of 4-5 year old with nothing to do in the daytime, wanting to join. There is no other provision for young children in the compound, often a problem if their parents are dead.

There are rules

One of the DSA main objectives this season was to register a under 17's team in the FAZ Super Amateur League, sort of the Premier League of Zambian compound amateur football. This costs K1000 (over £100) per season for a team of 22. I don't know if he has manage to do this yet.

The football season in Zambia runs from March - September, when the rains are imminent. It's hard to play on pitches made of mud in the rainy season; the ball just gets stuck. In the DML, there is neither relegation or promotion and all teams competing are based in the Lusaka area. The furthest a team would have to travel in the DML for away fixtures would be 10-15km, if they could raise the money. Regularly, away games are forfeited and the result 2-0 awarded to the opposition team and a bye if a cup tie. There are several cup competitions where the prizes are trophies, small amounts of cash or equipment. Kelly received some school equipment from a friend in Canada recently and the calculators that were included were very welcome by the  school going members in the winning team of a recent pre-season tournament.  

The League tables

Most of the DML games are played at the pitch in Chainda where records of the results, goal-scorers, disciplinary matters are recorded in an A4 hardback book. The book is very important, guarded closely by the coach and to have the honour of carrying this to the Kelly's home is a mark of respect for the chosen child at the end of a match day. 

Updating records - pitchside, Chainda

Footballs

Late afternoon

Footballs don't last long on the earthen pitches of Zambia. The ground is covered by layers of cultivated rubbish and fragments of domestic items accumulated over the years of habitation in the compound. Playing barefoot, injuries to the soles and skin are as common as the sun rising each morning and then hanging up there until it goes down again. The academy are short of first aid supplies, especially plasters, which are dear and GoalZambia hopes to help with this. Organised by Coach Mukuka, the academy does put aside a nominal pot of money to deal with hospital fees demanded as a consequence of broken bones or other serious incidents. Families are made aware of this when their children join up. At present this pot of money stands at not very much at all but I couldn't find the exact figure in my notebook.


State of new ball after 90 minutes

 And the balls wear out. In my naivity before my first visit to the country and relying loosely on my sister's advice that I should take some footballs for the kids of the compound - I would have no difficulty getting rid of them - I bought ten cheap two for a fiver sports direct Sondica footballs all shiney and new. Some, out on the Chainda pitch failed to last even the day they were first kicked. Dispite hardened soles, the same happens to human feet but kids have no choice but to play on regardless. To play or not to play is not really a question sometimes. One of the first things I learnt in the country was that a cheap ball will only last a day, whereas a ball of £10 will last up to six weeks. Mathmatics has never been my strong point but in this case, it seems to add up. Better quality balls also tend to be more repairable with a puncture repair kit and some twine. The cars and blue buses along the tarmac road that runs behind one of the goals are a regular decimator of passing footballs fated to bounce no more, there being no fence between the road and the pitch and no hope of something like that being built. That's just the way it is.

Running twine repairs

As elsewhere in Zambia things are not as they seem at first light. I had a final brand shining new, two for a fiver at a two for a fiver sports outlet, football to give away as the time to depart the country after my first visit drew near. There were only a couple of days to go. I took a walk through the Chainda compound late afternoon sun and shade in the hope of finding some children playing football together, which doesn't take long, and offering the ball. Towards the edge of the settlement, near one of the boarded up because there's no one to work there Aids clinics I found about twenty kids running around, chasing a homemade football in need of repair. Identifying the mothers sitting chatting outside one of the houses, I asked if it would be alright to see if the owner of the ball would be happy to swap it for a new one. I wanted to return to the UK with one homemade ball to show children in schools and stuff like that. The mother assured me her son would be more than happy to consider the transaction and swap the ball, indeed he did. We were both quite excited. I put his ball into my bag and, presenting him with the new one, expressed my thanks. With the new ball in his hands he maybe thought similar thoughts but I don't know. As I was walking away I looked behind me to see the same area now devoid of the children playing. They were now hanging around, individually, in pairs or small groups, kicking around in the dust. The boy with the new football had gone into his home, just him and the ball. He'd disappeared. As I walked away from the kids with their ball, now mine, in my bag and with my few days left, away from the remnants of their big match and the mothers and family watching sat there chatting, I sort of felt a tinge of something sad in the quiet absence of the exciting noises of their play. But as I kept walking away toward the tarmac road and home along the edge of the compound where the market stalls are, thinking that there was no way in the world the boy would be able to keep that ball hidden in there, away from his pals for very long at all, no way, I laughed.


My ball

Giske FC

Pre-match photo Dynamic Stars (can't remember who they were playing either)

Blue and white stripes are the colours of Giske FC, the only football team on the small archipelago island of the same name twenty miles or so from the mainland, Norway, and across the exciting looking outcrops of grey that hang out west from the coast on the google map, like big clumsy troll fingers turned to stone, or the tendril like fjords, running blue between them, seeking shelter further inland from some north wind on the westerly coast of the country, where it meets the Norwegian Sea, or in the photograph below. It's a small place with a lot of fisherman/fish and the football club ground is, unsurprisingly, near the sea. The ball keeps going in the water.

Giske

I have a friend from the island (whose not a fisherman but I think her granddad was) and she asked the local team if they had anything to give towards GoalZambia's work in southern Africa. They gave the shirts. They gave equipment; balls, pumps, goal keepers jerseys and plastic cones to run around and more. That's the kind of kit the academy needs (apart from football boots - everybody dreams of a pair of boots but very few have them, even a crap pair. If there are any they are shared around the team. but they rarely fit and literally fall apart before your eyes during a match. Most kids just get on with playing barefooted because they can't wait around for a dream or a pair of boots, whether they fit or not, when the biggest matches in the world come round thick and fast each week). My friend brought them over to London on one of her visits and we got them over to Zambia thereafter. The team had a whip round at the full time whistle of one of their home league matches, raising and donating £350. I don't know who they were playing and what the boat they came on looked like but it doesn't really matter.  Other people and organisations did a similar thing to Giske FC and i'll be posting some of their photographs as and when I do. The  blue and white stripes were a winner though, there was no doubt.

It was difficult to explain to the lads and lasses in the academy where these shirts came from when they put them on although I didn't stop trying. There is not a sea in Zambia and most of the lives of the members have been spent in the compound or those like it, or in their family tribal villages. The lucky ones may have been on a school trip years ago to the Victoria Falls and Livingstone. They don't really remember it that well and seem relatively less impressed than what the travel brochures say. They raised their eyes at me, listening politely, then slightly bemused, when I told them i'd seen my first elephant, like you would in this country to someone who told you they'd just seen their first small cat, mainly, and perhaps simply, because that doesn't happen all that much (something like that anyway). It was hard for them to imagine, I suppose, but they invariably liked the photo of the small island with a lot of fisherman in the middle of the Norwegian Sea and laughed wonderingly at how the inhabitants got there. Zambia is not a seafaring nation.

Giske away

And now I sometimes think about Giske and wonder how it is there and the fisherman and trolls and the football pitch by the sea, even though I have never been. And the boats and the team. I would like to go there one day and watch them play.

Compound Shops

Corner shop

These are some of the shops in the compound, away from the main market areas, the one's your mam might send you to to get something forgotten quickly or if an extra guest turns up for dinner after church on Sunday or Saturday or whatever day you go to church, whatever domination you are. It's where the kids get there lollipops and they are often open before the market stores have opened and after they have shut. They are the compound convenience stores, the corner shops.

 Many families supplement the food they can afford to buy with what they have room to grow around their houses. Some have small areas of land around the compound on which to grow maize or larger family plot further out into the bush away from the urban settlements. Other have familiy plots further afield or in their tribal rural villages and they will go their as families as and when needed to collect provisions or harvest the crops. Any surplus food can be sold or shared with neighbours, hence the shops, small family stalls and tables selling little bags of mealie meal, tomatoes or rape outside people's garden gates.

If you have maize you can cook it at the side of the road and sell it from there to passing trade in motorists or foot commuters. To turn the maize into mealie meal you need a grinder, an relatively expensive piece of equipment and a good source of income itself if you have one. I've discussed with Kelly the possibility of obtaining one for the academy. It remains a possibility. Other shop sell airtel minutes. There are no land lines in the compound and mobile communication is solely through pay as you go. Many shops sell this from k2 (25pence) upwards and the stubs of the voucher litter the ground with the beer cartons and plastic bags. Popcorn making machines are popular and relatively cheap and it's an ingenius marketing ploy to add pink food colouring to it - a real selling point for the kids. Try it at home, it works and it's sort of more fun. Chips, fried at the roadside shack are readily available and always eaten cold with the obligatory salt, loads of it, but no vinegar.

Blaya proud outside his family shop that magically turned up overnight over the road

Chickens are commonly kept and commonly lay eggs, these being sold at the shops. I've never tasted a tastier egg than those laid by Zambian poultry. I have no idea what they eat but you see them wandering the tracks of the compound pecking at it.  The chickens themselves are saved for special occasions or as gifts when popping round to somebody else's house for dinner. Caution needs to be excercised in offering this gift as you can end up waiting three hours for the bird to be cooked or having live chickens running around, waiting to be killed, after inviting guests to eat at your house.

One-man inconvenience shop closed

Children work in shops or help on their family's stalls or selling popcorn, corn, beer or fritters along the side of the road. Child labour is common in the country, especially if unable to attend school, something that Goal Zambia hopes to work towards addressing for the members of the academy. Wages if any are minimal and sometimes just in food. A friend of mine, having recently completed his grade 12 (loosely comparable with GCSE level) only declined the offer of a job with one of the market shops after long discussions with his family, who really need an extra source of income in order to send his younger sister and brother to school. The wages on offer were £15 a month. A bag of mealie meal, sufficient to nourish a grown man for one month, costs £7. The wage on offer was just, only just, too low. The cost of food in Zambia is not much different to the UK, in fact many commodities, un-dreamt of luxuries for the compound communities, and only available from the supermarkets and shopping centres, are noticeably dearer.

Chitumbuwa

Boy with chitumbuwa at pitch

Chitumbuwa or fritters are the kind of food in the country that seems to make the world go around. They are the chips or the on the move snacks, the bacon sandwich on the way to the office in the morning. They are an indelible part of the Zambian culture. They can be used to define the day and, the freshness of them, the time of it. Early in the morning is the best alongside the main roads at the queing cars of the junctions when you vcan see the smoke rises up in the sunshine and floating off in the early morning cool breeze. The smoke is a good sign of the freshness, just cooked and crispy, scalding incredibly too hot to touch fritters and two at that time for is just the right amount for the most perfect breakfast and a garantee of satisfaction through to dinnertime and nshima. Roadside fires heat the black cast iron cauldrons of oil in which the heavy duty pancake like dough mixture, dolloped into balls is deep fried. Twigs are used to transfer these into a plastic serving bucket and the fritters sold to those in need from there. They cost 50 ngwee, 5 pence each and are more, in my opinion, than worth it. In a country where many food items are as, if not more, expensive than here, Chitumbuwa are a occasional affordable treat.

And this is important, this woman with the saucepan in the photograph is a welcome sight on the football pitch. It's what happens to make a match day go around, an integral part of it. She is the fritter woman preparing the pan of oil that the fritters are deep fried in. It's match day, a weekend and early mid-morning,  say around ten o'clock and the pitch is getting busy with the pre-big match nervous players and reverberating with the sound of adrenaline. Kids are gathering to watch the older teams play competitively in the FAZ or Dynamic Ministries league and their favourite players, their local heroes from Chainda and neighbouring compounds are there on the pitch, in front of their eyes, in real life. The young kids stand and stare or show off their keep me ups with their home made or punctured discarded balls, running around the pitch screaming to each other and the older kids do it to impress the lasses. There is an all enveloping sense of excitement that grew from the night before, the days before, and, if a big local rivalry match is scheduled, for weeks before. People arrive with their new proud hair cuts,others laugh at them and you can see the girls in their new braids and wigs. Families from the Seventh Day Adventist pass by in their church best clothes at ease and conscience free to watch a bit of footy on their day of rest when they can't even think about doing the laundry because God, in Zambia, likes football and even predicts the national team scores. He's a Chipolopolo fan.

Preparing the oil in the fritter hut

At the side of the pitch, between it and some corrugated roofed breeze block walled houses is the hut that serves as burger van, the tea stall, the refreshment stand and meeting place. A simple traditional wooden poled fire shelter structure with thatched grass roof round and through which the blue smoke from the newly kindled fire swirls then floats up and away like a part of the whole thing, with it's smell across the pitch and everywhere. The smell can make the belly rumble.

The woman or her daughters get there and light the fire with the yesterdays wood, left there, safely respected. She lives in a nearby house and this is her job. One of her jobs, and the money she makes from it help to feed her family and send some of her relatives to school. The kids in the academy are hungry most of the time. They don't get much to eat and after having fun playing football all day long they need extra sustenance like chips on the way home from a day building sand castles and stopping the incoming tide at the beach. The academy feed the kids at the pitch from the fritter stall on match days and some training days and will also provide mealie meal which some designated members will occasionally cook for the team.

The new academy shop building may be such to accommodate somewhere for the kids to congregate when not in action and somewhere for them to be fed and hang together about between matches. There is nowhere else. On big match days, when the mighty FAZ registered Chainda Bombers team and their local stars are in action, or on cup tie days a few thousand people will gather at the sidelines to watch and it's a good day, those days, for the fritter woman.

From another house near to the fritter woman's a tap provides the academy's water. The lady is paid K20 on a match day for the use of this. There are not many taps in the compound and those there are are shared by the community. Drinking water comes from bore holes dug in the ground beneath the open dry toilets beside the houses. Contamination is common news and Typhoid and dysentery are familiar consequences for the compounds residents. They, like the fritters, are a part of the compound culture too, albeit less welcome.

So, 50g of plain flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 tablespoon of cooking oil and half a cup of milk or if you can't afford it, water. Mix all the ingredients, save the milk or if you can't afford it water, up together and then add the milk/water. Keep going until the mixture is very thick. Prepare the oil, make it hot, as hot as a chip pan before getting a good sized dollop of mixture on a deep spoon already dipped beforehand in the hot oil, and adding this to the pan. Wait on until they are crispy and gorgeous dark golden brown and Bob, as they, whoever they are, say, is your uncle! Enjoy as much as possible!

Perfect, gorgeous as can be examples

And so Kelly will feed the kids and it's a major part of the day and a sure way top get them all together. They will say grace in a group before eating but the taste senses of the mind are already on the food, not the provider, and the prayers, overridden, drift away at the close with the smoke. And the mouths, you can see them watering. Amen's are hasty with eyes open wide, said whilst forming an vague queue before the fritter woman's serving bucket, any order of which rapidly disintegrates to a noisy crowd hiding the woman and her bucket somewhere in the middle. Tricks learnt by the older kids are are played in an effort to get an extra chitumbuwa and the younger kids have to be quick in order to have their fill. No crumbs are left and nothing goes to waste. No kid is left out.