Goal!Fest

This amount of time until Goal Zambia's Goal!Fest. Remember Saturday 9th April 2016 at Duffy's Bar, Leicester. Doors 8pm, music from roundabout 9pm. Tell some of your pals! You are extremely welcome.

Here we go again.....

 

Gender Based Violence (GBV)

Painting (Lusaka Museum)

 Okey dokey, let's define Gender Based Violence (GBV hereafter),

 Violence directed against a person on the basis of gender. It constitutes a breach of the fundamental right to life, liberty, security, dignity, equality, non-discrimination and physical and mental integrity. It is often, out of the necessity of reality, interchangeable with violence against women.   
Have a gander at the statistics, any statistics. Here's a bunch of them from the last 10 years, I found here and there. They all tell a similar story:

• In the world, 35% of women have suffered violence. 1/3 of women have suffered physical or sexual abuse by their partner within a relationship. Of women murdered,  in 38% of cases the perpetrator was their partner.
• In Europe, 20-25% of women have been subjected to GBV.
• In the UK, 40% of women murdered is gender related. Only 24% of domestic violence incidents are reported. 1/3 of those in same sex relationships have suffered GBV. In 2004, 70% of women involved in prostitution started as minors, 85% of those having experienced sexual or physical abuse at home.

Get the idea? I write this post in the week when a woman in the UK was stabbed 72 times after phoning 999 to report her fears after her partner had threatened to kill her, at home with her children. There was a delay in responding to her call, quite a tragic one, it seems. In the same week reports have been published highlighting changes that are to be made in the way that sexual offences are dealt with by the police in the UK, centred around positions of power and ultimately meaning that men must "prove" consent. In this country there are more cases of rape coming to court and the issues of GBV are publicised, being addressed and often at the forefront of people's minds.

At the risk of getting monotonous, here's some more percentages:

In Zambia:

•  47% of women have been physically or sexually abused since the age of 15, 77% of these by their husbands, the highest figure for Southern Africa. In some surveys in some areas of society, the figure is 90% 
• The first sexual experience for 1/3 of girls was a forced one. 1/3 of girls are often beaten by a close relative or boyfriend. 
• 72% of men admit to beating their wives or girlfriends. 
• 1/3 of girls in school knew of someone in that school who had been sexually harassed. 
• In a 2014 survey in Lusaka, 30% of female school children reported sexual or physical abuse. 
• 41% of women suffering domestic abuse did not report it.

There are hundreds of statistics and they all tell the same story year in year out. You get the general idea. There is a massive issue in Zambia to do with GBV and the root of this problem, as elsewhere in the world, lies in gender inequality. The most vulnerable are the children and it is the children that must be focused on the get to the root of the problem.

Child defilement or rape is a major issue in Zambia and Africa. It has very serious long and short term consequences for the children including psychopathology later in adult life, infection and sexually transmitted disease. The fundamental damage to the child occurs prior to the abuse as they develop capacities such as trust, intimacy, agency and sexuality. The impact of these in all areas of adult life is well documented. Most affected children are between 2months and 10 years of age and 70% of abusers are immediate family members. The rest are usually in a position of trust such as guardians or baby sitters. Infection rates for HIV and other diseases are more prevalent in children due to internal lacerations during penetration and insufficient vaginal fluids. Brain functioning and development are also affected.

Right, here's a story, based on a true one. It's not a statistic and the names of places and faces have all been changed. This happens a lot, behind the statistics.

 Emma's story.

Mary lives in an extremely poor compound in Lusaka, Zambia. She was married eight years ago when she was 13 to a man five years her senior. Mary is now 21. She has three children, Emma aged 8, the eldest, Mercy aged 4, the youngest, and Sammy aged 6, in between. They live with their father in a little shack.

In late September, Emma was raped by her father in a small space between the outer walls of a nearby latrine in the compound. At some undetermined point after this, she was repeatedly raped at her grandmother's home.

In mid-November, neighbours of the family, on seeing and becoming concerned about the blatantly painful gait and ill appearance of Emma, questioned her grandmother, who revealed the fact that she had been allegedly raped by her father. Emma had confided in her grandmother.

One neighbour reported this to professionals and with her mother's agreement collected the child and took her to hospital. She was examined by medical staff and found to be severely injured and infected internally from the sexual attack. It was restated at the hospital that the attacker has been her father.

The incident was reported to the police by the professionals. The police did not immediately investigate the incident. The local inhabitants of the compound are expected to approach the police authorities and inform on any sighting of the suspect, who had appeared to have disappeared. They parked their car at the side of the main road and waited, on the outskirts of town.

Around Christmas time, Mary, the mother, was approached by the professionals and with her agreement, Emma and her two younger siblings Mercy and Sammy were taken to a place of safety. Mary gave a statement to the police claiming it was the either Emma's father or another man who had committed the crime.

Still unsuccessful with their futile search, the police eventually apprehended the father at the a local police station when he went in to report an unrelated crime and complained that his mother-in-law was refusing him access to his children at her home. On questioning, the names he cited for his children corresponded to those in the police notes, and he was arrested and put in the cells at the local jail. Police refused to release the father until the Emma had been to the hospital for further age assessment. This proved unnecessary as she was obviously a minor. Her HIV test results were, thank goodness, negative.

Emma had to go to the local jail and look into each cell in turn to identify the person who raped her. She saw and identified her father as the pertetrater. She was then taken to the gap between the latrine to identify the scene of the first crime. Her graphic description of the nature of the attack and what her father had done to her physically left no one in doubt about what had happened. She was extremely traumatised during this time. Emma described how before the second attack, her father had arrived at her grandmother's home and asked that Emma go with him. She states that her grandmother had refused but the father had taken her anyway by force.

Mary was asked by police, and agreed to make a statement and be a witness in any court proceedings. She may not, only time will tell. Her mother, Emma's grandmother, refused to make a statement for fear of reprisals. The neighbours who initially drew attention to the attack, after initially agreeing to provide statements and be witnesses, retracted the offers after a police visit.

Being a case of double incest and rape, the police are keen to obtain a conviction for this crime. Additionally the man has no family so the favoured bribe/compensation payment would be difficult to arrange. The professionals are hoping for similar. A conviction, a 25year prison sentence and the subsequent press coverage would do a lot to promote this tragic and all to common issue in the country. It would be a step towards breaking down taboos.

If the man had a family and access to money or land, a compensation payment would be offered to those parties involved and the matter and charges dropped. This would allow all parties to get on with their lives and Emma, most importantly of course, to live happily ever after.

In many parts of Zambia and in all levels of the society, gender inequality and GBV are acceptable. School children at play times act out role plays based upon it; the boys will remove their belts (if they own one) and whip the compliant girls. They have a right laugh. Normalisation of any behaviour makes any cultural or social change very hard to instigate, particularly in the adult populations. Education in these areas must begin at school and earlier.

Domestic and sexual abuse of children and young women has a profound effect on mental and physical and severe reproductive health problems. It has major implications for the continued spread of HIV and Aids. Women subjected to GBV are 50% more likely to be infected. Only 11% of women would feel confident of asking their husbands to use a condom, even if they were aware their husband was HIV positive.

The situation is not simple and any attempt, including this admittedly brief one, risks further simplification. Part of the problem itself lies in simplification. The more I learn about the country, the more complicated it gets and the more questions I am left with. I feel I know less as I go along. Through gender inequality, more so in Zambia and the rest of Africa, than Europe and the west, normally women are both economically and psychologically dependent upon their abusers. Unequal property rights mean women relinquish homes if divorced, reinforcing this dependance. Women who report rape are at risk of this and of being ostracized or stigmatized. They feel blamed and ashamed for what has happened to them. On the male side of things, power and dominance are such a part of the culture that they believe that what they do and how they treat women is right. Boys need positive male role models to act as a catalyst for change. The myth of virgin intercourse still exists as does the cultural belief that getting a child pregnant will mean that the man's business will grow and expand along with the foetus.

Here's some more statistics, painting this picture:

• 54% of men say do not have the right to refuse their husbands sex
• 53% of men say women sometimes deserve to be beaten
• 20% Aisof men say it's a woman's fault if she gets raped
• 46% of men say that forcing your partner to have sex is not rape
• 38% of men who say that in Zambian culture it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife

GBV only exacerbates gender inequality which in turn spreads Aids and causes "choice disability". Women end up with no power over their own lives, a massive detrimental disadvantage for a society. The massive proportion of women become a group unable to fulfill their potential in the world and this has been suggested as the overwhelming factor in crippling extremely poor nations and ensuring they remain in the vicious poverty trap. The people in those countries need to be empowered and the women are the lest empowered of all group. It is strange to have societies where the most oppressed live intimately with their suppressors.

 

Children, both boys and girls need to be nurtured and educated. This begins at school, but unfortunately so does the abuse. This is especially directed towards girls and gets in the way of their education and their advancement to secondary education levels. In  a 2014 study 30% of school children said they had witnessed or knew of GBV in the classroom. 1/3 of girls had been sexually harrassed by a teacher. There are initiatives underway to tackle this within schools, including safe spaces and girl's clubs. Despite these many girls are raped, sexually abused by both teachers and classmates, including on the journey to or from schools. These are rarely reported for fear of retaliation, stigma and blame, as well as unresponsiveness from education authorities. The wider and long lasting effects are the emotional injuries caused these girls, the discouragement to continue in education and the reinforcement thereafter of discriminatory practices.

In Schools 2012:

• 54% of students who experienced sexual violence or harrassment by a teacher/fellow student at or on the journey to/from school
• 50% of pupils who knew of a teacher who had sexual relations with a pupil, often lured by the promise of money, school fees, exam passes, exemption from punishment.
• 66% of female pupils had been harrassed by fellow students.

GBV in the countries schools results in infections, child pregnancies, dangerous abortions as well as depression and severe anxiety. It is a violation of recognised fundamental human rights.

Education within schools and in the football academies that children meet up at need to inform young adult women and children of their rights. The stigma associated with being a victim of GBV needs to be quashed. Economic laws need to be amended to reflect gender equality and not leave abused women scared that their husband will be imprisoned and she will lose the family home. Women need access to property ownership. The abuser is more often than not, the main wage earner in the household. For boys, negative stereotypes of power and male dominance need to be replaced by positive role models through sport and football and adults likely to find themselves in the position of role model need educating.

There are laws in Zambia focusing on GBV, notably the Gender Based Violence Act 2011. Between 2007 and 2010 incidents reported increased 347%. Despite this, conviction rates are still incredibly low. The majority of these cases don't get to caught and if your ask people in the street, many are unaware of the law.

The challenge is not only for women to embrace. In fact, the dire poverty and inequal position many women find themselves in, in Zambia and across the world can make this difficult. As Desmond Tutu expressed on the Intervention Day for Elimination of Violence towards Women in 2012, it is also the responsibility of males. They are the main pertetrators, they are the main abusers. Men must take responsibility too.

Statue of woman (Henry Tayali Visual Arts Centre, Lusaka)

In our age of modernity and global economics, especially when clashing with existing and differing traditional values in places like Africa, we living in the west, our actions effecting poor countries there, should also bear some responsibility. That would seem reasonable in a compassionate world. The root causes of inequality, perhaps everywhere in this day and age, stem from the implications industrialisation has in relation to girls and women's access to education, lifestyles, modernity, culture and challenges and life choices that occur at puberty, and it is perhaps the future welfare of countries such as Zambia and elsewhere in economic, social and health terms, that the empowerment of women will have the most impact.

Girls - Early marraige

Zambian lasses (from Lusaka Museum Arts Collection)

Gender inequality issues exist all over the world, in any country, at any stage of development. Often the issues derive from how cultural practices and views, accepted traditional beliefs about gender and economic factors, to name a few, are in direct contradiction of what it means to be alive in this world, whatever society a person lives in, and the rights all people have. From topless specific page pictures in tabloid reading material, representation in politics, sport or employment, or access to education, equal economic opportunities and rewards in life, women often appear to be undervalued, exploited, vulnerable to violation and denied their rightful place in many societies..

In Zambia, these issues, added to other factors are harmful and life threatening in a very immediate, real and unique way. The often deliberate collision of western cultural values and economic models, with traditional tribal Bantu societies in sub-Saharan Africa has its casualties and these, not occasionally, are women and girls. Casualties in many societies is one area where girls and women are well over-represented. In some areas where progress has or is being made in gender issues in the UK and western societies, there is nominal provision in Zambia and other African countries. Western influence and intervention, through intentional economic agendas and on the back of widespread mass media and internet access induced cultural change, have had a major impact of other countries. In the world global market, and in their own proclaimed ethical principles, the powerful nations must accept some responsibility for this.

Zambia has one of the highest rates of childhood and early marriage in the world. Data is again difficult to obtain, but latest figures show that 42% of 20-24 year old females are married before they are 18 and in more traditional rural areas the figure is as high as 60%, many of these girls as young as 13 years old. An early marriage can be defined as a formal, statutory or customary union of a girl before the age of 18 (Convention on Human Rights), requiring the girl to set aside her childhood and assume the role of a woman, leading to a life in that society of disadvantage and deprivation.

Girls in rural areas most at risk

Three main reasons lie behind early marriages for girls and young women:

• Poverty - in any country this is a trap that is hard to get out of. In Zambia, the poverty is overwhelming and extreme. Escape is literally a dream. It's hard to put into words some of the conditions so many of the people live in. To escape this is a exception almost unheard of. Widespread mass media and internet has introduced a brightly lit shop window of the western material world to Zambia and it's people that they have to peer through each day. They can't get away from it. What does distract them at all is the day to day objective of getting something for their families to eat. One way out of poverty for families, at least in the short term, are the male dowries paid to families of girls they marry, and often the subsequent extra pair of hands to work in the fields. In desperate poverty, this is a very attractive way out and can lead families to see little choice. Girls from poorer families are five times more likely to marry early. Choice can often be linked to information and education.
• Education - Non-educated girls and women are more vulnerable to early marriage. 65% of girls without a primary education between 20-24 years of age marry before they are 18. In comparison, 17% of girls educated to secondary or higher level marry before 18. Girls are often married off to provide money to send male siblings to school. This overlaps with traditional roles given, and societal views towards women. In the UK, most girls go to school and complete an education and are empowered because of it. Zambian girls marrying early drop out of school and never return. This lack of education perpetuates the poverty trap and has severe consequences both for the personal future of the women themselves, and the society they live in. Without education more women are abused, physically, sexually and emotionally and many more are infested with HIV and AIDS. Sexual activity in marriage is significantly higher, with married men three times more likely to carry the HIV virus. Under the shadow of violence and cultural norms,  married women are unable to refuse sex or insist on condom use. Younger girls are far more likely to suffer traumatic childbirth and are five times more likely to suffer maternal mortality. Figures from 2010 indicate 30% of deaths in childbirth were young girls. Early marriage can literally end a girl's life.
• Traditional beliefs - in Bantu society traditional roles and views of women are still held but this is within a society that has undergone forced change in so many different ways, both from internal factors and external international ones. The philosophical demographic of the country and the people in it is shifting. New languages, in more than just linguistics are evolving and again, there are casualties to this change. Although the law in Zambia states that a girl must be 21 to be married, customary tribal legal systems contradict and override this, leading to marriage at the advent of puberty, notably, but not always in rural areas. Many of these traditional practices habitual, however, and change is not impossible. Traditions are made by people and can be changed by people. People can change. If people are provided with the information and educated, things can be done for the good of people and their communities. Often change comes about, not by looking at the do not's and negatives, but by looking and concentrating on the positives and alternatives. What can be done instead? Many tribal chiefs, both male and female are helping as well as central government initiatives. People have to see the benefits of change in action. Chiefs are recognising the economic advantages of stopping early marriages and the benefits for local communities. They are beginning to understand the dangers of early marriage and the sense in avoiding it.  This all depends upon education and promotion of information. Girls who excel at school and higher education go out,earn more money and support their families so much better. It's important to enlist, equip and inform NGO's (non-government organisations), religious leaders, medical, health and school personal and most importantly by far, the young girls and women of the country. This is one of the most important roles of the football academies. The girls in the academies want to be girls and play football with their pals, they don't want to get married or be brides. They have dreams of playing for Barcelona or the Zambia national teams. They have aspirations to be nurses and teachers and to steal those and their right to make life decisions for themselves is tragic.

It is important at this stage to recognise that the mos important thing here are the girls and young women. What do they want? They want to go to school. It is alright politicians making laws and people sending money but girls need to be empowered not only in Zambia but across the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa and further afield. First, they need to be asked and listened to. Boys and men need to be educated in gender relations too. Such is the discrepancy in gender equality in Zambia, that changes in this would have dramatic and fantastic repercussions for everybody in the country. Women make up a massive proportion of the population of the country and to empower them to fulfill their individual and collective potential and excel in being alive can only be a good thing in the struggle to alleviate other devastating challenges that disrupt the country and the lives of everyone in it. It is not just a Zambian issue, but a developmental issue.

Dynamic Stars girls contingent

The football academies that Goal Zambia works with welcomes girls as members and as young as 7 and up to 14 years old. This is a key age for the education of these women and what they learn now they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. They are the future women of the country and have an equally important role to play in the countries future. Perhaps, faced with the issues they are faced with, their personal short term future may even be more important. On the pitch of Chainda, before a match, at half time or between training sessions, the coach of the Dynamic Stars, Kelly Mukuka, will talk to the girls teams about some of these issues. He does this because he cares about the people in the community he lives and about the country. He understands the alternatives. Health personal also visit the pitch, so important for the girl, and boys, unable to attend school. Part of Goal Zambia's work is to encourage and facilitate this to happen. We are inspired to see the kids have fun because that's what they want, and they look beautiful when they do.

Case Studies:

Agnes, from Lusaka, is 17 and has been married for 5 months after her parents decided they wanted to relinquish responsibility for her. A complete stranger paid the price she was advertised for, she married and moved to the small town of Chibombo, 2 hours away from the city. To escape this life she describes as "torrid", she would almost certainly face being disowned by her parents as a disgraced bride. I have seen this happen.

Beatrice  married when she was 15 and is now aged 32. She states she was terrified and confused on her wedding day when she had no idea what she was doing. In her first year of marriage she nearly died from severe complications in childbirth.

Mansa lives in the Northern Province of Zambia and was married when she was 12, to a 16 year old man. Her parents needed a dowry quickly. She was told by them to stop attending school and marry him. She was valued at £100. £50 of this was paid in cash plus a field of maize. She works in the field. She's 18 now, with 3 children and has never returned to school. She gets beaten up regularly and when he's not beating her up, he's sleeping around with lots of girlfriends. Her parents tell her she shouldn't worry - that's what all men do.

Aids - Women and girls

Young women and girls are the highest HIV infected group in Zambia. Females between 15-24 are twice as likely to carry the virus than their male counterparts. 16.9% of females who live in urban areas carry the virus compared to 10.3% in rural locations. 16.2% of females in Zambia are HIV positive. The general demographic for the highest incidence of infection has been described as "urban females in a long term relationship." The Dynamic Stars, one of the academies that Goal Zambia works with, have 25 female members between 7 and 15 years of age. Both for those that attend school and have parents, or not, this stage is a vital one for the rest of their lives. The factors in the rate of HIV prevalence in this group are many and diverse.

Girls in the compound commonly become sexually active at an early age, sometimes around 10 years old and generally with sexual partners over 5 years their senior who have already had several previous sexual relationships. Extreme poverty means that families are eagerly tempted to marry their daughters off at an earlier than the legal age of 18. The male dowries and economic benefits to this often out way the risk to the girl.The new husband can be another pair of hands in the growing of maize. Many children in the care of unfamiliar extended family members can be at risk from sexual abuse and rape. Work is being done to develop the skills of professionals in health and education in order

Zambia has serious and deep rooted issues with gender inequality. Women are very unlikely to refuse sexual intercourse with their husbands, or insist on the use of a condom. Male to female domestic violence is widespread and often the norm. Children at school play games openly, whereby the boy will remove his belt and beat the compliant girl on the backside. This is perfectly acceptable. Despite the fact that many women are too scared to reveal facts, 15% have reported to have been raped either within or without marriage and although work is in place within Zambia to tackle these problem at the root cause of domestic violence the resources and finances are minimal.

Mother to child transmissions was by far the most common form of infection of people under 15 years of age in 2007 but much progress has been made since then. This has been centred around providing councelling, testing access to preventative services and antiretroviral drugs along with careful tracking of preventative success cases by a central health organisation. Again, there are discrepancies between rural and urban areas in the availability of clinics and logistical problems of accessing them, although there are innovative attempts at tackling theses using mobile phone technology the use of Mother and Baby packs and often most importantly, the training of Health Care staff.  Most Zambians live in rural areas. Programs, where implemented, are working, the challenge is to make them accessible to all.

There is still a long standing belief within some sectors of Zambian society, particularly in rural areas, that sexual intercourse with a virgin will cure the HIV. The practice still takes place. Casual sex workers, as in any country, are at a greater risk, but particularly in landlocked Zambia, and notably at the entry exit points with neighbouring countries.

Girls are sometimes denied the opportunity to go to school, the places the family can afford often given in preference to older male siblings.

Goal Zambia finds it important that the football academies it supports include girls and young women and the Dynamic Stars Academy actively encourage them to join. The Blue Bullet Sporting Academy was formed by two women, Carol and Grace and also focuses on promoting education and sports for it's members in the Mtendere compound of Lusaka.

Happy New Year - Every little thing counts

Childhood is a massive part of a person's life and what happens during it plays an enormous part in a person growing up and becoming who they are in adult life. What is most important during that time is love from a carer or parent and the nature of it. A child is very vulnerable and dependant upon this love and the adult the child becomes is shaped by it. Many of us have issues that stem back to our childhood that cause us pain or difficulties later in life and it may be that some parts of our are lives are devoted to reconciling these, especially if ours parents and family are still alive. Many of us are equipped, through our loving formative years, of feelings of self-esteem that enable us to be ourselves in the world and play a part in it. If these years are disrupted or the love distorted, between carer and child, it's consequences can be harmful. If for whatever reason, a child loses their parents or primary carer, a hole is left.

When I first visited Zambia I had recently been reconciled with my parents after being estranged from them for a number of years. There were issues between us that had been faced up to and now we continue to develop our relationship in a positive way. I was very thankful at the time that my parents were still alive to enable me to do this. I grew up in a family that provided fostering care for children who for one reason or another faced challenges in their lives, the causes of which were not their responsibilities. In the UK, where 68 840 children are in care, there are problems in the adoptive system and in the care of the most vulnerable children in our society and there are many people working to alleviate these and endeavour to provide care and love for them. Although the odds appear stacked against them, in any society, every child that has to go into care is important and every little thing counts.



Breakfast at Packachele Primary School

There are up to 760 000 orphans between the ages of 0-17, due to Aids, living in Zambia. 170 000 of these carry HIV. These make up half of the orphan population in the country where 1.4 million children have lost both or one paren for one reason or another. For any child's future, in any country, to be in jeopardy is tragic but in Zambia the consequences of losing a parent are very much a matter of life or death. Not only the AIDS epidemic and it's repercussions, but also the overwelming poverty, mean that vulnerable children have very little chance. These children have lost one or both of the most important people in their lives, often at an age where understanding is difficult and the event most damaging. There is no government network of support for them and the burden on extended family members to care for these children is overwelming. They need love and food. When a mother leaves her child at one of the city rubbish dumps, it is not out of neglect or abandonment but out of love. They know that he or she will be found.



Parental responsibilies

And sometimes chances come along. I worked in two schools in Zambia. The first of these was a school for orphans and those with HIV. It was a deeply personal experience but what I felt most was the overwelming joy on the faces of the 150 pupils, not only at playtime, but in the classroom too. The school was a refuge from without. Outside the school was a world that included neglect, hunger, physical and sexual abuse. Inside the school was love, hope, friendship, food twice a day and often a release from otherwise tragic circumstances. These children were being equipped with the tools they needed to face their lives. They are the lucky ones. The majority of the orphans in Zambia don't get the chance to go to schools such as these because there aren't enough.



Kids of gthe Dynamic Stars Academy

Elsewhere, vulnerable children get lost. Child abuse, both sexual and physical, forced marraiges, child labour and corporal punishment are widespread in Zambia and because of the challenges the country faces, the infrastructure, and skills required to start tackling the problems and protecting vulnerable children are not in place. There is no money to put them in place either. Many Zambians and people from the UK and elsewhere in the world, are trying very hard and successfully to change this in many small ways. Healthcare professionals, teachers and parents are being trained in abuse recognition as are children in what is acceptable behaviour in the home or in society. Tribal leaders and politicians want to know how they can help. The people of Zambia want, ask for and sometimes need help to face these challenges.

For the children who are lost and do not go to school, there are the football pitches. This is often their chance in a country with very few compared with the UK. At the Dynamic Stars Academy, the children are safe from harm. They get fed, they get a limited education, perhaps enough to survive, and they get hope. They get to play football with a real ball and wear a football shirt. They get fun and they get friendship. for some, it will be a losing battle but for others it could be the most important thing in their future lives. The joy and the self esteem they get is amazing.

Without schooling, a vulnerable child is at more risk. Without organisations like the Dynamic Stars Academy, the vulnerability increases more. The costs of this vulnerability in the lives of the young people is Zambia is devastating and that is something i've witnessed. If not early marraige, if not forced labour, then many of the lost orphans, as young as six years old, slip away to live in the sewers of the city at night and a life on the streets by day, addicted to inhaling a mixture of avation fuel and glue, begging for food and supplementing it by scouring the cities rubbish dumps. Few escape this from this fate and most die before adulthood. The football academies and the people who run them are often a child's role model, one that many have lost through the death of a parent.




Children in Chainda

Sometimes I struggle to see how all this helps, in a country far removed from ours and with a culture so vastly different, especially on social and personal levels. I face my own challenges and make mistakes. I try and concentrate on the positives though. The first set of goal nets on the pitch at Chainda compound was one such occasion. I sometimes think about the children nearer to me in this country that need love and support, of which, like those I grew up with, there are too many. My chance came in Zambia though, at a certain point in my life, and I took it. I was filled with inspiration by the people I met and talked to who lived there working towards protecting children, and by the fun the children themselves had. The joy I received in the country from the people and children I met, I wanted to return and share, and to feel inspired to do something in life is, in itself, an important thing.

As we go into the new year, I am still waiting to hear from the UK Customs and Revenue, and hopefully the allocation of a Gift Aid number. From there I hope to start some fundraising events for Goal Zambia. I hope to raise some more money and plan to revisit the country later this year. I hope to have enough money to make a small difference in some of the areas that Goal Zambia hopes to contribute, and then report back. It is hard work to do all these things and I wish I was able to do more but, again, I try to focus on what I can do and what I have already acheived.

It means more than you think, when I log on to this blog, check the number of views and find it has gone up. I take this opportunity to thank all thoses who read it. That in itself helps. My only request at this stage is that, for each of you that reads, could you mention it to somebody else who doesn't who may be interested?

The world can be overwelming for anyone in a thousand ways, but I firmly believe that every little thing helps and there are thousands of ways to do that. There are thousands of problems. That's why I do this and I have fun. Part of this I do for me. I have the self esteem that makes me believe that things can get better and I have been fortunate in that. Things do get better with love and care. If one child in Zambia gets an education and avoids contracting AIDS, if one child experiences the joy of scoring a in a goal with nets, if one extra person reads this blog and tells another then it will do no harm. And if a person who reads this is inspired to do one little thing, in one little place, anywhere in the world, it doesn't really matter what, then it will be worth it even more.

Every little thing helps











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.