Catherine's Story

By Kimberly Burge

January 2008

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Catherine Phiri keeps her Bible on top of the books stacked on the lone shelf in the hut. The Bible's cover is disintegrating at the edges, as are many of the other books' tissue-thin pages. There is no way to protect them from the rain that seeps through the hut's thatched grass roof. The roof should have been replaced many months ago. It is beginning to crumble like the books. But there is no one in the family able to carry out the job, and no money to hire someone else to do it.

Catherine, 13, shares this bedroom with her two aunts and her younger sister, Bernadette, who is nine. Plastic bags draped over hooks in the walls hold their clothes. Pushed against one wall is a single twin bed. The girls are getting bigger now, and that bed is growing more crowded. Often times one of them sleeps on a tarp on the hut's dirt floor, and rashes will frequently appear on her arms and legs the next day as a result. 

Perched on the edge of the bed, Catherine carefully opens the Bible to read her favorite verses out loud for a visitor. Her voice sounds strong, declarative and full of faith. The words flow easily from her even though English is her second language.

The passage she reads comes from Psalm 27.

The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

Such faith might seem contradictory to the realities of Catherine's life. For the past four years, she has lived in Kampansoma, a village about 30 miles outside Zambia's capital, Lusaka. Catherine, Bernadette, and their two brothers, 15-year-old Lucas and 12-year-old John, came to live with their grandmother after both of their parents died as a result of AIDS. Theirs is a generation of orphans. More than 700,000 children in Zambia have been orphaned because of AIDS.

In many ways, Catherine's life tells the story of development in Zambia, both the progress that has been made and the challenges that still persist. Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters calls for more and better development assistance to countries like Zambia. Because these places are so far away from our own families and communities in the United States, it's easy to lose sight of who is actually helped by that assistance. In Catherine's case, it's a girl whose dreams tend toward the practical rather than the fantastic.

When she grows up, she wants to be an accountant.

A Grandmother's Worries

"Zambia is a very rich country, with very poor people," says retired Roman Catholic Archbishop M. J.  Mazombwe of Lusaka.

Its riches have been a mixed blessing at best, and sometimes have impeded progress. Zambia's Copperbelt Region produces its major export. In the mid-1970s, the price of copper took a sharp downward turn worldwide. Zambia was forced to borrow money from foreign governments and international lenders such as the World Bank. By the mid-1990s, Zambia's debt was one of the highest in the world. Saddled with these repayments, the government had few resources to invest in education, health care, and to improve facilities like roads so farmers could sell their crops at markets. 

Even though some of these conditions have improved, poverty remains an intractable problem: 64 percent of Zambia's population lives on less than $1 a day per person. Catherine's family is counted among that number.

Her grandmother, now 53 years old and also named Catherine, has been a widow since 1992. She has raised eight children and grandchildren on her own, managing to put four of them through secondary school to Grade 12. Now she has Catherine and her siblings to bring up.

Like the majority of Zambians, Grandmother Catherine is a farmer, raising maize and peanuts. She works her fields every day; everything must be done by hand. Irrigation means carrying buckets of water up from a river that has dwindled to creek-size in this, the dry season.

To feed her family, she grinds the maize into a porridge-like dish, nshima, which is the staple food in Zambia. It's solid and filling, though not especially nutritious. Recent harvests have been decent and Grandmother Catherine was able to sell two bags of maize, receiving about $1.60 for them. She could then buy beans and kapenta (dried fish) for protein.

"Bone-building food," her granddaughter calls it. 

Grandmother Catherine has stored away what food she could to feed her family during "the hungry months." By December, family members will be down to eating one meal a day, and sometimes she herself will go hungry so the children can eat.

She supplements the family's income by sewing tablecloths that she sells in the community. It never brings in very much money. If she had access to better farm implements—more tools to work the field, an irrigation pump, more seeds to plant—she might feel secure in providing for her grandchildren. But for now, she just doesn't know what will happen.

She does know that this is not the life she envisions for them. 

"These children are young, and I'm getting old," she frets. "Who will look after them? Who will feed them? Who will put them through school? I wish I knew they would make it through school."

A tired smile drifts across her face and she cups one strong, worn hand in the other. The dry season's dust that coats everything clings to her thin legs. As she holds her head up, she squints from the noonday sun. 

Schooldays at Chalimbana

"I will finish school." 

Her grandmother may worry, but Catherine allows no room for doubt.

When she is thinking of an answer to a question, Catherine will tap one index finger against her lips. After she has gathered her thoughts, she smiles before she responds, a smile that begins at her eyes before it envelops her entire face. It is a smile that easily elicits one in return.

Catherine has a plan.

"I'm good in mathematics, so I'm going to be an accountant. Then I can take care of my grandmother, my sister and my brothers."

Catherine is fortunate to be able to attend school. Worldwide, 55 million girls are not in school. That's why one of the eight Millennium Development Goals emphasizes primary education, especially for girls. Four years ago, in part with funds saved from debt relief initiatives, Zambia was able to institute free primary schooling for all children. But parents or families must still pay for uniforms and books, an amount beyond the reach of many families.

And they must allow their girls to go.

The "girl-child," as girls are called in many parts of Africa, has responsibilities at home that often impede her opportunity to get an education. It is usually the girl's job to bring water back to the home from the nearest water source. For many girls, this means walking one hour or more, each way, to fill buckets with water for the family to use to drink, cook, and clean (themselves, their dishes and clothing). She must do this every single day.

Catherine is very lucky in this regard. A borehole—a pump attached to a clean, safe water supply deep in the earth—has been installed near her home. She and Bernadette also gather the water every day, but it is only a 10-minute walk each way for them. They balance the large buckets on their small heads. Nine-year-old Bernadette can do this while wearing wedge heel sandals, without spilling a drop. So this responsibility does not interfere with their classes and these girls can go to school. 

They leave their home around 6 a.m. every morning, Catherine making sure that Bernadette does not dawdle. After an hour of walking, they reach Chalimbana Public School, which serves 1,732 students in grades 1 through 9.

School may be free, but teachers are in short supply. There are 64 students to one teacher in Catherine's Grade 7 class. Overcrowding is even greater for the younger grades. In Bernadette's Grade 3 class, one teacher handles 85 students.  Kids sit four to a desk, sharing one book in a stuffy classroom.

"Teachers are trained, but schools like ours don't have the money to pay them," says Chalimbana's headmaster, Joseph Longwani.  He knows the family stories of many of his students, stopping to ask one girl, 12-year-old Samantha, how her grandmother is doing.

"She's an AIDS orphan. She lost her parents at age seven. More than 50 percent of our students are orphans. Some have lost one parent. Most have lost both of them."

Mr. Longwani, the teachers and staff at Chalimbana try to do what they can for their students. Health care workers visit to distribute anti-malarial and de-worming medication and iron pills, and to administer vaccinations. But the school's basic facilities cannot meet all the needs of the children.

"See that cistern?" Mr. Longwani points to a large holding container situated high on a tower at the edge of the school. It leaks precious water.

"We get our water from a nearby college [secondary school]. We only have access to it for one hour in the morning. It's gone by the time the afternoon students arrive. Then they will have nothing to drink, nothing to flush the toilets with. And some days it doesn't work at all."

For all his efforts, Mr. Longwani knows his students face many battles. Like any educator, he wants them to lead his country into the future. But these students have yet to catch up to present times.

"The world is changing. Our children don't know what a computer looks like. Some of our teachers have never worked on a computer. Even once we've educated them, these children will be starting over again from scratch when they leave us, if they're even lucky enough to go on for more schooling."

He is working to catch them up. He shows off a locked, newly constructed shed. Long shelves are built into the perimeters of the classroom. There are electrical outlets (not yet live) every few feet. Mr. Longwani is trying to secure used computers from donors in England. They have collected nine so far, and he's hoping that British Airways can be persuaded to ship them to Lusaka for free. Right now, with its layer of sawdust and the darkened overhead lights, the room looks like an empty promise.

Grade 7 is a turning point for young girls all over the world, and especially for Catherine. This is the final year that she will have no school fees. If her grandmother can find the money, Catherine can continue at Chalimbana until she completes Grade 9. After that, things look even more uncertain.

While there are 67 primary schools in the Chongwe district, there is only one secondary school. Each year, students must compete for only 70 spots to enter Grade 10. Most do not even attempt the task.

But Catherine believes it will be different for her. She has her plan, and that accounting career ahead of her. So every day, she walks an hour back home with Bernadette. They bring in the water, and then Catherine prepares dinner for her family. After they eat together, sitting outside her grandmother's hut on a straw mat, Catherine retreats to the hut she shares with Bernadette and the aunts, to do her homework by candlelight, when there is money to buy candles. The firelight flickers off her face, her brow scrunched in concentration, one finger tapping against her lips.  

Why Development Assistance Matters

So how has development assistance from the United States made life better for Catherine and her family so far? The funds helped to drill that borehole, so Catherine and Bernadette have only a 10-minute walk to safe water. They can now attend school for free because Zambia has received debt relief, for which Bread for the World members have been particularly strong advocates in the past 10 years. The children at Chalimbana are receiving anti-malarial medication in a country where malaria is the number one killer of children under the age of five.

These are blessings, as Catherine and her grandmother know well.

And yet…

The family will soon be eating one meal a day. Catherine and Bernadette, and most of their classmates, will try to study as their empty stomachs rumble. Mr. Longwani will pray that those computers will one day make the 5,000 mile trek from England to Zambia. He will hope that some of his students are admitted to secondary school, and find the funds to attend. Catherine hopes so, too.

To develop a country like Zambia in a sustainable way is to create a web of assistance and opportunities that bolsters the determination and dreams of its people. If Grandmother Catherine can get an irrigation pump and more seeds, then Catherine and Bernadette will be well fed and able to concentrate on their schoolwork. If Mr. Longwani can provide computers, Catherine can learn how to work on them. She may do so well that she will secure one of the coveted slots at Chongwe secondary school. If further debt relief is granted to Zambia, secondary school fees could be eliminated. Where might Catherine's life lead from there? 

Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters is asking our leaders in the United States to create a better web with our development assistance programs, one that most effectively reaches people in greatest need and helps countries like Zambia meet the Millennium Development Goals. With so much yet to do, more funding for poverty-focused development assistance is critical. But this funding also must be better coordinated. On a fundamental level, none of Catherine's dreams might come true if her grandmother is not able to grow enough food to feed the family. And there are millions of Catherines across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. 

A 13-year-old orphaned girl in a rural village in Zambia can open her Bible and proclaim her faith in the Lord as her stronghold. Surely we who are blessed to live in the richest country on earth can speak out to our nation's leaders and ask them to help Catherine—and so many children like her—discover what her future holds.