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.
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Grandmother Catherine sews linens to sell for extra income.
photo by Margaret W. Nea |
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.
Catherine's story continues with: Schooldays at Chalimbana
