Catherine's Story
|
Catherine does her homework by candlelight.
photo by Margaret W. Nea |
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 nails 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.
Catherine's story continues with: A Grandmother's Worries
