Revisiting Zambia
It was great that so many of our Members were able to join us on Mon 8 Jul at our Club Meeting to hear Gill Clegg’s first hand account of her most recent trip to Zambia. You can click here to read about when Gill gave us a presentation on Zoom in 2023 about her time working in Zambia in 2019: https://sigbi.org/st-albans/zambia
In November 2023 Gill and her husband Jon revisited Katete in the Eastern Province of Zambia. Gill showed us printed and laminated photos to pass round at our Club meeting, which brought the stories she was telling to life. It was a lively interactive session with Club Members asking Gill lots of questions about every photo, and Gill answering warmly and openly. Gill started by using maps to show us where Watete in Zambia is. Zambia is a large land-locked African country, bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. Katete is in the East of Zambia, on the Great East Road, 50 km from the Mozambique border.
Gill was keen to see how the projects that she had started in 2018-19 were doing as well as meeting Benson and Samuel 
who had helped and supported her and many of the village women.
She was pleased to see that the chicken house that had been funded and built on Gill’s last visit was still standing and until recently had been supplying a steady income for the group of women affectionately known as the “Rock Ladies” as their other source of income was digging out and breaking rocks for hardcore to sell by the roadside. This is very slow, physical work and not without risk. There is a video of the ladies below – 
Gill says they burst into song and dance at every opportunity. Unfortunately, the last set of chickens had died probably due to a virus. With the Club’s donation they bought 100 day 
old chicks, feed and antibiotics for this group of village women to help restart the business. The chicks had to be ordered in Katete, then transported several hours from Lusaka and collected at 7am in the morning. The picture of Gill holding a box with a chicken in it is from her last visit. They presented it to her as a thank you gift. This shows how precious the chicken business is for them.
They also helped start a market stall business for a group of women by buying dried fish, caterpillars and beans, which they sold on the side of the Mozambique road.
Since the last visit the concept of micro-financing seems to have reached the villagers. However getting it off the ground has proved very difficult when you have little money. They helped several groups of village women (who all knew and trusted each other) kick start their micro-financing business (village banking) to borrow to enable them to sell produce in the market e.g. fruit and vegetable , chickens for egg laying.
Since they were in Katete five years ago, school fees have been stopped. However, children cannot go to school unless they have a school uniform. They took children to buy uniforms including shoes so they could start school. This wasn’t always easy in 40c heat and trying on shoes with children who normally didn’t wear any. One of the photos here is of a boy who was very ill with a kidney stone when Gill last visited – now he is healthy and goes to school.
November is a difficult time for food as the maize planting begins around Christmas time when the rains hopefully arrived, so they bought over 60 x 25kg bags of milled maize to help tide people over as supplies were running low.
After two weeks in Katete Gill and her husband Jon had a holiday in the game park South Luangwa, a three hour drive away, which they have visited in past and would thoroughly recommend. They stayed in a lodge and went out on jeeps to see the amazing animals there. The local village Mfuwe, although still very poor 
does benefit from the jobs that the lodges create, whereas Katete has no tourists. Unlike Katete, Mfuwe has a couple of very nice shops, one of which is Project Luangwa. This is a craft shop, which has been supporting education, funded by some of the lodges. They have also launched a campaign to support teenage girls’ education by producing reusable sanitary wear so that girls don’t miss school. These are stitched by groups of women employed by Project Luangwa. The idea is that tourists can purchase them and leave them with the shop to be distributed to the local girls. Gill purchased several packs of these with the Club’s donation. It is estimated that girls miss out on 25% of their schooling (those lucky enough to go) because of stigma and practical issues around menstruation.
Gill and Jon hope to go back to Katete in the future. They have decided to fund ongoing projects with the help of the two local men, Benson and Samuel. They helped Gill greatly when she was working mainly on her own five years ago and they continue to work with Gill to help their local community.
Gill ended by thanking the Soroptimist St Albans and District group for their kind donation last year which has improved the lives of many women and families in Zambia.
Gill emphasised how happy the people were – breaking into song and dance at every opportunity – just click on the video below to see and hear the “rock ladies” breaking rocks:
You can also click here to read about when Gill last spoke to the Club about her projects there sigbi.org/st-albans/zambia/.