Day 133 - The Site

This morning the group got up early to get out to the building site to see the progress of the project and start our work on the buildings. The orphanage is about a mile from the Hope Ministries Studio/office so the walk takes you through the main street of Serenje and the market where the locals are selling clothing and food items. You can look out into the distance in any direction to see mountains and watch the clouds roll in the sky for miles. (well they are much smaller than the Rockies, but bigger than Minnesota ski hills). The walk down the gravel road to the site it is really surreal. (pictures below from December that show the site before the buildings were constructed)

The orphanage is on a gorgeous piece of property that the church acquired from the city (Note: All property here is owned by the government, but the Zambians can get a 99 year lease on the property. One stipulation is that they have to start building on it within 18 months of acquired the land or it turns back over to the government. There are many partially finished buildings around the town, because no one has the money to complete a whole building but they do not want to lose the land.) There are 5 buildings on the site right now with plans in the future to add more. The multi – purpose building is the main building has 2 classrooms for teaching, an office, and an indoor and outdoor cooking area, that surround a large open air room in the middle where they can feed up to 200 children and provide a space to hold activities when they are not in school. There is also a bathhouse, a large workshop, a small tool shed (where 5 or 6 of the workers sleep on empty cement bags during the week, because they have to travel so far from the bush to work during the week), and a guesthouse complete with a small living room/kitchen, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms. On the outskirts of the buildings are a small field of maze and a vegetable garden. The goal is to have a self sustaining farm to feed the children, so they have hired a full time farmer to care for the crops. (Note: The Serenje City Counsel has not been completely supportive of this projective. I think they get a lot of NGO’s coming into town to do “goodwill” projects, so when they were approached by the church it was just another group trying to make a difference. However, the counsel members came out to tour the site on Thursday and they were so impressed by the craftsmanship and the success of the project that they gave the church 7 more acres of land to the Southwest to expand the crops.)
I just stood in awww when I arrived, because I have been following the project since it was just a piece of land with tall grass and now they are the nicest buildings in town. It is neat to see how much has been accomplished in the past 4 months here, especially with all the difficulties finding good workers, training them, and getting supplies to complete the project (they have to do weekly runs to Lusaka to get all the supplies). (tl: guesthouse, tr: workshop/garage, bl: bath house, br: multi purpose building, bottom a panaramic view of the buildings. The bath house is not visable, but is right behind the multi purpose building)

This morning we also got to meet Pastor Navice, his wife, Ketty, and youngest son Kaleb (one of their 10 children) for the first time, and hear their testimony about faith and the project. 10 years ago Navice started praying that he would one day be able to open an orphanage in Serenje, so to meet Mark, Jeff, and Zack was truly a miracle to him. He moved his whole family from their small bush community about 40km outside of Serenje to help with the project. He is so humbled and thankful for the work and the impact this will have on their church and the community. This man is truly a man of God and it just brought tears to my eyes to meet him. He has tried to do so much for his community where death and poverty are a daily occurrence.
We began work right away after we spoke with Navice. There was a group of guys who started building a roof on the guesthouse and a couple of us who started putting up ceiling boards in the bathhouse. We worked until mid afternoon and then headed to Navice’s church in Serenje where we helped with the monthly food distribution to the 40 orphans that the church supports. The children came with their caregivers to pick up a 50 kg bag of corn and small bag of dried fish. Some of the children could speak a little English, but most of the younger children had not attended enough schooling to communicate. We did find that they LOVED having their pictures taken and seeing images of themselves. It was a lot of fun to meet them and see how excited they were to receive the food. Most of these caregivers have 4 – 10 children of their own that they are also supporting, so it is a relief to have some food on the table for these children.