Spark Ventures

Never a Dull Flight

2012-01-24T00:33:00.002-06:00

I'm now in the British Airways lounge at London Heathrow after two flights that took me from Livingstone to Johannesburg and now to London. I've just got one more flight before I'm home to San Francisco, and I'm looking forward to resting up after a busy few weeks!

Normally I manage to sleep through all my flights, but I was awake for the first half of my trip from Johannesburg to London, so I managed to watch the four available episodes of the second season on Downton Abbey, which brought a nice dose of British scandal and drama to my flight. :)

As I was waiting to use the restroom on the flight, an adorable old British woman started up a conversation with me that started with an observation about the person who was using the restroom at the time: "Whizzing sure seems to take a long time when you're waiting!" Haha...it was quite the shocking moment for me, and the absurdity of it keeps making me think that I must have misheard her. Nonetheless, it was a priceless moment and exactly the kind of surprising humor that lightens up a 12-hour flight!

So I'm resting up for a few hours before I take my final flight, and I'm looking forward to seeing what characters I meet on this one. Thanks again for following our journey, and we're excited to share more about our work and travel in the coming months!

Fish Eyes and Other Animals

2012-01-22T23:29:00.002-06:00

We've had a truly lovely two days in Livingstone. Yesterday, after a magical trip to see Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, we arrived back at the hotel for a calm dinner at the hotel.

Scott ordered the bream, and as is common here, he was brought the entire fish from head to tail. I shared how many Chinese families serve fish the same way and how when I was a child my sister and I used to fight over the fish eyeballs. This naturally led to me being dared to eat Scott's fish eyeballs as Jamie and Scott squirmed. :)

We rested a bit, and with an early morning we were off to Botswana for a day-long safari. No matter how often I come on these safaris, I am always in awe of everything we see. We were a mere few feet away from crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, babboons, hippos, meerkats and warthogs (not to mention a few giant dung beetles fighting over a piece of dung!). It was a beautiful day, and we relished our final dinner before we all go our separate ways today.

I will be headed home after nearly three weeks since I left. Jamie has an exciting two-week safari planned that will take her from Zambia through Botswana and Namibia into South Africa (how exciting!). Scott will return to Lusaka to work with Hope on the continued strategy and reporting of the farm. And Mama Agatha will return to the kids at Hope House, who have no doubt missed her over the last few days.

I will try to blog again through my journey home, but in the meantime, I'll say thank you for following the blog! It's been fun sharing the joyful, sad and ridiculous stories from the past three weeks!

Two Fun Stories

2012-01-21T12:47:00.002-06:00

It’s been an action packed few days, and we’re now in Livingstone after a short trip to Lusaka to see the farm. I’m excited to share two of the best stories from the past couple days!

It turns out you can buy absolutely anything from your car while waiting in traffic in Lusaka. At first, while waiting in the interminable traffic, I was surprised to find young men selling car seat covers, walking from car to car showing off their wares. Then I was amazed when one young man walked by holding a pair of shorts, apparently for sale to the kind of driver who doesn’t mind not trying clothes on before purchase. But that did not compare to the utter shock I experienced when one gentleman walked by holding a PUPPY for sale! I suppose one man’s street is another man’s mall. :)

We took some of the Hope staff, including farm manager Mr. Tembo, to dinner on Friday. After being picked up from our hotel, we drove through Lusaka to pick up board chairman Roy Kaonga. As we stepped into the car, we noticed an odd smell, but we ignored it as best we could. I noticed Mama Agatha turn around in her chair to look in the trunk, and suddenly she said, “Oh! There are chickens!” Sure enough, we turn around and see ten of Hope’s chickens silently waiting in the back to be delivered to Roy, who purchased them earlier in the day. Good to know: Hope offers delivery service!

Goodbyes in Ndola

2012-01-19T13:23:00.002-06:00

Today was a bittersweet day as we said goodbye to the staff and students at Hope Ministries in Ndola. Tomorrow morning we'll drive to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, to see the poultry farm that Spark helped to launch in May 2011 and that has already started to help fund Hope Ministries' child programs.

I'm particularly excited about visiting the farm after having visited the building that Hope used to rent as a school building before Spark helped to build the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse. When we came upon the school yesterday, we saw that there was another school in session.

Two teachers were juggling seven grades with a total of 130 students in two classrooms. When founded only a year ago, the school had received its funding from a wealthy Zambian donor. The donor pulled the support just a few months into the project, and how the school is struggling to survive.

I had heard of this school from Hope earlier, and seeing it for myself immediately made me think of just how important the farm will be to Hope's long-term strength, empowerment and success. I'm looking forward to sharing with our investors our vision for how local businesses can sustain social impact for children around the world.

Wish us luck and good weather for our five-hour drive! :)

Surprises Are the Best Part.

2012-01-17T09:03:00.002-06:00

After a rather structured morning that took us around Ndola to see and learn about the effects of colonialism, slavery and HIV/AIDS, Jamie, one of our trip participants, and I were certainly feeling a bit weighed down.

I find that it's precisely in these moments when Zambia finds a way to show us its beauty and joy.

We had lunch with the kids at the school, waiting in line the way they do every day in the hot sun for the free meal at Hope, which for many of them is the only hot, nutritious meal they get each day.

Afterwards, Jamie's sponsored child, Jane, spontaneously suggested that we go for a walk through the neighborhood. Little did we know that she wanted to take us to her house so that we could meet her family. Despite our not having given any notice of our arrival, we were welcomed into the modest cement home, which houses seven people in two bedrooms.

Jane's parents were incredibly gracious and conversed with us happily while the rest of the group of 20 or so schoolkids who had followed us horsed around. Shortly, after warm smiles and a bit of conversation, we said our goodbyes and walked back to the school.

To me, it's these moments of unexpected meetings and hospitality that make me love Zambia and relish my time here. It's been a beautiful day in every way, and I'm excited for our next two days in Ndola!

Best Quote So Far

2012-01-15T09:28:00.003-06:00

Margaret, who used to be the manager of a major bank, is the deputy director of Hope Ministries. She is also a tall and wonderfully hilarious woman who has consistently had the best one-liners on every single trip I've taken here.

Half the time I feel like she doesn't even intend to be funny, but somehow, in talking about everything from Zambians' extraordinary skills at throwing rocks to the much more mundane topics of daily conversation, she never fails to say things that I will never forget.

Today, it happened while we were driving. It's the rainy season here in Zambia, which means most days there's at least one huge 20-minute downpour that soaks absolutely everything. This includes the dirt roads that we spend most of our time driving on. The rain plus the lack of upkeep on the roads means there are about a zillion potholes in every short stretch of road.

Drivers here usually meander across boths sides of the street on such roads, avoiding potholes and seriously testing the shocks on their cars. We faced a few doozies today, and Margaret casually mentioned that in Zambia you absolutely have to drive weaving from side to side like this. Then, she deadpanned, "Here, if you drive straight, it means you're drunk!"

Somehow after four trips and a cumulative three months in this country, I am still tickled and shocked by lessons like this. Alas, great lesson. Noted for the future. :)

Rowdy Kids, Bright Futures

2012-01-14T09:25:00.002-06:00

Although in Zambia education is supposedly free from Grades 1-9, costs for school fees, uniforms, books and supplies add up to the point that many students cannot afford to complete even this level of basic education.

To ensure that Hope's Grade 7 graduates (who have performed above the national average two years in a row!) are able to continue their education, Hope gives scholarships to its graduates to continue their education at local government schools. I was lucky enough to sit with these students this afternoon.

It was a rowdy scene (naturally, given that we had about thirty teenagers in a room on a Saturday afternoon), but truly inspiring. The students were invested in their education, asking questions about what kind of support they might get and what support they should work to find on their own.

I'm excited to see how these students continue to represent Hope, Spark and our successes for years to come!

Change!

2012-01-12T08:52:00.002-06:00

I love when I get to provide training workshops to Hope staff during my trips here. It's always fun and educational both for me and (hopefully!) for the staff as well.

Today I gave a workshop on managing change that was an absolute blast. I've found it's usually most helpful to include some sort of exercise, game or competition during the trainings that helps illustrate the issues being discussed. So I had the staff break up into teams and use a single sheet of paper and a single piece of tape to put together some sort of device that would hold up as many books as possible.

I told them they had four minutes, but half way through, I stopped them and had the half of each group switch to another team. There was quite a lot of mayhem, but in the end we crowned a winner and got to discuss (generally and using the exercise as a specific example) how change is only good or bad based on how you choose to adapt to it, which the Hope leadership thought would be a timely lesson given Hope's steady growth and success.

It was a blast watching all the staff members scramble and argue and laugh over the exercise. I even got so caught up in the training I forgot to take any pictures, so you'll just have to believe me that it was a riot! As always after giving a training here, I am incredibly energized and feel encouraged that the work we're doing is supporting the development of leaders who will help change the community. Yay, change! :)

Best Budget Meeting Ever.

2012-01-11T08:32:00.002-06:00

Is it odd to say that 2.5 hour budget meeting this morning made my day?! :)

I got to spend the bulk of the morning with Charles and Margaret to work on solidifying Hope's 2012 monthly budget. Going line by line with everything from textbooks to Grade 7 exam fees, we hammered out a tight budget that will allow Hope to continue to provide all of their valuable services to the children at Hope Community School and Hope House.

While spreadsheets and accounting and budgeting are not sexy, they are the backbone of organizations around the world like Hope and Spark, enabling them to produce life-changing results for communities around the world.

For example, we recently learned that all 21 Grade 7 students from the last school year (which runs from January to December) passed the national exam that allows them entry into Grade 8. (Hope serves Grades 1-7, so after that students must go to government schools, which often have fees and uniform/shoes requirements that can be expensive.

That's a 100% pass rate compared to the national average of 90%. It's an incredible feat, especially when considering the impoverished circumstances of many of Hope's students. How is it not exciting to spend the morning pinching pennies to make sure that these students will be able to be supported to continue their education in Grade 8 and beyond?!

So, after another long and joyful day, I'm signing off. (Here's hoping I won't wake up at 3AM tonight like I have been for the three nights! Not sure why jet lag is trying so hard to knock me out on this trip!)

Kids Do the Most Amazing Things.

2012-01-10T08:50:00.012-06:00

I love seeing ingenuity anywhere, but somehow when it comes from kids, it always seems extra amazing.

This morning, the son in my host family, Nkhongono, showed me an incredible and resourceful game he and Jeff, one of the children at Hope House, made over the weekend.

They found bottles caps of different sizes, and made a label for each one with the name and jersey number of various famous soccer players. (They even chose caps that roughly match the build of the players!)

They made goals out of old mesh and bits of wire, and chose a little acorn-like nut from a local tree to serve as the ball. They then flicked the bottle caps toward the nut, trying to eventually get it into the goal.

In moments like this, when the kids bring together resourcefulness, innovation and what can only be a true love of life, I have no doubt that this generation of Zambians will change the world!

Heartbreak vs. Inspiration

2012-01-10T08:49:00.001-06:00

One of my favorite things to do when I come to Zambia is to record what we call Transformation Stories. These are stories of children in incredible and challenging circumstances who are steadily transforming their lives through education and the support of Hope Ministries.

Today, Pastor Judy and I walked through Twapia, where the school is located, and we visited the home of Paul, a smart and diligent student whose mother has been in prison for three years. He lives with his six siblings and his uncle, who often leaves the children alone because he has to leave town to find work. On his most recent trip out of town, he had to rush back because Paul’s brother David came down with malaria, from which David was still visibly ill when we visited their home.

To imagine these children’s lives can be heartbreaking, and for me it often is. But in my best moments I fight the instinct to feel pity or pain and instead feel inspired to find ways to enable communities like Twapia to provide children like Paul and David with the education, healthcare and nutrition they need to become their very best selves. Here’s hoping that this trip will be one more step toward solutions like that!

Reunions and an Interesting Cultural Lesson

2012-01-09T02:43:00.001-06:00

It’s been a morning of reunions here at the Hope Ministries office. It is always fun to see and reconnect with the wonderful Hope staff members like Pastor Judy, Ba Margaret and Mama Agatha as well as meet the newest staff members, including Thelma and Phoebe, who work in the Hope office.

Mama Agatha is one of the house mothers at Hope House, and she is a lively and energetic woman who always gives me some of my best stories each time I visit. She did not disappoint this morning when, as soon as I walked in the office door she said, “You look fat!” with a warm and generous smile.

Funnily enough, Charles had just detailed to me yesterday how in Zambia, it is considered a very good thing to be fat, or plump at the very least. It demonstrates that you are well cared for and have enough money to stay well fed, so I happily joked around for a while about my plumpness. (Still, you can imagine that I won't be wearing this outfit again!) :)

Another day, another lesson in cultural similarities and differences!

Joann vs. Jet Lag

2012-01-08T13:04:00.004-06:00

For most people I know, jet lag means waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. For me, jet lag normally means sleeping twice as much as usual, which has made the past day here a bit ridiculous.

After the trip to the internet cafe yesterday, I went back to the lodge with every intention of getting some dinner at the lodge's restaurant before getting to bed. Instead, I fell asleep at 7PM, and other than waking up briefly at midnight and for about an hour at 3AM, I slept through to 8AM. Absurd, yes. But it gets worse...

After packing up this morning after my long night's sleep, I joined Charles, Rodgers (one of Hope's multi-talented staff) and Ruth (the new farm accountant) for a drive to Ndola (where Hope's school and orphanage are located). During the 4-5 hour drive that started at 10AM, I would say I slept about 3-4 hours. (This directly after having about a 12 hours of sleep overnight.) I can't tell if this means I'm winning or losing at jet lag. :)

Unsurprisingly, I was awake enough upon my arrival to help my wonderful host family, the Mulandos, prepare a lovely Zambian dinner and catch up a bit. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, which should be a much more productive day in the office, and here's hoping the worst of the jet lag is over!

New Year, New Trip!

2012-01-07T08:04:00.003-06:00

Hello Spark friends! It is so exciting to start 2012 off with a trip to Zambia! After leaving the US on Thursday evening, I arrived in Zambia this morning and had a smooth and (relatively) restful trip. It feels great to be back in Lusaka, and I have a good feeling that this will be a smooth, calm and productive trip.

I was thrilled on this trip over that I only had to take two flights (as opposed to the usual 3-4 flights) to get here. I lost faith for a little bit when my first flight was delayed by three hours, which gave me bad memories of my last crazy trip over here, but my two flights both ended up being as smooth and comfortable as I could hope for.

[Side note: If anyone ever gets the chance to visit the British Airways lounge at the San Francisco International Airport, you absolutely should! They made ice cream sundaes for everyone...amazing!]

Once I arrived, I was greeted by the talented and visionary executive director of Hope Ministries, Charles Mumba, who was nice enough to wake up early to pick me up from the airport at 6AM. It's always so great to catch up with the staff here in person, and I got to hear all about Hope and the staff as well as how the country has changed since the recent inauguration of its new president, Michael Sata.

Our first stop was to a local grocery store where I could get some bottled water. In a moment that was simultaneously shocking and unsurprising, Adele's "Someone Like You" came on as soon as we stepped into the store. As much as Zambia seems far away (which it certainly does after being in the air for over 24 hours to get here!), I am always elated and comforted by the moments when I realize just how small the world is.

A much-needed shower, a two-hour nap and a quick snack recharged me for the remainder of the day, and Charles and I headed to the poultry farm, which is already helping Hope to move toward financial sustainability. I got a tour of some recent construction, and Mr. Tembo, Hope's utterly marvelous farm manager, shared some recent challenges and successes. It was great to hear how the farm and the organization have progressed in just the six months since I was here last.

After mingling with the chickens a bit, it was on to the exciting part...accounting! I got to meet Hope's new accounting clerk,Ruth, and sales clerk, Emily, and we had the fun task of going through the books and learning a bit more about how the Hope staff in Lusaka keep track of every chicken, bag of feed and kwacha (the Zambian currency) that comes through the farm gates.

The rest of my evening I have no doubt will be sacrificed to jet lag, so I will sign off for now. I'm looking forward to updating you all on the progress, interesting stories and funny exchanges that are in store this week!

- Joann Chen, Spark Ventures Program Director

New Shoes at Hope School!

2011-12-27T14:09:00.000-06:00

Although the school year has ended for the students at Hope Community School in Zambia, the children were eager to return to their school during their December break for a very special event - to hear their test scores for the year. This event is very special to the children of Hope Community School, as those that do well in their courses are rewarded for their efforts in an incentives program designed by the local teachers and staff.

The rewards were based on the following categories in order to give students of all skill levels the opportunity to earn a reward:

-Best academic performance
-Regular attendance
-Most disciplined

Because of supporters like you, Hope had the joy of rewarding some of its most dedicated students with the gift of a new pair of shoes for their high year-end test scores! Although it’s something most of us take for granted, the gift of new shoes is a very special treat for these children, like Alex (age 11), pictured below. Alex has lost both parents and was found selling kerosene in the market to help raise money to pay for food for his family. He is now a student at Spark’s partner school, where he receives a daily meal, free education and semi-annual health check-ups and treatment.

The gift of shoes is something that is treasured by children like Alex, and it’s a gift that we are thrilled to be able to provide with your support. In addition to shoes, Hope Community School students like Alex also receive daily nutritious meals, and you can help provide three months of meals for one of these children for only $25 through Spark’s Meals4Hope program. Consider sharing your holiday giving with the children of Spark!

Happy Holidays to you and yours from the Spark family!

Two Days, 253 Children

2011-11-22T16:57:00.005-06:00

The lack of health care for children in Zambia is one of the most difficult challenges this country faces. For that reason, we help to facilitate a clinic twice per year for all students and staff at the Hope School. This November was the first time that Hope Ministries ran the clinic without the support of nursing students from North Park University, yet they still managed to see over 250 children over two days time!

A child from the Hope School talking to a nurse

Children checking into the clinic

Achievements/Successes:

All the children were available were screened and supplied with tooth brushes and all minor ailments treated.
Generally all the children looked healthy.
There was team work and good organization.
There were enough logistics in terms of drugs and equipment.
All the children were de-wormed.
The children were educated on proper oral and general hygiene.

A nurse teaching the children about oral health care

Common Ailments/Diseases Treated:

Diarrhea and abdominal pains due contaminated drinking water from shallow wells in the compounds.
Ring worms on the scalp and other worm infestations.
Poor oral hygiene/rotten teeth for a few children.
About 36 children were found to be malaria positive.
Upper respiratory tract infection – Most children came with the complaint of coughing and sneezing and headache.

The wonderful staff members that spearheaded the clinic

The success of this clinic was a big win for Hope Ministries and its sustainability/independence. With your support, Spark helped to fund this clinic, but we hope eventually that the profits from the poultry farm will be able to sustain the clinic and Hope Ministries’ other programs.

Interview with a Philanthropist: Rich Johnson

2011-10-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

Working in the non-profit world, we have the opportunity to meet so many inspiring individuals. Hearing their stories inspired us to start a new blog series, "Interview with a Philanthropist". Our first interview? None other than our very own Rich Johnson!

Prior to starting Spark Ventures, you worked as an Administrator at North Park University. Did you ever think that one day you'd be running a non-profit and doing work in Zambia?

RJ: Part of my work at the university was overseeing international volunteer opportunities for students. And I did travel with students to Mexico and Africa. But if you had told me 10 years ago that I would be doing something like this I might have laughed.

As the story goes, Spark Ventures grew out of an experience you, Scott Barbeau and Dan Marcus had volunteering in Africa. What was your "a-ha" moment?

RJ: In the summer of 2006, the three of us traveled to Zambia to volunteer with Hope Ministries, a local organization with a community school and orphanage. HIV/AIDS and the extreme poverty had left so many children helpless and we were trying to figure out what we could do. In a conversation with the Charles, the leader of Hope Ministries, I asked him what they needed most. He said, “We want to stand on our own two feet, so we leadership development and partners who will help us get there.” That was my a-ha moment. We returned to Chicago and began to form the strategy for Spark-to strengthen and sustain organizations like Hope Ministries.

Rich playing with a child from Hope Community School in Zambia

What was it about Zambia that drew you all in?

RJ: You often start a trip like this thinking you will be doing the giving, but the opposite happens. My experience has been that when I spend time with people living in poverty, I get more than I give. I get perspective, humility and I experience a profound joy-especially from the children-unlike anything I’ve known.

There are so many different projects that Spark Ventures manages in Zambia. Is there one in particular that is near and dear to your heart?

RJ: Well, Spark Fund is definitely one that I like to share with people. It's great because donors can vote on which projects they'd like to support. Spark Fund currently supports three great projects - Books, Books and More Books!, Clinic Construction and Supplies and the Poultry Farm.

What is the biggest change you've witnessed due to Spark Ventures' work?

RJ: Empowerment. I’ve seen a small group of Zambians who were struggling to help the children in their community, now become strong competent leaders. Their organization is now a beacon in the neighborhood and others are looking to them for guidance.

What's next for Spark Ventures?

RJ: Latin America! We are looking to add a second partnership and we have targeted Latin America so that we can test our strategy in a different part of the world. We are very early in the search, but you’ll be hearing a lot more about that in 2012.

If you're interested in learning more about Richard's work in Zambia through Spark Ventures, visit sparkventures.org, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

We Are Spark

2011-10-05T16:53:00.000-05:00

We can do more together than we can alone.

We are proud to announce our 4th Annual Fall Event, “We Are Spark”! You are invited to attend this unforgettable event on Friday, November 4th. Expect cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, live performances, inspiring video and plenty of great people!

Please join us at the Chicago Cultural Center from 7pm - 10pm in celebration of the amazing people and powerful impact that Spark Ventures has had thanks to people like you! We have prepared a very special evening, and are excited for you to see what we’ve accomplished and our future plans! The three founders, Rich Johnson, Scott Barbeau and Daniel Marcus, will be at the event, along with supporters and friends of Spark (including recent participants from the July volunteer trip to Zambia).

For the last four years we have engaged the Chicago community to help empower the world’s most vulnerable children, and we want to grow our community. By inviting your friends to the event, you can help us reach new volunteers, investors, and even participants for our upcoming January 2012 trip to Zambia. We look forward to not only having a great time, but to thanking you for your commitment and welcoming new supporters to the community. Proceeds from the event will go to expand Spark’s development work in Zambia and to launch a new partnership in Latin America that will soon be announced.

The Chicago Cultural Center is located at 78 E. Washington Avenue and tickets can be purchased in advance by calling 773-293-6710 or on the Spark website, where more information is available: www.sparkventures.org

“You must be the change you want to see in the world” - Ghandi

Beauty of Zambia, Comfort of Home

2011-07-27T11:36:00.000-05:00

We spent a beautiful final two days in Zambia, and we got to see the incredible Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The magnitude of this natural wonder was really beyond words. We were lucky to go on a beautiful and bright day, and we even saw a huge double rainbow from the mist of the falls.

We had a light dinner and an early night before heading to Botswana the next morning for our safari. After a 45-minute ride to the border and some customs formalities, we began our day with a water cruise safari. We saw crocodiles, lizards, elephants, hippos and the demonic-looking African darters (also known as snake birds). We even saw impala, water buffalo and baboons from afar!

After a short lunch, we started our land safari, in which we got even more up close and personal with the natural wonders of Botswana. For a while, we were just 5-10 feet from a large herd of elephants (close enough to consider stealing the adorable baby elephant being protected by the herd), and we even had one elephant chase after us for a little while, seemingly disappointed that we didn't want to keep looking at him. There were beautiful giraffes, mongooses, impalas and (my favorite) sable antelopes. We were sad to leave the Chobe National Part that afternoon, but we left Botswana to head back to the hotel, pack and get ready for our journey home. We had our final dinner together as a group, and it was an extra special dinner because we got to celebrate the birthday of one of our trip participants, Ross. Ba Margaret also took the chance to share some photos and stories about how Hope first started, and it was nice to have a moment to think about all that we'd seen over the past week and a half.

The morning started early for most of the group, and we headed to the airport around 7:30 in the morning. After four flights and nearly 1.5 days of travel, we made it back to Chicago safely. It was bittersweet coming home, as I think we'd all made or deepened connections with the children of Hope, the staff and the beautiful country of Zambia. Here's hoping we'll all be able to go back soon and see even more progress for the children.

Thanks to all of you who have followed the blog during our trip. We've loved sharing our experience with you, and we're looking forward to sharing many more journeys with you!

3000+ Chickens and a Vegetarian Farmer

2011-07-23T00:27:00.001-05:00

We started off early this morning for Lusaka, where the poultry farm that Hope Ministries started is located. The farm was launched with capital from Spark Ventures, and its profits will be reinvested in Hope's school and orphanage. It was a long drive, about five hours, but it was well worth it to see the result of nearly two years of planning, building and construction.

We had a brief pit stop at a fee-paying toilet and Hungry Lion, a fried chicken chain here that has possibly the most delicious fries ever, and we managed to make it to Lusaka in the early afternoon. We got a thorough tour from Charles and Mr. Tembo, the amazing farm manager who is so dedicated to his work with the chickens that he actually sleeps in a small, closed-off section of the chicken house while the chicks are growing. He even revealed that he himself is a vegetarian, which was not too surprising when you see how Mr. Tembo truly loves and cares for his brood.

It was so fortunate we came when we did because we got to see some full-grown chickens that are ready to head to market and the 3000 two-day-old chickens that just arrived yesterday for the next cycle. The Hope staff even had a small, informal dedication ceremony for the farm, and it felt wonderful to be a part of the start of what we hope will be something great that, as Charles said, "will last beyond each of us."

We then checked into our hotel and had a brief rest before going out to dinner with Hope's board of directors and some people who have been instrumental in the launch and success of the farm. It's now morning on Saturday, and we're getting ready to head to Livingstone for our visit to Victoria Falls. It will be sad to say goodbye to many of the Hope staff today, but we're excited for the final couple days of our trip and a chance to see the beauty of Zambia and Botswana!

A Tearful Goodbye to Ndola

2011-07-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

Our last day in Ndola started off with what I find to be the most powerful part of my trips here. The trip participants broke up into smaller groups, and each group walked with one of the Hope students to his/her home to learn more about his/her life. We visited the home of Akima, whom I've mentioned earlier in the blog, and we also visited Kainos and two brothers, Kondwelani and Ishuma. It's so easy to create a picture of what these kids' lives are like from our own understanding of Africa and poverty, but to see it first hand, both the good and the bad, is a moving and memorable experience.

I remember the first story I took like this on my first trip to Zambia in February 2010. It was about Steward, whom I've since sponsored and who was a quiet, serious and seemingly burdened student in Grade 5. I learned while speaking with him that he was the oldest of five siblings, the youngest of which was only six months old. He had to rush home from school everyday because no one was home to watch his youngest sister, Grace. This was in part because his stepfather was an unskilled laborer who had to go out every day to look for odd jobs and in part because his mother had committed suicide after finding out she was HIV positive.

This week, I've been able to read with Steward after school as part of our trip program, and I can't believe the change that's taken place since last year. Hope managed to find a social welfare service to help take care of Grace, so Steward can be the 14-year-old that he is rather than the adult he was forced to be before. He is reading better than I've ever seen him read, and he is more confident, seemingly better rested and overall seems healthier in mind and body. I know the trip's not over yet, but I have to say this is likely the highlight for me.

After experiencing the Transformation Stories, we went classroom to classroom to give brief motivational talks to encourage the students, despite the enormous obstacles they often face to getting educated, to stay in school and dream big. We then had some time to play with the kids at school before sharing some tearful goodbyes to the staff and students and head back to our lodge for an early night.

While I know we're all looking forward to seeing the poultry farm in Lusaka and the natural beauty of the region in Livingstone and Botswana, I have a feeling we'll all deeply miss having crowds of beautiful, animated, instantly friendly and hopeful kids around us every day. (I think we'll even miss having them follow us around saying "muzungu," the Bemba word for a white person, all day long!)

A Day about Progress

2011-07-21T00:21:00.000-05:00

Hi again all! Yesterday we had another day of beautiful weather, enthusiastic kids and new experiences. The main stop of the day was at Hope's former school and orphanage, two rented buildings that Hope used before it built the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse and the new orphanage. It was amazing to see the difference in size and basic usability in the old facilities and the new ones. At the old school building, we found out that there are now actually two schools operating there.

In a somewhat sad yet somewhat hopeful experience, we found out that the schools now in the building were set up by an individual donor who then lost interest in the project. Now the school is in the same place that Hope was when it first connected with Spark: too many children and too few teachers, inability to pay the teachers on time or at all, the desire but not the resources to give the children better education.

In the afternoon, we got to hear about how Hope made it from those circumstances to where they are now during a Q&A session between the teachers and the trip participants. We learned about everything from the content of what children are taught, how the teachers and students stay motivated to how each teacher's salary is impacting the numerous children and relatives they have taken into their homes. For me, these are the best moments of our trips: speaking with the Hope staff and learning the truth about the circumstances here, both the good and the bad.

We are now looking forward to our final day in Ndola before we head to Lusaka tomorrow to see the poultry farm. I can't wait to share with you our upcoming adventures!

Beautiful Days and Mixed Emotions

2011-07-20T03:12:00.002-05:00

Hello again from Ndola! We’ve had a great first couple days of our Partnership Trip here in Zambia. On Monday, after our history, culture and Bemba lessons with Charles, we were received with a beautiful welcome at the school. All of the Hope students sang and danced, and they even managed to rope all of us into dancing as well! We all had a bit of trouble popping our hips with the skills and enthusiasm that the students had, but everyone seemed to get a kick out of us trying.

The rest of the day we learned about Hope and got a brief tour of Hope Village, where Hope’s orphanage, school and clinic are located. It was so nice to see the trip participants who have invested in Spark get to see and experience the impact of their support. We also had a great session with our reading partners, students from the school, and Janet, Jade and Donna even got to meet and spend time with their sponsored children. Our beautiful first full day was capped with an incredible welcome program from the Hope House kids who have unbelievable singing voices. We entertained ourselves with a bit of Twister, which ended up being half Twister, half surreptitious shoving and bumping, and we worked up quite an appetite for the huge meal we were then served.

After getting to see the beauty, hope and joy with the students on Monday, we started the day with heavier issues on Tuesday. We visited a gravesite called Kantolomba, which is the miles-long gravesite where the poorest in Ndola bury their loved ones. It was heartbreaking to see the headstones, the bulk of which were for people born in the mid- to late-seventies, a visible sign of the missing generation wiped out by HIV/AIDS. We then heard a bit about the legacy of slavery and colonialism after a brief stop at the Slave Tree, a famous landmark in Ndola where African traders used to sell others into slavery. We ended the morning at Cicetekelo Hospice, where many HIV/AIDS and terminal patients come for free care, often at the end of their lives. We spoke to a patient, only 15 years old, who had been dropped off by her aunt but had since been abandoned by her family because of her condition.

Highlighting the complexity of life here, the mix of joy and sorrow, we spent a beautiful afternoon and evening playing with the children from the school and orphanage and eating a positively mind-blowing meal at the home of Mama Lillian and Uncle J. I always feel, and other trip participants have also mentioned feeling, that it’s hard to reconcile these differing experiences. We’re so used to hearing about the sadness of Africa, but seeing the joy and potential that abound here always makes me wonder what Zambia and Africa as a whole would be like if we talked more about its potential and opportunities rather than its problems and challenges. As I once heard in a TED talk, let’s start thinking about creating positives rather than just alleviating negatives!

All Here, Safe and Sound!

2011-07-18T03:37:00.000-05:00

Our Partnership Trip started yesterday, and all of our trip participants arrived safe and sound! For the most part, everyone's flights seemed to have been on time and smooth, though after traveling for a day and a half, the group was still a bit worn down. We had a chance to drop off our bags and get a bit of rest at the lodge before heading to dinner in the new home of Charles and Margaret Mumba, our partner directors. The trip participants got to hear straight from the founders of Hope about how the organization started based on the need Charles and Margaret saw in their community, and Rich pitched in to tell about how Spark began its partnership with Hope.

While the trip participants were getting the full story on Hope and Spark, we enjoyed a huge and lavish meal of chicken (straight from Hope's farm!), meatballs, cabbage, spinach, rice, noodles and much more. The trip participants even got their first taste on nshima, the local staple here that looks like mashed potatoes but is firmer and made of cornmeal. Everyone seemed immensely grateful for the beautiful meal after a day and a half of airplane food! It'll probably be another few days, though, before the trip participants will try eating nshima the Zambian way: with your hands!

We headed back to the lodge fairly early, and after some arrangements for mosquito nets and whatnot, everyone managed to get a good night's sleep. (It was no wonder after the long trip over and the huge meal we enjoyed!)

So now we're at the office, getting a great culture, history and Bemba lesson from Charles. The kids at the school and orphanage will no doubt get a kick out of all of us trying to speak Bemba, and I'm looking forward to getting the trip participants to the school and orphanage to see the work we do. Here's to a fun and productive day!

Myths about Africa

2011-07-16T05:24:00.000-05:00

Mama Lillian tells great stories. With every story she tells, you can see the various emotions and thoughts from the event rising back up, and she tells her stories like she's reliving them. One of her recent stories was about a woman she met when she was visiting her son in New York who asked her if she came to America by boat. Mama Lillian was (naturally) taken aback that the woman thought Africans were still using modes of transcontinental transportation from centuries ago! She told the story with the mix of hilarity, incredulity and frustration that you might expect with a comment like that.

Her story made me think that today, a light day for me here in the office, would be a good day to help dispel some myths about Africa. I hope you enjoy it!

Myth 1: Africa is all the same.

It's common to hear about going to "Africa" and what things are like in "Africa." I always find this quite interesting. Just imagine if a friend were going to China or Thailand or Japan, and you asked him where he was going and he said, "I'm going to Asia." It would sound intentionally vague, right? Africa is a huge and diverse continent with 54 independent countries and innumerable cultures and languages. Even within the community of Ndola in which we work, the Hope staff here talk about the community in Twapia, where the school is located, having a particular culture that some of the staff are better at navigating than others.

Myth 2: Africa is hot.

This one is the most interesting one to me. Take a look at this incredible infographic map of Africa. You can see that Africa is HUGE! How on earth could you have a land mass that large that has all the same climate? For example, in Zambia, it's currently the cold and dry season. This means that in the morning it's a chilly 55-65 degrees at times and in the afternoon it warms up a bit more. One of our trip participants, when I reminded the group to bring a jacket for the chilly mornings, even said that people thought she was crazy when she was talking about bringing a jacket to "Africa." Anyhow, the point is, yes, some parts of Africa are hot, but others are not.

Myth 3: Africans are very different from Americans/Westerners.

This is a broad one, but I get all sorts of questions about how different the Zambians we meet are than Americans. I find it so interesting because I have found more in common with many of the Zambians I've met than some of the Americans I've come in contact with! Mama Lillian told me a story about how a man she met in America asked where people in Africa slept. Wanting to mess with him a bit, she told him that Africans sleep in trees, the monkeys sleeping on one side and the people on the other. Mama Lillian's jokes aside, yes, there are of course cultural and other differences, but you could find the same cultural differences between a "typical" northerner and a "typical" southerner in America.

Myth 4: Everyone in Africa is poor.

In much of the Western world, news coverage of Africa focuses on poverty, war and disease, but as would be expected, the story of Africa has many more layers than that. Yes, there is indeed poverty, war and disease, but there's also wealth, joy, progress and growth. In a special nod to those raised in shopping malls of suburbia like me, I'll tell you about Pick and Pay, a new supermarket that has recently opened in Ndola. It's beautiful, huge and couched in the center of a shopping center with a beauty shop, toy store, rotisserie chicken restaurant and more. Pick and Pay looks and feels almost exactly like a Wal-Mart. Not what you think of when you think of Africa, right? Of course there's poverty and disease, and Spark's working to help address those issues, but there's much more to Zambia and Africa in general than that.

I hope you guys enjoyed Mama Lillian's stories! The Partnership Trip participants arrive tomorrow, so we're getting ready to have a great week here in Ndola with them. I hope to keep you all updated!

Puppies and Photo Shoots

2011-07-14T11:08:00.000-05:00

To give you an idea of what a ridiculous and wonderful day I’ve had today, I’ll tell you how it started. While eating porridge with Mama Lillian and Nkhongono, I see Mama Lillian stand up and start yelling out the window at Uncle Jay. I was thinking there was some sort of dispute until she started speaking in English, and said that there were three mysterious new puppies outside in the yard! Nkhongono and I ran out, and sure enough, three other puppies, not the ones from the family dog, Cheetah, were running about the garden. We then spent the morning oohing and aahing over the new additions to the family, and thus I started off my day beautifully.

The day continued with very smooth updates and letter writing, and we managed to finish by 11:30am, so I spent some time getting some papers organized and getting ready for our impact measurement workshop that afternoon. Half an hour before the workshop, I realized that I had not yet taken the photos of Teacher Loveness that I owed her. For those of you who followed the blog on the trip last year, I had a team building and process creation workshop with the staff in which we undertook the Marshmallow Challenge. The winning team including Teachers Juliet, Tamara and Loveness, and they each won a photo shoot with me and a minimum of 50 printed photos. (Photos are very expensive to print in Zambia, thus the Hope staff often do not have very many photos of themselves.) Long story short, I still had not taken Teacher Loveness’s photos from her winning team last year!

So as we begin to take photos, the rest of the teachers and Hope staff, most of them normally very quiet, diligent and reserved, burst into a frenzy of striking ridiculous poses. We had everything from pretending to chase each other to pretending to smell a flower to climbing up one of the ridiculous 8-foot tall old ant hills. It was a complete riot, and for a solid 20 minutes, I heard nothing but, "Joann, another picture over here!" It was so nice to see everyone break out of their shells and really enjoy themselves.

Our photo shoot, believe it or not, actually made the perfect segue into our impact measurement workshop. The Hope staff can at times be shy about sharing their opinions in these workshops, so having them amped up, happy and ready to be a bit loud was perfect. We had a great session, and I'm thrilled with the theory of change they created. We used the format for impact measurement that I learned at recent pro bono workshop held by Mission Measurement, and the workshop went perfectly. The torch will soon be passed to two Stanford business school students who will be volunteering with us to define strong metrics in August and September this year.

All in all, it was a wonderful, incredibly fun day, and I'm excited to have another week and a half with the Hope staff, hopefully with many more ridiculous moments.

The Charming Rita and Akima

2011-07-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

Hi all! It’s been another productive day as we managed to get updates and letters for more of the students who had missed class on previous days this week. Shortly after finishing our work on updates and letters, we had a quick lunch and started our Transformation Stories. Today we followed the stories of Rita and Akima, two amazingly talented young girls who are being educated at Hope Community School.

While walking with the girls and seeing their energy, their intelligence and their passion for learning, it was hard not to imagine what these girls’ lives might be like if they were born to slightly wealthier families or in a slightly wealthier country. Rita is constantly reading and loves nothing more than learning. She and Akima both attend school every day in a country where many of their peers cannot or choose not to attend school. The drive and discipline these girls display despite the difficulties of their daily circumstances are nothing short of amazing.

After an inspiring afternoon with these two lovely and hilarious girls, we spent a few hours waiting for our ride, a common occurrence here, and had a good time catching up with Mama Maureen while waiting. We got to talk with her about her family and share about our past travels, and she even offered to come to America to help raise any future children I might have! It was quite the productive day. :)

Absolutely Unbelievable Progress!

2011-07-12T10:32:00.002-05:00

Hello again! After I left you yesterday, I hurried home to have a delicious meal of nshima, fish, chicken, cabbage, gravy and mashed potatoes with my host family. It was such a wonderful and satisfying meal, and having nshima after six months away really solidified in my mind (and stomach!) that I am back in Zambia.

I went to bed early to get ready for another early morning for sponsorship updates, and semi-accidentally fell asleep at 8:30pm. Those who know me know that this is actually not that much earlier than I go to bed at home, but still, I was a little embarrassed.

At least I was well rested the next morning when I was picked up promptly by Hope’s new driver, Ba Alek, and went straight to the school to get ready for more updates and letters. To pretty much everyone’s surprise, we managed to make it through ALL the remaining grades! Not only that, we also managed to go back to Grades 2-4 and get updates and letters from the kids who missed school yesterday. It was amazing, and now I’m looking forward to a slightly more relaxing rest of the week! We’ve managed to get roughly 250 updates in two days, and I couldn’t be happier.

The updates and letters were a lot of fun to work on. We had all the children draw pictures for their sponsors, and we discovered a couple true budding artists. We were a bit short on translators, so the kids also got to have a bit of fun laughing at me as I told them to seka (smile), iminina apopene (stay) and kabiye ku clinic (go to the clinic – the building where we were doing updates so as not to disturb classes). I can never tell if they’re laughing because I’m not saying things correctly or because they’re always surprised that Bemba is coming out of a muzungu (white person, of which I am considered one here).

We then had a quick lunch break before heading out with Pastor Judy and Moses, a volunteer involved with Hope, to visit the homes of Ishuma and Kainos, two boys at Hope. Taking the stories of students at the school, stories we call Transformation Stories, is one of my favorite parts of my trips. It gives me a chance to meet and get to know the children at Hope and to meet their families as well. It also never fails to give me a new perspective on the work that needs to be done of the children here. The stories are sad, beautiful, inspiring and heartbreaking, usually all at once. They also have the added benefit of giving us a chance to walk through the village of Twapia and have small children follow us for miles at times. Never a dull moment here, and I’m looking forward to more great stories tomorrow!

Off to a Busy Start

2011-07-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

After a harrowing and highly unusual journey, I arrived in Ndola on Saturday feeling fairly rested and ready to get to work. I managed to squeeze in a meeting with the translators, mostly Hope staff and supporters, who would be helping me with sponsorship updates throughout the week. It was good meeting, and it was wonderful to meet a couple new folks who seemed eager to help out!

After the meeting, I went back to the home of the Mulandos, which whom I have stayed on all my trips. It was so calming and fantastic to see the whole family, which has actually grown since I left. Susan, the Mama Lillian and Uncle Jay's niece, got married to a government official who spotted her while she was sweeping the porch (it sounded very romantic), and Cheetah, the family dog, had puppies (adorable pictures to come).

I spent the rest of Saturday and the majority of Sunday resting up and getting prepared for the week ahead, which ended up being a great call because we got off to a running start today! We managed to get sponsorship updates (which involved taking a picture of every child and asking each child a series of questions about their favorite things and what his/her life is like) and sponsorship letters (in which children write to their sponsors) for all of the students who were present in Grade 2, 3 and 4! It was a satisfying accomplishment, and I was so grateful for the great Hope staff and for Sara Blumenshine, Spark's Global Intern who arrived on the same day as I did and who will be spending the next six months supporting Hope, particularly at the school.

It was a long and productive day, and I'm excited and ready to have another whirlwind work day tomorrow. With any luck, we'll get through Grades 5-7 tomorrow and only have Grade 1 left for Wednesday, leaving us two whole days to make up for kids who missed school earlier in the week and get other work done at the office.

I'm feeling good, and I'm going to leave you because I want to hurry home to my first meal of nshima on this trip! Nshima is a local staple made of corn meal, and I'm ready for some refueling after a long and productive day!

55 Hours Later...

2011-07-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

Well, I am in Ndola. Between my last blog post and now, I have lived a comedy of travel errors, so saying that I’m in Ndola feels much more like an accomplishment than I would normally think. The following (very long) post will read a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure novel in which you choose every single thing to go wrong; I hope you get a kick out of it! :)

After the delayed flight to London, I had a nice long layover to rest up, read and get ready for my next few flights. I boarded the plane for Johannesburg, and we ended up waiting for an hour and a half at the gate because of a medical issue for one of the passengers. This wouldn’t have been the worst thing except that the air conditioning on the plane was broken so we hundreds of passengers were basically melting from the 85-90 degree heat and increasingly unpleasant stench of body odor. Luckily, I was being “entertained” by the two German boys in the row in front of me who saw this as a chance to practice their armpit fart-noise-making skills.

With the delay, I arrived in Joburg 40 minutes before my flight to Lusaka was scheduled to depart. I ran the absurdly long way to the transfer desk to see if I could still make my original flight but missed the allowable check-in time by a few minutes. I then spent over two hours at the transfer desk waiting for my new ticket. I’m still a little baffled by why it took so long.

So, still having a bit of time on my hands, I got on the internet and tried to get in touch with Charles and Margaret Mumba, our partner directors, to let them know that I wasn’t going to make it to Ndola when they would be expecting me to because my flight to Lusaka wouldn’t make it in time for me to make my flight to Ndola. I managed to reach Margaret by calling her through Gmail and an international calling card and felt a little bit better that at least someone in Zambia knew what was going on.

Finally, I was on my way to Lusaka. As we reached the city, our pilot said we’d be arriving around 6:05PM, possibly enough time for me to make the 7PM flight to Ndola, the last one of the night. Feeling like my luck might have changed, I had my hopes slowly deflated as we were placed in a holding pattern over Lusaka for 45 minutes. (I later found out this was because the President was flying in, which was exciting, but maybe not exciting enough to make up for another travel hiccup.)

I arrived in Lusaka, went through customs and waited for my bags. Alas, they never arrived. A bit delirious at this point, I filed my lost baggage claim and was told my bags would arrive in about two hours on the next flight from Joburg. My only consolation came when I saw Charles waiting outside for me, and I felt a huge sense of relief that I wasn’t going to have to ask random airport staff if I could borrow their phones to call Charles.

It felt really good to see a familiar face, and Charles soon took me to a local lodge to get a shower and some rest before I’d have to return to the airport the next morning at 7AM to claim my bags and try to get on a flight to Ndola. I can’t tell you how absurdly good it felt to take a hot shower (albeit using the tiny bar of hand soap the lodge provided) and climb into a warm bed, even if I did have to wash my hair with a bar of soap and put back on the clothes I’d already been wearing for two days.

Anyhow, my bags did indeed arrive, and I managed to buy the last seat on an 11AM flight to Ndola. Finally, after over 55 hours of traveling, I made it to my destination!

Despite the highly unusual craziness of the past two days, I am appreciative of the good things that have happened in that time. I will leave you with the two things I am most grateful for:

1.Amazing partner directors who, with only the information from an email and very short, scratchy phone call, managed to find me in the madness of this crazy travel experience

2. The foresight to pack an extra pair of underwear and socks in my carry-on :)

Layover in London

2011-07-07T08:48:00.000-05:00

Hello again, all! After a slight delay in Chicago, I've made it safely to London and am now faced with the terrible decision of what brand (or if we're being honest, brands) of delicious European chocolate to indulge in. :)

The flight to London, the first of four flights that will bring me to Zambia, was smooth and uneventful. I was very excited to find, as the boarding for the flight closed, that I had an aisle seat and the adjoining window seat all to myself. I suppose on long flights like this you have to be grateful for the little things!

I managed to sleep through the bulk of the flight, waking only for the couple of standard airline meals, which I still oddly find completely fantastic. My family and I used to travel to Taiwan quite often when I was younger, and I think I developed a nostalgic attachment to food on airplanes. Logically, I understand that this is pretty ridiculous, but somehow I still find something simultaneously soothing and exciting about having each part of my meal individually wrapped. :)

Well, I'm signing off for my next three flights, as I likely won't have internet access at my stops in Johannesburg and Lusaka. Next time I chat with you, I'll be in Ndola with our partner, Hope Ministries!

- Joann

Getting Ready for Our Next Adventure!

2011-07-05T09:37:00.001-05:00

Hello friends!

For those of you who are new to Spark or to our blog, I'm Joann Chen, Spark's Program Director. I'm excited to kick off the blogging for my upcoming trip to Zambia, for which I leave on Wednesday. I'll be with our partner organization, Hope Ministries, from July 6-26, and it's going to be quite the action-packed trip with sponsorship updates, workshops with our partner's staff, scintillating conversations about accounting and much more.

What's most exciting is that a week and a half into my trip, I will be joined by Rich Johnson (our CEO), Jenny Risch (our Director of Resource Development) and the nine participants of our Zambia 2011 Partnership Trip! As we do every year, the Spark and Hope staff will show the trip participants the intricacies of our work and give them a chance to interact with the staff and children in Zambia. We'll cap off five days in Ndola, where Hope's school and orphanage are located, with a day in Lusaka to see Hope's poultry farm and two days in Livingstone for a safari and a trip to Victoria Falls.

I'm excited to bring you all along with us on this trip through the blog, and I hope you enjoy following our blog as we continue our work with Hope Ministries in Zambia. I'll be blogging pretty much every day, so be sure to check back here often! To get things started, ask me a question about the trip, our trip preparations or our work in the comments section below, and I'll answer it before I head out on Wednesday night.

Here's to a great adventure!

Joann

Launch Ceremony Will Start Just Now

2011-05-08T07:27:00.002-05:00

If you’ve traveled to Zambia, you know that time orientation in this country is quite different than our Western view. This being my 10th visit to Spark’s partners here, I have a much greater appreciation and understanding of these differences than on my first trip five years ago. Let me give you the picture…

In July 2006, I stayed in the home of John (Uncle J) and Lilian Mulando, who have since become my Zambian family. After a long day out and about, we arrived back at the house about 5pm and I asked Mama Lilian when we should be ready for dinner. She responded, “Oh…..just now.”

Understandably, I was confused when we sat down to eat about three hours later without any explanation about the delay. A conversation with Ba Charles, Hope Ministries' Executive Director, the next day helped to clarify. In Zambia:

Now = Sometime in the future, probably today

Just Now = Fairly soon, probably within a few hours

Now Now = Immediately (how Westerners understand “now”)

We have had many funny interactions about this, learning the Zambian definitions while helping our Zambian friends understand that in the U.S. when we say “now”, we mean “now now”.

So yesterday, I arrived at the farm around 8.30am with the camera crew (Zach, Sam and Paul). We worked on a video of a tour of the farm. (Watch for it next week!) Around 9:30am we began to set up the equipment in the building where the launch ceremony was to start at 10am. This building will be the storage room for all the farm supplies and equipment. The ceremony was starting in 30 minutes, but the building was empty. By empty I mean it was just cement walls us. I looked around the property, and I didn’t see any cars, not even the Board Chairman’s truck. At 9:45am I finally found Ba Charles and asked him if the launch ceremony was still beginning at 10am.

He said, “Oh yes….it will start just now.”

“I understand,” I said.

And I went back to our camera crew and told them to relax. Over the next 90 minutes, we sat and watched as about 100 plastic chairs arrived on a flatbed truck, were unloaded and were set up in the room. Some farm workers brought in two folding tables, which were then covered in nice African cloths by some women from the Hope Board. Someone brought in a small electronic keyboard and plugged it into an extension cord that mysteriously came through a space between the wall and the roofing sheets. Some of the older boys from Hope House, Hope's orphanage, have been working construction on the farm during their month break from school, and they came in and started rehearsing some songs.

Paul Johnson, our photographer, says that the first guests arrived at 10:22am. The fact that he knows and remembers this is a perfect example of how differently we observe and experience time. The preparations continued at a leisurely pace, and by a little after 11am about 50 people had arrived, so the ceremony got started. It was short and very genuine, with participation from several of the orphaned children served by Hope Ministries. These kids and thousands more like them will benefit from the revenue generated by this social enterprise in the form of a chicken farm.

Community members and leaders at the farm dedication ceremony

By the end, probably 75 people were in the room and we all moved outside and down to the chicken house where they had decorated the door with balloons and a ribbon. Ba Charles raised his voice so the crowd could hear him and he dedicated the farm with powerful words:

We dedicate this farm to the alleviation of poverty.

We dedicate this farm to the production of affordable food.

We dedicate this farm to the provision of well paying jobs.

We dedicate this farm to education, empowerment and job skills.

We dedicate this farm to supporting the future of Zambia’s children.

And to that, everyone in the audience responded, “Yes. We dedicate this farm!”

TLC for Hope's Inaugural Chickens

2011-05-07T10:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was our first full day at the poultry farm. We began with a tour of the land and facilities from Ba Charles. The buildings are made of bricks. I have to admit that I still have a hard time comprehending the construction processes here. All the cement is made by shovels, dirt, sand and water. Each brick comes out of an individual mold that is packed with the wet and heavy cement mixture and then picked up, dropped a few times to make it settle and then carried over to the brick rows where it is flipped and the mold is carefully removed. A farm facility like this requires thousands of bricks! There were workers everywhere we looked. They were working on the guard station, the extension of the chicken house, the foundation for the office building and a small bathroom facility.

The highlight was when Farm Manager Mike Tembo allowed us to come in and see the four-day-old chicks. They are kept in the chicken house and when they are in the brooding phase, which last for the first fourteen days, they are kept closer together at the end of the building with a temporary wall made of plastic. The temperature in the room must remain around 100 degrees F and there are special heat lamps and elevated charcoal warming areas to keep the little guys warm. It is still a free roaming area where they have plenty of room to move around. They eat and drink at their own leisure. He explained that at any given time about 40% of the chickens should be eating and drinking, 30% should be resting, and 30% should be moving around and active. He checks to make sure every chicken is alive twice every day and for the brooding period he actually sleeps in the chicken house, just on the other side of the plastic wall where the chicks are!

Zach, Sam and Paul couldn't get enough pictures or video footage of these little chicks. They were amazing, and it is great to know that they will be so well cared for by Farm Manager Tembo.

One of the 3,000 inaugural Hope chickens!

Agatha Kapiri: Compassionate Advocate

2011-05-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

In the last year, Agatha Kapiri joined the staff of Spark’s partner, Hope Ministries in Zambia. She is trained and educated as a social worker and has three main roles:

1. Serves as lead House Mother at Hope House (orphanage)
2. Provides oversight and advocacy for particularly difficult child welfare situations at Hope Community School (HCS)
3. Runs case management for HCS’s graduated 7th graders as they go on to finish their secondary education.

We sat down with Agatha yesterday for a video interview and told us about her morning.

Mama Agatha, Lead House Mother of Hope House

Around 9AM an older woman arrived at Hope Village with a young girl who was eight or nine years old. The older woman was the girl's grandmother, and their story is like those of so many others in Zambia. The grandmother had 12 children who have all died from HIV/AIDS. They left behind 13 grandchildren for her to care for, nearly all of whom have run away, gotten pregnant or gotten in trouble with the law. She had only this one young girl remaining. She heard that Hope Ministries might be willing to care for this last child as the grandmother felt that she had nothing left to give and that she herself might die soon. The pair had walked for four hours to get to Hope Village, and when they saw the hundreds of children in school and the healthy children at Hope House orphanage, the grandmother begged Agatha to take in her granddaughter.

Though I’ve heard these stories before and met the families involved, it is still hard to comprehend. But it was actually Agatha’s emotion that really caught me off guard. You see, the Zambian people are very proud and do not show much sadness or anguish about the poverty and hardships that surround them. Perhaps it is cultural. Perhaps it's that when you see it and live with it every day, you get used to it, as much as is possible, at least. But Agatha was fighting back tears and her voice cracked as she finished her interview and said, “It breaks my heart to hear these stories and see these children. I just want to help them…to get them the shelter, education, food and health care they need. We have to find a way to break this cycle of poverty and help these children to stand on their own two feet.” At the end of these video interviews, we typically have to go back and ask the interviewee to restate or rephrase some of their responses. But Agatha had said it all. Shelter, nutrition, education and healthcare for the children…and let’s make it sustainable so that we begin to break the cycle of poverty.

Educating Africa’s Future Leaders

2011-05-05T08:53:00.000-05:00

Rich and two Lenume videographers, Sam and Zach, at Hope Ministries

A while back, videographer Sam Sanchez of Lenume traveled to Zambia with me and a group of Spark investors. One of the videos that we worked on during that trip was our Partnerships that Empower video. Spark had recently raised the funds to invest in a brand new schoolhouse for our partner Hope Ministries, and when we arrived the project was underway. Sam and I set up our video interview for Hope’s founder and Executive Director, Charles Mumba, with the school construction in the background. As Charles talked on camera about the effects of poverty in their community and the great need for educating Zambia’s youth, behind him you could see the hard-working crew mixing cement and laying bricks to build the walls of the new facility. “We have a vision to reach these children….to change their lives.

Today, Sam and our video crew interviewed Charles again at that same site. Only this time, Charles was sitting on the steps of the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse, which for the last year and a half, has been the home of Hope Community School, which serves over 300 of Zambia’s poorest children. Today as Charles spoke, behind him stood the beautiful brick posts and the doorways into the seven classrooms that just hours before were filled with eager young learners and dedicated teachers. During Charles’ interview, Zach Rockwood, a second videographer, was getting a wide shot of the scene, capturing the proud Zambian flag flowing in the wind and a mural of the world painted on the side of the building. As I took in the whole scene, I thought about the privilege of investing in a partnership like this that is not only transforming the lives of children but also having a profound impact on an entire community. And I found myself quite moved as I heard Charles’ voice in the background from the interview…“We are investing in Africa’s leaders of tomorrow.”

Granadilla, Growth & Games

2011-05-04T09:48:00.004-05:00

Yesterday’s post was a little intense, so I will lighten it up today.

I tried some yogurt at dinner last night that was called “Forbidden Fruit of the Forest”. Sounds tempting, right? I thought so….and it was worth the indulgence. It is made from an African fruit called Granadilla. They make a juice concentrate from this fruit that we also mix with water and drink with dinner. Delicious.

Hope Community School on a recent quiet afternoon

The kids at Hope House and Hope Community School are getting so big. Kelvin, Andrew and Jeff are young men now! They’ve probably each grown a few inches since I last saw them. Kainos, my young entrepreneurial buddy who sells tablecloths at the market, is now in 7^th grade and at the top of his class. And I have a feeling that in a few years, Jane Mulenga is going to be on Zambia’s list of most influential young women. She is incredibly smart, poised and talented, and she has been helping us organize her peers to rehearse for one of the video projects.

Children at Hope Community School

A first grader at Hope Community School

During the long (34 hour) trip over here, I got addicted to Mahjong: the one and only game I have downloaded on my phone. Now, I find it is part of my evening routine to play a game or two before I climb into bed under my mosquito net. It’s a simple matching game of Chinese tiles. Joann Chen (our resident Chinese staff member) says the phone app version is not very authentic: big surprise. But I like it anyway.

- Rich

#Neversawthiscoming

2011-05-03T07:50:00.001-05:00

So I left out a small but rather significant part of what happened when we arrived in Ndola yesterday. I explained that we were picked up at the airport and taken straight to a Hope Ministries gathering. And I mentioned that they asked me to speak and that I talked about Nelson Mandela.

But I failed to mention that when I was finished and sat down on my bench in the front row, about 30 women all moved to the front and started singing a lively and passionate song. Whenever they sing in Africa, it comes with a lot of movement , so there was some serious dancing going on as well. Brightly colored chitenges (African fabric) were wrapped around the women’s waists, and some of them were even wearing their Spark Ventures t-shirts. (That was cool!) After so many trips to Hope, I've become accustomed to this type of celebration, and I find it to be one of the many inspiring and joyful moments of a trip like this. But at some point the women started to move towards me in what looked like a line dance, and I thought, “Oh no, they are going to make this muzungu (white man) dance with them,”which would have been a both hilarious and quite sad.

The woman at the front of this procession was Mama Maureen, one of the house mothers at Hope House orphanage. She was carrying a medium-sized cardboard box with the Aquavita logo on the side. (Aquavita is one of the brands of bottled water in Zambia.) As they got closer, the singing got louder and other people in the audience began to cheer….and at some point I realized that this was not a box of bottled water they were bringing to me. Nor were they going to ask me to dance.

As my mind raced to figure out what was going on, all of a sudden the women dancing started to kneel down, some of the men from the audience also moved to the front and bent down next to me. Everyone’s arms were waving in the air and as the singing and shouting reached a climax, Maureen knelt right in front of me and placed the box at my feet. I looked down and in the box was a beautiful white chicken. Alive. I just stared at this animal in disbelief. And the chicken just looked up at me like, “I have no idea what is going on either!”

Once the singing and commotion died down, they took the box with the chicken away, and Ba Charles, the Executive Director of Hope Ministries, leaned over and said, “Our community wanted to show their appreciation for you. This is how they chose to do it; I was not involved. Ba Rich, this is a great honor.” In the hours that followed, I had several conversations with our Zambian friends and found out that it is a custom in the villages of Africa to present a living white chicken to someone who has been a great friend to their tribe.

The tribe of Hope Ministries chose to honor me in this way, but I know that their appreciation extends to the entire investing community of Spark Ventures because what we have accomplished, we have only been able to accomplish together. I wish all of you had the chance to be here with me on this trip: to hear the stories and see the transformation. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it: there is an amazing community half way around the world that is incredibly thankful for their partnership with Spark Ventures. We have been a great friend to them. And I thank you for making this possible.

-Rich

Traveling to Africa Is Always an Adventure

2011-05-02T13:47:00.002-05:00

I've lost count of how many trips I've made to Africa, but it's up around 10 or more. And I've let go of any expectations that I'll make all of my flights and actually arrive as scheduled. I left Chicago with Spark investor and photographer Paul Johnson on Thursday night, and we flew to London, arriving Friday morning. (Yes - we were in London for the Royal Wedding. Sorry to disappoint, but we were not part of the one million people who were out lining the streets in London. We were in the airport for our seven-hour layover and watched the festivities on TV with the other two billion people around the world.) Anyway, at the airport, we met up with our two video guys from Los Angeles-Sam Sanchez and Zachary Rockwood. The four of us boared our flight for Johannesburg getting settled into our second-to-last row seats right next to the bathroms on the South African Airways jumbo jet. Three hours later we were still in those seats but only 15 or 20 feet above the Heathrow tarmack instead of 30,000 feet in the air over Western Africa. After hearing more details than I would have liked about computer failures that had been repaired, we finally departed.

We arrived four hours late in Johannesburg, South Africa and missed the one daily flight to Ndola. The airline was nice enough to put us up in a hotel near the airport where we got some food and a short sleep before we headed back to the airport before 7AM to catch the flight to Ndola. Good thing we were early, because the airline told us we didn't have tickets on the flight. I asked if there were still seats and there were, but they were going to make us purchase new tickets. Since tickets were $300 each and since it wasn't our fault that we missed the prevous day's flight, I decided that a little push back would be appropriate. I'll spare you the running around and series of conversations that followed and just say that we got on the flight without paying and landed safely in Ndola on Sunday around noon. Of course we were greeted by Spark's partner director in Zambia, Charles Mumba. And he whisked us away to a gathering of the Hope Ministries community. It's expected that visiting leaders speak. So suffering from jet lag, tired, but thankful to be here, I got up and spoke to this amazing group... Hope Ministries.

I shared with them a favorite quote from one of Nelson Mandela's speeches: "As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." I explained that they have been an example to us at Spark Ventures of the amazing change that can happen when just a few people let their light and lives shine. Every time I come to Zambia I am inspired by Hope's work with the children living in extreme poverty here. Today, there is a very powerful light emanating from this place. And it is good to know that Spark has been part of fueling the flames of transformation...empowering this small NGO to become a major force in their community, providing nutrition, education, healthcare and much more.

That's all for today. More tomorrow as we get to work...

- Rich

Life Beyond HIV: The Story of Astridah Selita

2011-04-04T15:57:00.000-05:00

Continuing Spark's three-week series of stories of children whose lives have been transformed by the Spark-Hope partnership, we feature today the story of Astridah Selita, a student at Hope Community School fighting not only poverty but also HIV. Her story is one of the hundreds that inspire the work that we do, and we hope that you will read her story and share it by forwarding the link to this blog.

Astirdah Selita

Astridah’s grandmother, Joyce, is the sole survivor of a family wiped out by AIDS, losing her only daughter (Astridah’s mother), six brothers and their wives.

Despite their close relationship, Joyce has followed the nurses’ advice and has kept secret from Astridah the fact that Astridah is HIV positive.

Joyce keeps Astridah’s HIV status a secret in order to protect her from the stigma HIV-positive children face, a stigma that has pushed some children to commit suicide.

Astridah is told that the pills she takes for her chronic cough, fatigue and pains are to treat tuberculosis.

Astridah loves going to school as often as her health allows. It’s there that she receives the encouragement to continue her studies and realize a life beyond clinics, pills and nurses.

Thanks to the Spark-Hope partnership, Astridah and all her schoolmates receive comprehensive HIV/AIDS education so that the ignorance that Astridah’s grandmother fears can in time be dissolved.

Finding a Future: The Story of Bright Mambwe

2011-03-07T11:54:00.000-06:00

Spark Ventures has some impressive numbers that help tell about our success….45,000 meals served last year, over $100,000 raised for a poultry farm, more than 300 children receiving free education at our partner school in Zambia. But sometimes the best way to communicate the impact of Spark and our investing community is to tell the story of a child.

For the next three weeks we will be featuring the stories of Chansa, Astridah and Bright, whose lives have been improved and whose futures hold more promise than they did before. We hope you’ll take the journey with us, forward the link to this blog, and leave a comment or two....

Bright Mambwe

This is the small mud house that Bright and his family rent for 100,000 Kwacha ($20 USD) per month.

Bright lost his mother years ago to AIDS, and when his father, Winter, tested positive for HIV, Winter knew he needed to plan for the future of his children.

Touched by Bright’s story, Head Teacher Ng’oma accepted him into Hope Community School, the first school Bright had been able to attend in over a year.

Bright has been thriving in the third grade, where he learns from Teacher Judy. He loves studying math and playing soccer with his friends.

Bright loves airplanes and dreams of being a pilot one day, a dream that his education is helping to make possible.

Good Luck after a Long Trip

2011-01-19T01:49:00.001-06:00

Hi everyone! I am currently in London Heathrow airport's American Airlines lounge (thanks to a very generous friend of my husband's who donated a free flight upgrade for the final leg of my very long trip) and thinking with both excitement and sadness about the end of a long and productive trip.

I've had pretty good luck in travel so far. My Lusaka to Joburg flight was fairly uneventful given that it was only two hours. Then on the flight from Joburg to London, I was excited that I was moved from a row with a family of four with three very rambunctious kids and a somewhat combative mother to a row with only one other person and a free seat between us. I suppose it's odd that I enjoy so much the time I spend with the kids at Hope yet dread so completely being around children on an airplane. Might have to work on that. :) With the seat change and the comforting knowledge that the free upgrade will put me in business class for my last 7-8 hours of flight (from London to Chicago), I am in a pretty good mood given the almost 24 straight hours of travel completed so far.

In my layover and flights, I had time to finish Three Cups of Tea, an inspiring true story (that I'm sure many of you have heard of) about a man who decided to build schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan to tackle poverty and promote peace. While the organization he founded runs on a very different model than Spark does, it's always nice to have another affirmation of just how big of a difference education can make for children, their communities and their countries. It makes me think of kids like Jeff, Edward, Rita and Jane at Hope House and Hope Community School. These are just a few of the incredibly bright and dedicated students that I have a strong hunch will help shape the future of Zambia.

The people who will help make that happen are the truly incredible staff of Hope Ministries. In observing Hope Community School's enrollment and attendance procedures, in speaking with the accounting staff about bookkeeping and in viewing teachers in their classrooms, I have been overwhelmed on this trip by how much Hope as improved as an organization in just the few months since my last trip. Many of the to-do's on my list for this trip were made substantially easier because Hope has already cultivated the internal leadership and initiative to locate areas of improvement and then improve on them. This is the really exciting piece of what Spark does: enabling organizations to be able to "stand on their own two feet," as Charles likes to say. I am so happy to see that it's working, and I am certainly excited for many more years of mutual learning between Spark and Hope so that we continue to make each other better and stronger organizations.

That's not to say that the trip has not been without its frustrations and hiccups (both figurative and literal - Nkhongono spent a lot of my last two days finding ways to scare my recurring hiccups out of me). International development is a difficult field, more difficult than many realize, and there are times when the need seems so much greater than the energy we have to tackle it.

Yet in the ocean of needs, I find a lot of hope. I find hope in the small businesses that the Hope House children help run to earn a little money for their home and family. They sell popcorn, fritters, cards and handmade balls in a deliberate plan by Hope leadership to not only help the house with some finances but also to teach the children some basic economic survival skills in an economy with over 75% unemployment. I find hope in the school and office staff who crowded around my laptop, thrilled at the chance to learn a few more Excel functions that would help them do more for Hope and the children it serves. And I find hope most of all in the kids like those Grade 7 graduates I saw who looked on the verge of tears of joy when hearing they'd passed to Grade 8. I see hope as well in students like Rita, who has suprisingly impeccable English because her family used to be able to afford private school until her father passed away and who now comes to Hope Community School eagerly so that she still has a way to continue her education. These students' determination to get a good education despite all odds gives me all the hope I need to work past the figurative hiccups (a little water and holding my breath helped the literal ones) and continue to help Spark chip away at the sources of poverty in Zambia.

It's always sad to leave Zambia and the loving and generous community that Spark has joined there, but I leave with eager anticipation of the work the Spark team will be able do before our next trip in July. Thank you once again for following the blog! I've enjoyed spending this time in Zambia with you all!

A Brief Stay in Lusaka

2011-01-17T06:12:00.000-06:00

Hi again, everyone! I'm blogging from an internet cafe in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. After a relatively short journey by car (Ba Rodgers is a notoriously fast driver :) ), I arrived yesterday in time to begin discussions with Charles and Sandie on the progress that has been made on the poultry farm. It was exciting to see stacks of bricks and wide swaths of cleared land where the chicken house will go. I got a brief tour of the land before heading into Sandie's home, which is adjacent to the poultry farm property, to dig a bit deeper in to the details of the farm's budget and accounting. By the end of the discussion, I felt great that we had a solid and (to borrow a consulting phrase) MECI (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) list of expense and income categories for the farm. With the many uncertainties that come with starting a business of any kind in any part of the world, there is something really satisfying about the clarity and cleanliness of a well-planned accounting system. My mother, an accountant, will no doubt get lots of joy out of my saying that! :)

Sandie's wife, Barbara, made a delicious meal for us for dinner, and with a full stomach, I headed back to my room at a nearby lodge where I had developed an uneasy friendship with three spiders that have chosen to cohabit my room. Perhaps it was the nervousness and excitement of my impending final day in Zambia (or perhaps it was the drunken twenty-somethings next door listening to some classic 90s rap), but my morning started at 4AM and I got a chance to read and prepare for more discussions. (In just a few hours yesterday I finished Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport, which I highly recommend to anyone who spends any time in airports.) :)

Charles, Sandie and I had breakfast in Sandie's home before restarting our discussions on the farm's accounting. I was able to steal an hour of time from Sandie's daughter, a trained accountant, who will be helping to manage the farm finances. She immediately caught on to the system I was recommending, and I left our conversation/training incredibly confident in the farm finances given they were in such capable hands.

A quick lunch at Sandie's and I said my goodbyes to the incredibly hospitable and talented Khondolo family before heading here to the internet cafe. I'll be spending the afternoon at a local crafts market to purchase some items for Spark and have a look around before retiring to the room and my three eight-legged friends.

I have been incredibly happy and satisfied with the progress that has been made during the last three weeks (and in the months since my last trip here). The face-to-face time that I've gotten here with the staff in the office, school, orphanage and farm has been so valuable not only to getting more work done but also to deepening the relationships with the incredible people who run Hope. I feel very lucky to have spent the last 20 days with a group of talented people committed to building the future of their country through its children, and I am already looking forward to the Partnership Trip in July.

I'm sure that I'll be back online once I'm in Heathrow, so I'll share a bit about my travels when I can. Wish me luck in my final day and in my three flights home to Chicago!

A Few More Happy Times in Ndola

2011-01-15T01:55:00.000-06:00

Hi Everyone! It’s another slow and rainy Saturday here in Ndola. I’m spending the morning in the office preparing for some of the discussion about the poultry farm that I’ll be having in Lusaka starting tomorrow afternoon. It’s a bittersweet day in that I’m very much looking forward to seeing the progress that’s been made in the preparation for construction of the farm, yet I’m sad to be saying goodbye to the Mulandos and all the amazing Hope staff here in Ndola. Looking back on the last almost three weeks, I’m so happy with all that we’ve been able to accomplish together, and I’m leaving with even more happy memories of Zambia. I’ll spend the rest of my post today sharing a few of these stories!

While we were closing up the office one day, Margaret was trying to close the blinds, a process that involves yanking over and over again on the cord while one side of the blinds goes down, the other goes up and slowly the whole thing comes down. About two minutes into yanking on the cord in what from an outsider’s perspective looked like a futile effort, Margaret turns around, flashes a huge grin and says, “You like our blinds? They’re vintage.” Haha…it was a very diplomatic term.

Mama Lillian had been bugging Nkhongono about cutting his hair so that he’d look nice for his first day of school. I asked him what kind of hair cut he would get, and he started explaining the different options. There’s the English cut and the table cut, which involves four lines somewhere (I didn’t completely understand this one) looking like the four legs of a table. When he was explaining, I asked if the cuts require all of the hair to be cut off of one area, and he gives me a puzzled look and says, “No! They leave a little hair. Not like a potato!” It was quite a hilarious comparison, and now I affectionately call his hair a potato cut, which he finds very offensive. :)

On the way into the office, we pass through a small road that has a bar on one side. I had never really paid it much attention, until the other day when I noticed that the restroom of the bar, which charges a fee for use like many of the restrooms here, had written in large block letters over the doorway “VERY CLEAN.” The whole car had a giggle when I pointed it out, especially because Gertrude, one of the office staff here, was adamant that it couldn’t possibly be clean. A couple days later, when we were driving through the same small road, I looked on the other side and saw that the bar restroom had some competition. A small sign read, “Fee-Paying Toilet. THE CLEANEST.” Nothing like a little competition among restrooms. :)

The ladies here, particularly Margaret, Mama Lillian and Mama Maureen, one of the mothers of Hope House, somehow became convinced on my last trip that I am destined to have twins someday. They have taken to preemptively calling me “banampundu,” which means mother of twins in Bemba. It was thus quite a coincidence then that the little girl I spent the most time with at Seeds of Hope, an organization we visited that takes care of HIV-positive children under 6, happened to be a twin. I told Mama Lillian about the coincidence while we were preparing for dinner the other day, and her eyes got really big and she said “See…IT’S COMING!” Haha…it was hilarious and terrifying at the same time. :)

Well, this afternoon will be restful so that I can recharge my batteries before the Lusaka trip, and I’ll get to bake a strawberry cake for the Mulandos, who have taken such great care of me over the last three weeks. Then tomorrow morning, it’s off to Lusaka for the final couple days of this trip. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing about it!

Wrapping Up in Ndola

2011-01-14T09:27:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone! I've just got a short post today. It's one of my last days in Ndola, and I spent the bulk of the day at the school finishing up some final to-do's, including helping some kids to write response letters to their sponsors, working with the school staff on finalizing the new student database given the final enrollment information and figures and implementing a more rigorous system of tracking the nutrition that students receive through the meal program. It's been a productive day, and I was sad to leave the school and staff, knowing that I will be leaving for Lusaka first thing Sunday morning. The best consolation is knowing that Spark investors, staff and I will be back in July for our Partnership Trip!

I've spent the afternoon in the office making final touches to and doing some final training on the new reporting templates that Hope will be using. They'll start using them for reporting about their work in January, so I'm excited to see them start the new year off on a good foot!

I'll spend tomorrow resting up a bit and preparing for the discussions with Charles and Sandie that I'll be having in Lusaka. It will also be a day of goodbyes to the staff and the Mulandos who have been such incredible hosts to me over the last two and a half weeks. Nkhongono, Sombo and I will be using the Pillsbury strawberry cake mix that I brought over from the US, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out well! (You never know with the ovens here!)

I'll do my best to blog as often as possible during this final leg of my trip, though I know I won't have as regular of access to the internet. I hope I'll be able to send you lots of information about this business that will make Hope financially independent, sustainable and stronger than ever before. Talk to you all again soon!

Rain, Rain

2011-01-13T09:34:00.000-06:00

Hello again, everyone! So far this trip, Mama Lillian has been puzzled as to why we have not had more rain, which is the one thing that's able to combat the heat from the sun. Well, she's finally gotten her wish, as we've had two days of almost non-stop rain.The cooler temperatures have certainly been nice, but Cheetah, the Mulandos' dog, is particularly dangerous in getting your clothes super dirty when it's been raining outside, so I've had to take extra care as I approach the home each night. I can't tell you how many items of my clothing have giant reddish-brown paw prints on them. :)

Other than fighting Cheetah away, it's been a great day here. I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning working with Margaret to implement the new general ledger system that got me so excited yesterday. The more I think through it, the more I think that it will really be a great tool for the Hope team. I hope that it will help make their accounting and increasing their accountability an easy and painless process!

I've spent some time today working with the various office and school staff on a new financial/data report that Hope will begin to use this month. I've been hearing a lot of debate about how valuable it is for donors to focus on nonprofits' management ratios (the amount spent on overhead vs. programs) as opposed to the impact that the organization has. While I agree that the impact is what matters, I also realize that it's up to us nonprofits to identify, track and report the data on impact that actually matters. This new financial report will help us to do just that, with metrics for Hope's financial position, the school's scope and impact, the nutrition the students receive and much more. I'm glad that we'll have these new and improved tools to help us tell the world about the great work being done for the kids here through Spark and Hope.

I just wrapped up a brief training with some of the office and school staff on Excel, which is basically one of my favorite things (a relic of my time as a management consultant). I can't say it was the most scintillating training, but I saw some of the staff taking a few notes, which I hope means that at least some of the information I presented will be helpful. The find function really seemed to blow some minds, so I'm excited that that was a hit! :)

I'm wrapping up in the office for the day, and I'll be spending tomorrow at the school for some final to-do's before my departure for Lusaka on Sunday. It's hard to believe that my trip is coming to a close soon, and I'm excited to squeeze every last bit of progress possible out of the next few days.

I'm off to battle with Cheetah! Talk to you all again tomorrow!

YES!

2011-01-12T07:45:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I am writing in a moment of pure, unadulterated excitement. After pouring over Hope Ministries' accounting system and books over the last couple weeks, I kept having trouble figuring out how to help Hope create a general ledger (where they can track all expenses and income) that was clear, complete and accounted for some of the oddities that are particular to their accounting system. For example, Hope has a dollar bank account and a kwacha (the Zambian currency) bank account, and it's really hard to find a way to track both in one place without the system becoming too complicated to use. I was having the worst trouble trying to figure out how to keep all the information in one place as much as possible while still making the system clean and easy to use.

Well, about three minutes ago I finally had my long-awaited epiphany! I've figured out a general ledger system that will allow Hope to track its income, expenses and balances for cash, the dollar account AND the kwacha account all in one place with (from what I can tell) minimal confusion! Haha...Ba Mumbi, the marvelous office manager for Hope Ministries, thought I was crazy when I burst out into a huge smile and a small fit of giggles when I finally figured it out.

Haha...in other less nerdy news, it's been a good but very long 24 hours. After a lovely dinner at Hope House that included caterpillars, a local delicacy, the children and staff of Hope said a sad goodbye to the North Park students who were scheduled to leave Ndola for Lusaka, where Hope's poultry farm will be, around 6 this morning. We all packed into Hope's faithful bus for the ride back to our host homes, and I began to doze on the way home until I noticed about 30 minutes into dropping off other students and staff that the bus had come to a stop. It turns out in the excitement of making the upcoming trip down to Lusaka and Livingstone the bus driver had forgotten to get gas! After a 30-45 minute delay, Charles and Margaret rescued us remaining passengers and got us home around 10PM.

This morning the North Park students staying with the Mulandos had a slow morning of breakfast, goodbyes, pictures and advice for Nkhongono (which included how to keep too many girls from pursuing his cute little self :) ). I headed to the office after a quick goodbye to the students, but on my way, we saw the faithful Hope bus being pushed by its driver and conductor onto the side of the road. Not good when it's 8AM and the bus was supposed to head to Lusaka by 7:30AM. While I worked on some accounting processes this morning (including continuing to hit my head against the wall on this general ledger business that I just solved!), the Hope staff scurried to fix the bus and the students finally set off around 1PM. It was nice to seem them once more before they left, and I'm hoping that they'll enjoy their time in Lusaka and Livingstone!

So the rest of my day will be running this new general ledger system by Margaret, who oversees accounting at Hope, and working with Teachers Ng'oma and Silvia to implement the new student database! Wish me luck!

Good Day at the Office!

2011-01-11T06:43:00.000-06:00

Hello again! It's been a full day at the office, starting yesterday afternoon when I left you last. I was able to train Charles, Mumbi, the office manager as well as the three department heads for Hope Ministries on the new reporting system that we'll be using from here on. It was great to get their feedback on the draft templates I made, and it's always nice that there's the flexibility here to change things on the spot. I'm looking forward to seeing the monthly reports that Hope puts together and to see how the new report formats and prompts will help Hope to keep track of their successes, learn from their setbacks and keep track of their overall progress.

After a great dinner back at the Mulandos', the North Park students and I got to be bossed around by seven-year-old Sombo, who has very high standards when it comes to washing dishes. Half the time she's a very quiet and shy little girl and then something happens, usually right after dinner, when she becomes a little spitfire. It's quite a funny transition to watch! :)

Today has been a full day at the office, preparing more reporting documents that will help Hope to be even more financially accountable and transparent. When thinking about blogging this week, I was worried that it would be boring to talk every day about reporting, accounting and accountability, but in many ways this is the really exciting stuff. Yes, it's nuts and bolts, but perfecting these foundational processes and systems means that Hope will be on solid footing for the rest of what we hope will be a very long run in helping the children of Zambia. That to me is incredibly exciting!

It really makes such a difference to be able to come to Zambia and work with the Hope team in person. There are so many small conversations and quick questions that immediately unravel confusion that would take hours of phone calls to clear up. There's also the huge advantage of being around all the great staff here who are always so kind, so gracious and so welcoming. While it will be sad to see the North Park students leave first thing tomorrow morning to head to Lusaka for the end of their trip, I'm glad that I'll have some time with the office staff here without more than the basic level of distraction so that we can power through some of the accounting changes we're hoping to make together.

Over the next few days, I will be working with the staff at the school to create and implement a student database, I will be helping the accounting team to improve some of their record-keeping systems and I will be helping to set up fully the accounting system for the poultry farm. I'll also be doing some additional work with some of the teaching staff to train them on some computer basics and possibly even installing anti-virus software on their computers. It's going to be quite a busy four days before I head to Lusaka on Sunday, so wish me luck!

Rest and a Nice American Meal

2011-01-10T06:59:00.001-06:00

Hi Friends! It's been a slow and restful weekend, so there's not too much news on my end! I'd been feeling a bit under the weather lately, but a trip to the doctor and some antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection should have me all cleared up in no time. I spent the weekend for the most part trying to fight the infection with just an embarrassing amount of sleep, but I think it's been working. As a very nice treat after the doctor's visit, the North Park students staying at the Mulandos' made dinner, which is part of every North Park trip so that the host families who work so hard to feed and care for all the visitors get a night off and a chance to enjoy a nice American meal.

The North Park students staying at the Mulandos' made cheeseburgers (with bacon), baked beans (with bacon) and french fries (...no bacon). Tyler, one of the students, got an amazing picture of Sombo, Uncle J and Mama Lillian's granddaughter, with her eyes open absurdly wide, trying to take a bite of the hamburger that was basically as big as her head. It was a really lovely meal, and the hit for the evening was the Kool-Aid, which does not seem to have made its way to Zambia yet. Even the adults at the table couldn't get enough of it! (Though I'm sure they weren't too fond of the fact that Sombo and Nkhongono had a ridiculous amount of sugar-powered energy for the rest of the evening.) The dinner was topped off with a classic American dessert: Jello-O, which is pretty much what all of our stomachs looked like by the end of such a huge and delicious meal.

This morning I got up early to do a brief visit to Mwabombeni Basic School, a government primary school very near Hope Community School, to observe the first-day routine and process. I was glad to see that for the most part Hope was doing much of what the government schools were doing, and I picked up a few good tips and tricks that I'm looking forward to sharing with the staff at Hope Community School.

A bit more rest and observation at the school, and it brings me here at the office where I'll be working this afternoon on training some of the office staff as well as the heads of each of Hope's departments (i.e., school, orphanage, construction) on a new reporting system to help them better track and assess their performance. It's always fun to work with the staff here, so I'm excited to get their feedback on the templates I've created.

You should be hearing a lot from me this week since I'll be in the office almost the entire day every day. I'm looking forward to updating you on the progress!

Stories from Zambia

2011-01-08T07:43:00.002-06:00

Hello again! It's been a productive Saturday at the end of a very long week, and I thought I'd spend today's blog sharing a few good stories from my time here that I haven't had the time or space to share yet. I hope you enjoy them!

Uncle J and I were watching Sky News (a British news channel) while it was featuring a story about the search for a man who had gone missing in a lake in England. Uncle J scoffs saying, "These people! Making such a fuss about these things. In Zambia, when people go missing, we don't even pay it any mind!" Haha...I haven't learned to read Uncle J completely yet, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. :)

Nkhongono, the youngest son of Mama Lillian and Uncle J, and I go to the backyard to harvest mangoes almost every morning. Every now and then we stop by the guava tree as well to see how they're coming since they're my favorites and they're not quite in season yet. Every time we've checked there haven't been any ripe guavas. Then this morning we went out and Nkhongono picked a HUGE guava that was perfectly ripe, and I was totally bewildered that we'd missed it for all this time. It turned out that Nkhongono had been hiding that branch with other branches from the tree so that he could surprise me with a ripe guava. What a great kid. :)

On the last day of the clinic we offered to see all of the Hope staff to help ensure that the great team working together to take care of all the children at the school and orphanage continued to be healthy and strong. I noticed that not many of the teachers had come through yet, so I walked over to the school to make sure they knew that we were happy to see them. I walked into the Grade 7 room, which is taught by Teacher Angella, but I only saw Teacher Silvia, who seemed unsure about coming to the clinic. Then she pointed behind me, and I saw Teacher Angella, probably the toughest teacher at the school, cowering behind the door because she was scared of coming to the clinic to take her malaria test. After a good laugh and some slight cajoling, I managed to get them to (timidly) come through.

Last Sunday I shared my lunch with Dorothy, the adorable five-year-old daughter of the site manager for Hope Ministries, Pastor Kasongo. She has this adorable and perpetual smile that is unbearably contagious. So we were eating lunch together, and she kept saying "amenshi, amenshi." I didn't know what that meant and very cleverly kept saying "I don't know what that means" in English back to her. Every time I did that she would give me another one of her huge smiles, so I figured she was probably fine and just making conversation in her own way. It turns out that amenshi means water, and she had been parched all through lunch! I felt so terrible! Language barrier: 1. Joann: 0. :)

On the second day of the clinic, Teacher Ng'oma came up to the clinic with a little girl from Grade 1, which means it was her very first week of school ever, who had been complaining of feeling very ill. She had thrown up earlier in the day and complained of stomach pains and looked visibly ill and uncomfortable. We had her go through the clinic, and she tested positive for malaria. She got some malaria medication, and one of the older students walked her home so that she could rest for the remainder of the day. On the following day, it was time for the clinic to see all the Grade 1's so she came through again for a follow-up. The difference was absolutely 180 degrees. She was active, smiling and happy. I even saw her later in the day running around with her friends from Grade 1. The sight really made my day.

I hope you enjoyed these snapshots of my past couple weeks! Thanks again for following the blog! I'll try to post again tomorrow because I'll be in the office after the church service. I'm excited for another week in Zambia!

Very Long but Very Good Week

2011-01-07T10:01:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone! I've got another short post today. The North Park students ran the final day of the clinic today, and we finished seeing all of the kids at the school as well as some of their parents and most of the Hope staff. We had some interesting and heartbreaking cases today, and it was an emotional but productive day. A couple of our toughest cases included a parent of one of the students who had been bit by another woman during a fight over two years ago and whose wound had become incredibly infected. The most heartbreaking case we saw was of a child who looked to be about 1-2 years old whose entire left leg had been burned by hot water in a mishap. While these cases are incredibly trying and emotionally draining, it's amazing to think about just how much of a difference the North Park students, under the nursing leadership of Nurse Margaret, can make in a person's life in just a matter of 15-30 minutes. I feel grateful in moments like these to be part of Spark and Hope's work.

I'm looking forward to the coming weekend when I'll be able to power through some work that I need to do on my own to prepare for some discussions and trainings next week. I've got a conversation scheduled with Charles and Margaret about a variety of topics, including accounting and budgeting practices, and I know that it will be a very fruitful few hours.

Every trip here makes me think about Spark's Partnership Model, and it's in the discussions with the leaders and staff here that I really see how the idea of a partnership (rather than the West dictating to organizations and communities in the developing world, as has been the case in the foreign aid and international development for a very long time) is so powerful. At times it adds to the day-to-day work and to-do list, but I see continually and increasingly just how much of a difference the model is making and will make in the long term.

That's all I've got for today, but I should be able to post tomorrow as I'll be working from the office for most of the day. I'm looking forward to sharing more about the trip!

Successful Clinic Day

2011-01-05T09:38:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone! Today's post will be a bit short because I'm overextending my time in the office, and everyone else has left for the day!

It's been quite the busy 24 hours, starting with a dinner prepared by Mama Lillian for all of the North Park students and some of the Hope staff. It was amazing to see what a magnificent dinner she could create for almost 30 people, and with such ease and grace!

It was great that we all had a full meal yesterday evening because today was the beginning of a three-day marathon in which the North Park students run a clinic to see all of the students at Hope Community School. This was the first time I was able to observe one of these clinics, which are run twice a year, and it was great to see not only the Hope students get much-needed health care but also see the North Park students interact with the children in a whole new way. I'd say the best part of the clinic is watching the Hope students get their malaria tests, which requires a small prick on the finger to draw a couple drops of blood. I was surprised to see that even the older boys (who have been through previous clinics) were nervous about the finger prick, but I thought about how it's such a common occurrence in the US for children to go to the doctor, get shots and get blood drawn. With little to no available health care other than these clinics that the Hope-Spark partnership provide, I suppose it's really not that surprising that the students are nervous about a bunch of strangers making their fingers bleed. :) It was a great first day of the clinic, and the North Park students were able to think through some changes that will allow tomorrow's clinic to be even more efficient.

That brings me to now! I'm in the office, working through some ideas for accounting, the creation of a student database for Hope Community School and what the rest of my schedule while I'm in Zambia will look like. During the weeks here, there's so much to observe at the school, orphanage and clinic, that it's hard to put in enough hours in terms of prep work for trainings that I'll be doing next week and templates that I'll be working with Hope to implement for reporting and accounting processes. I'm excited for this weekend when I'll be able to just sit and power through some of the work. We've got two more clinic days before then, though, and I'm hoping I'll be able to observe and work simultaneously! I'll let you all know how it goes!

Happiness Is a Great Accounting System

2011-01-04T08:17:00.000-06:00

Hello again, everyone! I'm not sure how to describe just how excited I am about the work that has been done over the last 24 hours. In the afternoon yesterday, I had a fantastic and unbelievably productive conversation with Margaret, who is co-Executive Director of Hope Ministries, and Lucy, who is Hope's new accounting staff member. We talked through some of the existing accounting procedures, including the tracking of expenses, the tracking of income and the reconciliation of their finances. I got a pretty good handle on their current processes, and then we worked together to define new expense and income categories that will make their accounting system more complete, robust and accurate. I am likely revealing just how big of a nerd I am right now, but it was exhilarating. :) I am SO happy with the progress that we made yesterday, and now the ball's in my court to put together some reporting templates for Hope to use going forward. I'm really looking forward to this challenge, which will make Hope a stronger and more accountable organization. As Charles mentioned today in a conversation about these processes, building Hope's capacity in accountability helps create a solid foundation on which they can grow their organization, particularly as the poultry farm launches and as they receive the profits to invest in the child programs. Very exciting!

The day ended with dinner back at the host home, and Mama Lillian and her niece Susan made an amazing dinner, as they never fail to do. I think everyone was a bit tired and loopy because at some point during dinner, half the table burst into a 5-minute fit of giggles over how to pronounce "mackerel," which was one of our dinner dishes. Dinner preparation was a riot as well because while we were preparing the food, a drunken former neighbor of the Mulandos' showed up asking for corn meal that Mama Lillian suspected he would sell to buy more liquor. Mama Lillian, without showing an ounce of fear or hesitation, roughly escorted the man off her property. Just another example of the strength, tenacity and courage of the amazing women I've met here. (If you're wondering, I was walking a ways behind Mama Lillian as she dragged the man out of her yard, giggling at the sight.) :)

And if all that isn't enough progress for you, today has continued the streak, and I've been able to observe the classrooms and have a few discussions with the teachers about the operation of the school (as well as a great side conversation with Teacher Ng'oma about local beliefs in witchcraft). I was then able to have a meeting with all the teachers regarding the flow of the clinic that the North Park students will be running for all the Hope students from Wednesday to Friday. (I'm hoping to ensure that while one class is going through the clinic, the rest will be able to continue their lessons without disturbance.) And now I've managed to get to the office to work on a few of the reporting templates that I'll be working with the staff here to implement and have a conversation with Charles about the discussions and trainings for the couple weeks ahead.

Here's to two more weeks of progress made from working together!

First Day of School

2011-01-03T07:34:00.000-06:00

Hi Everyone! It is a sweltering day here, but I'm thrilled at the progress that has been made over the last day.

The North Park students worked on planning the clinic yesterday after getting to the office from the church service. I was excited to see Nurse Margaret, the Zambian nurse who has worked with every one of the clinics at Hope Community School since Hope began offering them. We got to chat a bit over dinner, and I was absolutely floored by her life story. She has been a widow for 22 years and has raised four children almost entirely on her own, all of whom have been able to find secure and even prestigious jobs in Zambia, the US or the UK. In her spare time, she's managed to have an incredibly successful 33-year career in nursing. Absolutely amazing.

We all had dinner together at one of the host homes, the home of Ba Silvia, and as always, we were treated to a delicious and abundant meal, and we ended the meal with some delicious mangoes, which are in season in Zambia right now and seem to be coming at us from all over the place. (The Mulandos have two mango trees, so Nkhongono and I go to the garden every morning to pick fresh ones...one of the many benefits of being in Zambia! Sadly my favorites, the guavas, won't be in season until I'm gone!)

After a good night's rest, I started the morning early today and headed to the school in time to observe all of the first-day festivities. The first day of school is mostly an administrative day, so the teachers had a brief assembly (what they call a parade) with the students, took attendance and had the students clean and beautify the campus. After all the work was done and the children and staff were waiting for lunch to be served, I was excited to be able to observe each of the classrooms. Because the first day here is largely an administrative day, most of the classrooms used the time to read books, set up the classrooms and review some lessons from the previous year. It was really great to see how each of the classrooms had a different personality as influenced by the difference in teaching styles, and I have never been as confident as I am now in the teaching staff currently assembled for Hope. They recently hired two new teachers, both government trained, who will add to the already high-caliber staff at the school. I wish I could add some pics from the first day, but I seem to still be having some problems uploading photos with the internet here. I'll try again soon!

I'm spending the rest of the day in the office, and I've already been able to work through some changes that we'll be working with Hope to make on some reporting processes and content. I'm looking forward to a discussion this afternoon with the accounting staff on the bookkeeping processes as well. It should be a productive afternoon!

By the way, thanks for the e-mails from everyone who's been worried about my suitcase! It did in fact arrive...it took a couple trips to the airport, a number of calls to Lusaka and quite a bit of keeping my fingers crossed, but the bag managed to make it. And not a moment too soon because washing my hair with a bar of Dove soap was starting to get old. :) Nkhongono is very excited that the strawberry cake mix and frosting I promised him have arrived. We'll see how it turns out in the somewhat unreliable Zambian ovens. Until tomorrow!

Happy New Year from Ndola!

2011-01-02T09:04:00.001-06:00

Hello again, everyone! Happy New Year to you all! The staff of Hope Ministries, the students here on the North Park trip and I all wish you all a very happy New Year, and we're excited to be spending the start of 2011 in Ndola.

We have had quite an exciting few days, including a great New Year's Eve celebration with the Hope staff and the community in which Hope works. We had dancing, music and snacks, and I'll add some pictures once the internet is fully functioning so you can see the fun and excitement!

We got to sleep in a bit on Saturday, as we did not return home until around 2AM, and while the students went to have a tour of Hope Village (where the school and orphanage are located) as well as the surrounding community, I stayed at the Mulandos' and was able to finish up some work on the financial forecasting for the farm and get started on preparing for some of the work with the accounting staff that I'll be doing over the next couple weeks. It was nice to have a quiet day of work, as well as some time to unpack all the suitcases that Spark brought over with supplies for the school, orphanage and staff.

Today we attended Hope's church service all morning. It is a true Zambian experience to attend church here. There's not a single hip not swaying, not a single mouth not singing and not a single child not staring at the mzungus (a very amiable term for white people). :) I was also very excited to see my old friend, Dorothy, the five-year-old daughter of a pastor here and one of the sweetest and most affectionate children I've ever met. It's always nice reconnecting with the friends I've met here, and I'm looking forward to seeing much more of Dorothy over the next couple weeks.

So now I'm in the office, well rested from the holiday weekend and very much looking forward to the work on enrollment, attendance and accounting that will take place over the next week. While the students do some more tours, I will be working with the school staff to ensure that enrollment at the school goes smoothly. The headteacher has asked me to help them work on a computerized database for their student records, and I'm really excited about tackling the challenge. I always find it amazing with projects here; there are always challenges and issues that you would never expect. For example, the school has a laptop that was generously donated by one of our board members, but it cannot be kept at the school because of security reasons and because there is not yet electricity at the school. It is the accumulation of small inconveniences like this that make Hope's successes (like the recent AMAZING Grade 7 exam results) even more incredible and inspiring.

I'm excited to bring you all more news of our progress together here. Until then, tuka monana (see you later)!

Secession and Zombies

2010-12-31T05:39:00.000-06:00

I'm back in the office after another great and busy day. After heading back to the office from the school yesterday, I did some work on financial forecasting for the poultry farm before heading home to find the four North Park students that will be staying with the Mulandos hanging out with Mama Lillian and Nkhongono, her youngest son. We had a delicious dinner and got to hear the North Park students' stories from the long trip over to Zambia.

Dinner gave way to a great discussion with Uncle J (Mama Lillian's husband) about African politics and the future of southern Sudan, where there will be an election in January that will decide whether it will secede from the north. Uncle J is an accomplished journalist and always brings an incredible (and hilarious) perspective to the news of the day. On a much less serious note, I was excited to introduce Nkhongono to Plants vs. Zombies, an absurb yet shockingly addictive game that I have on my iPhone. With that, we called it a night, off to dream lovely dreams about secession and zombies. :)

This morning has proven a success, with further discussions with Teacher Ng'oma about the enrollment process and school in general. A brief conversation about the poultry farm with Charles and Sandie, the chairman of Hope Ministries' board of directors, has me ready to finish up the forecasting and continue to think through the training and work I have ahead of me. It's been great to have time to talk through the processes here and see where I might be able to add value to an already extraordinary organization. Here's to two and a half more weeks of productivity and success!

Good Start, Great News

2010-12-30T06:37:00.002-06:00

Hello again! I made it to Ndola! (I can't say the same for one of my suitcases though...here's hoping it shows up soon!) I have been in Ndola for almost a full day now, and it has already been a busy and productive time. After getting settled in last night at the home of the Mulandos, my host family, we had a wonderful dinner, and I got to catch up with the family on how they've been since my last trip in July.

After a good night of mosquito net protected sleep, I got up early this morning to prepare for the day, which started with a meeting with the headteacher of Hope Community School, Teacher Ng'oma, as well as a couple of the new teachers, Teachers Janet and Silvia. We discussed the enrollment and attendance record-keeping processes, and I was excited to see how ready they are for the new year. I'll be spending some time over the next week or so helping to ensure that the first couple weeks of school (when enrollment/registration occurs) go smoothly, but the staff here seem to have a great handle on it already. That should free up some time for my next exciting task: accounting processes!

I visited the school briefly to review some of the enrollment and attendance records from this past school year and got to say hello to most of the teachers, who were waiting to meet about the new school year and the North Park students' trip. It's always so great to see the staff here again after a few months apart. Just their warmth and happiness at seeing you again make the four flights worthwhile!

When I arrived at the school, there was a group of children waiting outside the headteacher's office for their Grade 7 exam results. In Zambia, to qualify for Grade 8, which is the beginning of secondary school (like high school), you have to pass a government exam. An official happened to show up while we were at the school to deliver the results, and I am thrilled to announce here that 20 of the 21 Grade 7 students at Hope Community School who took the exam passed!* That's a 95% pass rate, and a rate almost unheard of at community schools! A big congratulations to the Hope students and staff...their ability to overcome the odds is truly incredible. I hope the following pictures show you a little bit of the sheer, complete joy these students seemed to have at hearing that they would get to graduate to Grade 8.

The staff have been very busy today (and I'm sure for the last few weeks) preparing for the North Park students, who arrived about an hour ago. I'm looking forward to meeting them myself and sharing great memories with them over the next couple weeks!

* There was a correction to this blog post. It originally indicated that 25 of the 26 students who took the Grade 7 exam passed. In fact 21 students took the exam and 20 passed, giving a 95% pass rate. Yay!

One Flight Down, Three to Go

2010-12-28T11:43:00.000-06:00

I'm currently waiting in London Heathrow airport for my next flight, which will get me onto the African continent, dropping me in Johannesburg, South Africa before another flight that will take me to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. From there I take a short flight to my final destination of Ndola. The idea of three more flights is a bit daunting, but after sleeping off and on in Heathrow, I'm feeling more rested and ready to take on the rest of this travel (as well as a bit of work along the way!).

As a side note, I find that airports are always such great places for people watching. My most hilarious people-watching moment so far this trip: seeing a grown woman (my guess is early 30's?) staring for a good five minutes at her exposed navel for no apparent reason. Couldn't figure that one out.

Well, on I go to tackle the rest of these flights. I just took my first malaria pill (a bit late since you're supposed to start taking them two days before you arrive), so it is really sinking in that I'll be in Zambia soon. Talk to you all again from Ndola!

Another Year, Another Trip!

2010-12-27T20:10:00.001-06:00

Hello All! This is Joann, Program Director of Spark Ventures.

As we approach the New Year, I am heading off to Zambia to work with our partner organization, Hope Ministries, on issues ranging from accounting practices to poultry farming. I'm excited to share my trip with you on this blog, and I'll be working hard to blog at least every weekday while I'm away.

Despite wet tennis shoes from all the snow in Chicago, the trip is off to a good start as I bop around listening to my iPod while waiting in O'Hare airport for our flight to board. (Given my complete lack of rhythm, I think the lady next to me thinks I'm having seizures.) Rich was upset that I made fun of his musical tastes on this blog during our first trip together in February, so to even things out, I'll share that I am listening to the Glee version of "Teenage Dream" on repeat. (Happy, Rich? :) )

Thinking about the coming year and this latest trip (my third this year), it's hard not to reflect on my past year at Spark. I started at Spark in January of this year, and it has been a truly spectacular 11 months so far. I've gotten to help plan the launch of a Zambian poultry farm, I've met some truly incredible Spark investors who give not only of their resources but also of their time and I've already spent almost a full month in Zambia, working with the dedicated and ever-generous staff of Hope Ministries.

I suppose this is all to say that I'm thrilled at the idea of what 2011 and this trip will bring. It will be an adventure to see what we can do for these kids together!

A few more highlights

2010-06-30T09:45:00.003-05:00

(Rich again..this time writing from Johannesburg, South Africa)

On Friday I gave a seminar to the entire Hope Ministries staff about Spark’s Partnership Model. I explained our mission is to come alongside of grassroots organizations like theirs and help to first stabilize, then strengthen and finally sustain their work with vulnerable children. It was a fun session with interaction and good questions. At the end we gave them all Spark t-shirts to signify their completion of the “course”. To our surprise on Saturday at the dedication they organized and most of them wore their new shirts to help indicate that their staff role and that they were available to serve the hundreds of guests who attended the event.

After a long week at school, most of the children still showed up bright and early for the ceremony on Saturday. Here they are seated on desks that had been brought out from the classrooms for the event.

Members of the Spark Transformation Team were seated as honored guests under one of the tents. Here you can see Spark Board Members Nancy O’Leary and Tasha Seitz, with Brady Josephson (Spark Director of Resource Development) and his wife Liz.

Co-Director Margaret Mumba of Hope Ministries and Nancy O’Leary pose with the Zambian and U.S. flags which now fly proudly outside of the schoolhouse.

Charles Mumba showing Rich some of the poultry land and where they are planning to build the chicken houses.

Dedication of Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse

2010-06-29T06:51:00.000-05:00

(This is Rich)

Saturday, June 26 was the dedication of the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse in Twapia--a village outside of Ndola, Zambia. Last year Spark Ventures raised the money to fund the construction of this new 7 classroom building serving now more than 350 orphans and vulnerable children. There were many generous people who invested in our Igniting Hope/Building a Future campaign. And we say thanks to all of you. One family, made a very large contribution in honor of young Shelby Goldstein who died at the age of 4. Her memory and spirit of joy and the love of learning now live on at Hope Community School in Zambia in this new facility. A building that is helping to provide hundreds of extremely poor children with education, nutrition and healthcare, thanks to the Spark-Hope partnership.

The ceremony was filled with singing and speeches, dancing and dignitaries. Board Member Tasha Seitz read a beautiful reflection on Shelby and message from the family.The day was filled with joyful children, families, friends, colleagues and community members who came to mark the official opening. We'll have more about this important event in Spark's history in the coming weeks on our website. For now, a special thank you to Shank and Renee Iyer and Greg and Rachelle Goldstein for helping to make this possible.

Here are just a few pictures from the day. Saturday, June 26 was the dedication of the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse in Twapia--a village outside of Ndola, Zambia. Last year Spark Ventures raised the money to fund the construction of this new 7 classroom building serving now more than 350 orphans and vulnerable children. There were many generous people who invested in our Igniting Hope/Building a Future campaign. And we say thanks to all of you. One family, made a very large contribution in honor of young Shelby Goldstein who died at the age of 4. Her memory and spirit of joy and the love of learning now live on at Hope Community School in Zambia in this new facility. A building that is helping to provide hundreds of extremely poor children with education, nutrition and healthcare, thanks to the Spark-Hope partnership.

The ceremony was filled with singing and speeches, dancing and dignitaries. But most of all it was filled with joyful children and families who came to mark the official opening. We'll have more about this important event in Spark's history in the coming weeks on our website. For now, a special thank you to Shank and Renee Iyer and Greg and Rachelle Goldstein for helping to make this possible.

Here are just a few pictures from the day.

Crowd at the dedication. Zambian and USA flags in the background.

The student choir performing during the ceremony.

Churchill Lombanya (advisor to the President of Zambia), Rich Johnson, Charles Mumba (Executive Director of Spark’s partner Hope Ministries

All quiet on the school front a few days before the celebration.

And Then There Were Three...

2010-06-28T04:55:00.000-05:00

Joann here again! This post is also coming a tiny bit late. It was written yesterday on our way to Lusaka. Hope you enjoy it!

Over the last three days we have accomplished and seen a great deal, and we have had a great time throughout! We visited another school, St. Andrew’s Basic School on Wednesday morning, and we picked up a lot of great tips about running a primary school. It has really amazed me how open and helpful all of the school staff members and headmasters/headmistresses have been. They seem not only willing but actually eager to show us the work they’ve done and allow us to learn from their experience. It is truly a testament to the culture here that even schools that are struggling to find fee-paying students are willing to help build up institutions like Hope Ministries and the community schools they run.

The last few days have also allowed us to follow children with incredible stories to their homes to see a small piece of their lives and hear their stories. One child walks four hours to get to school because there are no fee-free schools any closer to his home. One child’s family has been decimated by HIV/AIDS. While every child at Hope Community School no doubt has a fascinating story of struggle and survival, the children whom we’ve accompanied have really stolen our hearts and given us even greater motivation to continue the partnership work that we are doing with Hope Ministries.

Yesterday was an incredible day celebrating the dedication of the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse. Charles has long told us that for the community here, infrastructure is THE sign of reliability and stability. Thus, the construction and dedication of the schoolhouse has been an incredibly powerful signal to the children and the community at large that Hope and its goals to educate, nourish and inspire vulnerable children are here to stay. The celebration for the dedication involved hundreds of children and community members, and a number of the community leaders mentioned how wonderful it is that the spirit of Shelby Goldstein, who passed away when she was four years old, can now live on in the education and bright futures of the hundreds of schoolchildren who will study in the schoolhouse. It was truly a day to remember.

Today has been a day of celebration as well, though paired with sadness. As we embark on our five-hour bus ride to Lusaka to see the land that has been purchased for the poultry farm that will soon allow Hope Ministries to be financially independent and sustainable, we say goodbye to all of the children at Hope House and Hope Community School with whom we’ve spent the last week. I know that I’ll miss their laughter every time one of us attempts to speak in Bemba as well as the confusing hand and card games that they tried to teach us and that we could never really understand. I can’t wait until I can join them again!

Tomorrow morning Tasha and Nancy, the two board members that have joined us for this trip, will be leaving us, and Rich will be staying in Lusaka to have more meetings and discussions about the poultry farm. Thus, it will leave Brady, Liz and I to enjoy Livingstone and our safari to Botswana on our own, and I think we plan to work hard to have enough fun for all six of us! I have no doubt that having Mama Lillian and Ba Margaret as our guides and travel buddies will make the next few days an absolute riot. They call themselves the “senior ladies,” so Brady and Liz have started singing “all the senior ladies” to the tune of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” every time we see them. It’s going to be a ridiculous few days…stay tuned!

Two Schools, Five Marshmallows and One Dinner at Fatmol’s

2010-06-28T04:53:00.000-05:00

This post was written on June 24, but we've haven't had the chance to post it. I hope you enjoy it! (This is Joann again!)

Our day yesterday was a true eye-opener. We started by visiting a government school and a private school in Ndola, where Hope Community School operates. Community school like Hope’s are a recent phenomenon that are aimed at helping Zambia reach the Millennium Development Goal of providing free universal primary education. Government and private schools are often better funded and better run, and we hoped to learn from their experience.

The government school we visited, Mwabombeni Basic School, was large and clearly well run, and the students’ strong command of English demonstrated the quality of teaching there. It was the private Catholic school we visited, Dominican Convent Secondary School, that really made our jaws drop, though. Much more expensive and exclusive than the government school, this school ran like a Swiss watch. They had well-stocked laboratories, a large library and even a swimming pool, and what’s more, the students were confident, healthy and seemingly very happy! It was truly a marvel, and half the time I kept thinking that it was better than the high school I attended! After speaking with a senior teacher at Mwabombeni and the headmistress at Dominican, we learned a lot that will be of use for improving our own school, and we also saw models of what we might dream for Hope to be in a few years’ time.

After the school visits and a very long delay I caused by getting 20 copies of our training materials (a process that took about an hour!), we continued our day with a quick lunch and time with our reading partners, the children that each of us sponsors. This has been, to my surprise, one of my favorite parts of this trip, and every time that Steward, the student I sponsor, recognizes the words he’s reading, he gets this great smile on his face and a look of sheer pride and achievement. It’s been just wonderful.

After our time with our reading partners, Rich and I ran our first training session for the Hope staff, and it turned out to be a blast! We gave them The Marshmallow Challenge, which is a program we found in which teams of 3-4 have to try to build the tallest free-standing structure out of spaghetti, tape and string with a marshmallow at the top. We used it as part of a training session about creating and refining efficient processes, and the staff really rose to the challenge! We had two close calls during the session as two teams’ taller structures ended breaking halfway through the training! A group of the school teachers ended up winning with a structure 46cm high! (The blog's not allowing me to post pictures right now, but I'll try again soon!)

And lastly for dinner, which we had at our motel, Fatmol’s Executive Lodge. Despite ordering dinner at 9AM to preempt any problems, it turned out to be a hilarious comedy of errors including wrong orders, cold dishes, questionable parts of chickens and the arrival of our “Banana Boat” melted banana split dessert that looked more like what Brady called a “banana pond.” We were all so tickled by the end of dinner that the embarrassing stories from the trip started to flow!

The best was probably Rich’s admission about his trip to buy “talk time” (minutes for your cell phone). When he was on his way back, he had jogged across the dark street to get to our lodge. As he rushed across the road, which was definitely not equipped with sidewalks or street lights, he didn’t notice the upcoming barbed wire guard rail and ended up taking a head-over-heels, face-down tumble into the street. I SO wish we had gotten some video (or photos at least!) of him as he tried to untangle himself from the barbed wire with his backpack flying about as the bus drivers that had taken us home watched and chuckled from across the street.
As you can imagine, it was a great day, and we are looking forward to another eventful (and hopefully less dangerous!) day today!

Estreda

2010-06-23T12:00:00.002-05:00

Tuesday night (from Rich): Today we were welcomed back to Hope Community School by more than 300 beautiful children. Their singing voices are still ringing in my ears as write this post: “Hello, hello dear visitors, we say welcome to you today.” The dancing and drums, the songs and smiles, the games and gracious embraces…it’s an experience I wish for everyone to have at least once. The afternoon was filled with serving lunch to the students and then participating in a tour of the growing Hope Ministries Campus. Executive Director Charles Mumba painted an incredible picture of their current and future work as we walked through the 7 classroom school, bathroom facilities, Hope House orphanage, the water well, garden, and two new buildings under construction—the boy’s dormitory and a clinic. After lots of fun and a fantastic dinner with the children and staff of Hope House, we headed back to our lodge. As someone said on the bus ride home, what an amazing first day—how do we top that?

But as I prepare to climb into a comfortable bed for a good night’s rest, the overwhelming joy I felt today is clouded by the picture of a troubled 12 year old girl named Estreda. She showed up at the front door of Hope House about 8pm, just before we left. It was dark outside, she had walked from her home and had obviously been crying. The Hope House mother asked that I join her on the front porch to talk with Estreda. Slowly her story unfolded.

Estreda lives there in Twapia and walks about 30 minutes each morning to attend Hope Community School. Her parents are gone and she lives with her grandmother who is unable to provide for her. So today when she arrived home, her grandmother said she could no longer attend school because she needed her to go to the market during the day to sell vegetables so they could have a little money to buy some other food for dinner. When Estreda resisted and explained that she wanted to continue to attend school so that she could be educated, her grandmother kicked her out of the house and told her not to come back. That’s when she walked the 30 minutes back to the Hope Ministries campus and arrived at our door.

While the laughing and post-dinner games of cards, Jenga and Battleship continued with the Hope House children inside, I called Charles and his wife Margaret, who suggested that Estreda stay at the orphanage tonight and tomorrow the staff would go to visit her grandmother and try to work things out.

Estreda came inside and had some orange juice and I thought I glimpsed a slight smile before we left. But I go to bed thinking of the desperate conditions of she and her grandmother. How many of us have ever thought of having to choose between a grade school education or food? Tonight I realize that Spark’s mission to help vulnerable children achieve their potential often begins with simply giving these children the means to survive. Our partner Hope Ministries has been empowered to do just that for Estreda and hundreds more. And with Spark’s continued support, Hope will be able to help these children not just survive, but thrive. So it is with cautious optimism that I sign off for now.

Charles giving a tour of what will be the boys dormitory.

Hope House grandmother doing laundry.

Kelvin, Marvis and Jeff working with Judy on some poems for the dedication ceremony for the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse (on Saturday).

Poultry Farming 101

2010-06-22T10:36:00.000-05:00

This is Rich. I landed in Zambia’s capital city of Lusaka on Friday night after a delay in Washington DC. After a quick night of sleep, I spent all of Saturday with Charles Mumba and Sandie Kandolo (Executive Director and Chair of the Board for Spark’s partner Hope Ministries). We visited 3 chicken farms and a company called Hybrid that supplies small chicks to poultry farmers, who then raise and sell them back to Hybrid at a profit. It was quite an education.

My favorite part was meeting Mr. Tembo, a poultry farmer of great knowledge. He told us all about feeders and drinkers. He showed us the chicken “runs” or the actual buildings that house the chickens—as many as 8,000 at a time. It is very important that the chickens stay warm for the first few weeks so they have small charcoal pits that are placed in the buildings to keep the temperature up. They vaccinate the chickens through the water and provide vitamins. I’m pretty sure these chickens would qualify as free range. They check each day for chickens that haven’t made it, and at the end of a cycle, they are given a mortality rate. A mortality rate of 4-10% is acceptable when you are raising this many chickens. Mr. Tembo’s last crop had a mortality rate of only 2%! Like I said, he is one wise poultry farmer. Of course, these are what are called broiler chickens, so in the end the mortality rate is actually 100%. (Sorry to any vegetarians out there.) Evidently lay chickens (the ones you raise to lay eggs) are very temperamental and much harder to raise successfully.

Sunday I traveled by car to Ndola (about 5 hours) and got to spend one night with my Zambian family the Mulandos. It was great to see Mama Lilian and her cooking is as good as ever. Uncle Jay’s battery charging business was also doing quite well considering all of his customers who wanted their batteries charged so they could watch the World Cup games.

Monday Tasha and Nancy arrived and today (Tuesday) was our first full day at the Hope Ministries campus (as I’m calling it). It is quite unbelievable the progress and people that greeted us. But I’ll save that for another post. Thanks for following us and for your support of Spark Ventures. I’ll leave you some pictures of the farms and the children whose lives you are helping to transform!

Mr. Tembo (2nd from left) giving poultry farm lessons to Ba Roy, Ba Sandie and Ba Charles.

Drinkers (orange) and feeders (silver) alongside a 7,000 capacity chicken run.

Sandie Kandolo (Hope Board Chair), Rich, Charles Mumba and Roy Kaonga (Hope Vice Chair) at Mr. Tembo's poultry farm.

Some of the children at Hope Community School.

A new friend.

And So It Begins!

2010-06-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

Our long-awaited June 2010 Transformation Trip has officially begun! We had a soft opening on Friday when Brady and Liz, a first-time Transformation Trip participant, arrived in Zambia, but we are now fully in the midst of our trip with today's arrival of Nancy and Tasha to round out our group!

We have a full agenda planned, including tours of a government school and private school to see if there are things we can learn to improve Hope Community School and Transformation Stories, which document the incredible stories of some of the children at the school.

I have not had a chance to post over the weekend, so I can catch you all up on some of the work we've been doing! After Brady and Liz arrived on Friday we had dinner with the translators at Michaelangelo's, a hilariously decorated Italian/Zambian restaurant in Ndola. (Yes, stone statues and everything!) Liz got a chance to meet a lot of the staff, and I got a chance to thank all the staff who have been working so hard to get the updates and letters done over the last week. Dinner conversation circled largely around the World Cup, as one of the games was playing during dinner. (You can tell I'm not a soccer nut because I can no longer remember which two teams were playing!)

Saturday was a heavy day where we learned a lot about some history and current issues in Zambia, including the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I feel that we hear about this problem all the time in the States, yet we never hear about some of the nuances of the problem that we heard about from some patients at the AIDS hospice we visited. For example, many of the patients said they felt much better in the hospice simply because they were getting enough to eat. ARV's, the drugs that are prescribed for HIV and AIDS, can be damaging to the body when taken without food, and one patient with whom we spoke said that he collapsed after taking his pills one day because he did not have the money to buy anything to eat. It really made Brady, Liz and I think again about some of the things we thought we knew about how to control the disease.

After taking in the many lessons we had from Teacher Ng'oma and another staff member on Saturday, we went home to spend time with our host family, the Mulandos, as it was their youngest son Nkhongono's birthday! We had a nice dinner and got to rest and take in some more soccer before resting.

Sunday proved to be another restful day as we spent the morning in church, which is a true cultural experience in Zambia, one not to be missed. There was dancing, singing and lots of excitement, and we all had a great time. There was a great moment when Ba Margaret was introducing Liz, whom she introduced as Bana Brady (kind of like saying Mrs. Brady), and Brady stood up instead! We all had a good laugh and a good time.

After church we spent a few hours at Hope House, the orphanage that Hope Ministries runs, and we got to play all sorts of games with the kids. After realizing that Scrabble might be a bit ambitious given the fact that the children were still working hard on their English skills, we moved on to card games like War and Gold Fish, which turned out to be a ton of fun. It was the first chance we've had to really spend time with the kids at the orphanage, and it was great because they are all an absolute riot. Mama Maureen, the house mother, talks about how great the kids are and how they really treat her as if she were their own mother. You can imagine how tough it would be for her otherwise, with 14 kids to take care of!

And that brings us to today, and we are getting Nancy and Tasha settled in before another busy week. We'll send more updates as the week progresses!

Lots of Excitement...

2010-06-19T03:30:00.000-05:00

There has been lots of great progress and excitement the last couple days! We have completed all the sponsorship updates and letters except for those children who have been absent this week, and the translators, the Mulando family and I had a celebratory dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate the great week!

Another reason for celebration was the arrival of Brady and Liz! They arrived safely, and in fact we are better off now that they're here. The water and electricity had unexpectedly gone out in the last couple days, but almost as soon as they arrived they both came back on! They have certainly been lucky charms!

Today we are heading the the Slave Tree, where there used to be slave auctions to hear a bit about the history of slavery in Zambia from Teacher Ng'ome. Then we will head to Kantolombo Graveyard and an HIV/AIDS hospice, where we will see firsthand the effects of HIV/AIDS on the population here. It will be an eye-opening day, and Brady, Liz and I are ready to learn.

Well, we are about ready to head out. Talk to you all soon!

Tranformation

2010-06-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

We've had another productive, though very windy, day at the school today! We've completed all of the updates and letters for the students who have been in attendance the last few days, and I even re-took the photos for all of Grades 5, 6 and 7 because the indoor photos I took of them before weren't the best. Tomorrow will involve more tracking down the kids who have been absent the last few days, but the bulk of the work is done!

Because we have been so far ahead of schedule, I was able to take down two Stories of Transformation this afternoon. These are stories of students that attend Hope Community School in spite of incredible circumstances. I am looking forward to sharing these stories of strength and perseverance with you all very soon. These stories, which were the most powerful part of my first trip to Zambia and Hope Ministries, continue to show me the great work that is already being done as well as the great deal more there is to do.

While waiting for a ride to the office this afternoon, some of the translators that helped us with the sponsorship updates told me some of the best stories from the children this week. I've included two below so you can get a taste of the fun and confusion we've had this week!

When asking a student how long it takes him to walk to school, Mumbi, the office manager, said that he couldn't give an answer, so she tried to break it down for him. She asked him what time he leaves for school. "10AM," he said. Then she asked him what time he arrives at school, to which he gave the rather surprising answer "9AM."
Getrude, one of the new members of the office staff, asked on student what he wants to be when he grows up. He confidently answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. Surprised, she asked him what a lawyer does. He answers, "A lawyer works in the hospitals."

And, as promised to all Chicagoans, and Americans in general, my best purchase this trip (possibly in this life)..."Obama Pops." Also known as "Obama Lollis." Pictures for your enjoyment below. (The best part: the random woman blowing President Obama a kiss. :)

Enjoy, and talk to you all tomorrow!

Quick Update

2010-06-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

I don't have much time to post today because Ba Rodgers (one of the Hope drivers), Ba Margaret (Hope co-director) and Ba Lillian (Hope board member) are waiting for me downstairs in the office parking lot!

I'll just say that it's been another super productive day, with lots of fun surprises. I have a special surprise for you Chicagoans tomorrow, so check back in. :)

Tuka mona namaylo! (See you tomorrow!)
Joann

What a Different Four Months Makes

2010-06-15T11:44:00.005-05:00

It has been another long and productive day here in Zambia. After getting through all of the Grade 3 and 4 student sponsorship updates and half of the Grade 2 student sponsorship updates, the staff and I took a brief break before jumping right into more letter writing. The children, though a little confused at the assignment at first, ended up putting lots of effort in to their pictures and letters, and I’m sure they’re looking forward to hearing back.

In the excitement of being ahead of schedule yesterday, I forgot to write about all the changes that the school and orphanage have experienced since we were here just four months ago! The school now has several small gardens that replaced some of the big, empty area between the school and orphanage. The restrooms that were going up when Rich and I visited in February are now completed, providing a clean, hygienic restroom facility when many children did not have access to such a facility. Construction has begun on a storehouse/temporary boys’ dorm for the older boys at Hope House as well as a clinic that will be staffed by the Zambian nurse who has helped with Spark’s medical clinics for the last several years. I've included some pictures of the progress here.

Progress on the clinic

Progress on the boys' dorm and storeroom

Furthermore, there is a noticeable difference in the gravity and pride attached to being educated here. I see charts on all the walls of the weekly school schedule and what subjects are taught when, and more and more children seem to be in uniforms. It is so encouraging to see that even as the school accommodates more children, it is also working to ensure that all its students are getting a quality education.

In addition to reveling in the success of Hope Ministries the last few months, today the staff and I also worked on helping children to write letters to their sponsors. We finished early, so I spent my time entertaining some of the girls at Hope House with my terrible Bemba and long hair. They spent about half an hour braiding all my hair, teaching me Bemba and asking me to teach them words in Mandarin, Spanish and French. (They had quite a giggle when trying to pronounce “bonjour”!) We also took some great staged photos, two of which I’ve included below.

I’m sure the Mulandos are cooking up more delicious food as we speak, so I will head out to make sure I get a hefty plate of whatever's cooking! Although I don’t think my braids will make it until then, I’m excited to see what tomorrow has in store!

Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency!

2010-06-14T10:04:00.002-05:00

Wow. I cannot even describe how productive the Hope team and I were today! It was utterly amazing. I was expecting to do all of the Grade 7 sponsorship updates, maybe also some of Grade 6 if we were really productive. By 10AM, which was only half the time we had scheduled, we were done with Grades 7, 6 AND 5! It was amazing, and it was in great part thanks to Charles's herculean efforts in getting 8 translators ready for us by 7:30AM this morning. I hadn't brought the Grade 1-4 update sheets with me, so everyone went back to their normal schedules until we started to write sponsorship letter responses in the afternoon. I'll admit that it was nice to have a little break given the mild jetlag!

In the afternoon, after all the kids at school had lunch, we were able to get the majority of the responses to sponsors' letters done as well. This was a much longer process given that it takes much more time for each child to figure out what they want to say and have one of the staff help them get it down on paper, but we made good time and had fun along the way. The children were so excited about the letters they received, and they seemed to have a great time writing back and drawing pictures for their sponsors. One boy was just indescribably happy when he opened his letter to find lots of different stickers that his sponsor sent. It's always so heartwarming to see these small efforts and acts of kindness that bring the kids so much happiness.

After the responses were completed, I got to spend some time hanging out with the staff and the kids at Hope House, the orphanage that Hope Ministries runs. On the trip that Rich and I took in February, we took the Hope House kids to a poultry farm to get pictures of each of them with a chicken to help raise awareness of the poultry farm that Hope will soon be building and running so as to become financially independent. I had some of these pictures printed for each of the Hope House kids, and you should have heard the laughter when they each opened their envelopes! We have been told that photos are very expensive to print in Zambia, so I think they were tickled by the fact that they now had photos of themselves. The fact that there was a chicken in them was just icing on the cake. :) (The following is the best picture we took by far. It is truly a treasure.)

After my current stop in the Hope Ministries office to get caught up on some e-mails, I will be heading back to the home of my host family, the Mulandos, for dinner, play time with Khongono and Sombo, the two children in the house, and maybe even some sleep tonight. Dinner last night of nshima, rice, chicken and five-year vegetable (a green, leafy vegetable) was incredible, and I'm looking forward to more of the same tonight! I didn't remember liking nshima so much from my last trip, so either I'm really becoming Zambian as Mama Lillian Mulando keeps insisting, or she just has a special touch!

Tomorrow will be another day of updates and letters, and I'm looking forward to the work and play that it will bring!

- Joann

The Voyage

2010-06-14T09:58:00.000-05:00

After nearly 30 hours of travel, I have finally arrived in Ndola, Zambia, home of our partner, Hope Ministries!

The journey was long, though surprisingly entertaining. The man sitting next to me on the flight to London had very clearly had a few preparatory drinks, and so introduced himself two or three times during the flight, each time asking if he'd already introduced himself. A broken video screen on that flight meant that when I was not reintroducing myself to this man, I could actually get some sleep instead of watching Monsters Inc. over and over again, so all in all it worked out well!

Before falling asleep for the majority of the flight to London, I wrote letters to the two kids whom my fiance and I sponsor, Anna and Steward, using what most people would likely think of as nauseatingly cute stationery. I did feel a little awkward as the man sitting next to me watched me pull out a stack of papers with cartoon hamsters, koalas, rainbows and hearts all over, but I think Anna and Steward will appreciate the effort! :) I'm really looking forward to bringing all the letters that sponsors have written to their kids. Last time we went, the kids seemed so excited for the pictures and notes.

The rest of the trip was thankfully uneventful and quick, and it was so great to see Charles (the Executive Director of Hope Ministries) at the airport when I finally made it to Ndola! I've already unpacked, and I'm ready to attack the week, which should be fun and action packed.

I wanted to leave you all with a photo of the best moment of my trip over, but I've forgotten to bring the cord to my iPhone, on which I took the photo! I'll leave you instead with the idea of it: "American Cheeseburger" flavored potato chips in the London airport. I seriously regret not purchasing them...

Talk to you all again soon! I am about to head out to have dinner with my great host family, the Mulandos, and prepare for tomorrow's full day of sponsorship updates, sponsorship letters and catching up with the staff and kids!

30 Hours and Counting...

2010-06-10T16:16:00.003-05:00

It’s hard to believe that in just under 30 hours, I will be taking off for Zambia to visit Spark’s partner Hope Ministries! I will be joined shortly thereafter by Rich (Spark’s Executive Director), Brady Josephson (Spark’s Director of Resource Development) and a great group of Spark board members, investors and volunteers for our June 2010 Transformation Trip.

As the countdown ticks away, we are all working hard to pack up all the things that we’ll be taking over with us, which includes everything from letters that sponsors have written to their sponsored children to 100 pairs of donated Croc shoes and 500 sharpened pencils! I currently have a suitcase that is larger than I am awaiting my attention…

We have so much exciting work planned for this trip, and I know that we are all thrilled to get to see all the great Hope staff and kids again! On this trip, we’ll be updating sponsorship profiles, helping the children to write letters to their sponsors, doing training with the Hope staff and spending time learning from the staff about how things are progressing at the school, orphanage and upcoming farm! We’ll hear updates about plans for the poultry farm land that was purchased about a month ago, and we’ll even get to tour the land.

There should be lots of great updates from various Spark staff, board and volunteers while we’re on the trip, so check back for updates on the progress Hope is making (not to mention any embarrassing stories about fellow trip participants once we get too tired to keep our guards up!)

Off to pack the massive suitcase and dream of nshima!

- Joann (Program Director)

Three Themes

2010-02-14T12:02:00.001-06:00

As Rich and I made our long journey home from Ndola after a very productive, often hilarious and occasionally heartbreaking trip, three themes about life in Ndola kept coming to mind.

Death and Loss
It did not take long to recognize the far reach of death in the lives of the children at Hope House and Hope Community School. As we listened to children tell their stories, stories of abandonment, parents' deaths and lost childhoods, it was hard to hold back tears. It felt somehow disrespectful, though, to cry in front of a 14-year-old boy whose parents' deaths have left him to take care of five younger siblings and who does so with strength well beyond his years. We saw the same strength and stoicism in a man who was carefully cleaning the grave of a boy, born in 2001 and died in 2009, and who stared with apparent pain at a makeshift headstone, a black metal sign with white painted words, while surrounded by similar headstones for hundreds of other children.

Compassion and Community
The pain of death in Ndola is matched only by the strength of the community. We heard countless stories of distant relatives and even complete strangers taking in children orphaned by AIDS and poverty. The staff of Hope in particular exemplifies how the community steps in to fill the immeasurable void left by so much loss. Teacher Ng'oma, the headteacher of Hope Community School, works out of what was intended to be the storage closet of the new school, having given up his more spacious office so that the Grade 1 students can have their own classroom, happily sacrificing his own comfort to serve the community.

Resilience and Hope
The ability of the children and the community to adapt to what many would consider impossible circumstances was truly remarkable. Margaret, the wife of the executive director and a major presence in Hope Ministries, visited the electricity company every day for weeks to insist that they turn on the electricity to the orphanage. The children at the school have endured more than we would think imaginable, yet they speak with excitement and hope when talking about wanting to be doctors, teachers, nurses and policemen.

This trip has not only showed the incredible progress that has been made already but also the limitless potential of our continued partnership. Thank you for following our journey, my first to Zambia, and for your support as we help to inspire even more hope in these children.

Do Dreams Become Reality?

2010-02-13T20:10:00.001-06:00

Friday night before Joann and I left we had one fantastic last dinner at Hope House with the children and staff. It was the first time I had “village rice”--which I loved, but anyone who knows me won’t be surprised at that. When I asked about the rice and told them how good it was, Margaret did her “laugh of approval” and Charles said that this officially made me a Zambian. After dinner, with the children sitting on the floor in the family room and the staff squeezing onto sofas behind them, Margaret delivered a great speech. She spoke directly to the children but we were all listening intently:

“Three years ago Charles, Rich and Mr. Mwale stood right here on this land and it was bush—nothing but weeds and dirt, no people, no houses, no buildings. But as they stood on this land, they dreamed this would be the perfect place for an orphanage and school, a place where children would run and play and learn. Look where we are today—we are here in a new home, the school is opened, we are feeding and educating hundreds of children including all of you here in this home. This dream became a reality. And that is why it is important for you to dream. Because when you dream, you open the opportunity for it to become a reality.”

It was a strong reminder to me of why we do what we do. We build partnerships that help vulnerable children achieve their potential. And the Spark-Hope partnership is doing just that. Our dreams for the children of Ndola, Zambia are becoming a reality…thanks to so many people who have believed in this dream with us and trusted and invested in Spark Ventures.

Story of Hope

2010-02-10T09:35:00.002-06:00

I met twin boys named Moses and Joseph today who are now attending Hope School. Their parents died about 2 years ago and not even their relatives would take them in. An incredibly gracious woman in their village found them out by the side of the road and took them to the police station, where they turned around and gave her official guardianship of the boys. This woman, Bernadetta found out that the boys had tried to get their extended family to receive them after their parents died, but no one felt as though they could take them in. Bernadetta had 4 great/grand children of her own she was already caring for but she decided to care for Moses and Joseph as well. Bernadetta invited me to her home where she explained that she has no job and they live off of the vegetables in her yard--including maize (corn) which they dry and ground up for cornmeal as a staple carbohydrate. The boys are now enrolled in Hope Community School and receive meals and a good education there. I took some pictures and promised to share her inspiring story and explained that the Spark-Hope partnership will continue to support the boys as they attend Hope School. - Rich

Sponsorship Program Talks

2010-02-09T17:25:00.004-06:00

We had a meeting today with all of the teachers at Hope Community School and some of the administrative staff. Joann led a seminar on how our Child Sponsorship program works (from the Spark side) and they shared how it was working here in Zambia. We spent a lot of time talking about how to improve the program--for the children, the sponsors and ultimately both organizations. At one point it started to rain and we are in a school building with a tin roof and it was so loud you could barely hear anything. To my amazement, Joann sat up and increased the volume of her voice exponentially to continue presenting to them above the noise of the rain. Who knew she had those kind of lungs. I also learned that Joann is really great with kids on this trip. Every morning and evening she spends time with Nkongono and Somba--the two children who live in the home where we are staying. I hear that she is dissing my music preferences on this blog. The worst thing I've found out about her is that she used to eat Twinkie's for breakfast. - Rich

Laugh of Approval

2010-02-07T09:32:00.000-06:00

We've had another fantastic and seemingly unpredictable day here in Zambia. Last night, after our unforgettable chicken and children photo shoot, we went home to rest up for dinner with Charles (the executive director of Hope Ministries) and his wife Margaret. We started dinner off with what has proven to be fairly typical experience here: a blackout. This one was particularly treacherous though, as it had stolen our dessert because the power was off for too long for Margaret to complete the final course. :) We were stuffed to the brim as it was, though, with rice, chicken, nshima, fish, pumpkin leaves, pumpkin and maize. Dinner ended up being a hilarious lesson about Zambian dowries or, as Charles calls them, "tokens of appreciation" that suitors pay a woman's family for her hand in marriage. They're pretty big tokens at thousands of dollars per daughter, though! When it was time to head home, we caught our wonderful driver, Gift, watching Hannah Montana in Charles' family's shop, which turned out to be only half as funny as Rich's subsequent confession that he has Miley Cyrus on his iTunes.

After a good laugh and another restful night (with quite a rainstorm), we headed off to church this morning, which was moved into one of the classrooms at the new Shelby Goldstein schoolhouse because the church's floors were flooded from the evening's rain. Rich gave a great speech that included the proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together," which Rich delivered in what Margaret was not afraid to call distinctly western-sounding Bemba. Rich's Bemba elicited a roar of laughter from the congregation. Charles and Margaret explained that it was clearly a "laugh of approval," but I'm fairly certain they were just trying to make us feel better because I'm pretty sure I got the same kind of laughter when Margaret had me get up and dance to the music in front of the rest of the congregation. Either way, we had a fantastic time and took lots of pictures that we'll share as soon as we can!

Rich & Joann - Day 1

2010-02-06T15:12:00.000-06:00

After three flights, 23 hours and not a lot of sleep, we finally arrived in Ndola yesterday morning! We started off the day on a really great note, hearing that the kids had finally moved into Hope House after a little luck from David and Nancy, who helped the electricians finally come to turn the power on. We had a great dinner at the new house with all the kids and staff, and I got my first taste of nshima, though I ate it with a spoon like a true westerner while the children ate with chopsticks that David and Nancy brought. It was quite a sight to see, a room full of kids stabbing their nshima and eating their rice one grain at a time!

We ended the night fairly early to get some rest after our long trip, and we woke up early this morning to have breakfast with David and Nancy and see them off. Before they left we had what was quite possibly the most hilarious hour and a half of my life in which we took photos of some mildly frightened kids with a very frightened chicken. The chicken, initially fairly cooperative, took a turn for the worse around the 100th photograph, so we switched to a chick, who as it turned out was not that much more cooperative. (In all fairness, I think our request for a docile chicken that wouldn't try to run away was a bit of a stretch.) The photos turned out great, though, and the kids seemed to have a good time egging each other on. We're off to get
started on the rest of our very busy week, so we'll be back in the next couple days for another update!

We Have The Power

2010-02-05T15:58:00.009-06:00

Today we spent another day at the school reading and playing with the kids while the staff got organized for us to visit the second village. This time we set out in a car and had to drive over to our destination. The roads in Ndola are some of the worst we have ever seen, but these roads had the deepest potholes and rough surfaces that you can only imagine. We have sworn never to complain about Chicago roads. This village is in a valley and last year during the rainy season the wind become so strong it took almost all the roofs off of the houses. Once we arrived we were surrounded by children who followed us from house to house. We found the homes as good/bad as the first village and the people were very sweet and appreciative. Ten nets, ten pictures, ten homes and two hours later we were on our way back to shower and change to meet Rich and Joann from Spark. They arrived at 3:00 today.

We have kept this a secret in order to surprise Rich and Joann. The power to the orphanage is now on. The electric line was attached late Tuesday and the inspector approved and turned on the power late Wednesday. Knowing this, it was decided to move the children in time to surprise Rich and Joann and have our farewell/welcome dinner at the new orphanage. David had been helping clean out the new building on Wednesday and help with the move on Thursday. It just took three truck loads, you will enjoy seeing the pictures to follow. The house mother and the kids, with our help, arranged the house, set up the beds, installed mosquito nets all in 24 hours. IT WAS SO AMAZING SO SEE IT COME TOGETHER! Charles attributed this good fortune to David. He referred to it as the power of the Israelite. In Africa there is a saying that an Israelite will bring an African good luck. Charles kept thanking David saying that they have been waiting for months and once David arrived they had power within 48 hours.

By Friday, the orphanage was ready for the children and its guests. Rich and Joann were picked up for dinner and were told by Charles that they were going by the new school, which is directly across from the new orphanage. As they arrived, Charles was so excited that he blurted out the truth to them. Dinner was served in the children’s new home. Nancy brought chopsticks for the kids to eat with as well as some of the adults. We then spent some time teaching the children how to use them. It was quite fun and we got a lot of laughs from the group.

Our farewell dinner was attended by all of the children, school and office staff. We each received a present and the children sang their goodbyes to us. Our trip was really just about over. We have tried to enrich the children's lives this week. We know that our lives have been enriched even more. Tomorrow we will make a quick visit to the orphanage and then off to Cape Town.

This is the end. More pictures will follow. We thank you for reading this and hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have. Please remember that Spark is having its second annual wine tasting on February 18, 2010. We hope see you there.

P.S. We are now almost landing in Johannesburg. As our new Cape Town friends have explained, we are now entering civilization. We are seeing beautiful homes, trees and swimming polls. We are getting excited to see Cape Town.

Day Three of the Mosquito Net Project

2010-02-04T01:27:00.014-06:00

Our days follow a certain routine which begins with having breakfast while we print the pictures from the day before and discuss the previous day’s events. We must have printed over forty pictures before 8:30 a.m.! Then it's off to the school for reading with the younger kids and Nancy spent some time sewing buttons on the children’s uniforms. David spent some more time preparing the orphanage for the eventual move while Nancy served lunch to all of the kids. Today it was porridge but we were not sure what that is. At 3:00 p.m., after what seems like an interminable delay, we set to the village with some of the teachers and staff, carrying ten mosquito nets. Two hours later we returned. While it was hot and humid, we enjoyed spending the time with the families. David took the photos while Nancy and Gift (a staff person), who is quite tall, installed the nets. They had to be sure to instruct each family on the proper use and care of the net. Of course, Nancy had candy for the families which made all the kids really smile. Once the first “sweet” came out we were followed by a large group of children hoping for more. One of the major problems we had today was most of the children’s beds/mats were outside drying. The reason for this is the roofs have small holes in them to let the light in. Good idea in the dry season, bad idea in the rainy season.

On the way back, one girl, who we would guess to be about 2 years old, spied us walking and began to scream uncontrollably. We were told that she had probably never seen a white person. This of course made David want to talk to her even more.

Off to a quick dinner at Margaret and Charles and then to bed early. We have learned that we will be distributing more nets tomorrow to another village. This village is even poorer than the one we have been spending time in. Tomorrow is also our last full day here and we are beginning to feel sad about leaving. While the events of each day are overwhelming, the children, teachers and staff are so warm and loving that we will miss them all.

Tomorrow we have a surprise for you. Stay tuned.

Day Two Of Mosquito Net Project

2010-02-04T01:16:00.004-06:00

It was off to the school yesterday after a brief visit to the office and orphanage. We both spent time reading with the younger children and David taught some of the children to tell time. David thought this went quite well until Nancy reminded him that there are no clocks or watches in any of the children’s homes. While Nancy served lunch (as David is now barred from lunch duty), David assisted some of the older boys in helping to clean out the new orphanage. Hope is waiting for the new electric line to be dropped before the children can be moved into the new orphanage.

Then, assisted by the staff from the office and school, we marched into the streets of Twapia to begin the mosquito net distribution. We went into eight homes, installed the nets and gave instructions to the families of the proper care and use of the nets. At the same time, David took and printed out a photograph of the family for them to keep. All of the families were so happy to have the mosquito nets and the bonus of a family picture. It was so hot and humid and as we walked through town all we could do remember how cold and snowy Chicago is right now.

Then back to the school for distribution of 80 more mosquito nets, Nancy was assisted by the Hope staff while David (now the official photographer of Zambia) took photographs of all the families. This time, the mothers decided that they wanted the mosquito nets with them while they were photographed. After Nancy finished distributing the nets she helped David and by 4:30 or so we were all done with the net distribution and the pictures. Off to an hour visit at the orphanage for reading and learning how to tell time. David has it in his head he is going to teach everyone in Zambia how to tell time as if by knowing how that they will be on time.

We were exhausted, hot and filthy when we arrived back at the hotel. This was a night where we were to have dinner by ourselves and then we had to print out the photographs. We ended up meeting gentlemen from Cape Town who joined us for dinner. Finally, we were both so tired, we ended collapsed in our beds. Another day was waiting for us.

Here are some more pictures we were finally able to upload:

Day One Of Mosquito Net Project

2010-02-02T08:43:00.003-06:00

Our morning was pretty much a repeat of yesterday and we expect that is how the rest of the week will be. Each day, as we pass each other outside of the school, we stop and make a few comments about how we are overwhelmed by the amount of children! We just cannot believe how many children are in a classroom, with 2 or 3 children sharing a desk plus some children sitting on mats on the floor. The teachers are doing a great job with hardly any resources. The kid’s pencils are stubs and writing paper is at a shortage, but they all have smiles on their faces and are very happy to be at school with their friends. You would not believe how quickly you can get 300 children, without saying a word, to come over to you. Just bring out your camera or some candy.

Today was David’s turn to help with lunch! Unfortunately he got fired from his volunteer job so I will be back on lunch duty tomorrow. He gave too much food at first then there was not enough in the end.

After some reading with the children, we took pictures of all of the parents and children who showed up to pick up the mosquito nets. We were able to print a good deal of the pictures on the spot and distribute them out almost immediately. The smiles on the parents' faces made it all worthwhile. Next there was a demonstration of the proper use of the nets which involved a net, a child and a floor mat. That was quite the scene. We wanted to make sure the parents understood how to use them and made sure we got all their questions answered. We distributed 47 nets today with 253 to go! Tomorrow we will be back at the school for a second round of distribution and then walking to various homes for a personal delivery of some of the nets.

We are tired but happy.

Thing One and Thing Two eat Caterpillar for dinner

2010-02-01T13:40:00.000-06:00

The day started out as a typical hot day where we made a quick trip to the Hope Office and then off to spend the day at the Hope Community School. There was a welcome program which made us feel so glad to have made a second trip to Ndola. You gain a lot of credibility here when you have returned to Zambia for a second time. We got a tour of the new orphanage, which on our last visit had been a shell without a roof on it. Unfortunately, the final step to occupancy is bringing in the electric line to the building and this has been delayed by the government bureaucracy. The good news is that the school is up and running already. There are now 300 children attending the school and they are already tight for space despite now having seven classrooms instead of three. One can only wonder where these children have been for the last two years.

Nancy and I were on lunch duty but I managed to escape the serving of the food and Nancy worked up quite a sweat serving the children. This involved feeding three hundred children plus staff and we were done in an hour and half, using only 50 plates commonly referred to as Frisbees.

We did get a chance to read with kids and play some games including the Hokey-Pokey and London Bridge without it falling down. Next it was the Hopefully Protected project. Spark was awarded grant money to purchase mosquito nets for each child attending the school. We meet some of the mothers and their children at the school. Charles gave them an overview of the project and explained that Hope Ministries would be checking their home to ensure the nets were being used properly and had not been sold. To encourage participation, Nancy and I are taking family photos and printing them out on the printer we brought from home. So far we have 25 done and 275 to go!

Then off to the orphanage where we had a lovely candlelight (read no power) dinner. It was so dark that Nancy almost sat on someone’s lap. Dinner was quite good except for a small fried item. When asked what we were eating we were told it was in fact caterpillar. Nancy was quick to ask could this result in a butterfly flying out of her mouth. Everyone laughed so hard except for us. We suggest those en route to Zambia to skip this delicacy.

Tomorrow it is off to the school to begin distribution of the nets and picture taking. Our goal is to finish this project in two days.

Picture are coming but the internet service here is very slow.

Obama Girl

2010-01-31T14:13:00.004-06:00

Last night, after catching up on sleep, we went to a welcome dinner at home of Charles and Margaret. For those who do not know, Charles is the local minister at Home Ministries and Margaret and Charles also oversee the community school and orphanage. Besides our hosts, several other individuals from the school and orphanage attended. Maureen, one of the orphanage staff, showed up in an “Obama Girl” tee-shirt. We loved it and decided to send a photograph of it. We also printed out the photograph with the Polaroid printer that Nancy borrowed from her friend Marilyn. This morning we presented the photograph to Maureen, who was quite thrilled.

This being Sunday, off we went to church for 10:00 services. This also being Zambia, Charles picked us up at 10:35. Perfect! It is quite hot and humid and sitting in church/ under a plastic blue tarp did not help. Once the singing began, the room was full of happy faces and great music. The music portions lasted for over an hour. At some point, Nancy was pulled into the group of woman dancing and she joined right in. Then it was David’s turn. Once again proving that white man cannot dance. After a brief rest, we were up again to join the families, dancing and having a great time. Once the church services were over, Nancy and I distributed over 100 tootsie pops to all of the children and a few adults.

Around 3:00 we went to the orphanage. We had so much fun. Our appointed task was to take individual pictures of each of the kids and print them out with the printer. This proved to me a more laborious task then we expected. The kids each wanted to ‘review and approve” their photos and all of the staff wanted their photographs taken. Then the printer turned out to be real slow. We got it all done except for a few.

Tonight David and I hosted a dinner for 17 at the hotel. Good thing soccer was on so we didn’t have to do all of the talking. Everyone here is so very happy to have us back and all that Spark has done for Hope. We are treated as if we are rock stars! Tomorrow is a non-stop day staring at 10ish as we like to say in Zambia. Good night David good night Nancy and good night to all of you in the USA!

Photos coming soon!

Chapter II - Ndola, Zambia

2010-01-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

Nancy and I spent seven hours in the London Airport. We hung around the airport lounge, ate, laughed and had “15 minute” chair messages which were incredible. Then we left for Lusaka and arrived on time. We have over 300 pounds of luggage, not including the 25 pairs of grey socks she made me steal from first and business class on the flight to London. Somehow, we got all the luggage plus the grey socks, on the prop plane to Ndola without any fee. Charles and Margaret met us at the Ndola airport and helped us to the hotel.

It is quire warm here-80 degrees and humid. We both unpacked and have now spent over two hours sorting through the four bags of items we brought for the kids and gifts for the staff. There are so many books, pencils, pens, frisbees, tootsie pops, mints, chopsticks that it is hard to believe that we could carry all of this. We hope to get some rest and then we are off to Charles and Margaret’s house for dinner. We are attaching some photos so you can see what we are writing about. For those of you who have stayed or eaten at Michaelangelo’s hotel, the place looks a lot better in the dark! Also, for a place with two pools, there are no chairs to sit out!

Got to go! Time for a trail mix bar.

- Nancy and David

London

2010-01-29T20:25:00.000-06:00

we made it to London now we only have another 16hrs to get to our first stop in Africa. David and John Williams could not believe all the stuff we where bringing but we managed to get it all checked without paying a fine! Once we landed we collected all of the toiletry bags that where not used and the socks;even the used ones. The boys need gray socks for their uniforms and that was the color Amer. now has. David could not believe I made him collect the used socks but he did as he was told.

- nancy

Less Than 1 Week Until We Leave!

2010-01-21T10:39:00.000-06:00

One week from tomorrow Nancy and I will be landing in Ndola, Zambia and we couldn't be more excited. We have been frantically buying our last minute supplies and working with the Spark-Hope staff on last minute trip details we need to take care of before we leave. While we are in Zambia we will helping with a mosquito net project, helping out at the school and taking on other tasks like sewing uniforms and taking pictures. We will be updating this blog every day so please check back and follow our trip!

- David