In 2005 Helen Nanyangwe graduated from High school and had no money to go on to college. She walked from her home a great distance to the nearest teachers college in Kitwe Zambia and pleaded to be included on our ZSF program. After the long walk, she had arrived too late. The college had already chosen their students for the 2006 school year so she was told to return the next year. Again she make the return walk in 2007 but was again just too late and didn’t make the cut. But she was told they would save her a spot for the next year. However, she was quickly forgotten by the college because she was just one of so many students who come annually to plead for a spot.

Her return the next year corresponded with an unexpected visit by Peggy Rogers, the founder of the Fund, to the school. Again the school had already filled the spots and had forgotten her because her distance from the school didn’t allow her be around during the year to remind them she was even alive. The school’s staff remembering their promise to her now begged Peggy to find a way to add her on to the list and Helen literally begged for help, weeping and desperate for an opportunity. The staff told Peggy that each year she came she looked more and more desperate and ragged. They did not have the heart to turn her away a third time. Peggy told her she would find a way to make it work. Luckily a sponsor back in the US stepped up and saved this woman from another year of exile. Helen completed her first year in 2008 and is on the program again in 2009. She will graduate in 2010 and start her career as a teacher.

This is Abraham; He attends one of the elementary schools we sponsor. But he is really only the start of the story. In the words of one of our volunteers:

I was tired, I had visited so many schools, I had traveled over 3,000 miles and I had seen crushing poverty all around me and at that moment like so many others I was asking myself if we were making any difference. I was asking God if what we were doing was doing any good. I remember Abraham’s school because it was the last school on our list, it was late in the evening and we were behind schedule as usual. When we got to Abraham’s school we found his teacher Shagrina Kalenga was not at school the school looked abandoned but Abraham said he would take us to Shagrina’s home. He ran down a tiny dirt path and we tried to keep up as we passed up tiny huts the people inside would throw their hands out and wave. Just then a man came running down the path shouting greetings and wearing a huge smile. He told us he was also a teacher and his wife was Shagrina, the teacher on our program. Finally we came to some old buildings with faded paint and missing roofs. Shagrina, her husband and her two babies lived in one of these old buildings. I will never forget that home. I tried to smile and act comfortable as she motioned for me to enter her home. I need to say that the rusted old piled boards heaped up for a wall and the crack in the wood planked floors were nothing compared to the stink. I will never forget that stink. I was getting sick to my stomach sitting there. Shagrina had a baby tied to her back and one sitting in the dirt just out side the door. She smiled a huge smile that was so out of place for the setting. She clung to my arm as she told me how much this job meant to her. She told me she had been waiting for three years to get a job and she and her little family just could not make it on her husbands wages as for many months he was not paid correctly. I wanted to cry the situation was so pathetic but it was her joy that kept me from that. Wouldn’t you know it? That’s when my camera battery died. I got no pictures of Shagrina. Nothing but my story.
But God had just answered my prayer, yes what we are doing is huge in the lives of some of his favorite people.

This is Frazer. Frazer Mwaba. This old picture was the original picture Frazer sent to us when he was applying for a scholarship to High School. He wrote his sponsor that when he was accepted it was the happiest day of his life. He wrote his sponsor that he was about to be chased out of school. He only had one pair of shoes (the cheap plastic flip flops) and the school told him that they were unacceptable footwear. He found some used shoes that didn’t have bottoms on the front half of the shoe, just the heel. He said they looked like shoes from the top. He wore those to class and keep his feet still so no one would notice.

Many years later Frazer is now the teacher he dreamed of becoming. Here are his own words written to his sponsor:

“What a wonderful thing that the poor young man Frazer Mwamba would be called the teacher, not only a teacher but an influential figure in the society, as a source of knowledge and information. A teacher is considered to be a person who knows everything in our society, we are respected in the community.

I thank you Sir, because you have dug a concrete foundation for me. Indeed, you have taught me how to fish. I thank you because you never gave me fish, but you gave me nets and other materials for fishing and now I am a real fisherman. I will also teach others how to fish. That is my goal. I would wish to help every one who will be in need of my help. I promise to lend a hand even to those who never asked me, so long as they are in need of my help.

God bless you, be blessed, and Stay Blessed Always.”

Mwamba Frazer

Coming soon!