Day 5: The Helen DeVoss School

Today we took a little field trip to the Helen DeVoss School which is another ministry of the Alliance for Children Everywhere. The school is located in Kanyama which is one of the poorest compounds in the city and is also the one with the most kids. A compound is roughly equivalent to a neighborhood but is much more like a slum. The houses are small - usually only one or two rooms made out of cinder blocks with a tin roof. The women sit on the front step cooking over a small outdoor fire while laundry hangs on a clothesline nearby. Most of the roads are barely passable by jeep which is understandable when you consider that no one owns a car. Kids of all sizes run along side our jeep without shoes shouting "Muzungu, muzungu!" (the Zambian word for "Gringo") and garbage and mud litter the street. Zambia does have public schooling but the costs inhibit most kids from attending. Here you have to be able to pay for a uniform, pay for a notebook and you have to bath everyday. Sometimes just the cost of soap is all that keeps these kids from attending school.

The Helen DeVoss school is free to the children. Many kids are sponsored by individuals back in the US - the cost of a sponsorship is $200/year. The kids who are not sponsored are covered out of ACE's general fund until a sponsor can be established. The principal, Robby, is a distinguished looking man with gray hair who is anxious to tell us and show us everything about his school. He is a man who takes pride in his work and recognizes that what he is doing changes the lives of these kids forever. The kids well behaved, sharply dressed in their blue uniforms and intent on their studies. They greet us in unison with "Hello, how are you today?" We stopped in on 4 different classes who told us about what they are studying and why they liked going to the DeVoss school. They were representative of the 260 students who attend regularly (Grades 8-12). Our team laughed when we heard that attendance was low today because it was cold and many of the students didn't have warm enough clothes to wear - the temperature was around 75 degrees! It just shows how you become accustomed to where you live.

There are two things that the DeVoss school is most proud of - one is there computer lab which boasts 7 operating computers although Internet access is not available in the compounds. The other is their wet bench laboratory. I was so pleased to see the lab benches, sinks and test tubes. It's unusual to have a science lab in even the nicest private school so this is a real treat for the students. I hope many great scientists are born in that laboratory. Unfortunately, lab time is rare because they don't have enough glassware and other laboratory apparatus to perform many of the experiments. Hmmmmmmm . . . we'll have to see what we can do about that!