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Zambia: Chawama Compound, Lusaka
Chawama is a high density area (usually called a compound or slum), located in the southern part of Lusaka. It has recently been upgraded and attracted people from the middle income – and at times high income – who live reasonably good lives. However, the majority are still living in acute poverty. Rapid urbanisation has resulted in the loss of the communal life and village lifestyle when each tribe was one ‘big family’. The village arrangement had everything in place for meeting everyone’s social needs. One person’s problem was a problem for all and a child was everyone’s child. No one went hungry. But all this does not exist in an urban compound like Chawama. Life here is competitive instead of being complementary; it is each one for himself/herself. Urban areas are affected by many factors – the high cost of living, poverty, unemployment, compounded by lack of social support systems from the government.
Life in the city is very expensive because everything has to be bought. Many families can hardly survive, and the reality of people living on one dollar per day is very much the experience of people in Chawama. In Mtendere Parish, Lusaka, it was again clear from the discussions at a recent marriage enrichment seminar that the high cost of living, coupled with acute poverty, have had a telling effect on urban families. In Mtendere, too, children are sent by their parents to sell assorted merchandise. Many of these children have no time for school, and parents would rather send them to the market. Although education is now ‘free’ in primary schools, parents still have to buy books, pencils, uniforms – most of which they cannot afford, as their main preoccupation is to provide a meal for the family. These errands expose the children to all kinds of dangers and abuse, the commonest being defilement (rape). Because of the hardships some of the children face at home, they have resorted to begging on the streets of Lusaka and involve themselves in petty crimes. Children as young as five years sniffing fumes of glue from plastic bottles in order to ‘gain’ courage to survive the cold nights and rough street-life are a common sight in the streets of Lusaka.
People spend more time on making ends meet at the expense of spending time together as a family. Mothers wake up early to buy merchandise for sale and return home late from their make-shift ‘market’ along the streets. So children are left without direct parental guidance for a long time, making them vulnerable. Recently, the papers have been carrying headlines of one defilement case after another of the girl child.
Women also spend time crushing stones to sell with the help of children. They handle most of the house chores and at the end of a very long day are expected to fulfil other marital roles. Husbands and wives can live as virtual strangers to each other because they hardly ever share a meal together. Some mothers are also exposed to temptations, such as selling sex for money, to supplement their meagre incomes from market businesses.
The church here in Chawama has become the ‘new village’ in filling the vacuum created by rapid urbanisation by introducing teachings and support-systems modelled on those used effectively in the villages. Chawama Anglican Parish has embarked on marriage enrichment programmes to provide married couples with tools to help them build enduring and healthy marriages. The Parish, with support from clergy wives and others, runs a feeding programme for about 250 children, enabling them to go to school regularly. The Parish is involved in the provision of affordable education at the Parish Church School and has also allocated 10per cent of its overall intake for free education to orphans and vulnerable children. In partnership with the Council of Churches in Zambia Gender Desk, the church has trained widows and single parents in entrepreneurship skills, but the challenge has been the lack of funds to help them with start-up capital.
The church will soon embark on helping families by training them in budgeting so they manage their finances better. I believe that the Church must model the early church, where after the day of Pentecost no one lacked anything because all believers assisted one another. Here we can do that by helping revive and preserve the African communal life and extended family system that is rapidly getting discarded in the urban setting.
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