Cheshire Homes

Cheshire Homes
We arrived late in Livingstone after an 8 hour bus ride from Lusaka. The Sisters were awaiting our arrival at the guesthouse at Cheshire Homes. Monday morning the students arrived at the school. At this school the special needs children are provided transportation in a school van. I sat with amazement at the eagerness and interdependence these children showed at school. Once off the bus the children who walked went right up to the school building and came back to the van with the wheelchairs used by the children who were unable to walk. These children were assisted by their peers in getting out of the van and into their wheelchairs (they do not use their chairs in village because of the terrain). All were eager to be at school and ready to learn.

Cheshire Homes provides special education services to children who have physical and intellectual disabilities. Their donors, Touch Ireland, built a new structure that opened in 2007 and included a physio room. They are now beginning a new project to build a whirlpool. About 24 children are currently enrolled and attend the school. There is one teacher for all of these students, Evelyn Malumbe, who has been teaching at Cheshire Homes for many years. I met her the first trip I made to Livingstone before the school was finished. She attended training we delivered each year we have been in Livingstone. In addition to being a teacher for the school she provides home based education.

A women’s group also meets at the school. This group is made up of the mom’s of the children served by the school. A recent visitor taught them how to make dolls and bags from recycled products and cloth and they make these goods to sell as a benefit to the school. We have asked them to send us a box of dolls and we will try to sell as well. The parents are very committed to the school and appreciative of the efforts of the sisters and Evelyn. The teacher and sisters are appreciative of the Mom’s and they all work together to make the best for the children.

It is fun to see the progress of the school. With so little resource so progress has been made. Evelyn asked us to make sure we said hello to all from the University team who have spent time with the school and training teachers and families in Livingstone.

Chifwema Village School and Veronica

Yesterday we traveled an hour or so outside of Lusaka to the Chifwema Village. Mikala’s school, Beulini, provides outreach to three village schools including Chifwema. Once a quarter Mikala travels to each of these village schools to monitor their activities and offer support. The Head Master and one of the teachers at the school met us. They serve 450 students and have 10 unpaid volunteer teachers from the village – one classroom at the school is a special needs classroom and 5 children attend school in this classroom; 13 other children with special needs receive home based education where a teacher goes to the family home and assists the families with instructional ideas. For some children home based education is all that is possible because they are unable to make the physical journey walking to school (many children walk as much as 3 miles one way to get to school).

We walked to one of the family homes to meet a 14 year old child with autism who receives home based education. This was a remarkable experience. Veronica was completely included in her family home and her community. When Mikala first started helping the family Veronica’s mother would keep Veronica contained in a hut when she went to work in the fields, went to church or was away from the family home. Now Veronica has access to the village and the community embraces their responsibility of ensuring Veronica gets home to her family safely. She attends church and is now trying to go to the school classroom (instead of home based education). In very practical ways Veronica is being taught and her family has identified things that comfort her and assist her with learning (e.g. old plastic soda bottles with beans in it that rattle, kicking a plastic soda bottle to redirect behavior, pounding maze). We spent some time talking about strategies the family could use to teach her how to put on her own clothes and to teach her how to eat more then a two types of food. Simple suggestions such as using short word phrases instead of long drawn out explanations and requests (e.g. “Veronica up now,” “beans gone”) also how they could reinforce and shape desired behavior while eliminating undesired behavior. These were concepts that were knew to them but at the same time clearly they had figured many things out to get Veronica to learn new skills and be a part of her community.

Veronica has a couple of jobs. She pounds the maze to make their staple food enshima and she sweeps the area outside of their homes. She is extremely fond of her two older sisters and enjoys having her hair combed and braided – these are things she lets her family know that she wants and needs. One of the things we will develop for the family is a simple communication board. While Veronica seems to understand most words, she does not speak any words and communicates with gestures and sounds. A communication board may help her to learn how to express to her family what she wants.

What a wonderful opportunity to grow and learn from one another.

More later.

Amy and baby

Did that get your attention?!? We met this lovely little lady yesterday. Her name is Taisha and she is Mikala's great neice. Jean also had trouble putting her down. Early in the evening Amy, Mikala, and myself walked to the bus stop down the road to meet Kwanda, a special ed teacher who came in from Kwite. Ok I'm probably spelling that wrong. Kwanda was one of the visitors from Zambia we hosted at ICI last May. What was funnier was Amy and I carrying this cute little baby down a major Zambia highway. It was probably an interesting site.

I also included a picture of the actual "work", yes work we are doing here. We met with Kwanda and Mikala after dinner to talk about the assessment tools we brought. While they are not appropriate to bring and use in the villages at this time, we hope they will be helpful in the near future.

And speaking of visiting the village, we just got back after 3 hours total in the back of a pick up truck with a home made topper on the back to keep it extra toasty. It was an amazing experience, but we have to rest our bottoms for now and we'll share more soon.

All the best, Kelly

photos

Here we are! Holding our IPADS, we were desperate for an Internet connection and were standing in the front yard.

Day1

We arrived in Zambia late last night and our colleague Mikala was at the airport to greet us. Three hours of sleep later and we were up and ready fir a meeting at the Ministry of Education. It was great to see Grace Banda (who was a member of the first team trained at U of MN) but even greater to hear the new administrator talking about her leadership and the progressiveness of Mikela's program. Our conversation was focused mostly on encouraging transition with more formal focus and purpose, testing accommodation for special education children and the need for early intervention. We also discussed the need to better prepare teachers to provide support to special education students in inclusive classrooms. Joel Kamoko, District Board Secretary, at the Ministry of Education emphasized the need to teach life skills and he seemed very committed to supporting children with special needs. Mikala and Grace seem very positive about Joel's ideas.

We had lunch with Sandy and Father Patrick. It was fun to catch up and hear about their new project in Milawi.

Tonight is a quiet night at Beulini. We'll have dinner and singing with Mikala and her family then call it an early night. Tomorrow we are spending the day in Chitwema village and will meet with a few families who have children with autism then work with Mikala on autism assessment. Lookingnforward to it.

More later

Zambia 2011

Greetings,
We are excited to share that at team from the University's Institute on Community Integration will be traveling to Zambia on March 30th. This trip promises to be an exciting one with some new faces included. Joining us on this journey will be myself, Jean Ness, Matt Schulelka, and Amy Hewitt. Our visit will focusing around providing training around Autism Spectrum Disorders in Lusaka and beyond. We look forward to sharing our journey with you. Stay tuned for more details! -Kelly

Radio time

On the eve of our departure from Zambia, we completed our work with an interview on disability issues on one of the local radio stations, Radio Mosi O Tunya (dubbed "Radio that Thunders", which reaches about 30,000 listeners during the time that we were on air. The interview was great, and we were able to cover many of the topics that we usually include in our trainings. There is no way to know, of course, how this will resonate with listeners, but being able to get ideas out to so many people at once is certainly a good thing. Audio won't upload now, but we will try again when we get home. We'll post again with some last impressions of our work here in Zambia once we get back to Minnesota.

Thank you to everyone in Zambia who has made this experience a great one for us, and for your work to improve the lives of people with disabilities. We hope to be back soon!

-Matt, Derek, and Kristin