Cormac's African Diary - Part 1 (June/July 2010)

One of my main objectives in writing this diary is to give people, unfamiliar with the developing world, some sense of the realities faced by Camara in trying to deliver our educational program to schools in Africa. Occasionally the problems we face, and that I describe in all their gory detail, might paint Africa (and by association Africans) in an unfavourable light. I hope this is not the case as the majority of these problems are self inflicted. Which leads me to the second reason for this diary, which is to catalogue and remember my mistakes and hopefully continue to learn from them.

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Saturday June 26th – Sunday June 27th 2010
Dublin – London – Addis Ababa – Harare – Lusaka – Ndola - Kitwe
Outward Bound
My adventure starts with a visit to six airports in just under 30 hours. I left my house in Ireland at 1pm on Saturday afternoon and arrived in the BP Guest House in Kitwe, Zambia at 5:30pm (Irish time) on Sunday evening somewhat shell-shocked. On the way I met up with a number of Camara volunteers in Heathrow airport who were travelling out as Team Coordinators (TCs) for our four 'Africa10' training teams.

Each year we send out a group of trainers to provide computer courses to teachers in the schools receiving our computers. This training program which started in 2006 is a key part of the Camara model and last year we sent out 82 volunteers to seven countries. This year our program has shrunk dramatically - with 32 trainers travelling to four countries. This fall in numbers has been caused by a number of factors:
1.A change in training focus, where we now look for more technically competent teachers who can provide more advanced ICT courses rather than the basic computer literacy skills we had been offering before. With stricter selection criteria we had found it much harder to attract suitably qualified people to give up four/five weeks of their holidays to fulfil our training obligations.
2.I suspect however that the biggest reason for drop off in numbers is that the economic down turn has made it much harder for interested volunteers to raise the €2,500 required to cover the cost of the trip.

That being said, we still have four exceptionally strong teams with high levels of technical skills and passion, strong course content and the world famous Camara training certificates ready to descend on an unsuspecting African continent.

My travelling companions were: Frank Neenan and Elaine Clarke, off to Rwanda, Alex Bacik and Grace Duffy, to Uganda and Susan Stewart who was going to Zambia. Typically we send out two TCs - one female and one male - with each team, and as Susan's other TC was flying out a week later I was travelling with her as far as Zambia. Susan is a Montessori teacher from Dublin and used to dealing with stroppy 5 year olds – a perfect background for this job!


Monday June 28th 2010
Kitwe
The Good News - Camara's Zambian Hub
My wife tells me I don't get excited enough about the work that Camara does, and she is partly right - I tend to focus more on what we are doing wrong than on what we are doing right. Today she would have been proud of me, because when I walked into the Zambian Hub for the first time I experienced this huge sense of pride about what Camara has done over the last five years. I wish I could 'bottle' that moment – the feeling that this is what Camara should be about, that we had built something really special. The five years of mistakes and learning, all the efforts that have been made by volunteers, staff and supporters of Camara were today encapsulated in the beauty that is the Zambian Hub. This is what I found:
A building complex all painted green and white. Clean and organised rooms which 12 months ago had been dilapidated space full of rubbish lying abandoned at the back-end of Kitwe Teacher Training College (KTC).
In the driveway was a school bus waiting to pick up 20 computers from the Hub – having already passed the Hub's school Suitability Assessment and sent their teachers in for training.
In the reception area I met three Headmasters who had travelled from different part of Zambia to hand in their application forms for computers and training to be brought to their schools.
In the workshop 10-15 young volunteers (all wearing white coats) and busy refurbishing computers. They were mainly school leavers who could not afford to go to college but had agreed to volunteer in the Hub in order to learn some technical skills from which to earn a livelihood.
And in the front a packed, networked training centre where two volunteers were training teachers in basic computer literacy skills

I could go on, but each new thing I observed left me more speechless than the last. But the most incredible thing about the Hub was that at the centre was a young Zambian women who we had hired straight out of college nine months ago to be its first CEO, Rachael Kabale. While Rachael has had a lot of help from Camara people (Trisha Olsson, Farid Ali), from her local Board (Marie Doyle, Fr Nicholas, Fr Kelly, Francis Chilufya) and from the Principal of KTC (Mrs Mulwe) she was the glue that held everything together and it was her strength of personality that had brought the Hub to where it was today.

As I said, I lack the necessary literally skills to fully describe the impact that today had on me, or to really convey how extraordinary Camara Zambia really is. But for all those people who have supported us through the ups and downs of our first five years please take a quiet moment to reflect on what you have helped bring about and give yourselves a well deserved pat on the back.


Tuesday June 29th 2010
Kitwe – Ndola – Lusaka
The Bad News – The Loss of a CEO
Fr Nicholas, a diocesan priest and one of the Directors of Camara Zambia drove us to the International Trade Show in Ndola to look at the Camara stall that was being erected. This is the biggest trade show in the country and a superb opportunity for Camara to market its computers and training as many government minister (including the Minister of Education) and educational institutions will be participating.

With all that positive news you might expect that I was happy to be leaving Zambia with Camara in such good hands, but nothing is ever easy in Africa. Rachael has told me that she is leaving in September to enrol in a post-graduate course in NGO Management at All Hallows College in Dublin. Her fees are being paid by a charitable organisation (thanks a lot!) and it was just too good an opportunity for her to turn down. Through clenched teeth I wished her well on this journey and thanked her for all she has done for Camara over the last year. Our success, or otherwise is completely dictated by the people we have working in Camara and a lose of some one of this calibre is no small set back for us. My wife will be happy to know I was equally emotional when I heard the news but not is a positive way!

That evening I flew to Lusaka and stayed the night with Maurice Sadlier and Ceire McCaul, two class mates of mine from my Development Studies days in University College Dublin.. Maurice is the Assistant Country Director for Concern (an Irish NGO) in Zambia and for dinner they had also invited Val Duffy who works for 80:20 another Irish NGO in the country. Apparently there are around 500 Irish working and living in Zambia at the moment – mainly as Missionaries or with NGOs – but few however working in the business sector. Therein lies a much bigger debate on 'Does Aid Work?'.

Ceire and Maurice's house is dominated by three dogs one of which is a Rhodesian Ridge-back called 'Iwe' (which means 'Hey' or 'You'). A dog for the African grasslands as was demonstrated when our pre-dinner drinks were rudely interrupted by Iwe catching and trying to eat a lovely Africa Barn Owl who had mistakenly flown into their yard. Unfortunately the poor bird did not survive and poor Iwe was banished to the veranda much to his disgust.