Seed: Students for Education Empowerment and Development

Mary and I have had the opportunity to interview many of the guardians of SEED-sponsored students. As everyone has been very open and honest with their answers, the interviews have been a very interesting look at the daily lives of people here in Ng’ombe. Here are a few excerpts from some of the interviews:


[names have been changed]


Ruth is in grade 4 at Roma Girls School. Visiting her home for the interview, we spoke with her uncle, Jacob, though her grandparents are her main guardians. Halfway through our interview, her grandfather came out and shook our hands, but otherwise we were outside with just Ruth, Jacob, and a few other children. There are nine (?) people in the household: Ruth, Jacob, her grandparents, two other uncles, two nieces, and two nephews. (There is always a lot of confusion when we ask about the number of people in each household and their relationships; we have never received a straight, clear answer.)

The three uncles and the grandparents bring in an income. Jacob works “pieceworks” (on-call, temporary work) in construction; another uncle is a teacher at a secondary school; another uncle is a taxi driver; the grandfather works for the security department of a national housing department; the grandmother works on a farm far from home. (The grandmother stays at the house if there’s money, but if there’s a shortage, she stays at the farm.)


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Judith, who is in grade 5 at TICO, lives with her mother in Ng’ombe. Her mother is a maid at a university and returns from work at 20:00. She has several siblings: two sisters (one is 18 years old, the other is 15 or 16), and a brother (14 years old). Her oldest sister’s daughter also lives at the house. Of all her siblings, only the 16-year-old sister goes to school. Her brother used to, but he had to quit because they couldn’t afford school fees. With Judith’s scholarship, the family only has to pay her sister’s school fees. Her chores are washing her uniform, cleaning the outside area surrounding the house, and washing plates.

Judith is part of the TICO feeding program, so she eats breakfast at school. At home in the evening, her brother cooks dinner. The family also has a garden for their personal use; they grow sweet potato and sugarcane.


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Naomi is in grade 5 at TICO. We sat inside Naomi’s small sitting room to speak with her grandmother as Naomi and other children knelt and played on the floor. Her mother lives around here, but is chronically ill (she can’t speak). The father of many of these children is also around, but he brought them here for the grandmother to take care of. There are eleven people who live in this small house. Her grandmother doesn’t work, so they rely on tenants who pay monthly (they have a block of houses that they rent and live in themselves) and donations from well-wishers (for example, the church, which gives mealie meal—ground corn).

Her grandmother comes here to look after the kids, but usually she spends time on the farm. She leaves her grandchild (who is in grade 9) to look after the kids when she is gone, and sends neighbours to check in every once in a while. Her husband stays on the farm and she comes and goes, but she says she is permanently based on the farm. The produce they grow is basically subsistence farming.


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Mercy is in grade 4 at Ng’ombe Basic. Her grandmother is concerned about her health—Mercy is HIV-positive. Her grandmother makes sure she goes to the clinic once a month, and they say her HIV is manageable. But her grandmother finds walking to the clinic difficult sometimes because she is old. Once, she had to carry Mercy because she was sick with malaria, and so that was especially difficult.

She only eats one meal a day, which the grandmother buys from the market. Even though she only has one meal a day, Mercy says she can still concentrate at school. She writes her homework at her cousin’s place. If she has problems, her cousin is a teacher at a community school near Fatima so she can get help. Her grandmother would like her to finish grade 12 so she can be independent and look after herself—but also with that independence, maybe she could also make sure that she, the grandmother, is looked after also.


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David is in grade 5 at Flying Angels School. The family doesn’t eat until the grandmother comes home; if she had a bad day and there is no money, they cannot eat. David is part of Flying Angels feeding program, so he eats breakfast at school. This means that he eats maybe two meals a day: one at school and one at home after his grandmother comes home. There is space behind the home where the family could grow vegetables, they say, but they don’t have seeds to plant anything. Seeds are too expensive, as is water (which is 200 kwacha, about CDN$0.04, for a jug). A garden, while practical and beneficial, is too expensive to plant and maintain.

David is doing very well in school; he is number 1 in his class. Because he is doing very well, the family isn’t worried about his schooling. He says he can concentrate well in class. He completes his homework at home, and if he has any questions, he says he will ask his older sisters. He thinks school is okay because he has a scholarship so he doesn’t have to worry about the fees and is not chased, like his siblings.


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Sarah, who is in grade 5 at Ng’ombe Basic, lives at home with 9 others: her grandmother and six other grandchildren. All of her grandmother’s children have passed, so her grandmother has to take care of all her grandchildren alone. She works odd jobs, like washing others’ clothes. Sarah’s chores are sweeping and cooking; she does about one hour of chores a day. A major challenge of the house is paying the rent because they have little to no income. Rent is paid first so that the grandchildren have a roof over their heads, then anything left over is used for food. There’s no feeding program at Ng’ombe Basic, so the family only eats one meal a day: lunch.

A comment on Sarah’s report card said that the child is bright, but that she has deep thoughts about something (“consuming thoughts” means less concentration on her studies). Her grandmother thinks it’s about the way she meets her friends: Sarah isn’t able to carry pocket money or have a packed lunch like her friends, so she sees a difference between herself and her peers.


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Maria attends TICO school where she is in grade 5. She is not doing well in school; she is 16 of 18 students in her class. She says her weaknesses are math, which she is failing, and Nyanja. She also says her strengths are English and Creative and Technological Studies, but she is actually failing both those classes as well. Even though she counts it as strength, she does have problems understanding classes conducted in English; if the class was taught entirely in English, she might understand 45% of it. She says she can concentrate during class because her teacher emphasizes important things. If she couldn’t concentrate, she said, school would be difficult.

At school, she sometimes asks the teacher for help if she doesn’t understand something, but she doesn’t usually. Paul (our translator) suggested that she start doing this more often to help raise her grades again, and she agreed. He also showed Maria her report card, which she had not seen before (and had trouble reading and understanding). To give her an idea about her grades, Paul asked her what half of 100 was. When she replied, “50” he showed her that her marks were actually much below that halfway mark, at 40 or even 20. She said she wanted to do better, so Paul suggested she try to be 5^th, or even 1^st, in her class instead of 16^th. Her mother, who reached grade 9 herself, helps her with her homework (though she has not had homework at all in the past week or two); her teacher marks her homework sometimes, but not always.


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Maria knows she gets a scholarship but doesn’t know who her donor is, and doesn’t know about the scholarship or how it works. Paul explained it to her in Nyanja, telling her that someone in Canada cares about her education enough to pay her schools fees. She wanted to know what job her donor had, and how he could afford to pay the money.

Mercy and her family are grateful for the support from the sponsor. Judith would like to say thank you to her donor. Sarah’s grandmother would like to tell the donor about their home environment, and would love to exchange photos.

David would like his donor to know that he loves reading and football. He would love to become a pilot when he is older.


Melanie Ferguson

Overseas Intern – Zambia