Join Living Compassion in Rebuilding
Masala Primary School
In July, four monks and three retreatants traveled to Ndola, Zambia,
for three weeks. (See LivingCompassion.org to read their
travel log and view photos.) While in Africa, Living Compassion began
communication with Samuel Bwalya, the District Building Officer, and
Mrs. Mupeta, the headmistress of Masala Primary, about how to best
create a partnership with the school. A partnership in which the peopsle
of the community are empowered through support, not handouts, is the
goal of all involved. This empowering partnership begins with Living
Compassion assisting financially with the school's water and sewage
problems. Out of work parents will be employed to make repairs, instead
of large foreign companies.
Masala Primary, where five children from Living Compassion House go
to school, has over 2,500 students—such a large number that the school
has to be run in shifts. In the morning, the younger grades attend,
in the afternoon, the older. In the early evening, the school is used
by adults who never finished school. The student teacher ratio is one
to sixty four.
Before visiting Masala Primary, the monks had heard of their desperate
need of money for teachers, supplies, food and facilities repair, but
they were not prepared for what they found. They could not have imagined
the actual situation they walked into. Not only is there no food for
the students, who often have no food at home, the teachers regularly
go hungry also.
There are no toilets that function properly. They must pour water
from a communal barrel down the toilet bowls to flush them. In some
of the bathroom stalls, there are not even toilets with bowls—instead,
old-style holes in the ground survive from colonial days. The school
has an extreme water shortage and sewage problem. Clean and regular
water flow from the public system cannot be relied on. The sewage lines |
Living Compassion Team and
the Masala Primary School
Senior Staff Members.
have been so backed up that they have overflowed, and the school does not have the resources to buy larger pipes and reroute the lines.
Masala Primary has a dire shortage of desks, books, pencils and other
school supplies. About half the classrooms do not have electricity.
There are no computers even in the school office. (The school secretary
does her work on a typewriter.) The staff did not have the resources
to pay their last phone bill, and therefore have not had a working
line for months. Many students come from families who cannot afford
to pay the school fees, even though the fees are quite low—the equivalent
of twelve dollars a year per student.
As the relationship between Living Compassion and Masala Primary has
formed, a committee of staff members and parents in Ndola has stepped
forward to support the children of the school. Our intention is to
match theirs. Living Compassion proudly introduces Partners of Masala—a committee of caring individuals, companies, and schools dedicated
to the support of Masala Primary School. Please see the back of this
newsletter to find out how you can become a Partner today.
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At
the Living Compassion House: The nine children, wearing hats that were made by
retreatants while in Zambia, are well and happy. 
One
of the Living Compassion Team with a child at the AIDS Hospice.