Mrs.Mwila is one of the people who first helped make this project possible. She has a son who is deaf, and her dedication to helping others comes from her desire to give her son a good education. She is a colleague and a friend. During my previous stay in Zambia, we began to teach ten deaf children who walked to my little flat every day, and that is where we picked up this time around. Rigel and I eventually moved into our own house in the middle of the community, where we set up our first real classroom with the children. Mrs. Mwila and I started teaching the children, as well as feeding them breakfast: corn meal porridge, peanut butter, and fruit.

We had to move from place to place for a while, but when we finally found this house in the middle of the community, we knew it was perfect.  We had no hot water, but the house had a great back yard, and I grew a vegetable garden so the parents could come and pick vegetables; this way they could spend less of their money on groceries. Everything had to be washed by hand, and after hanging it outside, you had to iron everything with a very hot iron-- otherwise the tsetse files (invisible to the naked eye) would get into your skin! Needless to say, I was ironing all the time. There were plenty of times when the electricity went out, and we would have no water whatsoever for two weeks. I had to stand in the “queue” for three hours to get bore hole water (well water), and that was a very sad situation for all… A little boy was killed because after his parents went to work, he and his six siblings went to “fetch” some water from a well. He fell to this death, and the town was in an uproar-- people marching down the street, women wailing, trucks filled with people for the processional. It was heart wrenching.

We finally were able to teach our deaf children, who, by the way, never complained, ever. They love to learn, and we have taught them quite a big vocabulary, considering they started with no language at all. We were able to get donations of uniforms and shoes, as they walked an hour and a half to school without shoes-- sometimes two hours, depending on what village they lived in. Sometimes their parents rode these very old dilapidated bikes, and they would ride with their kids on the crossbar to get them to our classroom. We had a volunteer who painted our walls in the "Lion King" theme for the children, and the children loved it. We had donations of huge old tractor tires, so I dug several deep trenches in the backyard, painted the tires in bright colors, and planted them upright in the ground so that the children could have someplace to play during recess. I was able to build a one room classroom on someone else’s property that I was allowed to use for two years, but I had to leave because permanent housing seems impossible to find. I lived in Monze for two years this time—I was only there for one year the last time I went, in 2002. I came back to the states in 2007. I have now been back in the states for one year, so we only have one year left before we have to vacate the premises.

To get back the second time, I sold what little I had, raised funds for food and lodging, and asked my brother Steve to buy me an airline ticket. I knew I had to go back to continue my dream of building this school. It’s hard to believe it, but there are people who find it easy to forget these children.  We found ten hectares of land (about twenty acres), in a prime location to build a school with dormitories. We are in need of some funds to purchase this land, to the tune of Ten Thousand U.S. dollars ($10,000!). We have to do of some serious fundraising, not only to purchase this land, but to obtain airfare to go back and purchase it, to continue to teach more sign language to the volunteers, and to pay Mrs. Mwila, who is teaching still. The children need new uniforms and new shoes, or even old shoes,. The children range from age 4 to age 14, and we are now teaching ten children. There are many more deaf children and teens who are not able to attend our school. They live on the outskirts of Monze, way too far to attempt walking, and we need to buy a vehicle to pick them up for class.