Ngandu School

Being a teacher is no easy task with all the beaurocracy, administration, numerous restrictions, ever-increasing violence in schools, it is no wonder that teachers need the long breaks to recuperate. Being a teacher in Zambia is challenging to say the least, though for entirely different reasons. If you have trained in Lusaka and lived in a house with electricity and plumbing, being sent to a remote rural village is a real shock to the system. When Zambian teachers qualify they have no choice as to where they will be located.

Help teachers in Zambia: Malima Community School House

Schools such as Mukuni Basic and High rely upon trained government teachers and with a catchment in excess of twelve hundred pupils a considerable number are required. Sadly the government cannot provide adequate housing for these teachers and it is left to the school to meet the shortfall. Since building Mukuni High School, which opened in 2007, we have encountered all kinds of problems. Although The Butterfly Tree has build some houses many more are needed in both Mukuni and Ngandu Villages. Several teachers who are residing in Livingstone, some distance from Mukuni, do not attend classes every day due to the cost of transport. Others have requested a transfer.

The Butterfly Tree Teacher’s House – Siamasimbi Basic School

When we upgraded Ngandu School in 2009 the community built two mud hut constructions to help ease the situation. This was fine until an elephant sniffed out grain in one of the teacher’s kitchens and uplifted the roof, as aresult the teacher refused to return to her home. Ngandu, one of the oldest basic schools in Zambia, built back in the nineteen forties has over 500 pupils and feeds into Mukuni High School. Like Mukuni there are a considerable number of orphans and many of them are on our orphan sponsorship programme.

Teachers’s kitchen destroyed by an elephant – Ngandu Basic School

Today starts an appeal to invite anyone to donate just £5 to help these teachers who in turn can help the orphans who desperately need an education.

Last October I visited the remote village of  Ngandu, also in the Mukuni Chiefdom and a ‘feeder’ school to Mukuni Basic and High Schools.

Ngandu School was founded by the Roman Catholics in 1939. The first pupils were taught under a tree, there were no books or boards so they used to write on the ground with their fingers.

• In 1940 a small hut was erected to accommodate one class while the other remained under the tree.

• By 1944 a classroom block was made of grass to cater for both classes. The teachers were accommodated by the Headman before two huts were eventually built for them.

• By 1947 a further classroom block and two teachers’ huts were added and a weekly boarding system was introduced for pupils walking great distances.

• In 1948-1953 permanent buildings constructed and boarding facilities were provided, with the addition of two classrooms blocks for standards five and six in 1954.

After the government took over the running of Ngandu School in 1966, changing the standards to grades, very little has been done to improve the infrastructure.

Photo: Ngandu school classroom before restoration work

Ngandu School has produced notable people including Ministers, Directors and Chiefs and catered for both the Southern and Western Provinces of Zambia. Sadly they all seem to have forgotten about their rural routes as the school is in desperate need of restoration and funding.

Photo: me with teacher’s at Ngandu School overseeing restoration

Chief Mukuni asked me if I would visit Ngandu school and see if we could do anything to help. In early 2007 The Butterfly Tree paid for restorations to a classroom, which includes a new roof and sponsoring several of the school’s orphans and work on a second classroom will shortly be underway. If we can eventually upgrade Ngandu School it will save children having to walk several miles to Mukuni School.