The Triumph Of Hope Over Adversity

To me, this image sums up the joyous optimism of many Zambians, especially the young, amid so much hardship. (Don't worry, that's not barbed wire this Bwafwano Community School pupil is jumping over, it's strips of bicycle inner tube tied together).

Yesterday I kept an appointment that I had made when I was in Lusaka last week, to visit the shop that Motrine (we used a psuedonym, Martin, until he was 18) had set up to sustain himself while waiting to reapply to college. A day, but no time or place had been agreed for our meeting, but somehow, in the mysterious way that things get sorted out in Zambia, we were soon bumping over the unbelievably undulating roads into the interior of the Chazanga settlement in one of Bwafwano's USAID funded four-wheel drives. At a virtually vertical, deeply creviced slope, a group of boys clustered round the straining vehicle demanding to be paid for work they claimed to have done on the road - a triumph of sheer audacity over reality!


Motrine points out to me the streets on which he collected census* data on the inhabitants of 150 houses, which earned him the K2 million (about £300) that he used as capital for his business. His shop is a small, single-room breeze block and corrugated iron structure with a little porch and the words "Shop for rent" fading over the door. The walls of the shady cave are lined with crammed shelves of biscuits, sugar, mealie meal, washing powder, and lots more. On the counter stands three bottles of cooking oil, a jar of sweets, loaves of bread, some toothbrushes... and an empty egg tray.

As Motrine carefully transfers the eggs he's bought in Chazanga market into the empty trays, we're relieved to see that they've survived the drive. He paid K40,000 (almost £6) for the two trays and will sell each egg for K800 (about 11 pence), making a total profit of K8,000 (just over £1).

From the moment Motrine opens up, the shop starts doing a brisk trade; school children drop in to buy biscuits, smaller children swap empty coke bottles for full ones, a man comes in for some razor blades and a group of women sheltering in the porch from a sudden downpour tell us that they often come to buy sugar and mealie meal.


Motrine takes great pride in his business and appears to be thoroughly enjoying running it. He is volunteering at his church to "teach other youths about enterprise", and intends to continue the business once he gets into college as his course will, he says, complement this enterprise.

The school education that Cecily's Fund partner, Bwafwano helped him to get, combined with his own industriousness, determination and business instincts, seem certain to make his hope of becoming "a business man who employs others" triumph over the adversity of his orphaned and impoverished childhood.

I told him about the Zambian my colleague Caroline had met on the plane. He had built up a thriving business from nothing, and was just returning from a business trip to China. "You could end up on a plane to China too, " I suggested to Motrine . He smiled shyly and said "If God blesses me."

And if it is true that heaven helps those who help themselves, Motrine should be richly blessed.


*The 2010 census: preliminary results put the population at 13 million, up from 9.8 million in 2000