The 2010 shipment of bicycles has arrived

Luansobe residents are jubilant at the arrival in Luansobe of the second container of reconditioned bicycles from the UK. The 349 bikes were sourced by the UK charity Re~Cycle, and transport costs were funded by the proceeds from the sale of bikes sent last year.
The 2010 shipment has been eagerly anticipated. With poor roads and inadequate bus services, bicycles give Zambia’s rural communities crucial access to affordable transport. Wherever you go in the area, you will see bicycles. Bikes take the sick to clinics and children to schools; bikes ferry goods to and from market; they move unwieldy equipment, jerry cans of clean water; bags of maize; bundles of firewood and sacks of dried beans; bikes carry people to church and relatives to visit families. They are essential to ordinary rural life.
As in 2009, this year’s consignment is being sold locally at a very modest price. Luansobe residents say that, despite being second-hand, the bikes are more robust and better suited to local conditions than new bikes being sold in nearby towns.  Their popularity – and affordability – is clear; of the 411 bicycles of varying sizes sent out in 2009, only three children’s scooters remain in stock. The vast majority of bicycles which went on sale in late August 2010 had sold by early September.

Full to the brim

Good rains and a well-chosen site mean that Kantolo dam, completed just before the start of the rains in November 2009, is already full to capacity.
Local villagers, who would normally expect the dam to take two years to fill, now look forward to reaping the benefits of their contribution to the project. In partnership with Kaloko Zambia, they have worked hard during each dry season over the past three years, digging the core trench, filling it with clay to stop leakage under the earth wall, and breaking and carrying tonnes of rock to line the spillway. Kantolo dam, the fifth built by Kaloko in the area, will not only raise water tables in local wells, it will also provide water for livestock in the coming dry season and allow villagers to grow vegetables on small hand-irrigated plots around the dam.

Kwesha Transformed

Kwesha School has undergone a dramatic change, thanks to the determined efforts of the local community working over the last two years in close partnership with the Department of Education and the charities, Kaloko Trust and Caritas.
In 2007, Kwesha had no qualified teachers for its 320 pupils and occupied a dilapidated former dairy and piggery. At the start of this academic year in January, however, the school boasted two qualified teachers, funded by the local Department of Education, and was justifiably proud of four bright, new classrooms equipped with blackboards, desks and chairs. There are also two new teachers’ offices and storerooms and, in the coming months, Kaloko will be working with the community helping them to build houses for the teaching staff. It has been a remarkable achievement!

Infrastructure Expansion

Kaloko Trust is driving forward its programme to extend basic health services, education and clean water by creating a network of ‘satellite service centres’ in the remote villages around Luansobe. The first phase includes five community schools and health outposts together with ten boreholes and hand-pumps.
In recent years the growing population has placed increasing pressure on the limited resources of the Luansobe Upper Basic School and the Rural Health Clinic. By the end of this year, working hand-in-hand with the Departments of Health and Education, other charities and local communities, Kaloko hopes to have completed three community schools, four health outposts and five boreholes and pumps. The Department of Education has already provided six qualified teachers at three schools, as well as school furniture.
Kandulwe, Serenje and Kwesha are the first villages to have benefited from the programme, with these communities playing a strong part in providing free land, labour and building materials. Almost 1000 children will be saved a walk of several kilometres each day to attend a more distant school, while 600 rural families will receive regular medical attention and have access to safe water near their homes. Once the first phase is complete Kaloko Trust would like to extend the programme further to more outlying villages.

More bikes on their way May 2010

Plans are progressing to ship a further container of 350 bicycles donated by the charity Re~cycle to Zambia. The bicycles were loaded for shipment in mid May 2010. The shipment is being financed through the proceeds from the sale of cycles sent out in 2009.
Kaloko is also discussing with other UK charities the possibility of sending carpentry tool sets, in another consignment, to support a skills development programme envisaged for the Luansobe Carpenters’ Cooperative. This project aims to help ten pupils a year from Luansobe Upper Basic School who would undergo four weeks of training in basic carpentry, better equipping them to find jobs after leaving school.

Low-cost Latrines

Kaloko Trust Zambia has been host to several Finnish university students studying the construction, acceptance and use of dry toilets. Under Sari Huuhtanen of the Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland, six Environmental Health students, as well as Sari and her family, have been working on the project with the Luansobe coordinator, Michello.

60% of the people in the region, says Sari, do not have latrines, and schools often have no or very poor sanitation. The ecological double-vault latrine is well-suited to conditions in rural Zambia, and several dry toilets have now been built near schools and clinics in the area. With the original design costing over £300, however, the challenge is to bring costs to under £100. “The key,” Sari stresses, “Is to make the toilet affordable.”

The primary aim of the project, funded mainly by the Finnish government, is to improve sanitation and hygiene awareness. Waste products, which are pathogen-free if treated correctly, can be also used as a natural fertiliser, however, and trials are underway at Kaloko.

Bright Future

Two hard-working students, Mulenga Kalulu and Golden Musonda, both of whom were sponsored by Kaloko Trust Zambia (KTZ) until they completed their education at Mpongwe High School, are now looking to a bright and fulfilling future.

This year, Mulenga embarked on a university degree in Education, while Golden was accepted to study Medicine at the University of Zambia having achieved nine points in Grade 12 last year, the highest results in the country.