Drago – Street art publisher

Recently, Matt Small, Mike Snelle, Callie Curry (Swoon) and I took at trip to Kabwe, Zambia. We were there thanks to Zamcog (www.zamcog.org.uk) to work with students at Robert Shitima School. The school is a nondenominational facility run by The Brothers of The Sacred Heart where street kids and orphans and children living in the shantytown of Makululu can get a free k-9 education.

I cannot think of a better team to bring to Zambia than Matt, Mike and Callie. Callie was so up for coming that I knew she would be helpful and I could tell she would be good with kids, Matt already had experience working on art with “at-risk youth” and Mike was exactly whom we needed to make sure that everything came together smoothly.

For three days, Matt and Callie led workshops for all 200+ students at the school while Mike and I helped out as best we could. Activities ranged from printmaking with lino-blocks to portrait painting to making collages with colored paper. Many, if not all, of the students at Shitima School had never been given the chance to take art classes before our visit, but the kids took to the workshops with great enthusiasm and talent. At one point, I was nearly knocked over by a mob of students anxiously awaiting the sheets of drawing paper that I was passing around.

Over the weekend, we took time off from the workshops to learn more about Kabwe and spend some free time with the students. The two most moving places we visited were Makululu and a building run by Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order of nuns.

Makululu is one of the largest slums in the world and is where many students at Shitima School call home. We visited the homes of some of the students and met their families. The buildings were made of the simplest materials and were often barely standing. Many of the houses had roofs that were collapsed. Often, a family of 6-8 might have 3 generations living under one roof not much larger than the average American’s bedroom. The school is in such great condition that it was shocking to see what the real Zambia is like. The students that don’t like in Makululu typically live in dormitories at the school, which are much nicer than the houses in Makululu (and certainly better than living on the street, the alternative for many of the students).

As we visited houses and the markets in Makululu, a crowd of children began watching us. These kids were, at the oldest, maybe 6 years old, and many were younger. They wandered the streets of Makululu, some carrying younger siblings on their backs, and followed us wherever we went. Eventually there were probably 50 kids playing with us and watching us. One thing that I think we all saw throughout our stay in Zambia, but in particular while we were playing with the toddlers in Makululu, is that even when faced with extreme poverty, Zambians didn’t lose hope and were still very happy people.

Missionaries of Charity have a team of eight nuns running a facility just outside of Kabwe. It is an orphanage, nursery, hospice and hospital. The day before we visited, the nuns had been given a child for their nursery. The baby girl had been found in a dumpster and it was estimated that she had been there through three days of rain before being found. Luckily, she will be well taken care of at the nursery. That’s a visit I’ll never forget.

I brought a video camera with me, so there will be films of the trip appearing on Babelgum.com/rj in the coming weeks and those will shed some more light on the experiences we had.

Updates from RJ Rushmore
1 April, 2010