The July 2005 G8 Summit met in Gleneagles, Scotland and was hosted by then Prime Minister Tony Blair. Economic development in Africa was high on the agenda. The previous December I had spent a couple of weeks in Zambia with a small charity (Families for Children Zambia, now closed) following their work in two townships, having won the Metro staff scholarship prize. The summit provided the ideal peg for a series in vignettes in Metro (where I then worked) about the people I met. With so many children losing parents to Aids, parts of the trip were truly harrowing, but the stories I heard were among the most inspiring I have ever reported.
Foster’s story, Metro, July 2005
There isn’t much to the village of Kantolomba; several brick huts, a small market selling local produce and a couple of taverns selling munkoya, a home-brewed beer. People make their living by selling mangoes or by making simple wooden clothes pegs to sell to other villagers. At the centre of the community is the school, attended by around 250 children, many of whom have lost one or both parents to Aids. Among them is eight-year-old Foster who, having already lost his father to Aids, must now come to terms with the death of his mother – the night before. As his friends dance around the playground celebrating the end of term, he stands nearby trying to join in.
His two sisters, aged 14 and 16, arrive at the school – not sure where else to go. Their mother’s body is still lying in their small brick hut and, until the three of them can arrange a funeral, that’s where it will stay. Here, it isn’t a case of stiff upper lip – grief is raw and open and the girls’ tears flow openly. Foster watches them from the shade.
Once arranged, their mother’s funeral will be just one of several taking place that week. Already that day, three large lorries filled with dozens of mourners have trundled past the school with the people perching on the back singing soulful, traditional songs.
Just 100m from the school, the cemetery is busier than the rest of the village. Several women sitting along the road outside sell bottled drinks from cool boxes, while old men crouch under the shade of the trees, watching people weave their way through a maze of graves.
Each mound of orange earth is marked with a simple wooden cross or stone tablet announcing the name and date of birth of someone’s mother or father, daughter or son. The first few bear dates in the 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s. But just 20 metres further, the dates are more recent – 1968, 1972, 1977, 1983. In a small space between the newer graves, four men are digging another hole.
The cemetery is already three times the size of Kantolomba and the villagers are now struggling to find space to bury their loved ones. Some are going as far as opening up older, often shallow, graves to place new coffins inside.
A lorry pulls up at the edge of the cemetery and the flimsy white coffin is lowered off the back and placed on the ground. As the mourners crowd around, an older woman dressed in white falls to her knees, her wails pierce the silence as her family crowds around, their heads lowered. It’s a scene that, in two days’ time, Foster and his sisters must face. From then on, they will be relying on the charity of the school and the community to get by.