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They're usually barefoot, their clothes
don't fit and they need a good scrubbing.
Some suffer from AIDS, tuberculosis, herpes, malaria, neglect and
abuse. Many hunger for food, others for attention. To Elizabeth
Chisembele, the AIDS orphans of Kitwe, Zambia, are worth all the
effort and love she is capable of giving.
Chisembele, 53, raised seven children of her own. Now she helps
raise thousands whose physical and emotional needs are so great
they can appear crushing. A petite woman, she has the boundless
energy that sometimes blesses the small of stature.
She walks smiling into scenes that could make a Spartan weep.
"Sometimes it's emotional," she admits.
"When you find a child without food for three or four days,"
she said, and you have nothing left to give them. "You cannot
meet all their needs. The number of children is so huge."
Chisembele has spent the last nine years working for the CINDI-Kitwe
Program where she is one of 14 employees who monitor and attempt
to assist 14,000 of the estimated 65,000 orphans in and around Kitwe,
Zambia's second largest city with a population of 700,000.
Most of the children live with relatives, often grandparents in
the shanty towns surrounding the city center. In the dry season
the unpaved roads are dusty, in the rainy saeson they are mud.
Among other things, CINDI arranges feedings for the children in
their neighborhoods three times a week. Volunteers round them up
and do the cooking. The mass feedings were arranged, she said, when
it was discovered that food left at homes for the children was often
being eaten by others.
It is supposed to be a five-day work week, but she works six. On
the seventh day Chisembele, a Roman Catholic, who describes herself
as religious, goes to Mass.
CINDI's work can only be done with the assistance of hundreds of
neighborhood volunteers, many of them elderly widows just one step
removed from destitution themselves. Chisembele said she wished
she had something she could give the volunteers as a token of appreciation.
Many complain they need boots and/or umbrellas during the rainy
season, she said.
Chisembele said the job can be difficult, but it is inspiring to
see the work that goes on in the neighborhoods to help support the
children.
Does she ever feel like giving up?
"No, no, no, no," she said. "You can't give up.
You can't."
Her reward is seeing children who were once hungry well fed, clothed
and attending school.
"That is my satisfaction," she said.
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