Last week Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin and her team visited Zambia to see how Ireland's €22 million aid budget is spent. Seán Flynn, Education Editor, reports
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6TH - LUSAKA
It has only nudged past 6am, but even at this early hour the Zambian education minister is on the tarmac at Lusaka airport awaiting the arrival of Mary Hanafin and her entourage from Ireland. Dressed in a vivid green suit with an orange tie, the minister, Prof Geoffrey Lungwangwa, is a big, physically imposing man. Until September last, he was a vice chancellor of University of Lusaka but after the November election he was appointed minister.
Zambia is a democratic state and one that has not been afflicted by the kind of tribal conflict that has scarred much of Africa. The visit of the Irish education minister is big news in Zambia; half a dozen reporters and a camera crew from state television are on hand to record the moment. In a bleak VIP area, the Zambian minister talks of Ireland's rich contribution to his country - the work of missionary priests and nuns for more than half a century, the commitment of Irish aid workers and, not least, the development aid flowing from the Irish Government.
Ireland is giving €22 million this year. Some €8 million is targeted towards education where Ireland, along with Holland and Norway, is among the key donor countries.
Zambia is 10 times the size of Ireland with more than double the population. But government spending on education is minuscule. Zambia is spending about €200 million per year; Ireland invests €8 billion.
En route to the Irish Embassy we drive down Los Angeles Boulevard, formerly Saddam Hussein Boulevard. The change symbolises Zambia's drift towards the American way, but a billboard along the route points to an old failing. "Succeed the right way - not the corrupt way", reads the slogan set against a picture of a wealthy businessman in his Mercedes.
At the Irish embassy an official explains how Zambia continues to languish in poverty despite its bountiful supply of copper and its rich arable land. Zambia is ranked 165th among 177 states in the UN quality of life index; Ireland is fourth.
Despite the 10-hour flight from London, Mary Hanafin has no respite before a full day of engagements. It is the first hint of what will become a feature of the week - Hanafin's perpetual motion.
At the office of the Zambian ministry of education, there are more hints of the challenge facing the state. There are old Olympia typewriters and those clunky 1970s-style filing cabinets. You wonder what conditions are like out in the schools when the ministry muddles through with this level of equipment.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7TH - THE COPPERBELT
A 6am start means we reach Ndola in the Copperbelt by 8am. The Irish team is anxious to press ahead with meetings but everything must wait - President Levy Mwanawasa is on the tarmac. He is returning to Lusaka after a visit to the region.
It is a bizarre scene. Over 200 people are on hand to mark his departure with traditional music and dance. The roads all around have been closed for two hours and no one leaves the tarmac until the great man is safely airborne. Mwanawasa is only the third president since Zambia gained independence from Britain in 1964. Kenneth Kaunda, the father of the nation, dominated Zambian politics until Frederick Chiluba, the leader of the workers' union defeated him in the midst of an economic crisis in 1991. Chiluba is currently facing corruption charges.
After the long wait we arrive at the Copperbelt secondary teachers' training college and hear of the challenges facing teacher education in Zambia. They are formidable; the entry requirement for teachers is just five O levels, the broad equivalent of a good Junior Cert result. The colleges of education, such as this one, often face the burden of training teachers in subjects they have not studied in school - such as the sciences. Failure rates of up to 40 per cent of all final years have been recorded.
The college for 200 students is dilapidated and sparsely furnished. Morale is not helped by the bleak prospects facing the class of 2007. Teachers are poorly paid (about €90 a month) and full-time employment is scarce. Most of all, the teaching profession is struggling to cope with the devastating impact of Zambia's HIV/Aids pandemic. One-in-five teachers was said to be HIV positive in one survey. The Zambian teachers' union says an average of 1,000 teachers have succumbed in each of the past two years. Appropriately, there is an HIV/Aids resource room in the college, but the young social worker who runs it seems downbeat about the future.
We travel onward to the Mama Monty School in Kitwe. It has over 2,000 pupils. Upwards of 60 pupils are squeezed, three to a desk, in one class. Despite the bleak economic backdrop, the pupils seem remarkably ambitious, telling Mary Hanafin how they long to be engineers, accountants and psychologists. No one has the faintest notion where Ireland is so the Minister helpfully rolls out a map and locates our small island.
Hanafin is in her element in this classroom setting. She has visited over 400 schools in the past two years and she has an instinctive feel for saying and doing the right thing and pressing all the right buttons.
Three hours later, we have reached Ndola, where the Catholic diocese runs an integrated Aids programme supported by Irish Aid. A homecare programme provides practical assistance to those whose families have been ravaged. Volunteers work alongside the bereaved, allowing them to work in the markets or to continue in school if they are orphaned.
The field visit to homes is a harrowing experience. A 16-year-old boy, Benjamin, tells us how he is rearing his two siblings alone after the death of both parents. Hanafin is upset and shaken as a volunteer explains how HIV/Aids has become a weapon against education. Now, the challenge is to turn things round - to use education as a weapon against the disease.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH
A flight on a six-seater Cesna brings us across southern Zambia to Livingstone, the home of the Victoria Falls. A provincial minister, Joseph Mulyalta, is on hand and a royal welcome is rolled out.
Mulyalta was educated by Irish priests and worked for a time with an Irish businessman. With his easy charm and his ready one-liners he is more like an aspiring US senator than a provincial minister in one of the world's poorest countries.
But his mood darkens when half an hour later, a student at the local teacher-training college has the temerity to raise the bleak job prospects for graduates during an open forum. Mulyalta calls it an internal matter and continues with what sounds like a 10-minute party political broadcast.
The mood among staff and students at the David Livingstone College is surprisingly upbeat. We meet two students from Stranmillis teacher-training college in Northern Ireland. They tell of the desperately poor literacy standards out in the schools and the huge hunger for learning among the children and their parents.
One of the lecturers, Benson Mangu, completed a Master's in educational leadership and administration in UCD last year under an Irish Aid fellowship scheme. He explains the desperate lack of computer equipment and appeals for second-hand computers from the Irish teacher-training colleges. "We have two hands rushing for each mouse," he says.
His contribution - with its passion and commitment - is typical of what flows from every member of staff. It is a glimpse of sunlight after the rain.
That hunger and passion for education resurfaces at the Mapenzi Community School. Here, many of the pupils walk four miles or more to attend lessons. The principal Emmanuel Mainza and his staff work on a voluntary basis in the school, supported by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters. One 82-year-old sister explains how she has spent all of her life in the missions - in Ethiopia, Uganda and here in Zambia. For these nuns, the Hanafin visit represents a kind of affirmation - a signal from the people of Ireland that the work of 141 missionaries in Zambia is valued back home.
In the searing heat the Minister joins the kids in a traditional African dance. Despite the poverty and the shadow of HIV/Aids, there is an infectious joy in this place way out in the bush. The school takes its name from its village, Mapenzi, meaning suffering. The new name of the school will be Chileleko - meaning blessing.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH
Fr Michael Kelly is a slight, softly-spoken Jesuit from Tullamore, Co Offaly. He is also one of the most remarkable people that one could wish to meet.
His story is one of a lifetime dedicated to the poor since moving to Zambia in 1955. He is a Zambian citizen.
Today, he is being honoured by a new initiative in his name. The Father Michael Kelly Bursary, sponsored by the Irish Government, will allow Zambian students to undertake postgraduate study in Aids/HIV.
Fr Kelly's research work has largely focused on how education can be used as a shield against the disease. His central message is how HIV/Aids is less prevalent where education is available. He has also challenged the orthodox view of the Catholic Church on the use of condoms.
His acceptance speech is delivered with a great humility but it is also very powerful. He talks despairingly of how those of us in the West have become tired of the Aids battle and moved on. Here in Zambia, the pandemic is having an impact on every aspect of society; teachers are dying, students are dying. He recalls the final words of one mother to her eight-year-old son before she fell to the disease recently. Make sure you always stay in school, she told him.
The launch of the bursary in mid-morning marks the final official event of the Hanafin mission. Already this morning she has paid a private visit to a local community school where orphans of those afflicted by HIV/Aids are educated by the Presentation Sisters.
This afternoon, the Minister spends over two hours mingling with about 200 members of the Irish community. She works one end of the room, takes lunch and then meets anyone who might have missed out on a chat or a photo - or both.
The Michael Kelly Bursary is the only new tangible element to emerge from the visit. But it seems clear that the Irish commitment to Zambia can only deepen. In a joint statement, both the Minister and her Zambian counterpart commit to enhanced co-operation in the key area of teacher education. There will be more money and more support, but the scale of the challenge in education and much else is formidable.
Reflecting on the visit, Mary Hanafin points to the huge potential of this place, once one of the richest states in southern Africa. "What will stay with me," she said, "is how this country is struggling to meet that potential when it comes to education and overall governance."
• The Irish charity Concern runs an aid programme in Zambia.
• If you would like to assist the battle against HIV/Aids contact: Bishop Noel O'Regan, PO Box 70244, Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia.
