By Betty Trummel

Today was an awesome opportunity to visit a 10-hectare piece of land that is owned by Shine Zambia. This parcel is located in the Rufunsa District, about 96km outside of Lusaka. There are approximately 1,500 households out here in the local bush villages.

(The local women gave me such a warm welcome.)

So how does this relate to literacy? The importance of this land is that Shine is developing several operations in this rural area that will help support the school in Lusaka. And, they hope to build a school on the property as well. In fact, there’s a spot of land already set aside for this purpose.

Students who currently walk 10-12km  round trip to get to a government school each day would have a much shorter “commute,” and more time for learning.

Besides growing corn, the newest operation out at the property in Rufunsa is the construction of a pig farm. A gravel and concrete foundation has already been completed.

Bricks are being made from the local red soil. These bricks will be used with the concrete blocks.

A local Lusaka expert, Mr. Sinoya Phiri, was on hand today to give all of us the details on how to start up this venture. I learned so much about raising pigs! Bridget, who works in the office and does the accounting at Shine, and I took tons of notes to document the process. I can’t wait to come back and see this pig farm in operation!

And someday soon I hope A to Z Literacy is not only sending boxes of books to a new school out here to create a library in Rufunsa, but I hope we can also provide professional development and support for another school in Zambia!

Thank you to Rev. Banda, Mr. Phiri, and the people of the village for a great day!