South Luangwa
Young Zambians Dreaming Big And Making A Difference Writer: Julie Bates Photography: Shutter Speed Pictures
I
n August, 2019 I went to visit the PaBoChu Tuition Centre and Book Buddies Library Club in Mfuwe. It is off the main road, right in Kefa village and Patrick Chulu (aged 26) and Janet Mwanza (aged 23) who come from this village were getting ready to start the August holiday programme. I had been mentoring Janet and Patrick for 18 months or so and Janet had just returned from a life-changing 18 months’ work experience placement with The Book Bus in Kitwe in the Copperbelt. Secondary school students were turning up at the centre for their extra year 12 GCE tuition with Patrick. They attend throughout the year and keep coming in the holidays, hoping to turbo charge their important GCE results. Final exams are not far away! Many of these students have their tuition sponsored by NGOs, a few have parents
who are able to afford Patrick’s very minimal fees. The students file in, keen to grasp the difficult concepts of high school maths, science etc. There are also some school leavers who use PaBoChu for mentoring, research and interview practice and university students receive their tuition by remote learning. Patrick is very proud to be creating the first tuition centre for Mfuwe. He also teaches local language Chinyanja classes to English-speaking expats and even the occasional tourist.
He is a responsible role model to his students and I get the impression he really loves these students and wants them to succeed in life as well as in their exams. He is a big advocate of learning by understanding. I heard him say, ‘I want you to become mathematical thinkers, not calculators’ and he wants them to be able to apply what they learn to real life.
A big difficulty facing Patrick is that most of the students lack the basic ground knowledge in the subjects, so he assesses every
'She believed she could, so she did.'
R.S. Grey, Scoring Wilder
30
TRAVEL & LEISURE ZAMBIA
