Introducing COBACO

As I have mentioned earlier, my main mission on this trip is conducting research about rural-urban migration. To get access to the interviewees (migrant workers and their families), I am also interning with the local NGO, Human Settlements of Zambia (HUZA), as a research affiliate. I am based at an office belonging to another NGO that HUZA collaborates with, COBACO (short for Community Based Counseling Organization) in Kabanana. The organization focuses on providing youths and young adults with education and job opportunities, both venues that are very scarce in Kabanana and the surrounding slums. Most of COBACO members are unemployed or underemployed, and many of them have not completed primary or secondary school. Not surprisingly, women comprise over 3/4 of the members. They are often single mothers, or women who married early in order to help their family financially (the dowry, or Lobola, is charged at very high prices even in the squatters). 

Despite the poor living conditions in tiny and overcrowded houses and little or no income, you don't get the sense of disillusionment or hopelessness from the youths that is often described in foreign journals as the main trait of slum living. All the people in COBACO that I have talked to are very "Zambitious" (a pun used by a Zambian cellphone network); they know what they want to do with their lives, they know how to get there, and are hopeful that one day, very soon, they will be able to fulfill their dreams of higher education, a good job or better housing without succumbing to the snares of corruption. Although COBACO is not religiously affiliated, most of the members are Christians- Pentecostal or Catholic- and I think that their faith is what drives them to keep that vision alive every day.

 

COBACO office in Kabanana

I also want to say a few words about the people I work with. Mrs. Lungu is the lady in charge of the organization, but we see her rarely as she has a lot of commitments on the administration side. The people I am in touch with most are Gerald, Idah and Harrison, all holding executive functions. Working with them feels more like hanging out with friends. We joke around, discuss various topics like gender roles or corruption, and walk around Kabanana and other districts (sometimes being maybe a bit too loud :D) meeting other COBACO members. Next week we will start performing awareness drama plays and do peer education at the Chipata clinic. All three of them have helped me enormously in adjusting and finding my way around (literally) in the often chaotic streets of Kabanana. They have also arranged for me, from their own initiative, 'cooking lessons'. They decided that until I get the official approval to start doing my research, they will be taking me to different compounds each day where I will be meeting the people I might potentially interview while learning how to cook Zambian dishes! (I will soon be posting about how that part of my internship is going.)

Meet Gerald (he always smiles, but I think he wanted to look official in this one)

 

 Idah and Harrison (they never stop teasing each other)

Finally, I had to add this picture.

Crossing this bridge missing planks on both sides is a good morning exercise of concentration and balance (I constantly admire the construction workers successfully pushing fully loaded wheelbarrows across).