Report on Kwasha Mukwenu School Trip on 31st January 2025

Mwate Nampemba a member of ZST’s Zambia based committee recently organised a very successful visit for pupils of Kwasha Mukwenu Community School to the Lusaka National Museum and Chipata Level One Hospital. The school is in Matero Lusaka and has been supported by ZST for many years. Mwate’s report of the visit is below.

“On Friday 31st January 2025 the examination classes of Kwasha Mukwenu Community School which are Grades nine and eight went out on a school trip which was meant to be a gate away, career orientation, practical for some subjects such as social studies, science, and civic education etc. In this report are details of the full events that took place on 31st January 2025.

In this tour we had two places to go to which is the Lusaka National Museum and Chipata Level One Hospital. We started with Chipata Level One Hospital because it was near the school and then we ended with the Lusaka National Museum. Upon arrival at Chipata Level One Hospital we were welcomed by the nursing officer Mrs Zimba who later assigned Mr Zulu to take the pupils around for a tour at the hospital, Mr Zulu did a very good job at orienting our pupils with each department and the functions of the departments. During the hospital tour the pupils passed through the following departments for career orientation and spent 5 to 10 minutes in each department. The importance of this was to present the pupils with full knowledge on the different careers in the hospital set up such as follows:

1.what does a typical day in a particular career/job look like?

2.what is the best part of that career/job?

3.what is the most challenging thing about a particular career/job?

Below is a summary of the departments they visited.

RECEPTION

The reception is an important department of the hospital because it serves as the first point of contact for patients and visitors, this department comprises of nurses and other hospital stuff who receives patients and access the patients or client’s condition and later refer to appropriate departments. This department is key for stress reduction, communication, patient privacy, and quality control as well as improving patient satisfaction. In career orientation this is an important department as it gives the pupils overall information on what they want to get themselves into hence helping them making a sound decision concerning their career path.

OUTPATIENT DEPARMENT

The outpatient department quite different from the reception comprises of nurses, clinical officers and doctors who work together to see to it that the out patients are attended to and given quality health care as well as triaging which cases are critical and which ones are not in order to give sufficient health care. This part of the hospital where patients receive diagnosis, consultations, and treatments from doctors and specialists without being admitted as in-patients. The tour to this department helped the pupils to get a clear picture of the work and career in the out- patient department.

PHARMACY/DISPENSERY DEPATMENT

The pharmacy or dispensary department looks at safely procuring, storing, preparing, dispensing, and monitoring medications prescribed to the patients ensuring proper dosage and administration. This department is important in that after patients are seeing in the other departments they come with their prescriptions to get their medication here and the pharmacists must take keen interest in the patient’s condition and see if the prescribed medication is what the patient really needs to aid the recovery process. Hence this tour helped the pupils to get the knowledge of providing optimal management of medication to both in-patients and out- patients this information was important because taking up this career will require a certain kind of knowledge in both school activities and as a person wanting to take up this career.

UNDER FIVE CLINIC

This is a clinic for the under five children and follow up on the vaccines, growth, and nutrition which is vital for the Childs growth. This department helped to sharpen understanding of the pupils concerning the under-five clinic and the careers and duties found in this department as it provides curative, preventive, and educational service. This helps ensure that children do not develop permanent disabilities.

LABORATORY DEPARTMENT

This is the backbone of the hospital as it deals with the diagnostic procedures which helps with the patient recovery. This department helped the pupils to get oriented with the laboratory environment and the works and duties that are carried out in the laboratory hence helping them see what best suits them in that career line.

EAR NOSE AND THROAT DEPARTMENT

An ear, nose and throat specialist also known as otolaryngologist, diagnoses and treats conditions of the head and neck. These perform both medical and surgical treatments. This department provided basic information that the pupils needed to guide them the process of career choosing in case they would want to be ENT specialists one day this memory will always be with them and in turn motivate them to do their best in order to archive their goals in this path if they choose to take it up in the future.

RADIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

The radiology department looks at the ultrasound scans and x-rays as the diagnostic parts of helping patients this department has sonographers who do the procedures and writes reports. This helped the pupils to be more oriented to this department and if they pick it as a career, they know which subjects they must take seriously if they want to take up the career of sonography.

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL DEPARTMENTS

These are the departments that deals with both medical and surgical conditions were patients are diagnosed and treated. This department later decides if the patient will be admitted or released to go home on treatment hence this requires thorough understanding of the conditions of the patients. It really helped shape the pupil’s intellect and judgement if they need to do either medicine or surgery, they will have to be sound minded and be able to pass sound judgement regarding the patients care.

AIMS OF THE SCHOOL TRIP AT BOTH THE MUSEUM AND CHIPATA LEVEL ONE HOSPITAL

1.Education

2.Recreation

3.Interaction

4.Getaway trip

5.Inspiration

6.Career orientation

7.Practical for subjects such as social studies and civic education and sciences

EDUCATION

The school trip was meant to educate the pupils as the plan was to get examination classes as per Zambian standard present day that Grade Nines and Grade Sevens have to take exams before going to Grade Eight and Ten respectively hence the trip was meant to have the two classes exposed to the practical part of what they learn in school in subjects such as History, Geography, Creative and Technology Studies, Sciences and Civics. These subjects are really important as they are the foundation of many other subjects in Grade Eight and Ten, I am glad that this aim was achieved as the pupils were given a tour guide who explained everything and the pupils were free to ask questions which were answered respectively at both the national museum and at the hospital.

RECREATION

The school trip was aimed at recreation as it is important in the life of a pupil as it enhances physical activity, improving memory, behaviour, concentration, and academic achievement. Apart from that it improves mental health as it helps manage stress. I can say that this was a great achievement as the pupils’ showed happiness with the hospital visit and the visit to the museum as it will be shown in the attached pictures.

INTERACTION

It was a good way of interaction and come together of two different classes which was done properly, and everyone was bonding as well as interacting with each other since the two tours required the pupils to be in groups of different classes.

GETAWAY

Kwasha Mukwenu Community School is a school comprising of pupils from different homes and backgrounds of which most pupils may engage in doing unfriendly activities such as smoking, beer drinking due to peer pressure and for some because the homes where they are coming from they are not monitored or people keeping them engaged in such activities. hence the school trip was aimed at helping pupils get away from their daily lives and environment and have exposure to the outside part of town especially the Lusaka National Museum as it is ideal for such a get away and the hospital visit which as well gave them a picture of how diseases are rising such as HIV and other diseases that one can get from engaging in bad activities such as promiscuity and beer drinking which alters someone’s thinking which may lead someone to doing things they do not intend to do.

INSPIRATION

The hospital environment has such an organized structure and departments and seeing different career uniforms around the hospital area helped a lot so the pupils passed through each and every department and the duties of the departments well explained so that each pupil can get a picture of what they do hence be motivated and inspired to do well at school if they were to contribute to the community in a positive way. Most of the pupils were motivated to do paediatric medicine because we passed through under five clinic and they were shown how the clinic is done which helped most of the pupils.

The national museum on the other hand has two diaries the lower diary and the upper diary of which the lower diary is temporal and upper diary is permanent meaning the things on the lower diary keep changing and the ones on the upper diary do not change. This worked as an inspiration because the lower dairy has works from different people who have worked hard and contributed to the development of the country for example there is a picture of a Zambian artist Mark Mulaza Kaira popularly known as Marky 2 because of his hard work and his contribution to the country ,the pupils drew inspiration from that as they recognized him and screamed his name so the tour guide explained and said his picture is here because his hard working one day we can also hang your picture in here..

CAREER ORIENTATION

The National Museum contains many handi-crafts and paintings of different things, this on its own shows that every kind of job is important starting from the men and women who defended our country and who’s history has been recorded the pupils can decide to become politicians or lawyers and other parliament jobs that they may want to be. The paintings show that there is an artist who did them and among Kwasha Mukwenu pupils there maybe those that that are good at painting and one or two may just work on perfecting their skill and earn some good income in the future. This plus the first tour at Chipata Level One Hospital broadened the pupils career choices as some mentioned that they would do engineering, nursing, medicine and others musicians and environmental health technicians etc as regarding the guide the hospital and the national museum gave.

PRACTICAL FOR SOME SUBJECTS

This tour just like the previous one for 2024 served as a practical solution to the subjects pupils learn such as science, social studies which comprises of geography, religious education, civic, history and creative and technology studies for the Grade sevens as this showed an improved pass rate for the previous pupils in the last exposure visit that we took to the museum in February 2024 we hope that this year we get even better results after the two tours that we just took.

SUMMARY

The trip was a success though the initial plan and budget was for 56 people of which 51 were supposed to be pupils comprising of 27 (twenty seven) grade nine and 24 (twenty four) grade seven but only 44 pupils came through and 4 teachers plus myself making it 49 altogether but the budget was already made for 56 people in terms of food and transport the budget was for 55 people inclusive of the teachers as I was coming from a different direction so my transport was separate. However, the shortage of pupils was somehow covered by the presence of the driver who brought the pupils and waited for them until the whole tour in both places was done with the 3 men who were helping him so the surplus food was given to the 4 men who brought the pupils.

CONCLUSION

I would like to thank everyone who supported the trip in organizing and planning the teachers of Kwasha Mukwenu Mr Christopher Lwele, Mr Borniface Bwalya, Mr Kelvin Musonda and Mr Joshua Sayola they played an important role in making sure that the school tour was smooth and well monitored. Last but not the least on behalf of the pupils and entire Kwasha Mukwenu school I would like to thank the ZST for the continued support and for having the best interest for the pupils at heart may God richly bless you. And we hope to go out of town next year which we plan to go to see the Kafue National Park God willing.

The pupils were very happy I could see from their excitement and participation throughout the tour on behalf of Kwasha Mukwenu Community School thank for making the dream of many years come to pass and for making the pupils smile. We are so grateful; may God richly bless you. This as I work with the pupil’s I have a motto ONE SMILE AT A TIME! Meaning if we can put a smile even on one of the pupils then we would have archived a lot in that moment imagine how many smiles we are going to have by the of this year? A lot, right? Definitely a lot! Thank you once again for making my work easier this year I am looking forward to the rest of the programs this year. Thank you for reading this report”

Kwasha Mukwenu (“Help a friend in need”) is based in Matero Lusaka and was established by the Kwasha Mukwenu Womens Group in 1991. A Community School is led by the Headmaster, Christopher Lwele a former pupil, with the support of four teachers and provides care and education for approximately 250 vulnerable children in Grades 1 to 9. There are five classrooms. During 2022 a new nursery school was completed and equipped.

The Trust is one of Kwasha Mukwenu’s major donors. Funds are provided to cover pupils’ examination fees to enable further progress in Government Schools, infrastructure projects including extra classrooms, a Computer Lab and improved drainage, new desks and school equipment. Lunch is provided each day when funds are available and some parents work as volunteers.

Kwasha Mukwenu faces a number of challenges due to the increased number of children attending school and further demand for school places. The school is understaffed, and salaries are too low to attract qualified teachers. There is a shortage of desks and equipment.

In addition to providing grant funding the Trust provides advice and support to the leadership team and Headmaster including running entrepreneurial skills training workshops for the leadership team.

There are now many heartwarming examples of ex-students in successful jobs and careers, who would otherwise not have had the opportunity of education.