To say the cameras are a novelty would be something of an understatement

We’re back in Livingstone after a strangely uneventful bus ride, all things considered. Driving over the parts of the main Livingstone to Lusaka road that are just dirt tracks in a six wheel coach should, really, have felt more adventurous than it actually did. I guess National Express-style buses are the same the world over – no-one wants to talk, just sit uncomfortably silent next to the stranger on your left. I would say I prefer some of the more basic transport we’ve taken so far, but it beats walking and not being in fear of your life is never a bad thing.

Most striking thing about being back in the Jollyboys backpackers is how relative everything is. A week ago, Livingstone was far less developed than I’d expected: tonight it seems like a bastion of civilisation and Kalomo a strangely surreal dream.

One thing that’s taken me by surprise is the amount of NGO already here in Zambia. The office block over the road in Livingstone is a headquarters for several, and Kalomo appeared to have more aid agencies than shops.

The next poster in the grade 1 classroom correctly identifies that 'b' is for banana.

It’s important because one of the reasons I came here was because I’d just finished reading a book called Dead Aid. It’s been all over the blogosphere and stoked lots of debate about the relevance of charity to Africa. After 50 years of World Banks and Live Aids, there are still kids walking 14km a day just to learn to read and write. Most of the money spent has been spent badly, the book says, and Africa would do better on its own.

In the book there is a proviso for projects like LearnAsOne, though. It says that money given directly to small scale projects like building a school will, inevitably, have to continue for longer. Just take out the politicians, rock stars and global organisations who spend the cash on ineffective projects which lock people into a cycle of dependence while pocketing huge, greedy salaries themselves.

Everyone I’ve spoken to here agrees. Today we’ve interviewed government officials and home grown NGO organisations. Response Network explicitly do not want donations of clothes or books for the pupils. What they want is to teach the people here enough that they can survive by themselves. Rather than shoes, they want to give the people the skills to build drip irrigation systems, so they can grow more crops to sell and buy shoes. Where are they going to teach these skills? In the school.

The kids put on a little show of singing, dancing and plays for us

It sounds simple – give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a week, teach a man to fish he’ll feed himself for life. I didn’t understand until this week, though, how hard that is to deliver on. Simakakata is enormously spread out. There are no roads, no phonelines. Some of the larger villages have a mobile they share, but it’s for emergencies only. And this isn’t even a ‘remote’ place. We chose it as the site for LearnAsOne because it is close to Kalomo and we could get what we needed for the blog here.

The first guy I chat to in the bar tonight works on the river, taking tourists white water rafting. I tell him what I do for a living, and why we’re here. He says, without prompting, that he wants the big NGOs out of Zambia. His family is from Lusaka, politicians. He left because he hates the fact they’ve got rich off of the money sent for aid. Africa can find its own solutions, he says, they can’t be European ones. Trying to turn Africa into Europe has just brought AIDS.

He agrees with what we’re doing. Empowerment and respect is what people need. The chance to learn enough to make their own choices. Like him.

So far, though, I’m not sure I’m quite as convinced by Dead Aid as I was. There’s a lot of good come from the NGOs in Kalomo. Many people ride cycles donated by Bicycle Aid or USAID – including George. These make things like having a trained headmaster at Simakakata possible. I don’t know that that would have been achieved without a large, multinational organisation that can handle the logistics.

Right now everything is still very raw from the last few days, and it’s really hard watching an eight year old walk 14kms with no shoes without thinking ‘When I get home I’m going to send a parcel of shoes’. Aid may not be working, but it’s not entirely dead.

Irene. It's a tough call between her and Sonet to say which is my favourite of the kids here

Most of the evenings here have been spent fighting a slow internet connection – it can take an hour of failed attempts to get a photo up for the LearnAsOne blog, so we’ve been working on that pretty much flat out.

We’ve been at the school now for four days, and the kids have gone from being nervous and shy around us on the first couple of days to chasing us around, singing and dancing. I know a lot of their names now, and a fair few of their stories and the hardest thing about writing about this place for LAO is treading the fine line between being a fundraising activity – which has to describe the incredible poverty here – and wanting to be completely objective about these people.

Everyone we’ve met, from the illiterate farmers to the brilliant, brilliant headmaster (who, incidentally, is my new hero) is eloquent, polite, friendly and determined that what they don’t want is long term charity dependence. Just a leg up to buy the materials they don’t have for their school.

It’s not just about giving the children a primary education, which won’t just improve their lives and give the community the long term knowledge base it needs for economic development – it may save their lives too. The school is the only resource they have for learning about HIV, hygiene, malaria treatment, dietary requirements, what the signs are that you need to call a doctor.

The headmaster also runs a health outreach program. It’s hard to comprehend the distances between all of the huts and farms that make up the Simakakata community, but it’s home to 5,000 people.

There are no roads, no power, no water mains. The volunteers for this program do rounds, walking several kilometres a day visiting each shack in turn, and noting down any illnesses, births, deaths or other problems and offering advice. They report to George (the head) and he passes the relevant information on to the government. Any demographic information – vital for malaria and AIDS projects as well as the civil service – comes to the school in the first instance.

Without a good building with some utilities and housing for teachers, schools like Simakakata can’t attract trained teachers. George came a year ago, leaving a good school where he lived on site in a nice house voluntarily to cycle 16km every day to work in a derelict farmhouse without even a toilet or tap – without being offered a payrise. Because he wants to change the way things are for communities like Simakakata, and has worked in places that have been revolutionised by having a good school. Without good teachers, the only hope this community has is that it will carry on as it is now – living a bare  existence and subsisting on bags of corn flour provided by aid agencies. With teachers, they can start to learn how to do things for themselves.

At the very least, some of the children can leave to get a good job and send money home. They deserve more – those involved with the school project all believe that in 10 years time this place will be completely different – a proper, modern town that can generate its own wealth.

Right now, it’s all I can do to stop myself crying when I see a beautiful girl I’ve just been teaching a song to run off and – basically – drink out of a ditch because she’s walking 7km home in the late afternoon sun and is thirsty.

They say a church is more than a building. This school is much more than education, but there is nothing that it needs more than bricks and mortar.

That first day we got to the school I’d write up a blog post from the site, rather than head back to the motel to transcribe and upload. So here it is. Short and sweet because LearnAsOne get the best stuff.

The school we’re raising funds for is this old farmhouse. The day starts at 7.00am and finishes at 14:00, with the older children being taught first. There’s no water or toilets on site, and yet many of the children walk for miles every day to attend class. Only about half are wearing shoes.

They’re all so happy – curious and shy about the people with cameras who’ve descended on only the second day of term. The value the families here place on education is incredible. Before they look for funds for a clinic, they’ll try to raise money for a school. Being sick is a secondary concern compared to not having a future.