COVID Third Wave

Well folks, COVID has done it again, the government has closed schools for another two weeks and we hope to be opening again on August 16th!! We’ve now been closed for 6 weeks.

While schools are closed, our team comes in to make lesson plans, homework assignments and worksheets for our students. We then take these assignments to our student’s various compounds and villages. We check their previous assignments and give out new ones, explaining to the parent/guardian at the home.

We also have been providing food supplies for our Deaf students and their families. We try our best to reach every one of our twenty-six students, and to ensure a safe “hello, how are you?”, with our masks on, as well as handing out 25kg bag of mealie meal. We supply each family with the basics: cooking oil, mealie meal, and some veggies. For the more underprivileged Deaf children, we try to provide a bit more.  

We plan to continue our safety measures of hygiene, digital thermometer readings, nutrition, continued education and play time at the Centre. We always make sure all Ministry of Health protocols are followed, so for now we continue to strive to do our very best , and remain hopeful we can start teaching again. 

We are very committed to remaining as safe as we possibly can for our students- which brings us to vaccines. Vaccine roll out in Zambia has been slow. The first round of vaccines were made available in late April for a few short days, where some of the staff took part and are now fully vaccinated. The second round of vaccines just became available in mid-July, and the remainder of our staff got their first injection- and will be fully vaccinated once their ten week window is up, around the beginning of September. The second round of vaccines only lasted 3 days in Livingstone, as the supply ran out very quickly.

Covid-19 has been an issue here in Zambia  not only for all schools and thousands of children but for the general population. It has hurt the economy and people’s businesses. It has hurt most of our tourist companies and lodges, ensuring for some, their demise.  

Livingstone is an “International hub,” where people from all over the world have been coming, however,  tourists are rarely seen these days so in that respect, we are missing the element of being able to have visitors, and volunteers, which help us all to keep afloat. 

This pandemic has slowed down educating our Deaf community . They are already behind their hearing peers.  Our workshops on HIV/AIDS, Hygiene, Banking (i.e. saving for the future) and our non-violent discipline classes are on hold for the moment.

It has affected our Deaf Community in such a way, that, we at Desanto Centre for the Deaf feel more focused than ever in continuing the dream of success in educating our “forgotten Deaf brothers and sisters”. 

“Covid or no Covid”, as Mr. And Mrs. DeSanto suggests, we will continue this dream for its reality is imperative in the growth of our Deaf children, so that in the future, they may indeed become a more important part of society here in Livingstone Zambia.