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ROCKPORT — Over the summer, Rockport Public Schools donated 150 pounds of books to an all-girls secondary school in Africa.
The effort was part of a continent-spanning partnership between Rockport High School’s chapter of the National Honor Society and Kasenga Girls Secondary School of Namwala, Zambia.
“The students and teachers were thrilled with the books,” said Amy Huber, Rockport High School math teacher and advisor for the school’s National Honor Society chapter. “(We hope we) can pair one Zambian student with one NHS student, like pen pals, to establish regular communication that will help foster understanding and a sharing of cultures.”
Last year, Patricia Campbell, a Rockport resident and former vice president of Tufts University, pitched the partnership to Huber. The school is nearby a maternal clinic she helped open.
“We both felt it would be interesting for our students to learn from a very different place,” Campbell explained. “I called the headmaster (at Kasenga) on WhatsApp and explained the Rockport situation. Soon after, the students met each other on WhatsApp. We all just hit it off.”
Namwala, according to Campbell, is a small community that’s based on subsistence farming. It’s so vital that the local student curriculum includes agricultural courses. The townspeople speak a mixture of English and the Bantu language, Tanga.
This summer, when the school year ended, Rockport Middle School teacher Keith McCarthy told Campbell he had a plethora of extra books he was hoping to donate somewhere. The only way for the books to make it to rural Zambia, however, was to hand-deliver them. Campbell, who had business in Rwanda to tend to in July, stepped up.
“Shipping there is so expensive that it’s prohibitive,” she explained. “I flew in a way that I could add on baggage, so I had three fifty-pound suitcases filled with books.”
Rockport’s National Honor Society students included personalized letters with the delivery.
“I hope that you’re in good health,” read one of the letters.
“There’s something special about (writing to someone across the world) that’s hard to place. It’s some combination of unity and the best kind of unfamiliarity. The world often seems too large to understand, but I think it helps to learn just a little about the world one person at a time.”
The National Honor Society students have organized multiple fundraisers to support Kasenga. Late last year, they held multiple pop-up shops featuring painted fabrics and handmade beaded necklaces made by Zambian women. Then, in April, the students hosted a local talent show that ultimately raised $3,000 for new desks and chairs.
“Kids would be sitting on long benches” while studying at Kasenga, said Campbell. “Now every student has a desk and chair.”
Campbell says this is just the beginning of what she hopes is a long-term relationship between the two schools.
“(Rockport) teachers have told me they want to connect with the teachers to share and learn from each other,” she explained. “Maybe Amy could teach could teach a math class if we can get Zoom to work. There’s many possibilities of learning, not just assistance — (student) exchanges, if we get to that point. I want to congratulate Rockport for having the interest, compassion and vision to see how much one can learn and be helpful.”
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