The 2000-2001 Cosmopolitan Club Service Award was presented to Lishomwa Mulongwe, a graduate student from Zambia who studied Forestry at the University of Illinois and was a resident of the Cosmopolitan Club for one and a half years. The Service Award, presented each April for 18 years at the International Dinner and Entertainment Night at the University YMCA, honors individuals who exemplify the Club's spirit and motto: "Above all nations is humanity."
Lishomwa Mulongwe lived this motto in his daily interaction with others at the Cosmopolitan Club House and in spearheading the Cosmopolitan Club's annual Thanksgiving Benefit Dinner project, which raised a total of $1,500 to buy books for a primary school in rural Mazabuka, Zambia. The school, which has about 200 children in seven different grades, educates children of farm workers in a commercial farming area.
According to Mulongwe, "For children in Zambia, education is the only way out of poverty. If they don't get educated, it's practically impossible to get out of the trap. The government does what it can to promote education, but funds are low and the number of public school teachers has been reduced. Books are expensive and limited, and children often have to share."
Teachers in Mazabuka care about their students. Many spend extra time after school helping children who are falling behind. They also try to send books home with the children so that they can practice reading at home. To do more of this, teachers need more books. Thanks to Mulongwe and to his Cosmo friends and to various individuals and local bookstores, the school now has more of the books they need.
For Lishomwa Mulongwe, the individual is always responsible to the community. He has made a strong contribution to the Cosmopolitan Club's mission to build bridges among persons of various nationalities, races, cultures, and religions. Mulongwe's concern for others also appears in many of his poems.
Lonely Stares Life
by Lishomwa MulongweLonely stares life
Into empty and solitary spaces
Each darkened night
When man, woman or child
Turns aside alone to sleep.
Love given lessens strife
Many are the war torn places
Fighting and killing does not make it right
It can't be, unless peace was sown far a-field
And its roots let to grow deep.For now wake up and see
The day stretch endless clear skies
And into the bright morning light-run
Bare foot over cobbled side roads
Where orphaned kids play hide and seek
Among houses arranged in symmetrical rows, and neat
Little girls sit on a bench watching jumping toads
And skimming dragonflies over green and murky waters
Where algae sits watched over by a stray beeLife is not that easy
Sometimes the milkman is late
And the children's play is disturbed
At the wailing of the ambulance
Flashing lights and staring people
Then no one remembers last night's dance
Bright eyed young women, and young men
Holding them so gentle-
But the burning house, dying screams
And sobbing voice saying "there is little anyone can do"
Will never go away or find release.And life has ended the way it began
A moment of silence is all that was given
The ashes were gathered only
To be scattered away-
Everyone has since returned to their old way of living.
The river has washed away yesterday's rain
Leaving the land alive but shaken-
And hope lies dead in the street, and it seems silly-
That no one has anything to say
Or see reason to give the event any meaning.Faintly beams light
Into a sorrow and doubt ridden soul
Casting wearisome shadows into the gathering dusk
That covers everything with gloomy denial-
Then silently, darkness falls and refuses to go.
Wait until strength is softly spoken into sight
And the shaken but steadily awakening soul
Opens its eyes and loses its death mask
Man's undimmed desire to live brings renewal
When the streams of his existence continue to flow.