So after a quick turn-around in the UK, switching our best clothes to our worst, and swapping our wedding list-matching suitcases for grubby backpacks, we set off for our next adventure in Zambia.
Although the main focus of this trip is the work for On Call Africa, our first month in Zambia will be spent working with a charity called SAPEP. They train volunteers from rural villages to empower their own communities to reduce the burden of AIDS. At first we were sceptical of what they actually did, but the more we learn, the more it makes sense. As well as providing support for people with HIV, both psychologically and practically, they help them to learn new income-generating skills so that they can improve their quality of life for both themselves and their families. And because it’s all done via community volunteers, or ‘peer educators’ (the PE in SAPEP), it’s realistic in terms of creating behaviour change, and it’s sustainable. But any way, if you’d like to know more, they have a UK sister charity, PEPAIDS, which supports them and has a fantastic website – www.pepaids.org
The main thing we’re doing during our stay with SAPEP is helping them put together a grant proposal for a new project and coming up with ways it can be monitored. Neither of which we have a great deal of experience in I have to say, but we’ll do our best.
We arrived in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, on Thursday morning and were met by a SAPEP employee, Wilson, who drove us the two hours to the small town of Mazabuka, our home for the next month. Since we’re not here long enough to rent a house, we’re lodging in a guest house. We can’t help but compare Mazabuka to our previous home of Gulu, in Uganda. Although a lot smaller than Gulu and in a different hemisphere, there are lots of similarities. Whilst the rolex chapatti stands are missing, the smell of charcoal-grilled corn-on-the-cob still fills the air, street sellers price their tomatoes and aubergines ‘per pyramid’ of four, kids constantly shout ‘hi, how are you?’ as you walk down the street, and EVERYWHERE sells mobile phone credit. After a week of rushing round Manchester in January, the overly-friendly, laid back people of sunny Mazabuka are a welcome relief. That being said, we’re already dreaming of cereal with fresh milk, and cheese, and tea, and nice toast, and wine, and a toilet with a seat. We needn’t have worried about ‘cruise ship weight gain’, one month here should sort that, let alone six!
On Friday, we went out to a village with some of the SAPEP guys to watch them do a dance/drama session about HIV and child abuse – heavy topics! Wilson decided not to drive to the village in his 4x4 because the roads were so bad after the rains the day before. He was afraid we’d get completely stuck and not be able to get home again. So instead, we crammed into a minibus with the rest of the team. How we thought that a two-wheel drive bus carrying twice the number of people as it was designed to do was going to make it there and back I don’t know, but I guess you could say it did. We had to stop literally every five minutes to get out and push it out of a muddy ditch, but we made it.
We arrived at a house in the middle of nowhere. There was a single family living in the house and no one else. Given the fact that the team had been due to come the day before but had to cancel because of the rain, and there was no way to communicate this to the villagers, we wondered how on earth anyone was expected to show up. But, ‘beat the drum, and the people will come’ we were told, and they did. Within 15 minutes a crowd of well over 50 people had arrived to watch the performance. Unfortunately for us, it was all in the local language ‘tonga’. But going by how much the kids enjoyed it and the dynamic Q&A session that that followed, it seemed to have been a great success. It’s so hard to imagine what life must be like for people living out in the villages. They are subsistence farmers, and the focus of every day is growing enough food to survive. The rainy season is busy, with crops growing like crazy, while the dry season is slow with not much to do except sit and wait. Most of them get very little, if any, schooling. It really does hammer home the need for international aid workers to include local people in the planning when trying to implement any kind of programme requiring behaviour change. The cultural differences are astounding.
Pictures to follow soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment