Back to Their Future

Everywhere you go in rural Zambia, it is usually the children you see first. They line the roads waving and grinning because to even see a car is a terribly rare event. They are thrilled to meet new people and will greet you over and over, to show off the English they know and in hopes of becoming friends. You are dragged over to meet their families and welcomed in to eat with them with smiles and open arms. Family is important here, because often family is all you have between you and the world, but sometimes family does not offer the safety it should. There are countless cases of the abuse of girls and young women at the hands of their male family members. For a long time this went unchecked and unchallenged, but education is helping to counter the damage done by ignorance. Project Luangwa works to educate young people, to help make their lives better. At present they are focusing on teaching young women that they do have a choice about what happens to their bodies, and teaching young men that they too have a choice. Tradition does not have to dictate their future, and they do not have to bow to pressure from ‘the way it has always been’. There is no shortage of minds to soak up knowledge and combat ignorance. The schools we visited with the National Police Aid Convoys (NPAC) were bursting at the seams with children so keen to learn that they even did what their teachers told them!

PEPAIDS is another charity which aims to educate, in particular, young people who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. Often these children are the sole carers for sick relatives or younger siblings, so when PEPAIDS gives them the chance to have some time off they leap at it. Camp Zambia is run so that children and young people can come and learn some life skills, as well as being able to relax and be children for a while. One particularly heartwarming story is that of Jack. His father had died and his mother was seriously ill, so he was the head of the family, responsible for caring for his siblings and his mother. He came to camp Zambia with nothing more than the clothes he stood up in. He didn’t even have any shoes. Volunteers at the camp got him to stand at one side of the yard and imagine everything he could want on the other side. He told them he just wanted to feed his family. They asked what he had on his side of the yard, and how it could help him get to the other side. He had a slingshot to scare off monkeys, so he decided he could go out into the bush and catch guinea fowl. This he did, and his family had a decent meal for the first time in weeks. One day he caught two guinea fowl, so he took the spare and sold it at market. With the money he bought himself a pair of pink jelly sandals, meaning he could walk further into the bush and thus catch more fowl to sell.

They say the children are the future, and Zambia’s future must be bright!

If you’re interested in the work done by any of the charities mentioned, please take a look at their websites:

Project Luangwa: www.projectluangwa.org

PEPAIDS: www.pepaids.org

NPAC: www.npac.org.uk

First published in Southwell Life, February 2015.