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This blog will be an account my life working in a Refugee camp in Northern Zambia called Mwange. For the next year, I will be working for Right to Play, a sport and development organization based out of Toronto. What follows will be a life altering experience. Stay tuned....
Friday, March 11, 2005
Day 4 Lusaka
March 11th
Lusaka
This is our last day in Lusaka. We ran into some problems when we found out that our driver Peter possibly has Malaria, so we are crossing our fingers that he is ok and that we can leave tomorrow. It is a two day drive and we are supposed to be out at the camp on Monday for some meetings with other implementing partners and with UNHCR.
This morning I had an amazing experience as we decided to join the Lusaka team on an outing to distribute coaching certificates to trainees in a remote area in Lusaka. We left early this morning and headed to a compound (a compound is a very poor area where there is a very high level of poverty and almost no social services) called Chiwama. We spent the morning playing with the children in a field where to local schools had met up to participate in Right to Play games. There were literally hundreds of kids and they all want there chance to meet and touch the Mzungu (white person) see pics.
This is my first experience in the actual “field”, with the children that we are trying to empower. I immediately saw the effects of our work and the huge smiles on the kids faces… The morning was organized into a series of games, facilitated by Right to Play coaches, of netball, soccer and other games. I know this is just a taste of what I will be experiencing everyday upon my arrival in Mporokoso.
The afternoon was spent going over our plan for the next months and things that we wanted to accomplish in the camp. Seems we will be focusing on empowering coaches so that they will be able to train other local coaches in the camp. I am still learning and until I get to the camp and start meeting the people I will be working with, I really don’t have an idea of what will be necessary in our programming for the next months. I’m really lucky because Sophie has be really great in preparing us for the upcoming months and she has been a great project partner so far. We’ll have to see how sick of eachother we will get in being around eachother for 24 hours a day, but I know it will go ok…
Well, I probably won’t be posting anything for the next few weeks, but stayed tuned because I don’t know when I will next have internet access.
Lusaka
This is our last day in Lusaka. We ran into some problems when we found out that our driver Peter possibly has Malaria, so we are crossing our fingers that he is ok and that we can leave tomorrow. It is a two day drive and we are supposed to be out at the camp on Monday for some meetings with other implementing partners and with UNHCR.
This morning I had an amazing experience as we decided to join the Lusaka team on an outing to distribute coaching certificates to trainees in a remote area in Lusaka. We left early this morning and headed to a compound (a compound is a very poor area where there is a very high level of poverty and almost no social services) called Chiwama. We spent the morning playing with the children in a field where to local schools had met up to participate in Right to Play games. There were literally hundreds of kids and they all want there chance to meet and touch the Mzungu (white person) see pics.
This is my first experience in the actual “field”, with the children that we are trying to empower. I immediately saw the effects of our work and the huge smiles on the kids faces… The morning was organized into a series of games, facilitated by Right to Play coaches, of netball, soccer and other games. I know this is just a taste of what I will be experiencing everyday upon my arrival in Mporokoso.
The afternoon was spent going over our plan for the next months and things that we wanted to accomplish in the camp. Seems we will be focusing on empowering coaches so that they will be able to train other local coaches in the camp. I am still learning and until I get to the camp and start meeting the people I will be working with, I really don’t have an idea of what will be necessary in our programming for the next months. I’m really lucky because Sophie has be really great in preparing us for the upcoming months and she has been a great project partner so far. We’ll have to see how sick of eachother we will get in being around eachother for 24 hours a day, but I know it will go ok…
Well, I probably won’t be posting anything for the next few weeks, but stayed tuned because I don’t know when I will next have internet access.
