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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....
Sunday, June 12, 2005
June 1st
A new month… phewwww… Can’t believe I’ve been here almost 3 months already. I’m really starting to learn about how to work in the camp now. The most important thing has been remembering that we are working with volunteers and we can never ask more of them than they can give. It has also been important for me to remember that my being in the camp is something that is not very normal and not sustainable in the long run. With all the activities we are doing, we try to make decisions and implement intitiatives that are going to be sustainable within the camp and are not too different from what they are already used to…
Today we heard some more rumours about why we weren’t allowed in the camp yesterday, including that some civilians had been killed by rebels in a nearby village, but we don’t really know what’s truth and what is just being imagined to justify the big scare that we had yesterday. In my opinion, it was just some poachers in the area, and somebody heard some gunshots and got scared. There is a wildlife park (wildlife parks are the only place where you’ll find wild animals in Zambia) just north of here where some illegal poaching goes on.
Also today, our new guard started. We decided to hire a man who was a volunteer in his village for Right to Play and works as a farmer. He is trying to save up money to go back to school, so we are trying to help him out a little. I am also hoping he can help improve my garden!
