Links
Archives
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 3rd
It felt like Christmas today as I finally received my big package from Canada that my parents, Abbie, Paige and Sasha had sent over. The guy who just took over the project in Kawambwa sent it over. WOW!! THANK YOU!! Chocolate, magazines, guitar books, pain killers, and posters!! Everything I needed!
I was in the camp today for a very interesting day. It started off with a meeting with some of the coaches to discuss what we wanted to prepare for the “Day of the Environment” taking place the next day. As World Vision is responsible for environment in the camp, they were organizing the day and asked our coaches to prepare some games and songs. I don’t really like how these festivals are set up because they only benefit a few people and they’re normally very badly organized. Usually there will be a parade around the camp, then all the “important” members of the camp (which means the UN and their partners – which also means us) sit in comfortable chairs while the parade passes and refugees perform skits, dances and songs for us. Then we all go eat a big meal, while the starving refugees are left out… hmmmmm… Is there something wrong with this picture? Isn't it the refugees we are trying to help?
The meeting with the coaches was a combination of complaining, planning and reminiscing about festivals past, but we finally decided on the song and dance. I’m not really looking forward to this festival tomorrow, but nonetheless we assigned one of the teacher-coaches at Mwange C to perform a song called “J’aime les fleurs”. We’ll see how it goes…
