Drew's African Odyssey - Mwange Refugee Camp, Zambia

The first day to relax since coming back from Lusaka - or so I thought. I ended up going to the camp in the afternoon to enjoy the opening game of the camp’s football league. Wow, are those guys good!! The games are played on the central sports field, which is not so much a field but more like a clay tennis court. What’s even more amazing is that most of the guys play in bare feet. Last time I tried to play bball in the camp with bare feet, I ended up with huge blisters on my feet after only 15 minutes of play. Dunno how those guys do it… While watching the game, I ran into the American student group, FORGE. We chatted about happenings in the camp, etc. But it’s not easy talking to them as they always have a huge swarm of kids following them around all day. One of the guys, Johnny, wants to help out with some of the sports workshops we’ll be holding in the camp in the next week. I’m a little skeptical about this as the guys don’t speak any French or know much about how Right to Play works within the camp…

After the game, we ended up going over to the FORGE house, which is located just next to the camp,and is where all the American students are staying. Before they came, they realized that they didn’t want to be driving in and out of Mporokoso each day, so they found this big, vacant house about 10 min from the camp. As there’s no power in that area, they equipped the house with solar panels, painted it up, installed a toilet (outhouse) and shower (portable) and made the house livable. Now, all nine of them live there and they’ve employed locals to do the cooking and cleaning. We stayed for a dinner of chicken, potatoes, rape and buns. I had to laugh when the conversation turned to the girls complaining about all the spiders, mice and bugs in their house and would run away when they saw a spider and get their driver to kill it…. Welcome to Zambia…