Africa in a nutshell

where to start? my mind is chalked full of thoughts when it comes to writing a post that will acuratly capture my experience while in africa. i'm still in the processing stage so i will just try and give a quick synopsis of what took place in this beautiful place. 

the main mission of our trip to zambia was to work with  a organization called Hands At Work to run an educational program for 40 youth ages 12-18 as well as encouraging the teachers and caseworkers in the community. the program information was mostly based around sexual education (contraceptives, abstinence, STI's ect). Through talking about these things it also allowed us the oppertunity to talk about sexual abuse, exchanging sex for money, sustance abuse, terminal illness's of friends and family members, grief, and other issues that these teenagers are facing on a daily basis. 

in order to run this program with the kids we needed to have some sort of relationship with them. we spent many hours in their community interacting with them at their school and at the different feeding posts in their area. we also had the opportunity to visit the homes of various people in the community  who are very ill with some of the Hands At Work caregivers. The time spent in the community allowed us to have a greater understanding of the children's background in which  we would be working with.  it also helped to form a foundation for the work we wanted to do in our program. 

our group then hosted a 4 day vacation bible school based on the story of noah's ark. in the mornings and evenings we played silly games, sang amazing african songs, danced (or at least us white people tried), and played lots of 'football'. in the afternoons we ran our 'sex ed' program. 

the kids responded really well to our program. but what was even more encouraging to me was that the teachers and some of the careworkers from the community also attended the camp and participated in our program. it is encouraging to know that when our team leaves africa, there will still be adults to talk to our kids about the issues going on in their lives. 

my hope is that our time with the kids and careworkers will be just enough to have broken down some walls and that now the topics of sex, abuse, and sti's will no longer be taboo to talk about. 

all in all, i had a wonderful time. Hands At Work is an amazing organization that is working within many communities throughout africa. as of late I have become a little unsure about short term missions, but while working with Hands At Work, their sustainable development model is fantastic and made me feel that the work we accomplish while in zambia was in fact life changing for all people involved and would continue once our team had left. 

this is an extremely brief snapshot of some of the things we did while in africa. I have plenty of pictures and personal stories that i would love to tell but those will have to be saved for coffee dates upon my return home. 

Much love to all,

Norah (my african name, as no one could pronounce the  'L' in my name) 

ps - as of right now i don't know if i can figure out how to post pictures. when and if i figure it out, i will post a few.