My trip to Zambia

So if anyone noticed that I haven't been around for the last week and a half, it's because I've been in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa. (as well as a brief layover in London... hi MainTitles people from UK).

I was there to help with a camp for orphaned and endangered children. Zambia is one of the worst AIDS-affected countries in the world. It has a population of 10 million and of those, over 1 million are orphans. The life expectancy is 38 years, one of the worst in the world, and the average age is just a little over 15. And a lot of those 15-year-olds like more like they are 10 because of stunted growth from malnourishment. So it is not a very nice place. One of the strangest things I discovered is that we in the West are actually much more aware of the damage AIDS is doing in Africa than the Africans themselves are. In superstitious countries like Zambia, there is such a stigma surrounding AIDS that nobody talks about it and nobody wants to admit that they have it.

There were about 100 Americans and over 1000 kids at the camp. Each of the Americans was in charge of leading a small group of 10-16 kids. We had large group and small group meetings where the kids were taught (mostly about Jesus, sorry if this offends you anti-Christian people around here...but you'd be surprised some of the stories I heard from perfectly sane Westerners about supernatural occurences, so either there is something more than meets the eye or there was a lot of mass-hypnosis going on ) Then each of us Americans were responsible for meeting with each of the kids in our group individually (through a translator) and finding out about their lives...whether they have enough to eat, whether they are being abused (which most of them are in one way or another because they're orphans, mostly AIDS orphans, and nobody really wants them...I had one kid who was officially the cutest little black kid ever and his dad just died a month ago and yet his aunt beats him every day). So yeah...it wasn't really a vacation, but I am very glad for the experience and I plan on going back next year.

Another highlight was staying in a house with two American families...being a single adult I was rather not looking forward to going on the trip by myself, but the other people in my house were very hospitable and I had a great time hanging out and being harassed by their younger kids (ages 8-13). So yeah. I will post pictures later if anyone is interested.