Our task, as youth volunteers in our placements, was to get the local youths involved in discussions surrounding sexual and reproductive health and to encourage them to access the sexual health services in their clinic. This was in the hope that if there was greater understanding of the risks and consequences of unsafe sex this…
One Sunday morning, after a lie in (until 7.30) I got up to find that the kitchen had been turned into a chicken shop. I had to weave my way through the heaped buckets of raw meat just to get to the kettle. Outside on the porch semi frozen birds were being hacked apart and…
The staple crop in Zambia is maize. Although you can buy corn-on-the-cob from braziers in the street, maize is more commonly found in the form of maize flour called mealie meal. It’s made digestible by boiling it in water until it thickens into a substance a little more solid than mash potato. This is called…
Walking home as the sun dips down into the seemingly never ending flat plain is a peaceful affair. Kids are skipping, swinging sticks at each other or drawing in sand, catching the last few minutes of play time before the light disappears completely. About five minutes before we reach home, Elizabeth and I walk through…
Choma is found half way between the capital, Lusaka, and the tourist capital, Livingstone. High street is formed around the Livingstone-Lusaka highway. This is a single carriage way tarmacked road but serves the same purpose as a motorway. Alongside ordinary silver Toyota escorts and four by fours, there’s a steady stream of gigantic heavy goods…
Our first full day in Zambia was spent travelling from Lusaka to Choma. On the outskirts of Lusaka we stopped off at a shopping complex to stock up on bottled water for the journey. This in itself was fairly unremarkable. The shops and restaurants were large, western chains. The car park was full of beefy…
From July to September 2013 I worked as a volunteer in Choma, a provincial town half way between Lusaka (the capital) and Livingstone (where there is a rather big waterfall). I went as part of VSO-ICS and so formed part of a team of 23 other volunteers aged 18-25. 11 of us were from the…
