On our way to Victoria Falls, we stopped at a village to deliver 50 mosquito nets. These are given out for free to Zambians to prevent them from getting Malaria while they sleep. The thought is that in the day time, you can brush off mosquitoes, but you cannot prevent mosquitoes from biting you in the night. Hence, a group that is devoted to fighting malaria delivers these nets. I was shocked to learn that 65% of Zambians suffer from malaria in their lifetimes. We chose a school to deliver these nets to with the thought that it was important to give these nets to children, who are unable to fight the disease.
The school was amazing. We attended an assembly, where the kids all sang for us and a few got on stage and gave performances. We all got a ton of pictures, which will be fun to see after our trip. The coolest part of our visit was seeing how intense the music that the kids were singing. Imagine going to any elementary school that has 150 kids and asking them to sing. Chances are that, regardless of how many times these kids practiced, their performance would be weakened by stage fright, a lack of enthusiasm, and a failure to sing on one beat. These children were on a perfect beat and sang so loudly and with so much enthusiasm that my ears hurt when I went into the room. The dance and poetry performances of these kids would have been impressive even by the highest standards of a high school drama program. The last thing that struck me was that these kids interacted with us and each other in basically the same way that I would expect an American kid to act.
After we dropped off the nets we went to go see a village where the kids form the school lived. This was interesting because this village was unlike the other villages that we have been to, which were at least partially accustomed to foreigners. The houses were made of mud and straw and the toilets were holes that were dug into the ground. We got to see where one of the kids from the school slept, which was literally a walls constructed around solid ground with a few blankets inside. However, the most vivid memory I have of this room was the smell inside. It was not a smell created by a human. Instead, it was the type of smell that is found in crammed spaces of thousand year old ruins. Overall, I thought that this was one of the coolest and most interesting parts of our vacation so far. Right now we are waiting the airport for our flight to Cape Town for the last leg our trip.
John
