Initial Thoughts:
I wanted to do something worthwhile with my summer and it fitted in with my passion of coaching. I’d been to South Africa before but I wanted to come back and see proper Africa without a sheltered life. I expected the accommodation to be a lot worse – nailed by mosis every night - and I thought it might be warmer.
Impressions of Lusaka:
It’s a safe friendly city but it has poor infrastructure. Essentially it’s a tip as well. The streets are rife with rubbish. I went to Tanzania for the East African football cup. I was surprised that even Daraselem – the city there – has a population of 10 million people but it was really clean – although still worse than Britain. But compared to Lusaka it was amazingly clean. And the scenery was very lush and beautiful there.
The kids I took to Tanzania were completely respectful of their elders, their teachers and their parents. Even when I – a visiting student – asked them to jump – they immediately said “How high?” When at home I don’t think we show respect to gap year students or even our parents like that. This whole trip has made me appreciate my parents so much more.
Impressions of value of the project:
It’s two sided. I’ve learned a lot about myself. When you have 40 – 50 kids turning up for a class and two footballs available, you have to adapt and think quickly about how you get people moving. For example, I’m trying to set up new systems, think on your feet, adapt to what you have available. From the other side, I like to think I’ve had an impact on the kids. From the way my kids at Munali (my project school) work now compared to their performance when I first arrived, they’re just developing so much. I put emphasis on their fitness and their getting that now.
SIA – I think there’s different levels of efficiency. African / Zambian culture makes it so hard to plan. With what we call “Zambia time” classes start so late. Nobody cares if people are late. How can you build an economy on people being late? How can the government work if people don’t turn up to work on time. How do you construct a building? We see building projects on our way to work and it’s not often we see anyone actually working on them. So it’s been frustrating trying to deal with that culture. Before – at the early part of our project – I would be worried to be there on time. But you adapt. Now I go with the Zambian time which is kind of nice and it’s stress free. You go with the flow.
Impressions of the Team:
I love living with people and I’d rather be chatting with someone than watching telly. It’s really nice getting to know people that I wouldn’t have given a second thought to if I had been in St. Andrews. But here you get to know the person. I’m quite used to living with loads of people and working with teams in the sports coaching. It might be difficult to say the same for the counselling people who might not be used to working with more than one person at a time. At the beginning we separated into our teams without thinking but it has completely changed now. People are starting to share each other’s ways of working and we’re definitely benefiting from learning from each others’ thoughts – they’ve taught us how to calm and reassure, while we’re showing them our competitive fire.
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