Meet the Team - Lauren Ing

Initial Thoughts:
I thought Project Zambia was an opportunity that didn’t come around often and once I heard of it, I knew I wanted to take advantage of it. I wanted to see if the coaching programs I was learning in the UK worked in another culture and another country. In the meantime it would be a good way to spend my summer, getting to travel and learn at the same time.
But I wanted to make sure that I was giving something back. I think that through my degree in Sustainable Development, its nearly impossible not to want to experience the world, and try to help in any way possible. We talk about how the world should be, and what needs to change but we don’t put our words into action. Project Zambia gave me an opportunity to put these things into action and practice. Talking will only get you so far and travelling, and with an opportunity like Project Zambia, I couldn't turn it down.


Impressions of Lusaka:
Lusaka is completely different than I thought it was going to be. It's a sprawling city of chaos really. The social infrastructure isn't in place to put bins on the side of the roads, so there is rubbish everywhere. The tarmac is rife with potholes, and travelling throughout the city on their blue buses always proves to be an adventure.

Everybody is so friendly to us, stopping to ask us how we are, and what we are doing in Zambia, but I don’t know if they are friendly because they want something from me. I try to think the best of it, but it’s hard. I always think they want something from me in the back of my mind.

There are also far more language problems than I thought. Today my bus journey was difficult as I knew they were trying to make me pay a higher bus fare because I was white. I knew the whole bus was talking about me, laughing about me behind my back, but the language creates a huge barrier. I had no way to defend myself, and try to figure out what was going on. In the schools, trying to get a message across about HIV/AIDS or even life skills like peer pressure and self awareness is made 10 times more difficult when the kids barely understand what you're talking about. I've started teaching English to some of the kids, and that was something I did not expect at all.

There’s lots of people trying to help get the country sorted like UNICEF, World Food Programme, and the multiple other UN organisations. All of them are much more visible here than I am used to. The UN always seemed like some sort of entity that I could never understand because I never saw it in practice when I was in the UK or in Canada. Here however, it's impossible to miss. There are UNDP trucks in the car park, you pass the UNHCR building on the way to placements, and you drive around in a car donated to SIA by the UN.

However, with all the work that is being done here, a lot of it doesn't seem to co-ordinate. For example, Mutendere, one of our poorest projects, gets bags of maize from the WFP and yet they have no way of cooking it without being able to afford charcoal, so it just lies in store in cupboards. It’s frustrating that so many problems here have only got one step solutions instead of joining up the thinking and get, for example, the WFP to bring charcoal along with the maize.

The poverty is also a lot less evident in some areas than I thought it would be. There’s small dense areas of poverty – but not the absolute poverty I thought it would be. It’s the relative poverty that is the most striking. There’s really rich areas. And it’s the difference that’s hard, everything’s priced for the rich. You have our standard of living with things priced like they are in the UK, but people just don't make the same salaries. It's nearly impossible for people to even afford school fees that are only equivalent to £4/year. It's hard not to give money to everyone; I have to keep reminding myself that it's just not sustainable and doesn't benefit anyone.


Impressions on the value of the project:
The project’s doing really good, but it takes a while to learn the value of it when you first come. You expect a tangible difference in 10 weeks, something that you can see that you left behind, or something that will be drastically different because we were here. But people don’t change in 10 weeks. Because of that I think we’ve learned how to appreciate the small differences. If my kids can pass the ball to each other in our special needs school then that’s a success. But by the end of our time here, I’m so happy when I see sports empowering our kids; when a girl has the confidence by the end of our programme to stand up and talk in front of the boys, then that’s great. There’s no threat that we won’t have made some difference to at least one child – and that’s good enough for me.

I think that the peer leaders working at SIA really need us here to validate them. I have a problem about people listening to me just simply because I’m white. But if that validates what these brilliant peer leaders are saying to the kids, then I’ll do what I can and learn to capitalize on something I can’t change. Unfortunately, I’m always going to be white. These peer leaders are only in their early 20s and they need to know that we appreciate what they’re doing and they’re doing it right. It will be them that makes this project last, and continue when we're not here. So, if we can learn from them, while teaching them, then a difference will be made.

Impressions of the Team:
The group of us have gotten along ridiculously well, and I have definitely made some new good friends. With 12 random people picked from across the university, I didn't know what to expect with living with so many other people, but it's gone really well. I thought finding personal space would be hard, but it’s good to have people going through a similar experience. We talk about what we did that day over dinner, and it's been really helpful having someone know exactly what you're going through and understand how you feel perfectly. It definitely feels quiet when people aren’t around; the house is just so empty. It’s interesting to see people working in their own different way and different styles and it’s been good to see a side to them you never see at University.

The SIA staff are now friends. I’d come back for them. They need to know they’re doing an incredible job and I don't think I could tell them enough. If we were coming for three months and then leave, it would be useless. We’re trying to change norms here and that isn’t going to happen in 10 weeks. We help provide something different but it needs SIA to continue it. I need to know that my peer leader will still be there for the rest of the year. When I come back next year I need to know it’s still going and that it’s making a difference.