Welcome to Zambia-1st day

We made it! We have settled into the Olympic Lodge and are on our way to getting acquainted with the time difference and jet-lag. London provided us all with a day's worth of distractions. The group split up after we arrived in London with the understanding that we needed to be back to Heathrow at 5:00. Our many different interests led us to various destinations: the London Zoo, Covent Gardens, the Eye, museums, walking tours and lots of coffee and caffeine to keep us awake.

The plane ride from England to Lusaka, Zambia went smoothly with many of us catching up on the sleep we had missed. Customs was EXTREMELY quick and easy-we owe a big thank you to Dr. Lua who met us at the airport. With her VIP pass, we were able to get through customs without a hassle which had been one of our fears because the Wellsley group had so much trouble a week ago.

The entire group could not stop commented on how much we were able to pack in the suitcases. We are SO appreciative of every partners efforts in collecting supplies as well as all the elementary schools that helped gather donations. We are going to make such a difference is so many communities. These supplies will definitely help teachers implement lessons and assist with advancing the community aged children's academics and others who we support. I can not believe how many soccer balls, cleats and uniforms were collected from the FUSN crew. The soccer equipment will be used by many!

We spent a good portion of  the afternoon sorting supplies and seperating them to make it easier to find specific items. Many of us also unpacked our lesson plans in preparation for tomorrow's first day of teaching.
Many of us went on a tour to visit N'Gombe and Mendevu and we stopped by the Kaliyangile Guest House, which is the place we have stayed the past few years. They are putting on an addition and the walls were all freshly painted.

As I am finishing this blog, it is 6:30 at night and we are looking forward to a hearty dinner filled with nshima, fish, and lots of vegetables and rice. We are all so excited about getting our teaching underway and look forward to our first full night of sleep in Zambia. Internet access is not available at the guest house we are staying at so we will visit the internet cafes as much as possible to keep the blog up to date. Emails may not be checked as often as we would like but want you to know that we will answer them as soon as we can. Please pass along the blog to anyone you feel would be interested.

Departure day

Well, today is the day we are leaving on our trip to Zambia.  I suppose I should be packing but I'll get around to that later. 

So, overnight to London Heathrow, then about a 12 hour layover so we'll probably venture into the city, then another overnight to Lusaka Zambia.  No time for sleepy-heads as we unpack and resort our school supplies then head off in the afternoon for tours of the some compounds affiliated with our CWB partners SWAAZ and Zancomb.

OK, what's up with all of the acronyms and funny names.  Over the course of this trip we will introduce you to all of the new terminology.  Today we'll start with the bacics.  For those of you that might not be familiar with Communities Without Borders (CWB) you might like to view their web site at:

http://www.communitieswithoutborders.org/

This site has a great video showcasing the highlights of last year's trip.You will have a better idea of  the activities we will be describing in this blog if you view the video.  (Norm, thanks for all of your hard work putting this video together.)

Lusaka is the capital of Zambia, wikipedia site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusaka

Within the city limits are the squatters compounds where we will be teaching, namely Chawama, Mtendere, Garden, Mandevu, Linda, and N'gombe.  You probably won't find those on a map but I'll annotate a map in a future post.

Here's a brief intro to SWAAZ:

Society for Women and AIDS in Zambia (SWAAZ)

SWAAZ was founded in 1989 to promote grassroots participation in response to the challenges of HIV/AIDS and its related issues. The organization provides capacity building and funds to its 64 branches throughout Zambia, raising awareness among communities on STDs, HIV/AIDS, sex and sexuality, reproductive health and poverty alleviation.

Here the Zancob intro:

In the year 2003 Mrs. Bernadette Sikanyika founded Zambia Nsunga Communities Without Borders (ZANCOB) to support the children of Garden Compound. “Nsunga” is a Nyanja word meaning caring. ZANCOB is unique as it represents the first formally affiliated foreign organization of Communities Without Borders in Massachusetts. ZANCOB is a fully registered non-governmental organization in Zambia.


Enough procrastination ... got my money, got my passport, gotta go ...

tjm

First post introduction

Welcome to our blog.  This will be a collaborative effort of the Communities Without Borders group traveling to Zambia during Jun/Jul 2011.  We hope to keep you informed about our activities on a somewhat daily basis when we have access to the internet (and power!)  Please feel free to share the blog address with anyone who might be interested in keeping tabs with our group.  Having done this in previous years, we really like to hear back from you -- the readers -- with questions, comments or newsy items we can share with the group. 

Amy will be the primary blog-keeper and will find other blogsters to"volunteer" to write about their experiences. I'll (Tom) assist with the technical details and fill in as needed.

Amy has invited her elementary school class to follow our blog.  If anyone else has a group that is interested in following us, please let us know so that we can welcome them. 

Perhaps Sharon can make a link to this site on one of the CWB pages so that we can reach out to interested parties who might be out there.

Today Ruth and I will be amassing books from Lexington schools and delivering them to FUSN in preparation for packing day -- 20 Jun.  We are departing on the 28th and hope to have our first in-country post on 30 Jun.