LearnAsOne

Livingstone airport. Someone appears to be missing (leave your guess in the comments).

May 2009, I take flight from London to Livingstone.
 I meet Brenda Veldtman and Adam Oxford at Joahnnesburg airport for the first time.
 Brenda is a freelance photojournalist and Adam a freelance print journalist: for the following two weeks it was their responsibility to provide daily updates on the LearnAsOne blog. It was not feasible for video to do the same.

Our plane lands on a narrow strip of tarmac surrounded by the iconic red earth of Africa. The long journey and the nerves of first time self shoot seems to disappear in a moment of gratitude. Six months since my meeting with Sue, here I was, in Zambia, about to fulfil a life time ambition: to film within a community of a developing country.

We meet Steve at the Jollyboys backpackers in Livingstone; he arrived a week early in preparation of the two weeks ahead, dealing with in country logistics and politics. A quick bite to eat, a meeting of things to come, and we’re on our way to Kalomo.

The road to Kalomo.

We travel 120km north-east in a compact 4×4. A few hours travelling on a pothole covered dirt track and we enter the crossroad town of Kalomo, its architecture suggesting a colonial past.

Quickly leaving our luggage at Hotel Kalomo and make our way to Simakakata for our first meeting with the resident committee and our sister charity in Kalomo.

I cannot put into words how happy I was at that moment. This is when I met the residence for the first time and it felt good; it was as if all the jigsaw pieces fitted neatly together and I understood that one of my lifelong ambitions to film in an environment where it is needed was being fulfilled.

The first meeting with members of the Simakakata community.

Over the two weeks at Simakakata:

• I meet teachers who go three years before payment is provided, they depend on food donations given by an already starving locals and live in small brick huts with minimum resources.
• I meet girls like Saviour. Saviour lost her parents to AIDS when she was just still learning how to walk. She now walks 7km to school and 7km from school. That’s three hours in an average 30C heat with no food, no water, and no shelter. All because she wants to be able to read English and one day become a teacher.
• I meet the ‘blind’ community: a community of physically impaired families who live in exile. In some families, both parents are affected. In Zambia it is difficult to find work when physically challenged and there is no benefits system in place. Instead they are left to defend for themselves and live in poverty. The blind community is a neighbor to the Simakata school and has the only water pump that can be seen for miles. The community kindly shares its resource with the school.
• I meet a community of people who have made bricks by hand in an attempt to build a school. So far they’ve managed to make 60,000. It is their wish to build a school that caters to their needs as a community and the educational needs of their children.

For me, it was the children that made the trip so special; they were curious, honest, playful and unscathed by their circumstance. They did not grow tired of the video camera, were amazed by the ability of an iPod, and were fascinated by Adam’s computer.

It didn't take the kids long to commandeer the iPod.

I do not pity the people of Simakakata, but I do believe they deserve the benefit of a formal education that is so often taken for granted in the UK. In return, we have so much to learn from the people of Simakakata skills that cannot be taught from a text book: generosity, community and hope.

During my trip I bathed in brown water (we were fortunate to have a bath at Hotel Kalomo), ate chicken with the local residents (a privileged gift from a struggling community), danced with the local villagers (I have no idea what the song was about but it had a lot of “Zambia” in it), and ate Caterpillars with a Welsh south African.

More so, I met friends that I will never forget. It was an opportunity that I hope to experience once again.

You can read the final part of Nerys’ story here.