Mothers Without Borders - My trip to Africa!!

It only took me 10 months... but I finally finished writing this blog post about my trip with Mothers Without Borders! 

After coming home I was so sad from everything I had seen that I couldn't even talk to Jeff about it and every time I sat down to write about it I would end up crying and closing the tab. But I am finally in a place that I can talk about it and I am excited to share my experience with you! So without further ado... here is my story about my trip to Zambia, Africa. 

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For as long as I can remember I have wanted to move to Africa and open/run an orphanage. 

I don't remember why or when I decided that, but the desire for it to be located in Africa came from my grandpa serving his mission in Nigeria, Africa.

On July 28th, 2021 I went to listen to a girl, Sasha Piton, talk about her experience of going to Africa. As I listened to her talk I made up my mind that I was going to go! I have known for years that Jeff is not as passionate about selling all of our stuff to move to Africa to open an orphanage so I felt like this was the next best thing. Jeff picked me up after the meeting and I told him, "I'm going to Africa!!" and he said "okay". I'm not sure if he thought I would actually follow through but the next day I applied to go!

I asked lots of people to go with me and thankfully my dad said yes! 

I spent just under a year trying to raise donations to help with the cost of the trip and I am SO thankful to everyone who donated!!! It truly means so much to me and I can never say thank you enough! 

Packing for Africa was SO stressful. We were each taking two large army bags full of donations with us so that left us with one carry-on and backpack to get all of our personal items in for the whole trip! It honestly turned out fine and I actually overpacked! 

June 3 - Leaving America!! Our luggage took up the whole back of my parent's van! We flew from SLC to Dallas, and then Dallas to Doha, Qatar. 

June 4 - Still traveling! We left Doha and headed to Lusaka! Before this trip, my longest flight was only 5 hours so 34 hours of flying was insane.

June 5 - Still traveling and then touching down in Africa! I can't even begin to explain the way my heart felt the second I could actually see the ground and knowing that after all these years I MADE IT!!! When we touched down I was listening to the song "I need love" by Zara Larsson and now every time it comes on I can still feel how I excited I was in that moment.

We got all of our luggage and headed out to the truck that was going to be our ride for the next few weeks! 

After about an hour's drive we made it to the house, unpacked and everyone crashed early since we were all dead from the two red eyes. 

June 6 - I woke up at 5 am wide awake and starving! I was about to find out how miserable the breakfast and lunches were going to be for the next two weeks really fast. After breakfast, I took my first cold shower! I was honestly dreading this part, I almost cut all my hair off before the trip so that I would have less to wash. It was cold but not ice cold, so overall not too bad. 

After morning class they took us to the Carol Zulu Primary School and we got to learn all about how it was started! If you want to learn more about it check out this short and beautiful video! 

While at the school we also got to learn about the lunch program they offer to all of the students. In Zambia, on average a person eats 1 meal every 3 days. This meal program makes it possible that every child who is attending school will eat at least 1 meal a day on school days. Check out this beautiful video about how far the feeding program has come!

If you feel passionate about supporting this meal program I would highly recommend donating to it. It cost less than $3.00 a month to feed one student. That's something even a college student can afford. 

After all the kids finished up eating we got to go and play!! They loved seeing all of the "Bazungu's" which means "white people". While playing with the kids they were all rubbing my arms and laughing about "how white I was", I told them I am super white in America also!

Funny story: the kids at the school were amazed at how tall my dad is (he is 6' 4) and they were telling Kathy (the founder of Mothers without Borders) "that guy is as tall as a building, go make him stand by it so we can see"

When it was time for all of the kids to go back to class they were all hugging us so tight and they didn't want to let go. 

This was also the first day I really got to see what the streets in Zambia look like. It's like I was in a different world. There were people everywhere!!! In America it would be so weird to see people out of their homes just hanging out, selling stuff or walking places. Here is a photo dump of some of the streets I saw in Zambia. I want to also clarity that I did drive in some really nice areas, but I don't have pictures of them because we were not allowed to take pictures there.

June 7 - We got to go to the House of Moses, a crisis nursery. They were SO grateful for us coming since we were the first group to come back since covid. During our time there were got to split up into two groups. My group went to the toddler's area first. While in there we got to hold, play and feed the kids.

After spending time with the toddlers our group headed upstairs to the newborn room. We then got to hold lots of sweet babies. While in that room there was a fussy baby in a crib. I had noticed that the nurse had gone over to him a couple of times but never picked him up. After a while, my heart couldn't take his sad cry anymore. I walked over and saw a much larger child than the rest of the kids in this room. He looked to be about 2 years old. As I picked him up his body was stiff and he couldn't bend his limbs. I sat on the floor and held this sweet boy while he made those sad sick cries letting me know how miserable he felt. He had cerebral palsy and was not able to eat very much because he would choke while eating. Holding this sweet boy and knowing how short his time on earth broke me inside. I wanted so bad to bring him home and get him the care he needed that was just not a possibility for him where he lived. Leaving him there and walking away was one of the hardest things I had to do while there.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside with the children for safety reasons. But we did snap a group photo outside of the house and a picture of the donations we brought with us.

We then drove over to Bill and Bette and they told us about how their program works and we took a short tour of the school house on their property. But all the children were taking a nap so we didn't get to meet any of them. 

For dinner that night we got to try nshima. Nshima (pronounced "she-ma") is what everyone in Zambia eats for every meal they get (if you don't have money). It is a cornmeal porridge, we don't have anything super similar to it in the United States. The closest I can describe it is like cream of wheat and mashed potatoes had a baby. It has basically no nutrients in it but it does make them feel full. You eat it with your hands by rolling it into a ball and serving it with things like beans or meat. This is what they serve each day at the school lunch program which is why it is so cheap to serve the children. 

I was surprised at how good it was. However, we were eating it with meat and I can't imagine it would taste very good plain. To cook nshima is quite a skill! I was blown away at how much work goes into it.

 

June 8 - They took us to the compound in Chazanga and this was honestly the hardest day for me. The compound is like a slum. It's basically the poorest of the poor. People think that if they can move closer to the city they will be able to find work so they can feed their families. So they sell all their land and move to have a better life. I thought I knew what poverty looked like, but the people here are so poor words can not even describe it. The homes are tiny mud and cement squares that multiple people live in. Most don't have doors and almost none have windows, this leaves them with extremely poor air circulation in the homes. 

The problem with not having fresh air circulating in your home is that Tuberculosis (TB) is huge in Africa and is spread by the air when someone coughs, talks, sneezes, or sings. So I'm sure you can imagine that when you have 9 people living in a one-room home with no fresh air that it spreads quite easily.  

TB is treatable but it requires you to take your medicine at the same time each day, be eating consistently, and do regular blood work in a lab. If left untreated you can experience spinal pain, joint damage, meningitis, liver or kidney problems, heart disorder or lose the ability to use your arms and legs. The people who live in the areas like this do not have access to medical care near by, so getting your medicine or keeping up on your lab work is not an easy task, especially when you can't walk anymore. 

In the specific area we went we met the sweetest lady who runs a foundation with Cecily's Fund. Their foundation has a school, BISO Community School, to educate the children in their community, a food program, and a health program where nurses who live in the community go home-to-home to provide medication and checkup's to the sick who can no longer leave their homes. 

While in the compound each group was paired with one of their nurses and got to go visit different homes with people suffering from TB. We got to sit in their homes with them, hear their stories and leave them with a traditional African song. This experience was SO hard for me, I still think about it regularly and randomly cry when something reminds me of being there. 

We were not able to take pictures while there and I have searched the internet high and low to find pictures to show people what it looked like because words cannot explain it. But I have found nothing that can compare. 

After we visited the homes of the sick families we were walking back to the school so we could play with the children. While walking kids would peak their heads out and yell "bazungu's" which would result in multiple children coming out of everywhere to look at us. A group of them started following us and when they got brave a few of them came to hold my hand while we walked. By the time we were back to the school I had multiple children hanging onto each arm. 

We played for almost an hour before the other half of our group showed up and I am not kidding when I said there was hundreds of kids. They were EVERYWHERE!! We each took our own group of around 50+ kids and started playing games with them. I was exhausted. When I saw the next group walking back I pointed at them and yelled "bazungu's!!!" ALL the kids went running and it was honestly one of the sweeting things i've ever witnessed! 

We had so much fun playing with them! When we were getting on the truck to leave all the kids stood by the wall and chanted "I love you" and as we drove away they chased the truck. 

June 9 - We went back to the children's resource center (CRC) to do some service. We were split into three groups, my dad and I both worked in the garden. My dad spent the time spreading manure while I helped pull weeds and till the ground. 

That night we had Lord and Jackie come over to the house we were staying at and listened to them tell us their life story. It's incredible what they they have overcome and what beautiful people they are! 

June 10 - We went shopping! They took us to a market called Kabawata. It's where local artist can rent out a space and sell their products. We only made it to a few huts because they beg you to buy from them. It was very overwhelming. I knew that I wanted a salad bowl with servers and a nativity and I got some beautiful ones! While I was shopping a bunch of them kept asking if I had anything to trade, I thought they were joking but when I jokingly said I have a pen they got super excited. I then found out how bad they wanted to trade for pens for their kids to use for school and the women really wanted to trade for tampons. That really broke my heart because those are things that we take for granted in America. When I go back I am going to take so many pens and tampons so I can just hand them out. 

This guy kept asking my dad to trade for his sunglasses and my dad finally gave in. 

After shopping we went to a center for street kids call Chisomo. This house is a safe place for the street kids to come hangout in during the day, eat a meal, take a shower and get some sleep. We got to shop in their front room and then went to go play and read with the kids. Most of the kids were at a kindergarten or first grade reading level. 

This was another happy but heartbreaking day because I am so blessed to have my education and my brain can't comprehend how every evening they kick all the kids out of the safe home and back onto the streets where the kids are vulnerable to being abused and beaten by strangers. 

June 11 - We went back to the children's resource center to hangout with the kids for the day. It was a good day because it was calm and gave my brain time to help process the things I had been seeing. They kids are all so beautiful! A bunch of the girls were so happy when I took my braids out so they could play with my hair. They were obsessed with it. A sweet girl, Natasha, spent the longest time braiding it. It's shocking how tight they can braid! At one point a bunch of the girls were taking all the stray hairs off me to twist into their own hair and when they couldn't find anymore strays they just started plucking them out of my head. One little girl even twisted a strand of my hair into my dads arm hair. 

On our way home we passed all the street kids hanging out on a corner together. We were all so happy to see them again and they were thrilled to see all the bazungu's on the truck! 

June 12 - It was Sunday so we went back to the children's resource center to go church with them which was held in the lunch room for the school. First of all, all of those kids can hold still durning church. Which really just tells me that my kids don't need a whole bag full of toys for church to keep them quite. Second, hearing the children sing the hymn was so amazing and I could feel the spirit so strong! God is with his children no matter where they are in the world! After church we went back to the CRC to read more books and have a calm day. 

While there I pulled out a ziplock bag and bent down to start collecting some dirt for my sister, Danielle (She collects dirt from all over the place). The kids asked me what I was doing and I told them my sister wanted dirt from Africa. They looked at me so confused and one kid asked me "No dirt in America"? I had a pretty good laugh over that and after explaining that we do have dirt, they told me that I needed to take her the good dirt, dumped out my bag and then went and got me the soft dirt off the driveway. 

June 13 - They took us to Katuba village. When we pulled up all these women came walking/dancing slowly to us singing to welcome us! It was so beautiful!! When they reached us they started hugging everyone! After the beautiful greeting we went into their school house and they welcomed and sung more for us. They had a bunch of stuff they made set up for us to shop from and we each got to take a turn shopping. I bought some darling things for my kids and when I went to pay they told me I needed to buy a chicken. Chickens are my favorite animal so I asked to buy veggies but they said no. So I bought a chicken. The worst part of it all is they made me go pick one of the chickens out to put on the truck. 

Holding the chicken I bought

After shopping we played with the kids and then busted out the nail polish to paint the kids nails. Man that was a hit, if I had know I would have pulled it out sooner!

After spending time there we went for a walk to meet a women who had lived in the village her whole life and hear her life story. There were a couple of girls who told us that they lived by her so they could walk with us, we found out when we arrived that they were "taking the long way home". 

As we were leaving the village I saw this house and told my dad "look how nice that house is". That's when I realized that my standard of nice had drastically changed. 

June 14 - Our last day in Zambia! It's crazy because it went so fast but also so slow. I was missing my family SO badly at this point and I couldn't wait to get my phone back to call them. 

They took us back to the CRC to give us a full tour of the land. First we toured the current spaces they use.

The laundry

The mango trees 

The Kitchen

 One of the buildings for the children.

The bathroom

One of the bedrooms

They then took us to the new CRC center they were building for the kids. They were amazing!!! With the new spaces they will have a buildings for the boys, girls and a huge lunch room! This will make it so they can house up to 100 kids! 

One of the three new buildings

Standing where the new home for volunteers will be someday. 

After taking our tour we went for a super long drive. They wouldn't tell us where we were going, just that we were not allowed to take pictures. While driving we drove past a cemetery, it was well maintained with gates and guards. Right as we passed that cemetery they explained to us that one was for the rich and we were about to go visit the one for everyone else. She then asked us how many loved ones we had lost in our life. Stop for a second and answer that question yourself, how many loved ones have you lost in your life? For me my number was 4. In Zambia they lose an average of 10 loved ones a year. A year!

As we pulled up to the cemetery we were going to visit all you could see were super high weeds. She told us that in those weeds were hundreds of graves. As we drove through them every once and a while you could see a headstone. Then she told us we were about to get to the section of graves that were from 2020/2021. The sight I saw will be burned in my mind for the rest of my life. I could not believe how many graves there were. 

The cemetery was just mounds of dirt, one after another as far as you could see. Graves on top of graves. We got off the truck and walked through them and you could tell by the shape of the dirt approximately what age the person buried there was. It was heartbreaking and I cried the whole time I walked through it.

This is a picture I found on google. It looks basically identically to the one I was at, only the mounds were not as straight, some of them were on top of others. If you were to walk through all the tall trees/bushes in the background of this picture you would find the exact same thing. They are not able to visit cemetery's like we do here, so they really only go back on the one year anniversary and then not again.

Most also can't afford head stones so they have these metal sheets, like you see in the bottom right of this photo, that they paint on. The graves are all covered in trash and one of the graves was marked by a stick with a upside down soda bottle on it. 

When I got home that night they let us have our phone back if we needed to check into anything like a hotel or plane. I didn't but I missed Jeff SO much so I snagged mine and sat in the corner of the room trying to be sneaky. It has never taken so freaking long for my phone to turn back on and when it finally did and I sent my first text message I died waiting to see the bubbles of him typing back. I didn't know if he would even see my message because there is an 8 hour time difference. But the second those bubbles popped up I started to cry. Not only did this trip completely change my life in the worst/best way possible but it also reminded me how incredibly blessed I am to have Jeff and my family! 

Life is not fair. When I got home my brain couldn't comprehend why we are so beyond blessed in America, with our stupid first world problems, when there are others in the world that have it so hard. 

I cried for days for no reason. I cried when I drove past a cemetery. I cried when I was driving and thought about how clean our streets are. I cried when I thought about the compound. I cried when I listened to the song that was playing when I touched down. And I cried when people asked me about how my trip went because I couldn't bring myself to talk about the things I had seen. 

 I am thankful to know that we have a God that sees, knows and loves every single one of us. I am thankful that I am blessed in my life to serve others. I am thankful that I got to grow as a person and that I will never be the same. I am thankful that my heart is large enough to hold the pain of the world and I am SO thankful that I got to go to Zambia and serve God's children in anyway that I could. 

God be with you till we meet again.

-McKenna