Simon is from Cardiff University Medical School, in his first year. He spent just over a month in Zambia was stayed at the local backpacker's guest house. He focused on the day care and the hospice and was well-loved by all. As with his predecessor from Cardiff, Tim Kelly, he was a good friend to our family and an enormous help while he was here.
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Hi to any prospective volunteers to Jon Hospice Day Care. I just wanted to add some comments about my time in Zambia. I will attempt to offer some advice as well as telling you a bit about my experiences.
The first thing I feel I must say to begin with is that if you are even thinking about travelling to Zambia and volunteering then you should just book the ticket and go. For me this really was an experience of a lifetime. I feel that i have benefited from the whole experience on so many levels, but most important of all I hope that I was able to make a difference in the children’s lives.
As this trip was my first time out of Europe it was definitely a baptism of fire. However, the challenge was a massive part of the trip for me. Living out of my tent in a local youth hostel added to the experience. I stayed at Chachacha backpackers (www.chachachasafaris.com/lusaka.html), about a 20min walk form Tim’s clinic in town. This gave me the opportunity to meet a large range of people, some of which were on other projects in Zambia and others who were just travelling through. I would definitely recommend this as the place to stay in Lusaka. I made friends with a group of Birmingham, England, medical students who run a project in one of the neighbouring villages and a group of them are there every summer and are all really friendly.
As for the day care, the daily jobs included playing with the kids, monitoring their general health and reporting any problems to Dr. Mead. As well as offering any support to the staff as, and if they needed it. There was also an adult side to the hospice. Here we were able to do morning ward rounds with Dr. Mead and another Dr. Beddy (I hope that is how it is spelt). In this area is where I wish I was a bit further through my medical training, to enable me ot be more of a help. However, this was still a great learning experience and one I feel will help me in my future career. The kids really enjoyed donations of toys that we all had taken such as footballs and teddy bears etc. However, one bit of advice is that make sure if you take anything you take something for all of them, because I took some balloons one day thinking that they would all share them and throw them about, but no they all wanted one for themselves and by the time a few had been burst there were not enough.
I also had the opportunity to do some travelling after my time at the Day care. I ended up flying home from Cape Town visiting Botswana, jo’burg, and a few places in Zambia. I would definitely recommend visiting Victoria falls, this was about a 6 hour bus journey from Lusaka and offered slightly more touristy options. These include things like white water rafting, a definite must although not for the faint hearted, I loved it so much I did it twice. Elephant back riding, amazing though expensive, canoeing, gorge swing, micro lighting to name a few. Jungle junction an island in the middle of the Zambezi is also a must, www.junglejunction.info/index.htm
I hope this information will be helpful and please add any questions you like and I will do my best to answer.
Last of all I would like to thank Dr. Tim, Jane, the America students Sabrina, Chris, Magali and Ellen, everyone I met at chachacha or at any other point in my travels for making my trip as amazing as it was. I plan to return when I get the chance.
Best wishes
Simon Bagguley
What truth you speak Simon!! It truly was a great trip and a pleasure meeting and working with you... I hope school is going well! -Sabrina
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