This past June, I was blessed to be asked to join a group of sisters and lay people and travel to Zambia, Africa to aid the Daughters of the Redeemer open up a school. The group/ project is The Franciscan Common Venture, or we were referred to as the Common Venture Team. We met in January to go over specifics and obtain more information on the culture of Zambia, what types of foods to avoid, and much more.
We went into the experience thinking that we would be helping out in the classroom, giving aid to the teachers who were hired to fulfill the education of the children. That happened...But not until they hired the teachers a week before we left to come back home!
We were greeted upon arrival by Sr. Matilda, Sr. Emelda, Sr. Margie, and Sr. Connie. We collected our luggage, and luckily Sr. Rosie was the only one of the 7 of us not to receive her luggage (never fear, it was located and picked up the following day!) We then traveled by vans to Mt. Zion which would be home for our stay in Zambia. The road was quite interesting to say the least! Dirt road with many dips, holes, and large rocks jutting from the ground! Susie, who is a novitiate at Mt. Zion with the Daughters of the Redeemer, had a light supper prepared for us, then we were able to shower and go to sleep. They advised us to sleep right away when we got there and sleep until we woke up and that would help our bodies to adjust to the time changes. I think I slept from 4:30pm to 11am the next morning!
We were able to check out what we called "The Little Blue School" AKA: Redeemer School, and talk with Sr. Emelda and Sr. Brenda who would be the principal of the school. Construction started on the school in February, and was ready to open (for the most part!) on the first Wednesday we were there.
I'll close this post for now and pick up again later with more details about our school observation experiences and more on Redeemer School experiences!
Thank you for reading!
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