Today I was excited and anxious to see where our tour guide Japhet works. He has mentioned Africa Directions throughout his time with us, and now we could finally see his organization and place of work. When we arrived we split up into two groups to take a tour. Africa Directions (AD) felt very organized and seemed to be a welcoming place for teens. AD is located in a former bar and nightclub and was created to promote youth development through recreation and awareness. For example, a lot of teens in Zambia like to play pool, but the only pool tables are in bars. This has led to drinking and alcoholism. So, AD provides a safe place for teens to play pool without having to be surrounded by alcohol and bad influences. In addition to pool tables, AD has an STD testing center, girls’ chill-out room, basketball court and several common areas.
Another room we saw during the tour is the sewing room. The purpose of this room was to teach the teens of AD a skill or trade they could use. They sew shoes, dresses, purses and little bags. They even sew clothes for the fashion shows. They create their own designs and gather the required fabric. I thought this was interesting because we don’t get taught these types of skills at school in the US. What was really interesting is that they sew a pair of shoes in two hours and sew a dress in thirty minutes — that’s really fast. I’ve never met anyone who could sew and I never imagined it could be done so quickly. After our facility tour we split up by gender. All the girls went into the girls’ chill out room where we had a conversation with several Zambian girls who asked lots of great questions about relationships, comparing and contrasting those in Zambia to those in the USA.
Africa Directions is within the Mtendere neighborhood of Lusaka. I was looking forward to the tour and seeing people in their community. AD does community outreach through recruiting events to attract teens and supporters to the organization. During this event they had a drum circle and performed skits. They attracted a lot people. It was a welcoming experience because they entered a new community to promote Africa Directions and its mission. In order to meet someone new, it helps to be welcoming, especially in trying to attract new teens and community supporters. The drum circle and skits made a lot of sense to me and made me wonder what this sort of recruiting would look like in DC for different types of organizations trying to reach teens.
We ended the day at Africa Directions with a big round table discussion between our team and the AD peer educators. They asked a few questions, and we shared differences and similarities from our own countries and communities. It was interesting to see that, despite many differences, there were also quite a few similarities, such as what we look for in a relationship and what a healthy vs. unhealthy relationship looks like
The night ended with the students from David Kaunda school returning to the guesthouse. We had a dance party and celebrated our new friendships over pizza, chips and soda. The DK kids and some members of our group danced throughout the evening. I don’t dance in public, so I chose to just cheer everyone on. It was really nice to see them again, and I had a lot of fun.
Storm W., E.L. Haynes Public Charter School