School Uniforms to Zambian Orphanage – a dream come true

During the October half-term 2015, together with two other students, Rosannah Morel and Bertram Jayarajah, I was lucky enough to go to Zambia on an extraordinary adventure to visit an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS. I was given the opportunity through my school, Mount Kelly Foundation, and one of our teachers, Mr Mark Tailyour.

Copper Belt

We went out to Ndola, in the heart of the ‘Copper Belt’ region to volunteer at a remarkable place called St Anthony’s Orphanage. The orphanage was originally set up as a home for children with HIV/AIDS, who had contracted the disease from birth from their parents who sadly died of the disease. However, very recently the orphanage has also taken in children found abandoned and wandering the streets, or babies whose teenage mums have abandoned on the steps of the local hospital. It is now home to about 100 children who are there for a range of reasons, including those with physical impairments, mental illness, and still some with HIV. The small group of Zambians running the orphanage do an exceptional job, and the children are genuinely loved and wonderfully looked after by the staff.

School Uniforms – and a dream come true

When Mount House School merged with Kelly College in 2014, a new school uniform was created and so the school shops on each site had brand new uniform with the former designs that they could no longer sell. We acquired 8 suitcases and filled them with Mount House uniforms, and took these with us all the way to Zambia.

As it turned out, there was too much clothing for the orphanage, so they passed on the surplus to a local Community School where some of the orphans who are not sick, also attend. But the extraordinary thing is, the Headteacher at this school, Sister Regina, had been given an idea in a dream several months back, to change their school’s dusky brown and orange design, to a brighter black and white check design.

So you can imagine her surprise and delight as she opened each suitcase to find the black and white kilts of former Mount House uniforms, and enough uniform within those suitcases, to kit out their entire prefect contingent, well.. naturally she was delighted and astonished – this certainly was a dream come true. A very surreal experience, travelling all the way to Africa and finding yourself surrounded by the uniforms that you recognised and wore back home!

Paracetemol for sick children

One other heart-felt moment was when we visited a rural village called Fisenge just outside Ndola in the heart of the bush. Here we went to a medical dispensary and clinic for the local village people. We were able to give them a number of reading glasses that we had with us because we knew that for an older person to be able to contribute to the income of a family, would give them back their dignity, and reading glasses enable the women to sew and elderly gentleman the ability to hammer a nail into a fencepost for example. And whereas these things are comparatively cheap over here, they are certainly a rarity over there.

Similarly with paracetamol - a parent with a sick child suffering from the often fatal malarial infection might queue up all day for one paracetamol tablet to help alleviate the fever his or her child is suffering with. And that paracetamol tablet might cost them a day’s wages. We took out around 480 tablets for the clinic to dispense to these sufferers - but that is another story!