A memorable trip to Zambia creates a desire to do more

For those of you who don’t know me I am Ruridh Allen. Having been involved with both the Scouts and Explorer Scouts within Strathaven for many years, I was one of the lucky few who were able to travel out to Zambia in 2008. This was a trip meant to mark the centenary of Strathaven Scouts, and what a fitting trip it was. Headed by the ever present Iain Park, who had the contacts in HHI, new leader Tim Geraghty as well as his brother Niall and young leader Chris Baird we organised what was for many their first trip outside of Europe. After a long few months of fundraising - including those lovely days spent sanding down church railings -  we set off on our not-so-little adventure. Just short of three weeks later we returned dusty and tired but with a sense of satisfaction that few of us had felt before. The sense of achievement as we hauled up that water tower, or as the grain hut grew just one more brick higher was immense, and it was topped off with a wonderful couple of days in Livingstone seeing the best Zambia has to offer. Safaris, sunset cruises and of course Victoria Falls are hardly activities to be sniffed at.

And so you wonder why I am writing this article? Well, after my own trip to Nepal/India in Easter 2011 I took the role of President of H.E.L.P (Scotland) Society. H.E.L.P is a student run charity that acts to send enthusiastic Medical students away to countries less fortunate than ourselves with the aim to carry out meaningful charity work, as well as to gather a sense of the culture and how it differs from ours. Why then do we not just organise another trip to Nepal? Well for all the fun we had travelling and visiting the tourist areas we felt that we weren’t used to our full capabilities. We were sent to organisations which didn’t need us, and felt that on the whole we didn’t contribute to the community as we had previously hoped. This is why, in light of Iain’s 2nd successful trip out to Zambia in summer of 2011 I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to exploit what is a wonderful charity, and one that is close to my heart.

So I set the ball rolling with help from, of course, Iain as well as the wonderful Jute, Zambia’s finest Welsh woman and our contact within HHI, the charity we worked with out there.  She is the ‘go to’ woman with everything regarding Zambia, and she was soon firing off prospective projects for us to aim towards. At the time of writing we are still in the planning stages, however, after various emails back and forth we are beginning to get a picture of what our trusted volunteers will be doing. Work on building a school in Mumba had hit the brakes due to lack of funding, however, with funds raised by the volunteers from here, this looks like it could be back on the cards. There is also talk of helping build houses for a leper colony in Gwembe, as well as various medical attachments in Gwembe mission hospital, something which will provide great insight and experience to the medical students. The proposed length of our trip is 4 weeks and HHI have kindly offered to ‘put us up’ in the sense that we are either going to be camping or hiring out rooms within their grounds. They have also offered to provide liaison staff whilst the volunteers out there.

Overall the aim of this trip is to expose people to a culture and country that many of the people going out there will never have experienced. I hope,  that like me, they come out of this with an enormous sense of satisfaction knowing that they made a positive contribution to the development of this wonderful country. This truly is going to be a once in a lifetime trip, and one I am honoured to be involved.

If any of the readers would like to make a donation, or if you would just like any more information regarding the trip then do not hesitate to email me on roo686@gmail.com or get in touch with me HHI contact.