48 student life While spending the day on a safari ride, the HIZ group travels through the Chobezi National Game Park in Botswana on Sept. 20. The group spent the night in the game park and took a long boat ride and car rides to see different animals like elephants, giraffes, impala and lions. Courtesy of Shawn Daggett Lucas Nossaman, a sophomore, sits with a young boy, Agape, on Sept. 17 just outside Haven 1 at the Namwianga Mission. Many afternoons after class, students would visit the children living in Havens 1 and 2. Courtesy of Kayla Maynard Sophomore Macye Dean plays with two young girls, Pamela and Chaluvia, on Sept. 9 in the school yard at Namwianga Mission. “Since they didn’t really understand English, we had to come up with games that didn’t involve any talking or games that just had short phrases that they could easily pick up,” Dean said. Courtesy of Macye Dean Zambia remains one of the African countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. According to a report by Zambia Orphans of AIDS, about 19 percent of children under age 18, or 1.1 million, are orphans, most of them because of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. Namwianga Mission in Kalomo, Zambia, provides care for such orphans through sponsorship-funded orphanages: Haven 1 for newborns and infants and Haven 2 for toddlers. Harding students participating in Harding University in Zambia (HIZ) had the opportunity to work in these orphanages. The students, after finishing morning classes, usually walked a dusty cattle path to the havens and returned before sunset. One night, however, three girls braved the nocturnal shift to experience a whole new side of orphan supervision. While most students finished homework or journaled about a day in Africa, sophomores Cassie Davidson, Kayla Maynard and Macye Dean arrived at Haven 1, quite unsure of their responsibilities. It did not help that it was an especially dark night with no electricity, a frequent event at Namwianga. Even so, the “aunties,” as the paid orphanage workers are called, did not miss a single dirty diaper. “I asked myself, why am I here?” Dean said. “I felt pretty helpless in the dark due to all of the fussy babies.” When the power came back on around 11 p.m., the students felt relieved. Now they could actually see where they were working. The haven consisted of four baby rooms, each containing an average of 10 cribs and nameplates holding medical records and formula bottles for the day, depending on how many orphans the haven had at the time. Dean worked with an auntie named Rejoice, who also attended school by sleeping from the morning until class began at 1 p.m. This could have justified a sluggish shift, yet Dean said Rejoice displayed far greater competence with the tasks than herself. “Mainly, I dressed the babies because the first one I bathed, I definitely got soap in his eyes, and I was still slower than Rejoice,” Dean said. “Finally, she just said, ‘I will bathe, you will dress.’ ” Two or three times during the night, the aunties changed all the diapers. These diapers, however,
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