From Scotland to Zambia—Volunteering Overseas

“Some of my friends thought I was crazy to embark on this adventure,” recalls Anne Thomson.  After all, sixty year old widows from Scotland do not commonly volunteer to move to Africa to support prison ministry.  But that is just what Anne did.  Two years after her husband died and seven years after retiring from her job as an Advances Manager with the Royal Bank of Scotland, Anne took a two-year volunteer placement position with PF Zambia through Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), an independent charity that places volunteers in developing countries to fight poverty.  Anne offered to support PF Zambia using her administrative and accounting skills.

Located in Southern Africa, Zambia consists mostly of wide-open plateaus with most of the population living in the cities.  Though it was once the third richest country in Africa, Zambia is now one of the ten poorest countries in the world.  Despite the enormous cultural and economic differences between Zambia and Scotland, Anne adapted and settled in well to her new home.

It was Anne’s first visit to a prison in Zambia, however that caused her the most distress.  The smell, the heat, the poor conditions and the extreme overcrowding were hard to accept.  She saw nearly 90 prisoners crowded together in one cell, most lying on the concrete floor without even sufficient space to turn around.  Diseases such as TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS spread uncontrolled throughout the prison.  “The miracle to me was that anyone survived,” Anne recalls.

Later, Anne also witnessed the severely difficult living conditions of many of these prisoners’ families.   In a country where the majority live below the poverty line, losing the income of one family member due to a prison sentence can be devastating to struggling families.  PF Zambia offers financial support to these families, through micro-loans, skills training and job placement, so Anne accompanied PF staff on a visit to the home of a prisoner’s wife and children.  The mother was disabled, and the children were very young.  They entered the home to find the mother lying beneath a blanket on the floor, surrounded by her frightened children.  The home was bare of furniture; the mother most likely sold it all to pay for food.  “I had never seen such poverty and deprivation,” Anne recalls.

The country’s extreme poverty permeated every aspect of life—in the prisons, in the homes and in PF Zambia’s prison ministry.  “Limited funds made it very difficult for [PF Zambia] to undertake the planned holistic approach to its ministry,” Anne notes.  “I admired their commitment.”

In addition to working with PF staff in the office, Anne found time to assist with PF programmes intended to alleviate the suffering of prisoners and their families.  She helped coordinate a medical clinic in the prisons with a visiting team of volunteer doctors and nurses from Tearfund, a Christian international outreach organization.  “With immune systems already low because of inadequate diet, prisoners were extra vulnerable to contacting diseases,” Anne says.  “What did surprise me, was that no matter how poor the conditions were, the prisoners could still smile,” she adds.  “but then one of my lasting memories of Zambia will always be the happy, smiling faces of the people.”

She also helped plan and present an HIV/AIDS prevention programme for the men’s and women’s prisons.  Zambia has one of the world’s worst HIV and AIDS epidemics with one in every seven adults infected and over 60 percent of the prisoners contracting the virus.  Anne and a PF volunteer conducted surveys in the prison to help refine the curriculum.  While PF staffers made the educational presentations in the eight prisons to a combined 2,000 prisoners, it was Anne’s responsibility to liaison with prison staff and arrange for accommodations for the team.  Despite some initial confusion on the way the virus can be spread, the prisoners were very receptive to the message. 

Anne extended her stay in Zambia for an additional six-months, and she was surprised at the “reverse culture shock” she felt on her return home.  “When I came back I would hear people moaning about the national health system.  I just wanted to scream, ‘be thankful you have got it!’” 

Hoping to educate other would-be international volunteers, Anne recently wrote a book about her experiences in Zambia.  She titled it “Wash My Bikini,” because that is how she learned to say “mwashibukeeni,” good morning in Bemba, one of Zambia’s seven local languages.  Regina Ndaipeni, a PF Zambia staff member recalls working with Anne.  “Her stay in Zambia exposed her to the many challenges we face in this country,” she says.  “The book is Zambia in her eyes.”  Thanks to Anne’s book, many Westerners, who might never have the opportunity to visit Zambia, have the chance to see it, and the challenges of prison ministry there, through Anne’s eyes.