{"id":11271,"date":"2018-10-02T05:15:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T15:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workable-level.flywheelsites.com\/?p=11271"},"modified":"2019-03-07T12:43:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T22:43:12","slug":"kcc-student-finds-community-in-volunteer-opportunities-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/02\/kcc-student-finds-community-in-volunteer-opportunities-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"KCC Student Finds ‘Community’ in Volunteer Opportunities in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Katlin Cilliers<\/a> | Staff Writer<\/h5>\n

The picture of poverty was clearly painted in Matthew Lum\u2019s description of his volunteering experience in eSwatini, Africa: minuscule, thatched-roof houses in precarious conditions in which families of five or more people must cram into. No toilets as westerners know them; no outhouse. No electric power. Thousands of orphan children either being raised by their sick, elderly grandparents \u2013 due to the HIV\/AIDS epidemics that has affected families since the mid 1980s<\/a> \u2013 or being left to their own fate.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing to an orphanage means giving up not only your land, but also your community, and community is extremely important in rural eSwatini,\u201d Lum wrote in a text in early September.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old has been going to the southeast African country\u00a0<\/strong>to volunteer and help with his mother\u2019s nonprofit, Advocates for Africa Children<\/a>, since he was 9. The experience of aiding his mother in her project has been formative in the way he perceives the world around him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how much I\u2019ve learned that changed the way I thought versus formed the way I thought,\u201d said the Kapi\u02bbolani Community College sophomore.<\/p>\n

eSwatini \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 formerly known as Swaziland\u00ad \u2013 has the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world<\/a>, according to Avert.org, an HIV and AIDS charity based in Brighton, England. Those high rates make thousands of children orphans every year<\/a>. The country has a population of a little more than 1 million people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a country with about the same land mass and population as Hawai\u02bbi,\u201d Lum said. \u201cBut it\u2019s gotten the highest rate of HIV\/AIDS in the world, and also a very large amount of orphan children. \u2026 HIV\/AIDS is essentially a death sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n

AFAC \u2013 Advocates for Africa Children \u2013 is a Christian nonprofit organization that sends both youth and adult groups to experience the realities of eSwatini, while helping empower the local communities by implementing sustainable sources of living. Their projects include enabling people to raise livestock \u2013 as\u00a0a lot of the rural culture is based on subsistence farming \u2013<\/span>\u00a0providing access to potable water through digging wells, and promoting the Christian faith.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an important part of my mother\u2019s mission that the locals maintain the projects they benefit from,\u201d Lum said, \u201c\u2026 that they have a sense of ownership of these projects. [Otherwise], when [volunteer organizations] leave, it falls apart because it is \u2018the foreigners\u2019 thing.’\u201d<\/p>\n

In a given day, volunteers will chase and slaughter chickens for the group\u2019s own subsistence for the next few meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people here in America don\u2019t know where their food comes from. \u2026 I think it\u2019s generally, like, an eye-opening experience, like I got this chicken. I killed it, and now I\u2019m eating it,\u201d Lum said.<\/p>\n

The youth groups also visit schools and interact with local high schoolers in assemblies, receive messages from volunteers and the local pastor, or even from Lum\u2019s mother, Heidi Lum, who is the head of the Hawai\u02bbi-based organization.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Locals celebrate water faucet installed in the high school grounds. (Photo courtesy by Heidi Lum)<\/p><\/div>\n

“One of the big things that the team comes away with [after these school visits, is] \u2026 these kids are just like us,” Lum said. “They just come from a <\/span>background of poverty, but they\u2019re like us.\u2019”<\/span><\/p>\n

In July 2017, one of the youth members from the Hawai\u02bbi volunteer group noticed how there was no potable water available at the school, and students would often have to miss class in order to go fetch water \u201cat a far distance,\u201d according to Lum. The group decided to take action by fundraising the money to build a well in the school ground. They raised $7,500; the well was drilled in January 2018, and the pump installed in March. Students have had water in the school grounds for seven months now.<\/p>\n

In eSwatini communities, laundry is usually the females’ responsibility. So female volunteers are encouraged to join in doing laundry by the riverbanks.<\/p>\n

“They\u2019ll use these green bars of soap,” Lum said.\u00a0 “[They’ll] … put [the clothes] in these tubs and I\u2019m not sure whether they use their feet. … We do know that doing laundry that way is hard on the hands.”<\/p>\n

Going to a game reserve to see the African animals is also part of the youth group\u2019s experience, as volunteers get to see zebras, impalas \u00ad\u00ad\u2013 a smaller type of antelope \u00ad\u2013 and giraffes.<\/p>\n

During the volunteer trips, KCC student\u00a0doubles as both a volunteer and aid for the organization. Being from the same age group as the youth guests, Lum gets to join in the activities they do, while also helping his mother to provide a meaningful volunteering experience to the group members.<\/p>\n

Lum has also made friends whom he is happy to see when he goes back. One of them is Edward Mkhonta, the pastor at the church in one of the villages. Mkhonta is one of the few middle-aged people that survived his generation\u2019s HIV\/AIDS epidemic in the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent a great deal of time with him. Whenever I come to the country we greet each other with a big hug,” Lum said.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Since middle school, Matthew Lum (left) has been involved in his mother’s missionary work in Africa. (Photo courtesy by Matthew Lum)<\/p><\/div>\n

Those experiences and connections have helped shape Lum’s perspective of the world beyond his own reality while he still decides whether he wants to pursue a four-year college education.<\/p>\n

“One of the things I\u2019ve probably learned from traveling a lot is that you can\u2019t generalize and think of all of Africa as being the same,” he said.\u00a0“There are several dozen countries there, and each is different; different landscape, different climate, different peoples, different cultures.”<\/p>\n

AFAC\u2019s volunteer groups are taken to experience life in the rural communities of eSwatini and Tanzania. They try to get teams to go to Africa twice or three times a year. Travel preparations start about six months prior to the departure dates, and those interested can either pay their own way, or raise money for their expenses, which are tax-deductible. The cost of a two-and-a-half week trip is roughly $4,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Katlin Cilliers | Staff Writer The picture of poverty was clearly painted in Matthew Lum\u2019s description of his volunteering experience in eSwatini, Africa: minuscule, thatched-roof houses in precarious conditions in which families of five or more people must cram into. No toilets as westerners know them; no outhouse. No electric power. Thousands of orphan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":11296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campusfeatures","category-features","category-travel","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}