ZAMBIA: Springs volunteers learn to love hardship

Matt Wood, a senior at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, spent a week this summer sleeping on a thin foam pad in a tent in the middle of nowhere in Zambia. When he returned to his “warm and comfy” bed, he thought he would be happy.

Except he wasn’t.

He worked dawn to dusk cleaning wounds for the traveling Zambia Medical Mission, working alongside 140 Zambian volunteers and 120 volunteers from America, including 12 from Colorado Springs.

It was draining work. In six days, the team treated more than 16,000 Zambians.

Yet Wood, a 2008 Doherty High School graduate, suffered more weariness in his own bed than he had ever endured in Zambia. He missed the rush that arrived each chilly morning when he realized a chaotic, purposeful day awaited him.

“I couldn’t make myself get up,” Wood said of his first morning back in the Springs. “It was really depressing, being back to my everyday life. I didn’t have anything special every day. I really missed waking up with a sense of purpose.”

Benita Thomas, a medical laboratory scientist at Memorial Hospital, understands. She travels each summer from her home in Falcon to Zambia, where she oversees blood testing for the medical mission team. In a way, she’s developed two homes. She thinks of Zambia and Zambians virtually every day.

“It’s a haunting feeling,” she said.

But this haunting, she said, is not a downer. She employs the feeling to inspire her to work. She’s always looking for blankets and food and medical equipment to send to Zambia.

Last year, a friend from Memorial donated $1,000 so Thomas could purchase a HemoCue monitor. This allowed her to test Zambians, especially females, for anemia. She believes the instrument helped save the lives of at least two young women.

“They were slowly bleeding to death,” Thomas said. “And no one knew.”

She’s always looking for volunteers. Last Halloween, Benita visited UCCS to oversee a blood drive. She met a junior and learned he had traveled to Africa. A conversation followed and soon she handed the UCCS student an application to join the medical mission.

His name was Matt Wood.

Volunteering for the medical mission helped registered dietitian Shawna Walker look at her home and her lifestyle with new eyes. After spending weeks with Zambian men and women who survive on extremely little, at least by American standards, she returned to her house and saw way too much. She immediately discarded clothes and toys and books.

“I’m taking a few things out of my life,” she said, “and I’m not being so consumed by my watch.”

Walker, like many Americans, seeks to squeeze every possibility out of every hour, but her journey to Zambia changed what that means.

After a recent Sunday morning service at Eastside Church of Christ, Walker and her family faced an afternoon of renovation work at their home. They hoped to bolt from the building as quickly as possible after the closing prayer.

But friends asked if the Walkers would join them for lunch. A few months ago, Shawna Walker would have begged off.

But that was then.

“We are going to enjoy being with people,” Walker told her husband and children. The Walkers, following Mom’s example, skipped work to enjoy a leisurely lunch.

Walker traveled to Zambia with her son, McKinnon, a sophomore at The Classical Academy. She wanted him to experience life without television and malls. She hoped the long journey would alter his outlook on the world.

On their final day in Zambia, McKinnon turned to his mom and said, “Can you believe this is over so fast? It doesn’t seem right to leave yet. We could do so much more.”

At that moment, Shawna Walker knew her long trip had been a success.