In 2018 I was contacted by a long time friend asking to please film something for him in Tanzania to which I said 'YES' without hesitation as I had been begging him for years to take me on a trip into Africa. My brief was to capture the stories of 7 Men we were due to collect.
We embarked, traveling from South Africa to Tanzania which took us 6 long days by car. We went through Botswana and Zambia to get there, the roads are very bad in some places so we had to take is slow.
Little did I realise that this trip would change my life.
So who were the 7 Men we went to collect in Tanzania?
And who is 'the Boy in the Orange T-Shirt'?
The 7 Men had a calling to reach out to people from impoverished communities in Africa. They had spent 3 months in Tanzania teaching Conservation Agriculture (a practice where the soil is not ploughed) and making new friends as they moved around.
We spent a week in Northern Zambia capturing mind blowing stories of new friendships that were made, overcoming difficulties and traveling around teaching with minimal finances.
Witchcraft is prevalent in this area and being a white woman, the children were terrified of me, especially because I had a camera with me. It is believed by the local people that if any part of their bodies are photographed a piece of them will be removed forever. While walking with my new found friends I could hear the children shouting 'Hello' from behind bushes and rocks, I knew they were shouting to me as it is assumed that white people speak English.
Regardless, we had fun getting to know each other, laughing and showing the children by my interactions with the 7 Men, I was of no threat.
We decided to go into the village on the 5th day to sing songs with the children. They slowly began to emerged from their hiding places and tolerated me filming them from a distance.
Then all of a sudden this boy in an orange t-shirt came up my camera with a mischievous glint in his eye, held the lens and pulled it towards his face, which landed up being the opening scene to the video I created. He then pointed to see the back and that was the moment he came closer to me and let me open my arms around him and have him investigate further. We had a moment where I think both of us paused, as trust developed.
Before any of this I had build stone walls around me to protect myself from a hurtful past, one where I believed not many people loved me. I allowed no one new in.
In this moment, before I knew it I had so many children around me, all wanting to see what I had in my hands. My cell phone was passed around amongst them to see how it operated. It was in this moment my heart began to soften.
It became time to leave, we made our way back down to Livingston in the South West of Zambia for 2 nights and stayed at a campsite situated alongside the gorge below the Victoria Falls.
It was here in the campsite that I told my story of abuse from past relationships to the 7 Men, where words and actions had cut so deep that hurt and mistrust was all I had being carrying around with me for many years, where all I thought that men were after was sex and women were nothing more to them. When ever I had told my story before, I was told to get over it, things happen and we must move on. But the opposite happened on this day. These guys, all of them came to put their arms around me and their words to me were 'Dada (Sister in Swahili), we love you'.
In that moment, I realised what Love was really all about, it was about being there for one another, supporting each other, connecting.
We did a final walk together that afternoon over the bridge that connects Zambia to Zimbabwe. In that moment I knew I had found something that would last.
We are all still extremely close to this day, supporting each other through life, bound by this unconditional love for one another through experience and understanding.
So what am I most grateful for for?
I am grateful for learning to love again.
I am grateful that my heart has softened.
I am grateful that I am loved by such extraordinary people.
I am grateful for my friends that these same people have become part of my family.
But I am most grateful for having received love so great I am able to leave love behind, with every step that I take, because love is the most important gift of all we can give to someone else.
Ladies of Hive Community Contest #64
Thank you to my friend 
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