Mark Neufeld
In Zambia: Through the eyes of Mark Neufeld
Mark Neufeld
October 27, 2008
Mark Neufeld went to Batoka, Zambia, to teach English and computer classes as part of MCC’s Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program from August 2007 to July 2008.
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I entered the SALT program not knowing what to expect. I was looking for an experience abroad, and on continental Africa, but was unsure as to the rest of the details.
What I found was an intensely rich experience that challenged me beyond what I could have ever expected, but I was also rewarded. Despite the events of the day, good or bad, photography had a way of centering me. It was for me both a coping mechanism and a means to interpret and synthesize what I was seeing, doing and hearing on a daily basis. It helped me make the foreign more familiar, and to understand my surroundings.
I became far more dependent on God this year, and He answered; never before have I felt so close, felt that my prayers were heard or so tangibly answered. I became much more reliant, and this in turn led to a closer relationship with God, with an understanding that a commitment to Him is a daily decision, one that I will have to repeat again and again.
I left Zambia in July 2008 and in fall 2008 began a graduate program in documentary media in Toronto, Ontario. I hope this program can help me to both synthesize my experience abroad as well as cultivate new opportunities to travel, learn and photographically record stories and events from around the world.
