Lansing woman highlights health in Zambia

from the Detroit News

LANSING -- Emily Sterk spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching people in the southern African nation of Zambia about health. The Lansing resident rode a bicycle to different villages to highlight such issues as HIV and AIDS, nutrition and tuberculosis.

Sterk, 24, moved to Zambia in January 2006 and lived in two villages in the Serenje district -- Chibale and Nchimishi. Toward the end of her stay, she created a camp for vulnerable children, such as orphans or those living in poverty, and developed curriculum to teach them about various life topics.

Sterk said she knows she changed at least one life during her two-year stay.

In October, an orphaned Zambian boy named Parson told Sterk that because of her, he had talked for the first time about his life's goal of becoming a school teacher.

"That's really important, I think, for every child to know that other people care about you and care about what kind of decisions and goals you have in your life," Sterk told the Lansing State Journal. "That's the first time anybody in his life has asked him about that."

Her main duty, though, was to teach villagers about health issues. Her area was home to about 16,000 residents, mostly subsistence farmers. She learned enough to be conversational in the language of ChiBemba, as well as the local dialect, ChiLala.

Sterk grew up in Lansing and graduated from Michigan Technological University in 2005 with a bachelor's in scientific and technical communications. She returned to the United States in February and is staying at her parents' house in Lansing after living for two years in mud-brick homes with grass-thatched roofs, she said.