Travel hero Jackie takes journey to heart
When Jackie Scott visited Zimbabwe during a trip to see friends in South Africa, instinct told her it was somewhere she had to return to.
‘‘We were there for three days and that is all it took to grab my heart, I just knew I had to go back there but I wasn’t too sure why.’’
She wasn’t sure what she would do, but a 10-minute visit to the Sandra Jones Centre, a crisis centre for children and women who had been sexually abused, sealed her decision.
A soon as she returned home, she began thinking about how she could return to Zimbabwe.
‘‘I came back to New Zealand and I was like: ‘Oh I don’t really fit this place anymore’. I had a massive change of heart and thinking.’’
She thought about it for a month and knew she had to go back. The Nelson City Council customer services representative asked if she could take time off work and began saving for her trip. Less than a year later she was on her way back to Africa.
Scott recently returned to New Zealand from almost a year living at the centre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, supporting the the girls by providing them with love, education and support.
A friend encouraged her to enter a competition called Travel Heroes, which looked for New Zealanders and Australians who had used a holiday to make a dif- ference in the lives of others and Scott was voted the winner.
Scott said she loved doing simple things with the girls, such as taking them for walks.
Before she left, she started a campaign to raise money for a new truck to replace the centre’s 30-year-old vehicle which had doors that did not open, a speedometer that didn’t work and was prone to breaking down.
The target was $10,000 but before Scott left, she had raised $20,000.
The truck will be used to take children to school, expectant mothers to hospital and to check on the girls when they returned to the community. It was dangerous for girls to travel long distances by foot due to the heat and other dangers.
She recalled one day she went for a walk with a group of the girls to get some food supplies. She approached a woman running a stall to ask if she could buy them each a lollipop.
She asked Scott if the girls were her family.
‘‘That question really hit me and I just said; ’Yes this is my family, I am their Aunty Jackie.
‘‘It was at that point it made me realise how much they mean to me.’’
A friend tagged Scott in the travel insurance company Columbus Direct’s competition on Facebook and encouraged her to enter. Scott said when she found out she had won, she jumped out of her bed, tripped over and hit her head on the door she was so excited.
‘‘It’s a pretty cool achievement for a little Nelson girl.’’
The prize was $5000 Australian dollars to a charity of her choice (naturally she gave it to the Bulawayo centre), and $500 towards her own travel fund.
Scott said Zimbabwe was a special place, the children were amazing and she would be returning at some stage.
‘‘It was a privilege to be part of it and see the girls transform.
‘‘Just the change from being so hurt and broken to being restored back into normal society again.’’