Making a difference: Utah woman still striving to improve life in Zambia

BRIGHAM CITY — Every night Bana Barbara prays for a better life for her children. Every day nothing changes.

"Because," says Peggy Rogers, "what can you teach your children if you can't read or write? How can you hope to give them a better life if you, yourself, are dying from AIDS?"

Bana Barbara is just one of many people that Peggy has come to care about in the remote areas of Zambia, just one of hundreds in similar situations that she has determined to help through an education program she has established.

Peggy Rogers' African odyssey began in 1999, when she first visited Zambia on a vacation. She fell in love with the people and the country and came home determined to do something that would make a difference.

She wrote a book called "Heart to Heart: Worlds Apart" with the idea that all proceeds from it would go to a scholarship program. But, she said, "I was very naive. I had no idea how little you actually make on books."

In the meantime, fate — or something else — was conspiring to help her find another way to help.

Rogers' daughter, Jenny, decided she wanted to join the Peace Corps. And some very interesting coincidences occurred. "For one thing, when she went to apply, they told her that people hardly ever get accepted without a four-year college degree, and she had not yet graduated." And they told Jenny she could not request a specific assignment.

So the Rogers family was surprised when Jenny was sent to Zambia to work in a fish-farming program. She was sent to a remote area, and after she had been out about a year, she called her mom. We need to rethink this scholarship thing, she said. People who get educated leave the country. They don't stay around to help.

Then Jenny had a regional Peace Corps meeting in a place called Kasama. The way to get anywhere in these remote areas is to hitchhike, and it turned out that Jenny was picked up by two students from the Kasama Teachers College.

Jenny had heard of the college but had not been able to find anyone who knew about it. This time, they took her right to the school and to the principal's office. Jenny later wrote to her mother: "When I walked into his office, he was busy writing something, so he didn't even look up. I walked up to his desk and I couldn't believe it. He was in the middle to writing a letter, and the letter was to you!"