When David Pocock woke up in a wet swag infested with termites, he knew he'd gone a step too far.

So it was straight into one of the huts of Zimbabwe's Nkayi community for the rest of the week as the rising Wallabies star checked out the charity project he'd set up in the country of his birth.

Pocock won't get a chance on this tour of South Africa to pop home but he says what he saw at the end of last year was encouraging.

He and Perth youth worker Luke O'Keefe's Eightytwenty Vision group has targeted maternal health, feeding schoolkids, conservation farming and care for people with AIDS in the small community.

"The first few nights we stayed in our swags and we just got infested by these termites and it rained and we ended up just sleeping in one of the huts," Pocock says.

"We visited all the hospitals in the area and then we went and had a look at all the demonstration (farming) plots and met all the elders from the villages, mainly just spent time out there so they knew who we were and you could sort of build up a bit of a relationship."

One way of doing that was through a soccer match played on a bare, dirt pitch.

"They organised this soccer game and invited us to play," Pocock says.

"A few of them had boots from somewhere but mostly (they were) barefoot.

"It was the most contested soccer game I've seen live ever, it was ridiculous."

Pocock and his family left the troubled country eight years ago amidst death threats and the murders of neighbouring farmers.

But even that hasn't stopped the 22-year-old flanker wanting to put something back and he says he's most pleased with the maternal health project.

"The women will come in two weeks before and just wait because there's no public transport or anything," he says.

"Before they were just staying at home, giving birth at home, because of the concrete floor they had to sleep on.

"The birth rate at the hospitals has just gone through the roof since that's happened."

Better farming techniques are another result.

"If there's a mother with AIDS and her kids, they can do the conservation method," he says.

"For the Mum to get behind the plough when she's got AIDS is unrealistic."

Pocock has a future as a rugby superstar awaiting him but, beyond that, is considering turning his aid work into a career.

"I'd definitely like to be involved in the on-the-ground implementation," he says.

"Going out to Zimbabwe and staying in the rural area in a hut for a week, you actually see the reality of it.

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