Journal

31 May 2008, Mansa Hotel, Mansa

Finally have a few minutes of down time and wanted to write about how things are going in Zambia. Three other grad students and I arrived in Lusaka on Saturday, May 10, not too jet lagged (yet) since we had to overnight in Jo-burg en route to Zambia and were able to catch a few hours of sleep. The pace has been pretty frantic since touching town in Lusaka. They put us to work first thing on the 11th and we headed up country on the 16th. The survey I'm helping out with is a survey of rural households and asks them about their agricultural activities, off-farm income, demographics, food consumption patterns, etc. I'm based in Luapula Province, in the northern part of the country, just across the Luapula River from the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Eating lots of yummy tilapia here!) A colleague from the project I work for (Kasweka) and I, along with a Zambia Peace Corps Volunteer (Nan) who lives in this province, have been leading the training of the 38 enumerators who will do the data collection here. Similar trainings are taking place in the other 8 provinces of Zambia. Dingi is on the other side of the country, in Western Province, leading the training there. It's a bummer that we couldn't be paired together to do the work but I guess it raises fewer eyebrows having us in different places. We talk to each other every day on the phone, though, so that's an improvement over the extent of our communication when I was in MI. Today is our last day of training and we head out to start the data collection on Monday. Should be fun to be back out in the bush! Looks like I won't have to be sleeping on schoolroom floors too much since most villages in the province are just off the main tarmac. Most nights we should be able to find a guesthouse or lodge in towns along the road. We finally have a couple days off and so are going to head to Nan's village on Sunday to check our her world, meet her neighbors, etc. It's been fantastic having her help – there's so much work to do so her help has been invaluable – and it's also been awesome having another American to vent to and have a beer with. It also brings back a lot of memories of my time in Guinea. Made dinner at the PC house here in Mansa one night – our place in Labe was SO much nicer! I don't think we realized how good we had it! No maffe tiga or maffe hakko here, but lots of nshima, fish, chicken, pumpkin leaves, kale, bitter eggplant and Chinese cabbage. Not sick of it yet but I still have 4-5 weeks to go in the field…

Dingi is getting his Land Cruiser all fixed up so that we can use it for our vacation in July. Can't wait! We got to spend a little bit of time together before we headed out to our respective provinces. Even had dinner w/ his family one night, which was a lot of fun (even though I couldn't quite muster up the courage to eat the chicken feet – his favorite – that were served as part of the meal!!). It was great to see him around his family and to hang out with his mom in her home (instead of mine – remember, we were roomies for a month last fall at my place in MI!).

Other than that, all is well. We have a pretty good team of enumerators (knock on wood) so are hoping the fieldwork goes smoothly. I'm sure the first week will be hectic as we get into the groove but after that, they should have a rhythm down pat.


6 June 2008, Mansa Hotel, Mansa

Here at the Mansa Hotel after another long day in the field. Data entry started on June 2. I seem to have developed some allergies to the dust or something. I came down with a cold middle of last week and seemed to be getting over it as of Tuesday, but then the last 2 days my nose has been running like crazy and my eyes are red & itchy. Hoping Nan can get me some benadryl from the PC house and bring it to me tomorrow. I went to a local pharmacy and supposedly got some sort of antihistamine – it helps a bit but not much. Kleenex is extremely expensive so I’ve resorted to using TP for my runny nose and am going through it like crazy! Maybe the locals were right when they told me that using TP would make my cold worse.

Sitting here at the Mansa, waiting for the chef, Xilda, to make me chicken, chips, and salad. She does a really nice job with the cooking. I’ve been here in Mansa for three weeks now and will be heading up to Mwense with Nan, Kasweka and Mr. Sakala tomorrow. We should be out visiting the teams for about three weeks.

Quite the musical medley here tonight. There’s a band playing later and for their sound check a little earlier they did the Rocky theme song (made me think of dlb and lifting for softball at Allegheny), and then that K’Millian song that I got from Hunter and that makes me think of Dingi! Now it’s a remix of “Under My Umbrella” – the regular version of that song was my theme song last summer and this remix seems to be one of the theme songs for this summer.

Finally got the vehicle issue squared away – the money for vehicle repairs didn't make it to Mansa until Friday (an accountant has to physically transport the money from Lusaka up here – efficient!?!?). None of the repairs could be started until Monday because of the weekend. Many parts had to be bought in Kitwe (several hours’ trip away) and four of the five vehicles the teams will be using hadn’t been driven in over a year. The end result is that they all needed a lot of servicing to be ready for the field. At least now it seems like all five teams will have vehicles by tomorrow morning.

Ingrid and Steve are also working tonight at the Mansa Hotel restaurant. They’re super nice and I’ve enjoyed chatting with them from time to time.


16 June 2008, Mansa Hotel, Mansa

We (Kasweka=Zambian, Nan=Peace Corps, and I) left the provincial capital (Mansa) on Saturday, June 7 and have been catching up with the various teams of enumerators that are doing the data collection for us. Our first stop was Mwense, a tiny town about 1h30min from Mansa. Not exactly a tourist hotspot so the only place we could find to spend the night was the local government rest house. I guess one shouldn’t expect much for a whopping $4 per night, but this place was pretty gross. The dilapidation would have been bearable were it not for the filthy toilets/bathrooms and the prison chain gangs (sans chains and with only one unarmed policeman) working on the grounds behind the place. Needless to say, we were relieved to discover that we would have to camp in the village the next few nights since the particular enumerator team we were visiting was working too far away from Mwense to drive back and forth every day. Camping was fun – it was sort of like car camping but with different food. Nan has her backpacking tent with her so she and I slept in that and Kasweka slept with the enumerators in a vacant building owned by the local elementary school. To be honest, I didn’t sleep too well the first night – I never sleep very well the first night I camp somewhere, regardless of the location, but in this case, the (pick your favorite species of) poisonous snake/wild boar/rabid dog factor made me a bit more on edge than usual.

Anyhow, being in the village was reminiscent of my first few days in the village in Guinea – the kids were still totally fascinated by having muzungus (white people) in town so we pretty much had a crowd of curious children staring at us all day everyday (we called it the fish-bowl effect in Peace Corps). I needed to do some laundry while we were there and the crowds seemed to swell as I washed away. I figured at first they were just staring at me because I am so bad and awkward at doing my laundry by hand – only later was I informed that washing ones’ underwear outside (much less hanging it on the clothes line for all the world to see) is completely scandalous! In terms of what the village setup was like, there were probably 50 households or so in the village, each with a small square hut with thatched roof and potentially a thatched gazebo type structure in their yard (where they sit outside during the day, cook, etc.). Some households were keeping pigs and/or chickens. Most households have small fields (1-2 acres) on the outskirts of town where they grow cassava, beans, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and potentially maize. Many households in this province also rely on fishing for their livelihoods. There seemed to be many more children running around without shoes than in Guinea, and far fewer cement block/tin-roofed homes. The local elementary school and health center seemed in better shape than the ones I remember in Guinea and the roads out to the village were better maintained. One fun thing we did in this village while waiting for the enumerators to come back with questionnaires for us to review was when Nan used her local language (Bemba) skills to teach some of the village kids how to play Go Fish. So cute – and the rest of the time we were in the village we kept hearing kids walking by speaking Bemba but with “go fish” thrown in every few sentences. Also met the chief of the village when we were in town – we were required to kneel and clap three times upon entering his hut and then to give him a monetary offering ($7 or thereabouts). He was an old man, probably in his 70s, and was wearing a business suit, not a traditional outfit as I expected.

After Mwense, our next stop was about 2 hours away in Kawambwa. About 15 km outside of Kawambwa we took a short break to check out the Ntumba Chushi water falls. Gorgeous. Not on the scale of Victoria Falls/Niagara Falls or anything like that, but still quite beautiful. I’ll share photos of all this stuff with you when I get home – the internet connection up here is too slow to even think about uploading photos. After the waterfalls, we headed out to link up with that enumerator team, which was working in an area right near a several-hundred acre tea plantation. Got a quick tour of the tea processing plant at the Kawambwa Tea Estate and then spent some time with the team, reviewing their work, etc. We didn’t get back to the town to look for a place to crash until dusk (6 PM) and could only find 2 (crappy but not as crappy as the Mwense rest house) rooms in the whole town. “New Juniors Inn”, where we had to stay the first night, turned out to be a hub of activity and music was blaring until 11 PM right outside our window, and we were awakened by the sound of a generator (also right outside our window) at 4 AM. (Zambia is having lots of excess demand for electricity so there is “load-shedding” = intentional power outages at least once a day for a few hours.) Fortunately, before trying to sleep, we had wandered across the street to a much nicer looking, 5-room guest house (the Lusenga Trust) in search of some dinner/beer and they had rooms open the following two nights, which we booked promptly. Ended up having a nice dinner there with the folks that were staying there, who turned out to be the head of the Zambia wildlife authority, the guesthouse owner, and two guys from South Africa (RSA) who worked at Kruger National Park (in RSA). Apparently, elephant conservation has been so successful in RSA that there are now problems with elephant overpopulation in some parks. Culling elephants is only allowed as the absolute last resort (because of the highly social, intelligent nature of elephants) so these guys were trying to bring several hundred elephants from RSA to a couple national parks in Zambia where elephants had been totally poached out. Lusenga Trust puts all of its profits toward supporting the elephant project – pretty cool.

Spent three nights total in Kawambwa and then left this past Friday morning and set out for Nchelenge on the coast of Lake Mweru. The lake is absolutely stunning. I’m not sure how big it is but my guess is that it’s at least as big as some of the Finger Lakes in New York. In some places you can’t see the other side of the lake. The lake separates Zambia from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Villages dot the shoreline. The place has real potential as a tourist destination, but the infrastructure needs a lot of work. The guesthouse we stayed at (the best one in town) was probably built in the 1980s and it’s hard to believe that much has been done to maintain or improve it since then. The road is pretty potholed getting up here, too, so that would probably discourage some potential tourists. In some ways, I guess it’s a bit of a chicken and the egg problem – without good tourist infrastructure, very few tourists will venture up here, but, at the same time, it would be risky for investors to build a nice guest house, for example, if they’re not convinced that they’ll get enough guests to make a good return on their investment. In the end, despite its natural beauty, Lake Mweru kind of left me with a sense of sadness because of the untapped potential and deep poverty in the surrounding villages. With respect to the survey work, though, the Nchelenge team seems to be doing a good job and is making good progress. One last thing about Nchelenge – while we were in town, a girls’ sports tournament was going on for girls from various districts in the province. Some girls from one of the participating teams had come over to the lake to relax and swim. One of them was wearing a South Hills YMCA t-shirt – made me think of the girls in Pittsburgh!

So, that’s what I’ve been up to for the last week or so. Data collection is about halfway done, so I probably have two more weeks of supervision. Sorry for the gory detail. If you actually read all or even part of this, you are a trooper!


20 June 2008, Mansa Hotel, Mansa

Back in Mansa after having been out in the field since June 7. Mansa, the Mansa Hotel, and Shoprite (grocery store) never looked so good! I have a newfound appreciation for a clean room with running water (hot water is a bonus) and things other to eat than nshima, chicken and fish!

22 June 2008, Lusenga Trust, Kawambwa

Since I last wrote, our travels around Luapula Province have continued. (Brace yourself – this is part update/part journal entry, so is about 3 pages long!) After spending a few hours in Mansa (provincial capital) the afternoon of the 16th and battling with our driver’ office so that they would send him his allowance so that we could continue our work, we were on the road again, this time to Samfya, some 89 km south of Mansa. We reached Samfya just before dusk, in time to catch the sunset at Luapula Province’s second big lake: Lake Bangweulu. I think the name translates to “Lake of the Clouds” or something like that. We were on the western shore of the lake facing east so the sun was setting behind us; as darkness fell over the lake, we could barely discern the sky (clouds) from the water – it looked like an endless expanse of water/sky. Amazing. There was a “beach” – a couple 100 meters of sand demarcated by bricks – where we could walk up to the water if we paid 2,000 kwacha (less than $1). We scoped out the Sun Sand Beach Hotel, which sounded inviting but turned out to be a musty, rarely used, overpriced guesthouse on the waterfront. Plus, the fact that all they were serving for dinner was chicken despite being located on one of the main sources of fish for the province convinced us to look for greener (or at least cheaper) pastures. At this point, my main requirements of a guesthouse are quietness and cleanliness and we found a place that fit the bill for a thrifty K70,000 per night (about $20). Got ourselves some nshima and chicken for dinner (turns out Sun Sand Beach wasn’t the only place not serving fish!) and called it a night.

Spent the next few days in Samfya supervising the work there and managed to squeeze in an hour’s trip to different points on the Bangweulu lakeshore. Unlike at Lake Mweru, the boat to take people to the other side of the lake was actually working (rather than run ashore and half sunken), though we didn’t have enough time to take the trip ourselves. While at the market buying fish to cook for dinner one day, Kasweka and Nan went on a second-handing clothing/shoes (called “salaula” in Zambia) shopping spree. Kasweka, always the queen of high fashion (actually high heels – the only time she wears flats is when doing fieldwork) bought three pairs of shoes and Nan bought an Old Navy fleece and Eastpak shoulder bag. Nan was tempted to buy the fleece that once belonged to Barrie, who apparently worked at a Holiday Inn somewhere in Canada, but ending up going for the Old Navy one in the end. I wonder what Barrie is up to now!? Some of the salaula stalls even had used Nike running shoes and Chacos. Second hand Crocs (and Crocs knock-offs) are also quite popular in Zambia.

Our third night with the Samfya team required us to sleep with them in the field, about 45 minutes drive from town. We wanted to review their work first thing the following morning so needed to be there to make sure they made the corrections the night before. Camping in Samfya at the elementary school was rough compared to where we had camped some weeks back in Mupeta. The ground was extremely hard and bumpy and we were warned that one of the local dogs was “vicious,” so Nan and I opted to pitch the tent…in the office of the school headmaster! We managed to string the tent up between a table, bookshelf, and two nails in the wall. The school building was more or less crumbling and many a critter had made its home in the rafters and walls, so we were glad to be protected by the tent as we heard mice (we think!) scamper by our feet and bats fly (and drop things on us!) overhead. Perhaps we would have been better off taking our chances with the vicious dog outside! Originally, when we were going to pitch the tent outside and Kasweka was the only one who was going to sleep inside the school, some unsuspecting village girl was enlisted to come and sleep with Kasweka in the headmaster’s office so that Kasweka would have company. I’m sure the village girl thought the two muzungus (white people), one of whom had a light strapped to her head (=headlamp), pitching a tent inside an office, were completely insane!

The next morning, through the exhaustion induced by a relatively sleepless night, we managed to finish our work with that team and head back into Samfya town. There we linked up with another team that was working close by an area and checked in to see how they were doing. After reviewing their work, we drove back to Mansa Thursday afternoon. After nearly two weeks of nshima, nshima, nshima, we were elated to have the-best-spaghetti-bolognese-one-can-get-given-the-limited-ingredients-available-in-Mansa for dinner, prepared for us by Anna Maria herself, an Italian woman who is married to a Congolese guy. (We had made the mistake of ordering “pizza” at Anna Maria’s restaurant several weeks prior when Anna Maria wasn’t working. Unfortunately, since Anna Maria wasn’t working at that time, her Zambian helpers prepared the “pizza” for us. What we ended up with – even after we called 2 hours ahead to place our order and waited for another hour while at the restaurant – was some combination of what tasted like buttery pot pie crust, ketchup, and that really crappy American cheese you get in school cafeterias. We learned our lesson to only eat “Italian” food at Anna Maria’s when she herself was doing the cooking.)

Spent Friday checking email and preparing questionnaires for the data entry people, said our goodbyes to Nan (she was only on loan to us from Peace Corps until the 21st), and were back on the road Saturday morning, heading north again to touch base with the first three teams we had visited. One of the teams was low on fuel so we had to carry 40 liters of diesel fuel in two 20-liter jerry cans to them in the back of the Land Cruiser – safe, right?!? Breathed a sigh of relief when we offloaded the fuel to them and were (slightly) less at risk of dying in a blazing inferno.

Nchelenge (Lake Mweru) Redux was as stunning as the first time around, and we got to see even more of the lake as we drove north about 45 minutes to Chienge district. Looking at a map of Zambia, I think Lake Mweru is probably about 140 km long and maybe 50 km across. The road from Nchelenge (Kashikishi) north to Chienge was flanked on either side by one seemingly endless village and was like an obstacle course for our driver as he dodged goat after chicken after small child after guy on bicycle after chicken after large overloaded truck barreling down the middle of the road after goat. (Did I mention how many goats/chickens would dart out of the tall grass across the road as we approached?!?! The driver’s honks to try to scare away the animals seemed to do the opposite, drawing them into the road.) Spent last night and this morning reviewing the Nchelenge team’s work, bade them farewell, and drove about 1-½ hours down here to Kawambwa. We miss having Nan around – she lightened the workload but more importantly was a fun, interesting person to spend time with. Kasweka and I are managing ok, but our little team feels incomplete without Nan.

So, here I am in Kawambwa, the place with the really nice guesthouse (Lusenga Trust), the proceeds from which go to support the national park where they’re trying to reintroduce elephants. Just had dinner and asked the guy to bring me hot water in the morning so that I could take my daily bucket bath, and to my shock and awe, he said that the running water is now working, which means a HOT SHOWER in the morning!!! I can hardly believe it. Hot bucket baths are nice, sure, but to actually have the water pour onto me without my having to dip a small metal mug into a bucket of hot water and pour it on myself is going to be AMAZING! I just hope the shower is still working in the morning. (I would take a shower now but the power is out – load shedding – and the generator is broken.) The last time I had an actual hot shower was in South Africa when we had to spend the night there en route to Zambia on May 9th, over six weeks ago! (The room I had at Chita Lodge in Lusaka was nice enough but only had a bathtub, no shower.) My, how spending time in Africa reminds us to appreciate the little things in life!

We’ll be here working with the Kawambwa team until Wednesday, June 25. This is the team that seems to be making the slowest progress. Two of the other teams should be finished by Wednesday or Thursday of this week, but this group probably won’t be done until Tuesday of next week. We need to kind of stay on their case so that they pick up the pace. Kasweka and I can’t go back to Lusaka (meaning Dingi and I can’t start our vacation) until the data collection is done up here – I leave Zambia on July 14th so Kasweka and I have decided that we have to head back to Lusaka by July 3rd. That will give me July 4th to wrap things up at the office; then Dingi and I will hopefully have July 5th to 13th to do our thing. It’s looking like we’ll go to Lochinvar National Park for at least part of that time – that is the park for which he bought a hunting license, so we’ll go and do the safari thing for a few days. I told him that I want us to pamper ourselves for at least a couple of days, too – we’ve both been “roughin’ it” for seven weeks in the field so could really use some R&R!

One last story before I call it a night: one of Dingi’s teams in Kalabo (Western Province) got chased out of the work area by villagers, who suspected them of witchcraft/ “Satanism” – a not uncommon accusation in Zambia. By “Satanism” they mean devil worship – I’m told that people “sell their years” to other Satanists and get paid handsomely. This is why people who get rich quickly (or are rich) get accused of being Satanists by the locals. “Selling your years” apparently means if you were supposed to die naturally at 75 but you sell 10 of your years to Satanists, then you will die at 65. Anyhow, back to one of Dingi’s teams being accused of Satanism. The village they were trying to enumerate was extremely remote – a 6 hours’ boat ride across a marsh, then a 2 hour canoe trip and then an hours’ drive (or something horrendous like that) from the regional capital. Bottom line: this particular village doesn’t get many outside visitors. My observation is that here in Zambia, particularly in the rural areas, people ascribe things that are unfamiliar or that they don’t understand to witchcraft/Satanism. I suspect that was the case when a team of government workers arrived, unexpected and uninvited, in their village. (Even wearing the color red is sometimes grounds for being accused of Satanism.) So, Dingi is currently back in that village, trying to convince the local people to let the enumerators come back and do their job. He’s been out of cell phone contact since Friday since the area is so remote; needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting his call tomorrow, when he expects to be back in a place with cell phone coverage.

All for now. More in a few days.


23 June 2008, Lusenga Trust, Kawambwa

Dang! No hot shower after all! The power is out again this morning and no electricity means no hot water. As Kasweka would say, “Shame!”. Oh well, another day, another bucket bath.


29 June 2008, Juldan’s Bus Station, Mansa

Finally heading back to Lusaka today! Hurray! It’s like the Promised Land at this point. I was supposed to be up here in Mansa until July 3rd but Mike called me on Friday night to tell me about a conference on strengthening markets for agricultural inputs in Lusaka July 1-3 and strongly encouraged me to attend. I feel bad leaving Kasweka all alone up here but we spent much of the day yesterday tying up lose ends and making sure everything is under control. I’m sure she’ll be fine on her own. Two teams finished last week, two more should finish tomorrow, and the fifth and final team should be done by the middle of the week.

Last time I wrote in my journal up in Kawambwa, I was being teased by the prospect of a hot shower – something that never came to pass. That team was having major issues but I'll spare you the details. Kasweka and I finally left Kawambwa on Wednesday, June 25, exhausted and frustrated, but feeling like we had done all we could to get that team back on the right track. Met up briefly with one of the other teams near Mwense on our way back to Mansa and picked up their completed questionnaires to review. Spent Thursday in Mansa answering questions from the data entry people and reviewing still more questionnaires. I had looked at so many at that point that my eyes were starting to glaze over!

Kasweka and I decided to adopt a “divide and conquer” strategy on Friday – the work from the Mwense group needed a lot of corrections so we thought it would be better for Kasweka to go to the field to do the corrections with them, rather than for us to wait for them to come back to Mansa and try to coax them back into the office. I stayed behind in Mansa to continue reviewing work, supervising the data entry, etc.

Met up with Nan for lunch on Friday – she had been in Lusaka taking care of some things at the Peace Corps office there. Since she’s now officially back on the PC salary (and not per diem!), I decided to treat her to lunch at Anna Maria’s. It was good to see her one last time. I thought then that I would not be going back to Lusaka until the 3rd so we planned for Sakala, Kasweka and I to swing through her village to say goodbye and bring her some of her things on Monday – now it will be only Kasweka and Sakala since I’ll be in Lusaka.

Sent out a shameless plea for phone calls on Friday afternoon and got to talk to Darcy for a while and to my parents for a little bit, which was wonderful. Hopefully they’ll have an easier time getting in touch with me once I’m back in Lusaka.

Dingi was quite sick at the end of the week – he came down with the flu and was feeling really crappy. I talked to him yesterday as he was traveling back to Lusaka and he sounded better. Only one more week until we get to take our vacation! We’ll be making our game plan for the trip this week.

My final day in Mansa yesterday was quite hectic. It was only at noon that I knew for sure that I was leaving today, so the rest of the day I had a thousand and one things to do. Treated Kasweka and Sakala to lunch at Anna Maria’s as a thank you, and met an American woman at the restaurant. She was an anthropology professor from Ohio and was running a Zambia immersion trip with some of her undergrads in a village near Samfya. Her immersion program sounds a bit like what Joe does with University of Rochester students in Malawi.

Was up until after 11 PM checking one more box of questionnaires (the last one! Thank God!) and otherwise getting myself ready to head back to Lusaka.

Had interesting conversations the last two nights at the Mansa Hotel with a waitress and waiter that work there. Topics ranged from education to agriculture to environment to Obama/Hilary and race/violence in the US vs. Zambia. I got the sense that most muzungus that stay there don’t really interact or converse with the staff at all. I really enjoyed chatting with them and learning from them.

Overall, the experience up here has been great. Full of challenges and frustrations, sure, but I learned a lot and was fortunate to have really good people to work with. Sure, there were some bumps in the road, but the teams worked really hard and in tough conditions. And through it all, they remained gracious and cooperative.

So, now I’m just waiting for the bus to come. If the past is a good predictor of the future, the bus will probably get moving an hour behind schedule.


7 July 2008, Dingi’s living room in Lusaka

The work part of this trip is finally over and the fun, rest and relaxation have begun! The bus did indeed end up leaving an hour late (around 10 AM instead of 9 AM) and 10 ½ long hours later, we finally pulled into the main bus station in the Lusaka city center. Seeing Dingi waiting for me there as I got off the bus was such a sight for sore eyes. So nice to finally be in the same place with him, rather than the “close but not quite” feeling of being in the same country but in different provinces. Ended up meeting a lady, Sharon, at the Mansa bus station as we were waiting and shared a seat with her on the trip to Lusaka. She had just traveled to Mansa to meet her father for the first time. Her parents had split up shortly after she was born and she had recently decided to try to find him and finally meet him. She was SO happy and feeling fulfilled and complete after visiting with her dad. Touching story. When I pulled out my iPod during the trip, she asked if she could use one earphone while I used the other – I was happy to oblige. Not sure if she liked my taste in music, but she seemed happy to have something to do.

Since I was still in work mode Monday, June 30 through Friday July 4, and because Dingi had a kid from the US staying with him (the kid was doing volunteer work for a church group), we decided it made most sense for me to stay at a guesthouse during the week. I was back to Lusaka earlier than expected so the place where my organization was putting us up (Juls Guest House) was fully booked my first two nights there. Tina (another grad student) was kind enough to let me crash in her room, which had two twin beds…and a HOT SHOWER THAT WORKED! After showering on Monday morning, I finally felt human again and squeaky-clean. The conference didn’t start until Tuesday so I spent Monday morning sleeping in and then did a bit of work during the afternoon. Dingi turned 32 while we were in the field, so Monday night we belatedly celebrated his birthday with dinner and a movie. The new Indiana Jones was entertaining but had zero plot development – it was fun nonetheless. It was wonderful for us to finally be face to face and have that time together.

The conference kicked off on Tuesday morning at a hotel in Lusaka. Much of the material that was covered was stuff that I had been exposed to in the past, but probably the biggest benefit of the conference was the opportunity to interact with private sector fertilizer and seed dealers and get a better understanding of how things look from their perspective. The participants were mostly private sector, NGO, a few government officials, and a lot of representatives from the regional economic communities. Had to renew my “research involving human subjects” certification after the workshop on Tuesday night, which took me about three hours, so unfortunately, Dingi and I weren’t able to spend any time together on Tuesday.

The workshop continued on Wednesday and Thursday. Hung out with Dingi on Wednesday night and then my colleague and his wife had Tina and me over to their place on Thursday night for dinner and euchre. Good times – I hadn’t played euchre in forever. Had meetings most of the day on Friday and then Dingi and I went over to his mom’s place for dinner. I moved over to stay with Dingi on Saturday morning - it's wonderful to finally be in the same place! Just relaxed most of the day on Saturday and then met up with Ana (another grad student) that night for a pizza dinner (with tiramisu for desert – yum!) at the Arcades shopping center. Went to church yesterday morning at Dingi’s mom’s church, the United Church of Zambia. The service was nice but LONG – about 3 hours. Much of the service was spent discussing church business so I got a bit bored. The singing was awesome, though. I met up with Kasweka and her boyfriend for lunch at Arcades and gave her one of the digital cameras that my dad had sent over with me. She was so happy she was shaking – so cute. I had heard a lot about her boyfriend while we were in the field so it was nice to finally meet him. After that I spent a few hours buying some small gifts for friends and family at the Sunday craft market that takes place weekly right there at Arcades. It’s amazing how much speaking a little vernacular (Bemba in my case) gets the vendors to reduce their prices. Muzungus get really ripped off by taxi drivers, too. I needed to catch a cab back to Dingi’s and when I first asked a driver, he demanded K75,000 ($23). I told him “no way” in Bemba and started to walk away – he immediately reduced the price to K20,000 ($6), which is what it’s supposed to be.

Took a ride around Lusaka with Dingi’s neighbor, Kaluba, while he worked with a few mechanics to try to get his truck in working order. Then we headed over to his mom’s house for a nice dinner and to watch Nadal and Federer play in the Wimbledon final.

Today we’re just hanging out at his place while the mechanics continue to work. Hopefully they’ll be done by 1 PM or so. His maid is here now cleaning the apartment and doing our laundry. I think we’re going to take Dingi’s truck to the car wash later and maybe check out Soweto Market, the biggest market in Zambia. As for our vacation, since his vehicle is still giving him problems, we’ve decided to go to Livingstone by bus on Wednesday, spend the night there, then spend Thursday and Friday in Chobe National Park in Botswana. Supposedly has one of the highest concentrations of wildlife in all of Africa! We’ll probably come back to Lusaka on Saturday so that we can just relax on Sunday. I can’t believe I leave one week from today. I wish time would slow down!!!


12 July 2008, Dingi’s living room in Lusaka

Dingi and I arrived back in Lusaka from our amazing trip to Livingstone and Botswana late last night. Before boarding the bus for Livingstone early on the morning of Wednesday, July 9, we had a very full Monday night and Tuesday in Lusaka. After I wrote on Monday, Dingi and I relaxed the rest of the afternoon, had some dinner, and then met up with Ana and some of Dingi’s friends at Arcades to see the movie “Iron Man”. Dingi liked it so much when he saw it a week ago that he really wanted to go again. Good flick – sort of a guy movie but even Ana and I were thoroughly entertained by it. Got back to Dingi’s place and called it a night. Monday night was Dingi’s former roommate Tom’s last night staying with us.

Dingi made a nice breakfast for me, Tom and two of their friends on Tuesday morning and then poor Tom locked his keys in his trunk. He was supposed to be leaving Lusaka for Ndola (a 4-5 hours’ drive away) by 11 AM but getting the keys out of the car turned out to be a big ordeal. Can’t just call AAA around here! Eventually his brother’s friend was able to pry the door open just enough to slip in a long wire and pop the trunk latch. (Apparently saying “pop the trunk” is very much American English – I said it to our taxi driver last night when we arrived back at Dingi’s place and he had no idea what I was talking about! The Zambian English version of the phrase is “open the boot”. That will take some time for me to get used to ☺.)

Once Tom was on his way, Dingi and I picked up Ana and Tina and headed over to Mukwiti’s place for lunch. She and her sisters went all out preparing the meal – and even made ifysashi with dried pumpkin leaves and groundnuts. Delicious! It was nice for the five of us grad students to get to spend some time together and hang out. After lunch, Dingi, Tina and I drove over to check out Soweto Market. The place is absolutely sprawling. Dingi said that walking around with two muzungus in the place would be “a logistical nightmare,” so we soaked in the atmosphere from the relative safety and calm of Land Cruiser. I don’t know how many square kilometers the market is, but it seemed to go on forever, and even on this particular Tuesday, which happened to be a national holiday, the place was still bustling with activity. After Soweto, we hit the Intercity Bus Station to buy our bus tickets for our trip to Livingstone the next morning, and then came back to Dingi’s place to hang out for a bit (and digest our lunch, and try to prepare ourselves for the next big meal!). We were out the door again 30 minutes later, this time headed to Kasweka’s place for dinner. The spread at her place was even more elaborate than at Mukwiti’s (which I didn’t think was possible)! Dingi and I were still full from lunch but didn’t want to hurt Kasweka’s feelings so tried our best to eat our fair share.

By this point we were nearly in a food coma, but Dingi’s aunt and cousin had arrived that morning from the UK so our next stop was his mom’s place so that we could spend time with his relatives. Very nice people. Dingi, his mom and sister were all pumped because their relatives had brought each of them a fancy new cell phone. Dingi’s even has internet capabilities like Nan’s. Sweet. It would be cool if he could figure out how to connect the internet phone to his computer – that would allow him a lot more frequent email access than he currently has.

We were up just before 6 AM on Wednesday morning so that we could get to the bus station to catch our 7 AM bus. I was shocked when we pulled out of the bus station at 7:10 AM, nearly on time. This particular bus company seemed more focused on customer satisfaction than others I’ve traveled on – we were even served a snack during the course of the trip. The driver was still going a bit faster than I would have liked, but it was nothing like the white-knuckled trip we would have on Friday on our journey back to Lusaka. The ride to Livingstone was uneventful but long – we arrived in L-stone around 2:30 PM. Headed straight to our motel, Zig Zag, and napped for the rest of the afternoon after having finalized our trip reservation to Chobe. We had initially planned to camp in Chobe Thursday night but once we got more information about what the overnight entailed, we decided to just go for the day trip. The overnight was $70 more per person but all it offered over and above the day trip was dinner, camping, and breakfast. Since there was no night game park drive, the day trip seemed like a better value. Had a nice dinner on Wednesday night at the Rite Pub & Grill in Livingstone.

We were picked up from Zig Zag on Thursday morning just after 7 AM. Before our ride arrived, I enjoyed a blissfully delicious cup of real brewed hazelnut coffee – my first non-Nescafe (i.e., instant) cup of coffee in over two months. Zig Zag claims to have the “best coffee in Livingstone” and I’m sure they’re right.

It took us about 45 minutes to drive from Livingstone to the border. Zambia is on one side of the Zambezi River and Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia all meet on the other side of the river. Going through the border check was relatively painless, and then we boarded a speedboat to carry us over to the Botswana side of the river. Once there, we were met by a driver from Chobezi, the safari company through which we booked our trip. He shepherded us through customs on the Botswana side (Kazungula border post) and then drove us the 20 minutes or so to Kasane and the Chobe Safari Lodge. Just by the look of the buildings along the road to Kasane, particularly the roofing materials used, one can tell that Botswana is a much more prosperous country than Zambia.


14 July 2008, Lusaka International Airport, Lusaka

The Chobe Safari Lodge was gorgeous (http://www.chobesafarilodge.com/). It serves as sort of the home base for the day trips organized by Chobezi. Shortly after arriving at the lodge, we boarded a boat along with about 15 other people and enjoyed a three-hour river cruise. The scenery was spectacular – I’ll let the photos speak for themselves – and we saw an incredible array of wildlife: many species of antelope (impala, kudu, puku, sable, red lechwe, and waterbuck), several different types of birds (e.g., kingfishes, yellow-billed storks, fish eagles, and “snake birds”), elephants, hippos, crocodiles, water monitor lizards, vervet monkeys, baboons, and cape buffalo. After the boat cruise, we enjoyed an elaborate buffet lunch, and then headed back out again, this time for a 2.5 hour game park drive. Saw many of the same animals we had seen on the boat cruise and also saw lions (though they were a bit far away), giraffes, and warthogs. It was awesome to see the animals from both perspectives – land and water. The trip back to the border, across the Zambezi, and finally to Livingstone went smoothly and Dingi and I were marveling at all we had seen in just a few short hours.

Our next big adventure was Victoria Falls. Dingi has been there more times than he can count (he went to high school in Livingstone) and I had spent several hours there last July, but it is still an awe-inspiring sight no matter how many times you see it. Shortly after we arrived in Livingstone from Lusaka, Dingi mentioned how cool it would be to view the falls from the air, and Tigi, a 7-year-old South African girl, and her dad, whom we met on the Chobe boat cruise, told us about their experience doing so the day before. Dingi and I played with the idea of doing a helicopter ride over the falls a bit more after the Chobe trip and at dinner that night, but more or less agreed that it was not within our budget and that we would try to do it the next time we came visited Vic Falls. I was pretty much at peace with the decision until the next morning as I was waiting for him to take care of some business at the post office. As I was waiting, I realized that I didn’t know if and when I would ever be back at Vic Falls – after all, there is so much more to see in Zambia and probably the next few times I come here, I’d like to visit new and different places rather than coming back to Livingstone again. Plus, we had saved close to $100 by doing the Chobe day trip instead of the overnight trip, and by staying at a cheaper guest house our second night in Livingstone. So as soon as he was done at the post office, I said, “Come on, Dingi – let’s just go for it! We are both too practical and not impulsive enough most of the time!” I could tell by the giant grin on his face that he was up for it☺ We booked a taxi and made a beeline for the helicopter launch pad…but there weren’t any flights available until 3 PM and we had to catch the 2 PM bus back to Lusaka. I think we were both somewhat relieved and somewhat disappointed, but sort of took it as not being meant to be…but then the taxi driver told us there was another helicopter ride company. Before we knew it, we had booked two tickets for a 15-minute helicopter ride over the falls 45 minutes later. Dingi thought it would give us “context” if we went to the falls to see it from the ground first, so we rushed there and took a few pictures.

Once back at the helicopter launch pad, our stomachs dropped as the helicopter arrived and we realized we were next. We were both a bit scared but as soon as we were inside and off the ground, fear was quickly replaced by awe and glee. I don’t think one can fully appreciate the shear immensity of the falls until seeing it from above. It was also amazing to see the seven gorges zigzagging their way back to the falls’ current position – each of these gorges had been the falls at some point in the distant past. The 15 minutes flew by but we were able to circle the falls about four times, seeing it from different angles. As we disembarked the helicopter hearts pounding, we both had the biggest grins of our lives on our faces. I have a new understanding of the phrase “what a rush”!

We were still flying high on the bus trip back to Lusaka, but man, was it long and scary. We ended up having to go on CR Motorways rather than the bus company we had used on the way down; CR drivers go way too fast and the road is pretty bad in some places. We were so relieved to get off that death trap of a bus once we finally arrived in Lusaka around 10 PM.

Our last two days together in Lusaka were mostly spent hanging out at Dingi’s place, having dinner at his mom’s house, and having lots of long talks. Had a good meeting this morning with the folks at the Programme Against Malnutrition (an NGO) to share some of our analysis with them, and now here I am, about to get on a plane to Jo-burg, then Amsterdam, Detroit, and finally Lansing. I’ve had a wonderful two months here, and the past week in particular has been one of the most fun and memorable of my life.