Easter arrived and brought with it a much needed four day weekend. On Good Friday I made the journey to the central bus station to meet Nikki. It is possibly the most insane place ever. As I understand each bus company is owned by different companies and as you walk in there are buses, cars and people everywhere in a very small space. The words musungo musungo are shouted at you endlessly and people try and grab you to sell you water, food or to buy tickets. We find the right place to purchase our tickets for Kafue and managed to get the last three seats on the packed bus. Our friend Mike was arriving into Lusaka from Kabwe and joining us for a weekend away. Nikki was legendary at employing delaying tacktics are we waited for Mike to arrive. Finally he does and the bus sets off. Instead of four seats across the middle of the bus there are five. We sat in close proximity to others. I spent most of the journey entertained at the food eaten by the chap next to me. The highlight being the apples he chewed and then spat out.... Weird. I also ate and enjoyed my first banana in adult life.
Three and half hours later we reach our destination and are dropped at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere by a tin hut police station. We sat at the side of the road for about 45 minutes wondering if we would be spending the Easter weekend in a tin hut with the police officer until our lift arrived. On arrival at the campsite we dumped our bags and went straight out for a night game drive. We were out for about three hours and saw tons of deer, elephants, lions and some birds. Halfway through the tour we stopped and had a beer in the moonlight. It was not quite relaxing as the fear of being eaten by a wild animal was pretty high in all of our minds. Saturday was glorious. Beautiful weather, not a chant of musungo to be heard and the most beautiful setting by the river. We were taken on a boat tour with two Belgium chaps. We saw lots of hippos, some more birds and a crocodile. In the afternoon more friends arrived and we chilled by the river and caught up.
On Sunday morning we were preparing for the horrendous bus journey back when the two Belgium chaps offered us a lift in the back of their pick up truck. The opportunity to save on the bus fair and have another adventure tempted us into thinking this was a good idea. When I say pick up truck imagine Billy Kennedy’s yute in neighbours. We scramble into the back amongst the luggage and set off. Every village we drove through we caused great amusement as people waved and laughed at three musungo’s perched in a truck. One chap narrowly missed falling of his bike in the excitement of watching us drive through. It felt like being in a parade at the Notting Hill carnival. About two hours into the drive a huge black cloud covers the sky for as far as the eye can see. We pull over and the Belgium chaps got us to lie down in the cramped space and covered the truck with a tarp. I am not sure I can do the next hour of the journey justice. At first we could not stop giggling but after about twenty minutes of being repeatedly slapped in the face by the rained on tarp and a serious feeling of claustrophobia and travel sickness it felt less amusing. EVENTUALLY the rain stops and we are able to sit back up in the truck and attempt to restore some dignity. Finally we arrive back in Lusaka only to find my hair to be similar to Bridget Jones after the drive to her mini break. Attractive.
Things at the orphanage are going well. I have taken paper, pens, balls and balloons with me on recent trips and the kids have been loving it. We now have some stunning art work from the kids on our walls here in the house. I also never knew how fun it could be to have 30 odd paper aeroplanes flown at your head! The boys find it hilarious to watch the musungo play football especially when you fall over. The babies are now being picked up to be fed and nappies are getting changed more frequently so I feel like I am having some influence there. The next mission is to get baby wipes and nappy cream to be used..... I suspect this is a bigger challenge and may take some time.
I went on another street outreach mission with the organisation that works for street children. This time it was surprisingly more positive. 6 new arrivals to the street were picked up and taken to various facilities meaning that their first nights in Lusaka were not spent on the street but in a safe place. We talked to a lot of kids and tried to encourage them to at least spend the day at some of these centres. Although still extremely saddening to see so many children on the street I had a similar sense of hope that I do during Crisis at Christmas seeing the great work that is being done there. I take my hat off to my VSO colleague who works at the centre each day.
Plans for the dewats project in the Kanyama slum area are progressing at Zambian speed.....We went on a visit to the area on Friday. There are various districts to the compound. Some are services by the government. If you can afford to buy a plot you have rights to the land for 90 years. You have too provide all of you own building materials and must build your house to a certain specification. In these services areas you are most likely to have some form of running water in your house and either a toilet in or outside of your property. We were taken into one of the houses which has 5 rooms in total and 16 people living there. We also visited an unserviced area which is essentially a slum. It was very different. Houses are built with whatever can be found. There are sporadic toilets throughout the slum which are shared by a number of households and are basic pit latrines. Water is bought from water stations throughout the slum at about £12.50 for 20 litres and has to be carried back to your house. There is no rubbish collection so it is all dumped in the street and is burnt. People openly defecate in the street and the smell is enough to make your eyes water! The good news is that if we can implement this sanitation system then a huge chunk of these issues can change. There is huge natural water stores under the ground which cannot be used because the pit latrines contaminate them. With the new system in place then this would not be the case and families could have access to water more freely. There would also be less diseases from the human waste.
So a busy old time is being had. I feel like I am learning so much every day, particularly that even wearing factor 50 does not stop me burning, the stalls that sell dried fish in the market makes me nauseous, my feet may never be clean again and things in Zambia happen VERY slowly.
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