Tanzania Trip

Two things I’ll definitely remember about our trip up to Tanzania: transport and food. We used almost every mode of transport you can think of – sleeper trains, minibuses, dalla dallas (riding in the back of a canter Zanzibar style), hitching on the back of a truck, bicycle taxis, taxis, coaches, ferries and a catamaran made out of mango tree and of course out own two feet.

And, as for the food – despite being in a majority Muslim country just as the holy month of Ramadan began (ooops!) I’ve never eaten so much yummy stuff day after day. On the Tazara railway that runs from Zambia up to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania we were given a whole flask of spicy chai for breakfast and every other morning we managed to find fresh exotic fruit on our brekkie plates. Fresh seafood was everywhere in Dar and Zanzibar. Despite calling my self a vegetarian I can gladly devour a plate of fresh prawns or crab. The spices on Zanzibar made all the food taste and smell delicious. We even found mangoes – the one bad thing about leaving Zambia a couple of weeks early was going to be missing the mango season.

Anyway I won’t bore you all too much with the detail but here are a few pictures of the trip.

From the Tazara Train
The Taanzania-Zambia Railway runs from Kapiri Mposhi, just north of Lusaka in Zambia to Dar Es Salaam. At best it takes about 42 hours and with beds to sleep on and a restaurant that serves delicious Chai in the morning and the friendliest on-board immigration officials I’ve ever come across its definitely better than the bus. We met lots of Zambians travelling to Dar to buy second hand gear to sell back in Zambia. Unfortunately our train stopped about 20 hours short of its destination in a really bleak town in southern Tanzania. We were lucky and hoped straight on a bus to the nearest big town.

Iringa turned out to be a little gem of a place plonked at the top of a really steep hill – with a bustling market full of colourful veg and spices, a really friendly hotel manager who helped us change our dollars on a Sunday and a yummy Indian restaurant round the corner.

Dar es Salaam
After living in Zambia – the most conservative of African countries with the sleepiest Capital City Dar es Salaam – Tanzania’s capital seemed to be a cosmopolitan city crammed full of busy, determined people. The fish market was excellent.

Zanzibar

Zanzibar really does live up to its reputation. Walking through the cramped alleys of Stone Town you feel like you’ve stepped back a couple of centuries and crossed into another continent. The beaches are magnificent (although I think prefer Lake Malawi with no salt and no tide). And I’ll give the food another mention - Just along from the port at sunset the local fisherman dock and lay out their days catch – crab, shark, prawns, red snapper, octopus…for about a pound you can take your pick for dinner and wash it down with freshly squeezed sugar cane juice.

Malawi
Instead of getting the Tazara back to Zambia we thought we’d be adventurous and take our luck with public transport through Malawi. About twenty different minibuses, two bicycle taxis, three taxis, two hitched lifts and a coach ride later we finally made it back to Chipata.

It was all worth it for a couple of days mountain biking in the Luwawa Forest with local residents little Bob and Leon the beast as guides!

Less than a month left

We’ve spent much of the past year reminiscing about the UK and making top ten lists of things we’re going to eat (mushrooms, Coop apple and cinnamon English muffins), see (Home and Away) and do (a proper pint at a proper pub.) We’re now counting down the last month in Zambia and it’s started to dawn on me that there actually might be things that I miss about Chipata.

Multi-cultural dinner parties. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, we shared the dining room with a young Indian volunteer who’s spent the last month spending literally heaps of Zambian Kwacha on phone calls home to his wife-to-be who he’s yet to meet. Next to him was Amanda, our English housemate and her parents who are in their mid-seventies but look little older than 55. Opposite me sat Denis, a Ugandan VSO who asked me to explain what ‘sleazy’ meant in between mouthfuls of lasagne. Stephen, sat to my right told us how in his clan back home in Uganda a couple must be able to recite five genealogical lineages to ensure that no ‘cross-breeding’ would occur. Alternatively, the President’s clan must marry their first cousin. And then there was me sniffling in the corner (I had a stinking cold) next to an exhausted Henry (he’d been running a conference since 07:30 that morning.)

Buying in-season veg fresh from the market, the tomatoes here taste amazing, really sweet and always a gorgeous scarlet colour which contrast to the oranges which, if not caught just at the right time are bitter and still green. I’ve definitely missed being able to get mushrooms, red peppers or courgettes all year round but there is something really satisfying knowing that you’re eating fruit that fell from a tree outside your living room window or veg that was grown in your neighbour’s garden. And we’re not even here long enough to see another mango season. Ahhhh!

Having the time to cook the fresh veg into something yummy. There’s not much to do in Chipata by means of evening entertainment so we’ve spent many a night trying out new recipes. I’m under no illusions that I will actually keep up this good habit back in the UK what with getting home after six and having Home and Away and the pub to tempt me away from the kitchen.

SarryAnna No matter where you go in Zambia there is always a gaggle of children ready to jump out from nowhere. In our neighbourhood the children are yet to tire of shouting ‘sarryanna, sarryanna, how are you, how are you, where’s Jimmy? Where’s Jimmy’ I definitely won’t miss the shouts of ‘Oi! Mzungu, give me money’ from the adult men but I won’t put up too much of a fight if the children try and jump into my suitcase.

Having our own personal tailor. I spent last Saturday morning rummaging through my wardrobe and throwing away most of the clothes I brought out with me (most of which are now stained orange from the dust). And my suitcase is now going to be a headache of bright colours from all the bits and bobs I’ve got made out of the local chitenge material. I really can’t tell whether it’ll look alright on a British high street but someone told me bright prints were in?

And of course Jimmy, but my mind was put to rest a little after we visited her new home. She’s going to be living with Franklin, Henry’s colleague who has a house with a court yard, complete with smiling kids and her best friend-to-be; Brucie the neighbours sloth like mut.

So this is it. We’re flying home on Thursday, September 27^th. Henry starts his new job on October 1^st in Lewes, near Brighton and I head for the job centre. Between now and then we’re heading up to Tanzania and Zanzibar to lap up the last bit of African sunshine before heading home just in time for the British Autumn. Great!

P.S. Sorry for the lack of photos but I think the dodgy electrics here fried my camera’s battery charger and I’ve only just got a new so fingers crossed for next time. See you all soon xx

Global Education

As part of the VSO deal, Youth for Development volunteers are expected to carry out a ‘Global Education Project’. Back in October 2006, I started my project at St Mary’s Primary School in Oxfordshire. Thanks to the lovely Mr Slatter, I got to ask the eight and nine year olds of Ash Class what they knew about Zambia and what they thought the lives of their peers living on the other side of the world might be like. At one point I gave the 8 year old pupils some photos of Zambian children to look at and asked them what was the same or different about these children compared to themselves. After a few moments of thought, one little boy stuck his hand in the air; ‘Zambian children all sit on the floor with their legs stretched out and in England we sit with our legs crossed.’ Throughout this lesson and the next this observation kept cropping up and it struck me that being told to sit cross legged on the floor during assemblies and story time is one of my strongest primary school memories. (Much to my secondary school teachers’ dismay, I found the habit hard to break and sat with my legs crossed even after I was deemed mature enough to sit on chairs in assembly.)

In contrast, Zambia is the land of straight legs. One of the veg markets in town is called the ‘ladies sitting with their legs stretched out’ market, (it does have a catchier Nyanja name that I can’t remember right now) our gardener bends from the waist to water the the plants and school children do indeed sit with their legs outstretched during story-time.

In many ways, the differences I’ve observed between children here in Zambia and those back home do boil down to things as trivial as the way they sit or the football team they support. But then, when a little Zambian kid tells me that the thing that makes him most happy is when his Daddy brings a cow home and they can drink fresh milk they suddenly seem worlds apart.

Attached to one of the organisations I work for is a community school. In Zambia, primary education is free up to Grade 7. I write free in italics because many families, despite not having to pay school fees, cannot afford to educate their children. It might be deemed rebellious in the UK to turn up to school wearing jeans instead of the standard black pleated trousers or ‘forgetting’ your tie but here a ten year old turning up to school without the same blue skirt and blouse her friends are wearing would automatically stand out as the ‘poor’ kid. A new uniform, including the right colour socks and shiny shoes would set you back 150,000 kwacha. We pay our gardener a wage equivalent to a yearly salary of 1,440,000 kwacha and he has four school-aged children to clothe, if he chose to send his children to one of the free government schools almost half his yearly income would be spent on their uniforms. On top of this, parents are also expected to equip their children with books and pens and it’s not uncommon for them to be asked to contribute when a roof springs a leak during the rains. Beyond Grade 7, a place in school costs K250,000 a year (not including uniforms).

Community schools that ask parents to contribute between 8000-15000 per term are th alternative. There are over 200 pupils at Chisomo’s community school. The class rooms are grass fences leant up against each other, creating a space little bigger than the size of a double bed or a straw mat under the open sky. The children sit with their legs stretched in front of them with their books on their laps and learn the English alphabet to the tune of Alde Lang Syne. This is where the Zambian side of my Global Ed Project takes place.

A Visitor's View

I’m Sally-Anne’s cousin, Lucy and am currently on a gap year before starting uni. After doing a whole lot of nothing for the beginning of my year I thought I had better do something worthwhile, so I came out to visit Sally-Anne for a month in Zambia.
I’ve done a lot whilst I’ve been here, from horseback riding at Lake Malawi to visiting Victoria Falls in Livingstone. I have loved being a tourist in Zambia and doing all the activities that are available but I have also loved seeing another side of Zambia; the everyday lives of the local people. Lives that I wouldn’t have been able to see without having Sally-Anne living here as a local.

The first part of my stay was spent visiting sights along Lake Malawi and staying in various lodges, with Sallyanne, Henry and my aunt and uncle. Highlights of my time there included horseback riding through the woods and then going into the sea on the horses at Kande Beach,

and a day trip which involved a walk through small local villages at Nkhata Bay, then down to a beautiful cove where we sunbathed, snorkelled and ate freshly caught fish cooked by our guide on the beach. Our day ended with a trip out on our guides’ boat where we waited for fish eagles to swoop down from the cliffs to catch the fish thrown by own guide and to pose for photos!

On our way back down the lake we stopped at Nkhotakota Pottery for the night and spent an hour learning how to make our own pots (which were terrible and looked nothing like the instructor’s) and had the chance to buy some of the hand made pottery. I now have two African cups for university which no-one can claim as theirs unless they’ve also been to the pottery in Malawi!

Something I noticed in Malawi was the amount of people on the roads walking with heavy loads of supplies balanced on their heads or pushing bikes loaded high. It’s incredible the distances these people walk or cycle to get from one town or village to another, and they do it because they have to. Another thing that astounds me is the number of people who can fit in the back of a truck. Because there’s little public transport people pile in pickup trucks, and I’m really surprised the vehicles don’t topple over backwards from the weight crammed in the back. Not to mention the size of the potholes here that you have to swerve to avoid, plus the fact that the most of the roads here are just dirt tracks; it can make travelling a bit difficult for most vehicles, yet people still manage to do it.

During my stay here we also spent three days at South Luangwa so we could go on safari. This was brilliant; when we first got there we sat waiting by the bar for our talk of what we would be doing during our stay, and whilst sat having lunch we saw a family of giraffe walking down towards the river, not far from us. It’s so surreal to see these animals I’ve only ever seen in zoos just walking around only a few hundred metres from me. I had many experiences like that throughout my stay in Zambia, both on safari and just driving along the road or walking through a car park. Every time I saw a wild animal I got very excited and had to explain to locals and taxi drivers, when they asked why I was so pleased to see these animals, that we don’t have animals like these just walking round England, only in zoos. My highlight of safari was seeing a female lion with her three young cubs, as well as getting to see a male lion up close. At one point a little too close as our vehicle went down a ditch and the lion walked up a verge alongside so that he was at eye level with us, much to the fright of me as I was sat on the edge.

I also spent a few days down in Livingstone. As Sally-Anne had already been their with her parents the week before I got to Zambia I decided to still go alone because I couldn’t miss seeing Victoria falls. To get there I had to get two buses first to Lusaka then to Livingstone the following morning. After hearing what my aunt and uncle had told me about these buses I was really dreading the journey. I was imagining them to be the tiny small mini busses you often see crammed and with people hanging out the side.
A guy I met in Livingstone said he spent a whole journey in one of these buses with a woman’s right breast and half her thigh on his lap, along with her shopping bag that she couldn’t hold because she was carrying a chicken with her! Another person I met calls them the ‘here hold my baby buses’. Need I say more about why I was partly dreading this six hour journey!
Luckily the coaches I was on weren’t that bad, but weren’t that great either. The seats are incredibly narrow so if you have a larger person sat next to you then you have one of their arms and legs squashing into yours. Fortunately for me, I find it very easy to sleep when travelling so I slept most of the time. However, this was made slightly more difficult by the TV which was incredibly loud and playing two hours of Zambian choir music. I enjoyed the first few songs but after about half an hour was forced to get my iPod out.

I arrived in Livingstone on Saturday and a friend of Sally-Anne's who works in Livingstone had arranged to take me to a HIV concert that night. It was meant to be a really big concert with Zambia’s main acts performing. It was a fun experience, yet I needed a bit of wine for it. Not surprisingly there were very few white people there and we were stood with the crowd of people who knew every word and dance to all the songs. Luckily the wine helped in making me feel not so out of place! It was something different though and I enjoyed having the opportunity to see a Zambian concert, and it was for a good cause after all.
I went to see Vic falls the following day and it was incredible. But I was rather stupid and thought I wouldn’t need to hire one of the rain coats. After all, the people coming back up didn’t look that wet and a group before me were going down without them, so I set of without one. On my way along the path a woman looked at me in my little top and linen trousers and just said “you’re brave”. That was when I first realised I might have made a big mistake. The people I saw who weren’t that wet had not in fact been all the way across the bridge and along the edge of the cliff so avoided most of the spray. So by the time I’d got back to the beginning of the path I was completely drenched from head to toe and it took me three hours to dry off! But it was worth it.
Having Alexa, Sally-Anne’s friend who lived in Livingstone, there meant I got to do something tourists didn’t. One morning I went with her to her work, which is a block housing her offices, a small school block, and a few locals who live their. Among the people that lived there were five children; these children were special because Alexa had worked to get four of the five sponsored by English people so that they could afford to go to school. When we first got there they ran up shouting Alexa’s name and gave her a big hug then came and hugged me too. A little boy called Junior and a girl called Sheila grabbed hold of my hand and I instantly fell in love with them all. As it was half term we spent the morning learning to write a few letters, singing songs and playing games. I loved it and was pleased I got to see a different side of Zambia that unfortunately many tourists and visitors missed, just as much as any bungee jump or gorge swing.

My sleeping on the coach on the way back to Chipata was also affected. Firstly, by a strong smell of fish that the person opposite was carrying with them and secondly by a man who came and sat next to me halfway through the journey. It was nice to have a bit of conversation for a change but after an hour and a half of comparing everything there is in Zambia to that in England he wasn’t really getting the hint that I just wanted to go back to sleep; so I spoke with this stranger the whole way back to Chipata about every aspect of the education system, buildings, food, culture, religion etc of both countries, for nearly three hours. One thing I find very funny here is how when I mention that I’m English, to certain people I’ve met, they ask me how the Queen is? I have to explain to them, much to their astonishment, that I haven’t actually met her and that most people in England haven’t either. This is something they don’t seem to understand, like the Queen makes personal visits round to peoples houses for cups of tea and biscuit.
When I got back to Chipata I phoned Ruben, the taxi driver to pick me up. When he arrived his previous fare got out and went round to open the boot. I thought he was opening it so that I could put my bags inside, but when I looked down there was a black goat staring up at me. The previous customers just lifted it out and walked off carrying it by the legs and Ruben got back in the car like this wasn’t weird at all! It may not have been for anyone else but I certainly found it weird, yet funny and just got in the taxi slightly baffled but laughing quietly to myself.

Overall I have had a brilliant time here in Zambia and although after a month I’m slightly homesick, I’m also going to be really sad to have to leave and go home. I now have my mind set that I shall make sure to do more travelling whenever I get the chance because if I have the opportunity to have another experience like this I wouldn’t miss it for the world!

“Long time, long time….You have not been seen”

(A Zambian expression usually made by someone you see everyday meaning: “Hello, I haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to?”)

For the past two months we’ve been distracted by a few visitors hence the lengthy silence. I apologise.

Visitor No. 1

Hanna turned up unannounced on May 1st, my birthday! Bless her! She came bearing gifts, not one, not two but three jars of pesto, kirby grips, the latest edition of Marie Clare, bday pressies and cards and soap from the airport hotel! We spent the whole day – just as you should on your birthday – eating and drinking. We ate a picnic lunch on the only patch of grass you can find in central Lusaka –Adventure Land – Zambia’s answer to a theme park complete with a Ferris Wheel you manually wind to make it go round!

The following day we travelled back to Chipata where everyone begins calling Hanna ‘Sally-Anne’ – she’s a small, young, white female, she must be me (no one seemed to notice she’s got flaming red hair!) Showing Hanna around my Zambian life was great and in a strange way made everything seem a bit more normal. That was until I ran a session for some of my peer educators and they all start confessing their sins giving examples of when they’d changed their behaviour in the past. Now I know how a Catholic priest must feel during confession…‘I was once a thief’, ‘I played truant’ ‘I used to drink a lot of beer’ and ‘I used to think sex was good!’ After all, peer educators shouldn’t be angels – realistic role models with ‘reformed souls’ is much better. Hanna’s own confession ‘I don’t say “what” anymore, instead, I say “sorry” or “pardon”’ and my ‘I’ve stopped asking Henry if he’s okay coz he finds it irritating’ seemed a bit pathetic.

We zipped across to Malawi for the weekend and drank beer from chilled tankards made in the pottery on the beach and learned to play Bao, Malawi’s answer to draughts. Over the past couple of weeks the wind has picked up in this part of the world so we got to play in some decent sized waves but had to move the tent to the shelter of the car park in the middle of the night as we were in danger of being blown over to Mozambique.

Enter visitors 2, 3 and 4
The following Friday Henry set off to meet his mum, aunt and sister in Lusaka and Hanna and I followed behind missioning it all the way through to Livingstone on the Saturday. We crawled onto the 5am bus in Chipata, caught a connection in Lusaka and stumbled into Livingstone at 10pm. It was all worth it for the free can of pineapple juice complete with floating bits we got on the second coach!

The Falls are spectacular at this time of year – full to the brim after the rainy season. We saw some hippos and a baby croc on the Zambezi. Hanna and Laura (Henry’s sister) flung themselves off the Gorge and Hanna played at being Peter Pan on the flying fox zip wire.

Back in Lusaka we said goodbye to Hanna and jumped on the sixth 6am bus in little over two weeks back to Chipata. A couple of days later Henry and his family went off to South Luangwa national park in search of some leopards whilst I got to stay at home with Jimmy and no electricity!

Visitor No. 4, 5 and 6: Hannah Gibbs and the parents.
Hannah number 2 (my Zambian colleagues and Henry’s family now think that all my friends are called Hannah) had coincidentally been in Lusaka for work and luckily I was passing through to meet my parents.

Henry waved his family off as the four of us took long bus journey No. 8 to Livingstone for another dose of adrenalin.

It was really lovely spending a day catching up with Hannah, reminiscing about Zimbabwe and comparing notes on HIV, Malaria and marvelling at how little Lusaka has to offer compared to Harare despite the troubles.

Visitor No. 7, Cousin (or sister according to Zambian family structures) Lucy
Lucy arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi on June 1st. The following morning she was greeted with a freak two hour down pour just as we were gearing up for a day of sunbathing. The rainy season in Malawi is supposed to finish in March! After swimming on horse back, a crash course in pot making, a couple of African braais, two lionesses with three tiny cubs, a Zambian pop concert, four long, tedious bus journeys, explaining repeatedly that two condoms are not better than one, lengthy theological discussions, a new wardrobe of chitenge outfits and a run in with an immigration office she’s now safely back in the UK and we’re once again home alone.

Putting HIV+ blood in the fridge WILL NOT cure AIDS

Last Friday I sat in on a group discussion that one of the peer educators had organised with a bunch of young people in his compound. They chose to focus their discussion on HIV & AIDS which initially I was a little disappointed about. The very fact that they’d chosen to take part in the discussion, I assumed, meant that they were more aware of the issues and possibly behaved more responsibly. Below are a few snippets of their discussion that demonstrate just how wrong I was.

The following questions were asked by two 20 year old male participants

Question asked during a discussion about the ways in which HIV can be transmitted: “If you were anaemic and your neighbour was a doctor and he wanted to get revenge on you they would give you a blood transfusion using blood infected with HIV?”

Answer given by peer educator and other participants: “All donated blood in Zambia is screened for HIV a minimum of three times. Only a qualified doctor at the hospital is allowed to give blood transfusions you should not get treatment for anaemia from your neighbour”

Apparently this young man’s concern was based on a real life situation that happened in 1995.

Question: “If donated blood is put in the fridge, will the ‘coldness’ kill the HIV”

Answer given by peer educator “There is no cure for HIV, putting blood in the fridge will not kill the Virus”

Question: “If you drink a bottle of Mosi (Zambian lager) before going for an HIV test will the HIV be undetectable”

Answer given by peer educator: “I’m not sure if having alcohol in your blood when you get tested for HIV means that the virus will be undetectable but most clinics won’t offer an HIV test if you are drink and THERE IS NO CURE FOR HIV”

Apparently some people also believe that if you wash yourself in beer after having unprotected sex the virus will be killed and you will avoid getting infected.

Question: About ten men a day are going to General Hospital to be circumcised becuase they believe this will either cure them from HIV or mean that they can't become infected. Is this true?

Answer: "THERE IS NO CURE FOR HIV. but...there have been studies doe that suggest that someone who is circumcised is at a lower risk of becomign infcted with HIV" Check out this bbc news story for more info. Although its an exciting development if we're not careful it could make matters worse, rumours have obviously already begun that circumcision is a cure and I wouldn't be surprised if someone tries to make money out of such a believe leading to unclean practices.

The scariest one of them all: “The problem of HIV has become like sitting your grade twelve exams. We have been learning about the subject for many years now so those who fail the exam (i.e. fail to avoid infection) must be stupid. It follows that the Pandemic will separate the stupid from the not so stupid and be of benefit to Zambia and the Zambian people!”

Answer given by peer educator and other participants: “People may become infected with HIV through no fault of their own, through mother to child transmission, through blood transfusions, through sexual assault or through not having the power to choose to use protection during sex. This is a very dangerous attitude.”

Lake Malawi Take Two

Filling in the gaps

I realise I haven’t written for a while and I’m not sure whether it’s because nothing much has happened or that I’ve just been feeling lazy. Actually, I’ve tried to upload some photos a few times but connections have been a bit slow recently – something to do with the end of the rainy season?!?

Anyway, here’s a quick round-up of what we’ve been up to over the past month or so (hopefully accompanied by photos but sorry if it hasn’t worked and you’ve just got a boring chunk of text to read).

A couple of weeks ago we were back in the medium-sized smoke (Lusaka) as I had to attend a HIV/AIDS sector workshop. I won’t bore you with the details but lets just say I’m glad that we weren’t paying!

Besides the workshop, Lusaka was good fun. Our trip coincided with a festival celebrating francophone Africa and finally after five months Henry finally got to see why I first fell in love with Africa…live music! Ba Cisekko was amazing. He’s a chora player from Guinea, West Africa. The drums looked like a giant, electronic hot cross bun and the drummer spent the entire show in a trance with his head cocked to one side, staring into the wings but was amazing. My thighs and back were aching for days afterwards from two hours non-stop dancing.

We had a go at recreating some of the rhythms the following night muscling in on the Lusaka based volunteers’ drumming lessons. There were no electronic hot crossed buns to practice on but the pots and pans were a good substitute. (Dan and Hannah – Luther would’ve been proud!)

Back in Chipata, Jimmy’s doubled in size and she’s still doing shark impressions which are a little more convincing now that her teeth have grown. The list of things she’s chewed up is growing – my sunglasses, Henry’s new sandals, a bracelet, my Birkenstocks, the arm of my cardigan and the VSO Zambia newsletter! The only thing she doesn’t seem to want to chew is the toy rope that we bought for that specific purpose. She is petrified of it – and doesn’t understand when we tell her it’s not a snake!

The rainy season’s all but finished which is great as my skirts will stay clean for more than one day. The sun is still scorching though and we’re told that the ‘windy’ season is fast approaching complete with mini-whirlwinds. I’m not feeling too confident about staying on my bike during a gale! Just in the past week I’ve managed to crash into a big bolder and provide morning entertainment for half of Chipata by wobbling off my bike during rush hour (pedestrian and bicycle traffic jams not motorised vehicles).

As for work, I’ve been feeling a bit stuck and de-motivated recently but I’m not going to launch into another rant – I’ll only wind myself into a tizzy and bore you some more.

Looking forward to the next couple of months is keeping me going. This weekend we’re off to chill out on the beach at Lake Malawi, next week we’re in Lusaka for our 6 month call-back workshop, 6 month anniversary party, another drumming lesson and probably a trip or two to the cinema. The first week of May we’re hoping to make it to Zimbabwe for the Harare International Festival of Arts, May 11th Henry’s family arrive and my parents fly in a couple of weeks later. Things will have quietened down by the end of June but that leaves us with only three full months of work! And before we know it Shoprite will be playing Christmas tunes and we’ll be on a plane home.

Not that I’m feeling homesick or anything!

Feeling Positive

My last blog mentioned in the title that I’d started to see some action at work but I forgot to elaborate. Basically, doing some activities at N’cwala ceremony seems to have sparked motivation in the peer educators and I’ve been trying to keep up with them ever since.

It’s become difficult to work in the Tikondane offices because the group are always hanging around eager for something to do. You have to bear in mind that this was the group that only a month ago had gone from my favourite to bottom of the pile as they were failing to turn up outside of pay day. In the last two weeks they’ve done more activities than in the entire four months I’ve been here. I’m feeling so positive that I’m willing to put in writing that I think it’ll continue like this for a while. We’ve just been given a bit of money to play with from funds left over following the depreciation of the Zambian Kwacha last year and another VSO, Amanda, has arrived to work for the consortium as a ‘Resource Mobiliser’.

My favourite activity of the past week has to be watching Tikondane Youth perform a ‘skit’ (drama) on the theme of alcohol abuse and STIs. Thirteen of us plus four drums piled into the nine seater Land Rover and swayed our way down the hill to Referendum, a compound just outside of town. I was a little nervous as the group had chosen to perform outside a bar full of young men downing cartons of ‘Chibuku’ or ‘Shake Shake’ the locally brewed toxic milky mush that, according to its own marketing is ‘found in established and questionable joints everywhere.’ Despite the location, their story of a school boy influenced by his alcoholic father who gets drunk, has unprotected sex, passes an STI to a friend and gets expelled went down a storm. They even managed to get some questionnaires filled in that I’d introduced as part of my less exciting role as the nagging monitoring and evaluation geek. We’ll have to do a bit of a rethink as many identified the main message as ‘school boys shouldn’t involve themselves with alcohol and drugs’ – which is ok but absolves the out-of-school youth (majority of the audience) of any need to change their behaviour.


There’s been a problem with getting the peers to turn up on a regular basis at Chisomo. However, things have picked up since the end of last month when, at the insistence of the more dedicated group members, we cut allowances for non-attendance. It was one of the toughest things I’ve had to do here. We introduced a policy of deducting from allowances during the first month or so after I arrived but it hadn’t really been implemented. Cecelia, Chisomo’s Behaviour Change Coordinator who I work alongside, found it really hard sticking to her guns when faced with excuses such as ‘I was at a funeral for the whole week’ or ‘I had to take my dog to the hospital.’ (That’s probably a little harsh, but so often attending your next door neighbour’s, gardener’s, daughter-in-law’s, uncle’s funeral is used as an excuse to be absent at work for a few days. And, I had a little cold last week and everyone without fail decided they were a doctor, diagnosed me with Flu, asked me what medication I was on and if I’d been to the clinic.) Still, sitting behind a desk withholding what, to many of the volunteers is their only source of income, I felt like Scrooge at Christmas and could see why Cecelia had found it so difficult. The money goes straight back into the, normally empty, youth project pot which is great especially as a big room has just been cleared for us to begin setting up a youth-led resource centre. Don’t ask me how you set up a resource centre without any resources, but that’s next weeks problem!

The group at Chisomo have finally reached the conclusion that drama is not really the right tool for what they want to do which is great because their strength lies in acting as themselves. A number of the girls have babies, when I first arrived I thought that this was a bit of a contradiction – they were preaching abstinence and safe sex with a baby clinging to their back. However, I’ve come to realise that young people here (just like the UK) won’t respond to angelic, holier than thou role models that are as far removed from reality as Inspector Gadget. Annie Zulu is HIV positive and has just had a little baby boy who is negative and if she continues to follow all the PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission) precautions he should stay that way. Young expectant mothers and young women are much more likely to listen to her reflecting on her own situation and follow her good example, get tested and protect their future children or learn from her mistakes and protect themselves.

Instead of drama, Chisomo youth have been out and about in their target zones conducting one-on-one discussions with their peers. The weekly ‘Go Round’ (courtesy of P&P) during our meeting finally served its purpose when they spoke of the challenges their peers had presented them with and gave each other sound advice on possible solutions. Hurrah!

As for KK, I’m going to forget about the past week when the peer educators all but told me they wanted to quit. They claimed the manager was getting them to do lots of the leg work and pocketing the proceeds. And that they couldn’t type up their articles for their youth magazine because they got dirty looks every time they used the office computer that usually sits idle. A couple of hours before the manager told me that the youths had been spreading rumours about her stealing donor money and that she had half a mind to ask the coordinator (who is unpaid) to leave. This feud has been going on for a while and my previous attempts to open some channels of communication between the two warring factions have been unsuccessful. I arranged to meet with the manager on Friday to agree setting aside a time when the peers could use the office computers and reinstate monthly project update meetings – she called in sick!

…but I’m not thinking about last week! The one before that was much more positive. The peer educators had collected ‘To the Editor’ letters from local secondary school students and we decided to use them as the basis for the first edition of the KK Youth Magazine. I’m hoping that this will be a good way of showing that we are truly youth-led and that the magazine will reflect issues important to young people in Chipata and then we’ll have donors lining up to support us…here’s hoping. We’re responding to letters about masturbation, rape and child defilement, corruption, education, smoking, prostitution among other things. You’ll all be pleased to know we’re including a short step-by-step guide about how to use a condom correctly and attaching a condom discreetly to the inside cover of the Mag.

And to top it all off Amanda, a new VSO volunteer has arrived to join the Chipata crew. And she’s great, really positive, upbeat and the icing on the cake is that she’s an experienced fundraiser and her job for the next two years is to get us some money!

N’cwala Ceremony and starting to see some action

Last Saturday, Feb 24th, was the N’cwala ceremony, the annual gathering of the Ngoni tribe. To be honest I’m not entirely sure what the official purpose of the gathering is but it’s something to do with the tribal leaders and Ngoni people paying tribute to their paramount chief and welcoming the end of the rainy season. The latter is a little redundant nowadays as the rainy season has got later and later in recent years and therefore the rains don’t stop until late March at the earliest.

As if to prove the point the heavens opened as we were travelling to the site 40klm outside of Chipata. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem had we not been sat in the back of a flatbed truck with no roof. Most of us managed to stay dry by huddling under the gazebo roof we used on our stall and putting up out brollies. Needless to say out umbrellas are no longer waterproof.

The site as we arrived reminded me of Glastonbury 1998, unfortunately there was no pyramid stage or Tony Bennett but everyone was knee deep in mud. It also became obvious quite quickly that rather than fulfilling their tribal responsibilities many people seemed to be there for the party, enjoying the little sachets of purple liquid which as far as I could work out were something close to pure alcohol.

I, on the other hand, was working. Along with the peer educators, we’d jumped in a flatbed truck early in the morning (still over an hour later than scheduled) ready to teach anyone who was ready to listen the delights of condom use, being faithful, abstinence, VCT (voluntary counselling and testing) and the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse. Unfortunately, the latter went out the window when two of the coordinators got drunk, some role models they turned out to be!

That aside, I was really impressed with the peer educators energy and enthusiasm. They genuinely seemed to believe that what they were doing was making a difference and when one came up to me to ask if I’d noticed if anyone was offering VCT on site because they had a young girl who was ready to go for an HIV test, I had to agree. In fact, the whole day renewed my faith in what it is I’ve been recruited to do here. Our stall was inundated with young men whose faces betrayed the fact that they’d never really seen, let alone used a condom before. We carried out over 50 condom demonstrations and distributed 300, we would have given away a lot more had we not run out. Despite the interest during the one2one discussions most people stated that they didn’t trust condoms because they aren’t 100% safe. The ‘abstinence only’ camp choose to ignore the fact that 98 times out of 100 using a condom correctly will prevent the transmission of STIs including HIV and unwanted pregnancies. I suspect as a result, many young people when they do (almost inevitably) become sexually active, write condoms off as an effective means of prevention. Sex, without a condom even within marriage is most definitely not 100% safe especially in a place where the HIV infection rate is over 25% and monogamous relationships are rare.

We didn’t get to see any of the ceremony which I’m not too sad about as the paramount chief drinks the fresh blood of a bull killed during the finale. I was most impressed by a couple of lads we know who watch our bikes outside the supermarket back in Chipata. They’d walked 40klm that morning to sell scones and ‘softies’ at the festival and were at outside Shoprite the following day bounding about all smiles

Introducing Jimmy!

A couple of weeks ago a little boy from a few houses away turned up at our gate with a skinny little three month old puppy with a gammy leg. Some big doses of TLC and a couple of trips to the vet later and she’s a crazy little pup that growls when she wants attention, has tried to eat 1000 Kwacha notes, whilst refusing to chew her dog bone and gets so excited when we come home or wake up in the morning that she pees herself…wonderful!

Anyway here’s some pictures of the crazy little might as promised.

P.S we named her before checking what sex she was!

Wonderful weekends

During our first month or two in Chipata I thought that weekends were going to be pretty boring. I was worried we’d have a bit too much time to contemplate what we were missing from home. But, with work getting more and more frustrating our sleepy Chipata and our ‘empty’ weekends are turning out to be exactly what the doctor ordered.

This weekend was no exception.

We were in bed on Friday night by 8:30, we’d had a ‘late’ night (11 o’clock) on Thursday after pie and mash at Richard’s. So I was wide awake at 6am Saturday morning. After our weekend habit of dippy eggs and toasted soldiers I finished the last few chapters of my book: ‘As used on the famous Nelson Mandela’ written by the comedian Mark Thomas. It is a very funny but bleak condemnation of the international arms trade. Well worth the read.

There’s been a break in the rains this past week which is great for using our solar heated shower bag. We’re still waiting for the landlord to fit a hot water tank – I’ve got a feeling we shouldn’t hold our breath.

One thing I won’t miss about living in Chipata is having to do all our washing by hand. I thought I was being sensible when I packed a cream linen skirt, a couple of white shirts and numerous white vests. Nope, my linen skirt has permanent browny-red spots from the mud flicking up when I’m cycling through puddles and my white tops are now a grubby shade of orange. To make matters worse Zambians, no matter how poor, are always immaculately dressed. Anyway, this weekend we made the most of the sunshine and spent a couple of hours standing over the laundry bucket.

Saturday early afternoon Henry (a colleague of Henry’s) popped round for a sarnie and interestingly asked me what I knew about anorexia. Interesting because the desirable body image here is definitely not super-model thin. Instead, women are admired for their curvacious hips and bottoms and ironically whilst Brits spend too much time on sun beds and fake tans many girls here spend too much money on skin lightening cream.

Saturday afternoon we thought we’d check out the swimming pool that belongs to a campsite just up the road from us. We’re weren’t sure whether it was open to the public but tourists are scarce this time of year so we thought we’d try our luck. We turned off the main road when we saw a sign for the campsite and continued for about 1 ¾ klms up a dirt track at which point we thought we must have misread the sign and turned back. Back at the main road the sign pointing up the dirt track read ‘Campsite 2klm’ Damn it! We turned round and cycled, for the third time, past the perplexed faces of some young girls doing their laundry in a stream and an old white-bearded white man driving a tractor. We reached the campsite only to find out that it is not usually open to sweaty members of the public after all Zambia’s Vice-President had stayed there last night. Off we set back down the 2klm long dirt track passing whispers of ‘crazy muzungus’ as we went.

Thankfully, there’s another, more welcoming, lodge fifteen minutes up the road that does allow smelly volunteers into their pool. (And this one played host to the President of Zambia last year!) A game of frisbee, a quick dip and a plate of delicious homemade chips later we’d forgotten all about the eight klm round trip we’d taken to get there. The cycle back was a bit of an uphill struggle but I quickly stopped my moaning when we passed a man carrying huge sacks of charcoal on the back of his bike. This prompted Henry to write his long awaited blog about climate change.
Saturday evening we were invited for dinner at Alok’s, a VSO volunteer from Indian and as you can imagine the food was superb. He’d told us the week before when I’d served him up my lame attempt at lasagne that he couldn’t cook – I think he was just being kind. Sat round the dinner table were Malcolm and Elaine – self confessed ‘golden gappers’ VSOs who’ve taken early retirement to share skills and change lives, Denis a volunteer from Uganda, Alok from India and the slightly less exotic Henry and I. The conversation was almost as diverse as our backgrounds ranging from the problem of population growth in developing countries to church bell ringing.

Sunday was a little less exciting. Cornflakes and toast for brekkie, a chapter or two of my new book (cheers Ann) and another round of laundry. We took a stroll around about where we live. If you walk to the end of our street you reach what looks like waste land and feel like you’re deep in the bush but if you look a little closer every spare square inch is covered in tall stalks of maize and banana trees.

We’ve just got back from tea and Christmas cake at Malcolm and Elaines. The Christmas cake turned up in a package that was posted in the UK on October 16th! And now I’m sitting on the veranda waiting eagerly for dinner of nutroast, roast potatoes and gravy courtesy of Master Chef McLaughlin. All seems rather British!