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!