Home sweet home

After spending most of the day shifting furniture back and forth on the roof of Richard’s Landrover, we finally moved into our very own house last Thursday. The excitement of our new found independence quickly vanished as we noticed every room came complete with a resident creepy crawly and we’d forgotten to buy bug spray! I think our ethical concerns might temporarily go out the window when we ask the bug exterminators to pay a visit soon. Spiders, cockroaches and giant crickets weren’t the only things making us feel uncomfortable, for the first time since arriving in Zambia we became acutely aware of the priveleges of being white.

In the weeks leading up to our arrival our kitchen has been gutted and re-built. During this time the ‘kitchen fitter’ and his wife and at least five small children had been living in a small crumbling shed in the backyard. As we struggled to get our mossie net up and prepared out first meal in our new home (beans on toast!) the family gathered their belongings, built a new bed from scratch and went off into the night to find somewhere else to stay. It took all our common sense not to offer them a room in our house – after all, we have got two huge spare bedrooms! But I really can't explain how crap iot felt, the two of us sitting in this huge house and seven or eight people staring through the curtain-less windows at the undeservedly priveleged muzungus

We did feel a little better thinking about the gardenee we'd employed earlier in the day. We’d met Mr Zulu a few times when we’d been back and forth to the house and he’d helped transport our fridge and cooker. What we hadn’t realised however was that he’d been employed to work on our garden just for September but had turned up a few days before we arrived and started work (unpaid) again in the hope that we’d employ him. Despite some difficulties in translation (he was insisting on working three days a week even though we’d decided to continue paying him his monthly wage for only two days work a week) we finally agreed. As he left he docked his hat and bowed his way out of the gate looking eternally grateful – which just made us feel even worse as we’d just agreed to pay him the equivalent of £2.50 a day.

The word has obviously got round that new muzungus are in town as we were woken this morning by an incessant tapping on the front gate and found a young man offering to do our laundry. A few hours later a lady stops by also asking for work. We are just reminding ourselves that expats employing everyone that comes knocking is not a sustainable answer to Zambia’s poverty and in any case we can’t afford to support everyone that comes knocking. Our allowance is 1.8million kwacha a month (only time I'm ever going to be a millionairre!) which is the equivalent of about 250pounds.

Since the first night's fiascos we're now settling into our house nicely. Our sofa is still being made so we’re using garden chairs in the meantime. We took a trip to Malawi last Wednesday and picked up a six seater wicker dining set, coffee table and three straw mats for less than a tenner! We’ve no hot water, but the way the weather is at the moment it’s blessing in disguise. Three more VSOs live just round the corner and they’ve got about four mango trees, an avocado tree and an orange tree in their back garden! Today we cycled to town and filled up our rucksacks with fresh fruit and veg and now we're sat in the local internet cafe, possibly off to a BBQ later and Henry can russle up one of his lovely curries. Sounds like a good saturday routine to me!

Photos of the house will follow soon.

Thanks so much all of you who are emailing me - I'll do my best to reply to you all soon. th einternet is quite slow and pretty expensive but I'll do my best.