Zambia at last!

I did end up packing everything bar the kitchen sink and somehow managed to get away with being 7 kilos over the limit – and that was after transferring everything I could into Henry’s bags – he’d chosen to take the minimalist traveller route!

After a pretty uneventful flight and stop over in Jo’burg we arrived smelly and shattered in Lusaka International Airport, Zambia. And immediately we were greeted by some of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen and taken step by step through immigration. I know it’s what everyone says about Africa – which in itself is so huge and diverse – but Zambia so far appears such a friendly place. Maurice, my Programme Manager with VSO Zambia, doesn’t stop smiling and whatever the meaning of his sentence they are almost always followed by a heartfelt giggle.

For this week we are being eased slowly into life in Zambia at the Commonwealth Africa Youth Centre in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city. To minimise risk of homesickness they are offering us a breakfast of eggs and beans every morning. Henry and I are struggling with out first encounter with a mossie net – the safety pins from the travel sewing kit have already come in useful! Neither of us have been food for mosquitoes yet although the skies have just this moment opened and the little critters get vicious in the rain apparently.

So far, in-country induction has been largely stress free. We were introduced to the city of Lusaka from the seats of a safari style mini-bus. Driving through the high-density areas isn’t quite what I’d envisage and I must admit I didn’t feel entirely comfortable. However, we did provide what seemed to be welcome Sunday afternoon entertainment for the local kids who ran alongside the bus laughing hysterically at Henry’s ‘strange’ face whilst shouting ‘muzungu muzungu!’ Muzungu literally means ‘white person’ and translates throughout Africa.

Another activity I wasn’t expecting and again didn’t feel entirely comfortable with was canapés at the British High Commissioner’s house. But when the director of VSO sneaked into her thank you speech something along the lines of ‘I hope Mr Commissioner that you will receive with open arms applications for funds from this new batch of volunteers,’ we quickly realised that hobnobbing has its purpose!

We are now ‘full-time’ Zambians with work permits, lifelong national registration cards and Zambian recipe book! I’ll post some recipes as soon as I’ve tried some out! All these privileges don’t come easy – we were waiting at immigration for nearly four hours. Henry and I got shouted at because Wegberg, our place of birth, is NOT in the UK (yep, we were born in the same place!) Getting our registration cards felt like something out of a Monty Python sketch we ran up and down a long corridor going in and out various doors picking up bits of paper, putting them down, having our photo taken (having it taken again when we blinked or laughed!) and waiting again for our mug shots to be laminated onto a piece of card!

We’ve just finished a day of workshops/lectures on gender and cultural issues in Zambia – I won’t bore you with the details but the quote of the week definitely goes to the trainer:

‘if women were supposed to be the sole carrier of the child and the only one to
do the laundry she would have been born a Kangaroo holding a bathtub!’

And with that thought I think I’ll leave it there.