30.11.06
An Epic Tale
So I decided that during the next power outage we had (which happens to be now) I would update my blog. Strangely enough, it took almost a month for our next one after I decided that (typically they’re once a week). The power went off about 11am, and it is now 8:30pm, and still not on. Apparently it will be back by 9:10, but who knows, I guess.
Well, from October 19 – November 1 my parents and I took a trip from Kitwe to Botswana, to South Africa, to Zimbabwe, and back to Kitwe. (If you look at a map, it’s a circle trip).
To start off we stayed the first night in Lusaka in order to get the Interpol for our vehicle (to be able to import/export it into the other countries. SO glad we don’t have that at the US/Canada border). Fortunately, it only took us about a half hour wait, when usually it can take up to three days. The rest of the day we spent trying to get Pula (Botswana currency) and Rand (South African currency) but the banks we went to had little, if any.
The next day we got to Livingstone by noon, but that was only half the trip; we went through the Zambia/Botswana border and traveled seven more hours to Francistown, where we got lost, and found our hotel about half an hour after we arrived. The drive through Botswana had hardly any towns/cities/urban communities, but we took one bathroom stop where the bathroom was this dingy old room that smelled like the Boyd farmhouse (like mice). We did see a lot of animals on the side of the road. This included: three elephants, many donkeys, (and donkey carts) cattle, guinea fowl, and goats. We also got to drive through a lightning storm, which was the first rain we’d seen in a long time. Botswana seemed a lot like driving through the prairies.
From Francistown we traveled across the Botswana/South Africa border and continued on to Pretoria (about 8 hours). It was amazing coming to the first “normal” town (we got lost there, too). It reminded me of Osoyoos; it had the same kind of architecture, and shops lining the streets. On the (highway!!!!) to Pretoria we encountered another lightning storm, and were in awe of the six lane highway. One of the biggest changes in South Africa (besides the nicely paved roads, “western” cities, ample supply of restaurants and other entertainment) was that all the signs were in both English and Afrikaans, and that people would first speak to you in Afrikaans, then in English – at restaurants, for example. Once again, we got lost entering Pretoria (which is like any north American city), took the wrong exit, and landed in a totally different part of the city than we were aiming for. On the other hand, we were able to get an interesting (but self guided) tour of the city. All the streets were lined with Jacarandas (trees with purple flowers), and at one point, on a hill overlooking the city; it was like a sea of purple. When we stopped at a strip mall (yes, a mall!!), the people in the Christian bookstore couldn’t direct us downtown; when we stopped at a nearby gas station, mom and dad each asked a different attendant, who gave them pretty much the same directions, so we figured it would get us there (turn this way, go that way, then after five, go on that side… or something like that, but with pointing). On the way to our hotel we passed both the Canadian and American embassies (the American looked pretty impressive with a bunch of guys in army clothing on motorcycles out in front). At the hotel we stayed at (right downtown) we noticed a professional football (soccer) team staying there as well (they were the loudest during dinner, where a ordered a hamburger that was so big I could barely open my mouth wide enough to eat it).
The next day, we decided to stay in Pretoria, and explore Menlyn Park; the biggest mall in the southern hemisphere. It was quite the ordeal, with the low point being that my sandal broke half way through, and I had to shuffle the rest of the time (hours) we were there. Everything is so much cheaper in South Africa (compared to both Canada and Zambia. Cheaper than Zambia because everything in Zambia is imported from South Africa anyways, and cheaper than Canada because the Rand is 7:1 compared to the Canadian Dollar; meaning I bought a shirt for $3.) In the afternoon we went to the Union Buildings (similar to parliament buildings, I guess), where we had at least one good laugh. The story goes like this: The Union Buildings are situated on a hill overlooking the city, with the slope of the hill covered in beautiful flower gardens, shrubs, statues, and other beautiful landscape items; the perfect place for a wedding. There happened to be a wedding party getting their photos taken (note - in Kitwe, this is done on the green, maintained, traffic circles), and so as we were going down the stairs, and they were coming up, I thought it would be nice to get a picture of them. This turned out to have more consequences than I thought. The photographer must have noticed this, and invited my mom and me to be in a “snap” with the bride and groom. After much pleading, and us not wanting to be rude, we gave in, and decided that yes, us total strangers would be a in a picture with a newly married couple. The bride and groom didn’t exactly look happy, but they did what the photographer told them. After the picture was over, my mom and I almost walked away, when all of a sudden the whole wedding party whipped out their cameras and started snapping away. I think I was laughing the whole time. (Side note: it’s 9:10 now, why isn’t the power on!!) Before we left, I picked up a pair of turquoise (stone) earrings, which I love. For dinner that night we found a wonderful pancake house, where we ate in an open-air restaurant that served sweet and savory pancakes. My mom and I stuck with strawberries and ice cream on our pancakes (more like thick crepes, which were wrapped around their topping), while my dad ventured onto the savory side, and ordered “bibotie” which is a popular South African meat dish. It was so good; it was minced beef that tasted sweet, with a mix of curry.
Early in the morning we set out to our final destination, but apparently it wasn’t early enough – it took us two hours to get from Pretoria to Johannesburg (normally a half hour drive), and was declared their worst traffic jam (it happened to be the introduction of the HOV lane). Our journey continued on the six-lane toll highway, past rolling hills, mountains, and finally, the long awaited Indian Ocean. In Shelley Beach (on the coast, south of Durban) we got lost once again. The place we stayed was not a hotel, but an apartment complex meets summer holiday complex. It was a nice place, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, TV area, and a wonderful deck – wonderful because of its amazing view of the Indian Ocean, which was right in front of us. We spent three days in Shelley Beach, which turned out to be a bit of a retirement community. There was a Spar (grocery store, for those of you who haven’t been to Europe) across the street, and a mall two blocks away. We managed to spend two hours tanning/body surfing/wave jumping at the beach before the wind picked up (the other two days rained/were cloudy), but we also took walks along the ocean in front of the place we stayed. Other events included visiting a Croc farm; leather shoe store where the owner listed off the rules of the shop before we were allowed to enter (the most important being DO NOT touch anything); reading for hours at a time in the lounge chairs on our deck; eating avocado with our newly purchased avocado slicer (like an apple slicer, but for avocados, or “avos”); going to the Waffle House restaurant (much like the pancake house – sweet and savory) where we met the 80 year-old owner who had been running it for about 50 years; walking in Tanglewood Park behind the Waffle House where if you face a certain directing while standing on a marked spot, your voice will echo (so creepy); shopping; eating out; using the internet café; eating a whole jar of Nutella in three days; and being merry and joyful.
After three days of relaxation we headed back to Pretoria. Fortunately, we had decided to stay in a different hotel than the one we had on the way there, because there was a taxi strike in all the major cities of South Africa – especially Cape Town and Pretoria – with four thousand taxi drivers protesting at the Union Buildings – right where we would have been, had we stayed with the original hotel. We only got lost twice.
From Pretoria we continued on to Messina/Musina (it’s spelled differently depending on the map you use), where we hadn’t pre-booked any accommodation. Messina is right near the (Zimbabwe) border, and much smaller than any urban community we had stayed at in a while. On our second try we found a nice little guesthouse, where we stayed the night. I did not (and still cannot) understand why a small town like Messina had three Spars, while a city like Kitwe has none (!!).
Early the next morning we ventured to the unknown, mysterious, country-who-banned-BBC… Zimbabwe. The wait at the border was... interesting. Highlights included waiting one hour in line behind someone importing seven vehicles (a truck driver). During this expanse of time we chatted with the South African Nephew/Aunt combination behind us. The total border time was 2.5 hours. Other than filling out a wrong form (apparently they rarely give out vacation forms, because so few people vacation there, so they automatically gave us an “in-transit” form), we had no other border mishaps.
Once in Zimbabwe, the two-lane road to Harare was a big change compared to South African highways. We saw monkeys on the side of the road (and crossing it), and saw our first few legendary African Baobabs, which are gigantic. There were no stops on the side of the road (again, a big change from South African highways), so we resorted to the “roadside” bathroom stop. We arrived in Harare, and surprise-surprise, we got lost. It took stopping at two hotels in downtown Harare before we were able to get proper directions to the guesthouse we were staying at. It was almost eerie driving downtown, because there were six lanes of road, but enough cars for two. On the road to our guesthouse, there was a line-up, at least 2km long of vehicles. We had no idea what was going on, and assumed it was a football game, or evangelical meeting. It turned out that this line was so long that it blocked the entrance to our accommodation, so we had to find an alternate route – the people sitting on their cars in front of the guest house told us the line was a fuel queue for the next day; hundreds of people would be waiting in line overnight to get cheap fuel. After a hotel buffet with a friend of a friend (equivalent to $7 each; in a South African hotel we noticed it was $25), we went back to our guesthouse across the street, and slept.
(Break Here. Another night, another power outage. Continue.)
The next morning, the Cooledges (directing VOH in Harare) came to give us Fuel Coupons, and show us the way to their house, because we were staying there that night. Since there is no fuel (petrol or diesel) in Zimbabwe, NGO’s have to buy fuel coupons, which are paid for beforehand, then given at certain gas stations after being filled out. These gas stations do not accept money, only coupons. Even the coupon accepting station had a line, so after waiting, and filling out our coupons, we got diesel, and continued on our way. We unloaded our stuff at the Cooledges' house, and then headed to VOH. It was really neat to see another Village of Hope, but we were greeted with the usual smiling faces of little kids (although, they were half naked because it was so hot that the preschoolers were having “get sprayed with the hose” time). We got group hugs from the soaking wet preschoolers, also making us soaking wet, and had a tour of the grounds, and vision of the future grounds. Afterwards, we briefly stopped at the near by mall (yes, they have malls there; unlike Kitwe… and mom managed to buy a purse, fabric, gifts all within this time. Haha), then met the rest of the family for lunch, and had a swim back at the house. The previous day, we had arrived in Harare too late to meet Sam who had stayed in Canada (sometimes with the Bersaglios) years ago, and we had met there. But… someone went to get the gate (kind of like getting the door), and I heard an, “Uncle Sam!” He came into the house, and I began with, “I haven’t seen you in about ten years…” but he remembered me right away. Sam, Sam, the Bongo Man. My parents and I talked with him for a while, until he had to leave. A nice home made dinner, and then to bed.
Early the next morning we were up, and headed to Dune Estates, which is a collection of gift/souvenir stores, rather than the hectic Curio Market. We bought … a lot - mostly because we could take advantage of the Zim Dollar. (Side note: It has the highest inflation in the world, of 1000%; for a comparison, a few years ago the Zim Dollar was twelve to one with the US dollar, but now it is some million to one. Also, it is not real money. It cannot be used or even exchanged anywhere else in the world, because it expires; there is a little note printed on the bills that say something similar to “Valid until February 2007”). The stores were hot and stuffy, so we had a nice lunch of avocado salad (which was amazing). We were running late, but we managed to take a quick look at the “Rock Garden” were there are carvers on site, making rock carvings, amidst the thousands of carvings for sale – ranging from palm sized, to large statue sized.
Leaving at 12:30, we still had a minimum of eight hours to drive back to Lusaka, and that was pushing it if we wanted to make it their in day light. It was one of the most beautiful drives in my mind; rolling hills, beautiful views from the tops of them. There were many winding mountain passes/hills, and unfortunately we got stuck behind an “Abnormal Load” truck, which took up both lanes, and it took at least 15 minutes of crawling along behind it until we finally managed to pass. As we drove by farms, we speculated at which ones had been deserted seven years ago. One emergency roadside pee stop, and four hours later we came to the Chirundu border of Zimbabwe/Zambia. There were no signs, so we would have completely missed the turn if it hadn’t been for the man at the booth who was wildly waving at us. On the Zimbabwe side baboons were jumping on all the vehicles, and the newly built building. Inside, we had to physically walk and find the border authorities that we needed to stamp our papers – they weren’t in their offices. Next, on the Zambia side it was a total shock to the system – no enormous air-conditioned building, but one tiny room with at least 50 people crammed inside. We didn’t even make it to the inside though, because it appeared we were supposed to wait in the line that was going outside the door – behind 13 other people. Meanwhile, we were really trying to hurry, because the sun was slowly, but surely going down, and we knew that there was a difficult road ahead. My dad decided to go inside, and see what was going on, and in doing so, managed to queue jump almost to the front of the line; things didn’t take long after that. As soon as we came out of “no man’s land,” and into Zambia it was hectic - people everywhere, shouting everywhere, people trying to go through the gate so that the border patrol had to restrain them. As we drove further down the road in this border town of Chirindu, we noticed hundreds, even thousands of little tiny houses on the side of the road, and far into the distance; some were brick, some straw, clay, or mud; some with thatched roofs, some with tin. My dad told us that last time he was there, Serge had told him that these were all prostitute’s “houses” – for the truckers that wait days and days to get through the border. The road turned out to be in rough shape; the roads were still winding, now with trucks stalled or in the ditch, and the sunlight was almost gone. A few times we had to travel on detour gravel (still winding) roads due to construction. Eventually, after keeping a look out for cars without lights, and people on the roadside, we made it back to the pavement, and were soon in Lusaka, at the Intercontinental (we didn’t get lost there). We had trouble with our room, so we were switched, and took long awaited showers. By the time we went downstairs for dinner it was already 10pm. Pizza and samosas… mmm.
On the final day of our journey we did a “Costco” shop at Spar, and checked out the new Mr. Price (equivalent to Old Navy), before heading back to Kitwe. Back at Kopa, an incredibly hot house, and an infestation of cockroaches in the kitchen garbage that we had forgotten to put outside greeted us. That concludes our epic journey.
Well, from October 19 – November 1 my parents and I took a trip from Kitwe to Botswana, to South Africa, to Zimbabwe, and back to Kitwe. (If you look at a map, it’s a circle trip).
To start off we stayed the first night in Lusaka in order to get the Interpol for our vehicle (to be able to import/export it into the other countries. SO glad we don’t have that at the US/Canada border). Fortunately, it only took us about a half hour wait, when usually it can take up to three days. The rest of the day we spent trying to get Pula (Botswana currency) and Rand (South African currency) but the banks we went to had little, if any.
The next day we got to Livingstone by noon, but that was only half the trip; we went through the Zambia/Botswana border and traveled seven more hours to Francistown, where we got lost, and found our hotel about half an hour after we arrived. The drive through Botswana had hardly any towns/cities/urban communities, but we took one bathroom stop where the bathroom was this dingy old room that smelled like the Boyd farmhouse (like mice). We did see a lot of animals on the side of the road. This included: three elephants, many donkeys, (and donkey carts) cattle, guinea fowl, and goats. We also got to drive through a lightning storm, which was the first rain we’d seen in a long time. Botswana seemed a lot like driving through the prairies.
From Francistown we traveled across the Botswana/South Africa border and continued on to Pretoria (about 8 hours). It was amazing coming to the first “normal” town (we got lost there, too). It reminded me of Osoyoos; it had the same kind of architecture, and shops lining the streets. On the (highway!!!!) to Pretoria we encountered another lightning storm, and were in awe of the six lane highway. One of the biggest changes in South Africa (besides the nicely paved roads, “western” cities, ample supply of restaurants and other entertainment) was that all the signs were in both English and Afrikaans, and that people would first speak to you in Afrikaans, then in English – at restaurants, for example. Once again, we got lost entering Pretoria (which is like any north American city), took the wrong exit, and landed in a totally different part of the city than we were aiming for. On the other hand, we were able to get an interesting (but self guided) tour of the city. All the streets were lined with Jacarandas (trees with purple flowers), and at one point, on a hill overlooking the city; it was like a sea of purple. When we stopped at a strip mall (yes, a mall!!), the people in the Christian bookstore couldn’t direct us downtown; when we stopped at a nearby gas station, mom and dad each asked a different attendant, who gave them pretty much the same directions, so we figured it would get us there (turn this way, go that way, then after five, go on that side… or something like that, but with pointing). On the way to our hotel we passed both the Canadian and American embassies (the American looked pretty impressive with a bunch of guys in army clothing on motorcycles out in front). At the hotel we stayed at (right downtown) we noticed a professional football (soccer) team staying there as well (they were the loudest during dinner, where a ordered a hamburger that was so big I could barely open my mouth wide enough to eat it).
The next day, we decided to stay in Pretoria, and explore Menlyn Park; the biggest mall in the southern hemisphere. It was quite the ordeal, with the low point being that my sandal broke half way through, and I had to shuffle the rest of the time (hours) we were there. Everything is so much cheaper in South Africa (compared to both Canada and Zambia. Cheaper than Zambia because everything in Zambia is imported from South Africa anyways, and cheaper than Canada because the Rand is 7:1 compared to the Canadian Dollar; meaning I bought a shirt for $3.) In the afternoon we went to the Union Buildings (similar to parliament buildings, I guess), where we had at least one good laugh. The story goes like this: The Union Buildings are situated on a hill overlooking the city, with the slope of the hill covered in beautiful flower gardens, shrubs, statues, and other beautiful landscape items; the perfect place for a wedding. There happened to be a wedding party getting their photos taken (note - in Kitwe, this is done on the green, maintained, traffic circles), and so as we were going down the stairs, and they were coming up, I thought it would be nice to get a picture of them. This turned out to have more consequences than I thought. The photographer must have noticed this, and invited my mom and me to be in a “snap” with the bride and groom. After much pleading, and us not wanting to be rude, we gave in, and decided that yes, us total strangers would be a in a picture with a newly married couple. The bride and groom didn’t exactly look happy, but they did what the photographer told them. After the picture was over, my mom and I almost walked away, when all of a sudden the whole wedding party whipped out their cameras and started snapping away. I think I was laughing the whole time. (Side note: it’s 9:10 now, why isn’t the power on!!) Before we left, I picked up a pair of turquoise (stone) earrings, which I love. For dinner that night we found a wonderful pancake house, where we ate in an open-air restaurant that served sweet and savory pancakes. My mom and I stuck with strawberries and ice cream on our pancakes (more like thick crepes, which were wrapped around their topping), while my dad ventured onto the savory side, and ordered “bibotie” which is a popular South African meat dish. It was so good; it was minced beef that tasted sweet, with a mix of curry.
Early in the morning we set out to our final destination, but apparently it wasn’t early enough – it took us two hours to get from Pretoria to Johannesburg (normally a half hour drive), and was declared their worst traffic jam (it happened to be the introduction of the HOV lane). Our journey continued on the six-lane toll highway, past rolling hills, mountains, and finally, the long awaited Indian Ocean. In Shelley Beach (on the coast, south of Durban) we got lost once again. The place we stayed was not a hotel, but an apartment complex meets summer holiday complex. It was a nice place, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, TV area, and a wonderful deck – wonderful because of its amazing view of the Indian Ocean, which was right in front of us. We spent three days in Shelley Beach, which turned out to be a bit of a retirement community. There was a Spar (grocery store, for those of you who haven’t been to Europe) across the street, and a mall two blocks away. We managed to spend two hours tanning/body surfing/wave jumping at the beach before the wind picked up (the other two days rained/were cloudy), but we also took walks along the ocean in front of the place we stayed. Other events included visiting a Croc farm; leather shoe store where the owner listed off the rules of the shop before we were allowed to enter (the most important being DO NOT touch anything); reading for hours at a time in the lounge chairs on our deck; eating avocado with our newly purchased avocado slicer (like an apple slicer, but for avocados, or “avos”); going to the Waffle House restaurant (much like the pancake house – sweet and savory) where we met the 80 year-old owner who had been running it for about 50 years; walking in Tanglewood Park behind the Waffle House where if you face a certain directing while standing on a marked spot, your voice will echo (so creepy); shopping; eating out; using the internet café; eating a whole jar of Nutella in three days; and being merry and joyful.
After three days of relaxation we headed back to Pretoria. Fortunately, we had decided to stay in a different hotel than the one we had on the way there, because there was a taxi strike in all the major cities of South Africa – especially Cape Town and Pretoria – with four thousand taxi drivers protesting at the Union Buildings – right where we would have been, had we stayed with the original hotel. We only got lost twice.
From Pretoria we continued on to Messina/Musina (it’s spelled differently depending on the map you use), where we hadn’t pre-booked any accommodation. Messina is right near the (Zimbabwe) border, and much smaller than any urban community we had stayed at in a while. On our second try we found a nice little guesthouse, where we stayed the night. I did not (and still cannot) understand why a small town like Messina had three Spars, while a city like Kitwe has none (!!).
Early the next morning we ventured to the unknown, mysterious, country-who-banned-BBC… Zimbabwe. The wait at the border was... interesting. Highlights included waiting one hour in line behind someone importing seven vehicles (a truck driver). During this expanse of time we chatted with the South African Nephew/Aunt combination behind us. The total border time was 2.5 hours. Other than filling out a wrong form (apparently they rarely give out vacation forms, because so few people vacation there, so they automatically gave us an “in-transit” form), we had no other border mishaps.
Once in Zimbabwe, the two-lane road to Harare was a big change compared to South African highways. We saw monkeys on the side of the road (and crossing it), and saw our first few legendary African Baobabs, which are gigantic. There were no stops on the side of the road (again, a big change from South African highways), so we resorted to the “roadside” bathroom stop. We arrived in Harare, and surprise-surprise, we got lost. It took stopping at two hotels in downtown Harare before we were able to get proper directions to the guesthouse we were staying at. It was almost eerie driving downtown, because there were six lanes of road, but enough cars for two. On the road to our guesthouse, there was a line-up, at least 2km long of vehicles. We had no idea what was going on, and assumed it was a football game, or evangelical meeting. It turned out that this line was so long that it blocked the entrance to our accommodation, so we had to find an alternate route – the people sitting on their cars in front of the guest house told us the line was a fuel queue for the next day; hundreds of people would be waiting in line overnight to get cheap fuel. After a hotel buffet with a friend of a friend (equivalent to $7 each; in a South African hotel we noticed it was $25), we went back to our guesthouse across the street, and slept.
(Break Here. Another night, another power outage. Continue.)
The next morning, the Cooledges (directing VOH in Harare) came to give us Fuel Coupons, and show us the way to their house, because we were staying there that night. Since there is no fuel (petrol or diesel) in Zimbabwe, NGO’s have to buy fuel coupons, which are paid for beforehand, then given at certain gas stations after being filled out. These gas stations do not accept money, only coupons. Even the coupon accepting station had a line, so after waiting, and filling out our coupons, we got diesel, and continued on our way. We unloaded our stuff at the Cooledges' house, and then headed to VOH. It was really neat to see another Village of Hope, but we were greeted with the usual smiling faces of little kids (although, they were half naked because it was so hot that the preschoolers were having “get sprayed with the hose” time). We got group hugs from the soaking wet preschoolers, also making us soaking wet, and had a tour of the grounds, and vision of the future grounds. Afterwards, we briefly stopped at the near by mall (yes, they have malls there; unlike Kitwe… and mom managed to buy a purse, fabric, gifts all within this time. Haha), then met the rest of the family for lunch, and had a swim back at the house. The previous day, we had arrived in Harare too late to meet Sam who had stayed in Canada (sometimes with the Bersaglios) years ago, and we had met there. But… someone went to get the gate (kind of like getting the door), and I heard an, “Uncle Sam!” He came into the house, and I began with, “I haven’t seen you in about ten years…” but he remembered me right away. Sam, Sam, the Bongo Man. My parents and I talked with him for a while, until he had to leave. A nice home made dinner, and then to bed.
Early the next morning we were up, and headed to Dune Estates, which is a collection of gift/souvenir stores, rather than the hectic Curio Market. We bought … a lot - mostly because we could take advantage of the Zim Dollar. (Side note: It has the highest inflation in the world, of 1000%; for a comparison, a few years ago the Zim Dollar was twelve to one with the US dollar, but now it is some million to one. Also, it is not real money. It cannot be used or even exchanged anywhere else in the world, because it expires; there is a little note printed on the bills that say something similar to “Valid until February 2007”). The stores were hot and stuffy, so we had a nice lunch of avocado salad (which was amazing). We were running late, but we managed to take a quick look at the “Rock Garden” were there are carvers on site, making rock carvings, amidst the thousands of carvings for sale – ranging from palm sized, to large statue sized.
Leaving at 12:30, we still had a minimum of eight hours to drive back to Lusaka, and that was pushing it if we wanted to make it their in day light. It was one of the most beautiful drives in my mind; rolling hills, beautiful views from the tops of them. There were many winding mountain passes/hills, and unfortunately we got stuck behind an “Abnormal Load” truck, which took up both lanes, and it took at least 15 minutes of crawling along behind it until we finally managed to pass. As we drove by farms, we speculated at which ones had been deserted seven years ago. One emergency roadside pee stop, and four hours later we came to the Chirundu border of Zimbabwe/Zambia. There were no signs, so we would have completely missed the turn if it hadn’t been for the man at the booth who was wildly waving at us. On the Zimbabwe side baboons were jumping on all the vehicles, and the newly built building. Inside, we had to physically walk and find the border authorities that we needed to stamp our papers – they weren’t in their offices. Next, on the Zambia side it was a total shock to the system – no enormous air-conditioned building, but one tiny room with at least 50 people crammed inside. We didn’t even make it to the inside though, because it appeared we were supposed to wait in the line that was going outside the door – behind 13 other people. Meanwhile, we were really trying to hurry, because the sun was slowly, but surely going down, and we knew that there was a difficult road ahead. My dad decided to go inside, and see what was going on, and in doing so, managed to queue jump almost to the front of the line; things didn’t take long after that. As soon as we came out of “no man’s land,” and into Zambia it was hectic - people everywhere, shouting everywhere, people trying to go through the gate so that the border patrol had to restrain them. As we drove further down the road in this border town of Chirindu, we noticed hundreds, even thousands of little tiny houses on the side of the road, and far into the distance; some were brick, some straw, clay, or mud; some with thatched roofs, some with tin. My dad told us that last time he was there, Serge had told him that these were all prostitute’s “houses” – for the truckers that wait days and days to get through the border. The road turned out to be in rough shape; the roads were still winding, now with trucks stalled or in the ditch, and the sunlight was almost gone. A few times we had to travel on detour gravel (still winding) roads due to construction. Eventually, after keeping a look out for cars without lights, and people on the roadside, we made it back to the pavement, and were soon in Lusaka, at the Intercontinental (we didn’t get lost there). We had trouble with our room, so we were switched, and took long awaited showers. By the time we went downstairs for dinner it was already 10pm. Pizza and samosas… mmm.
On the final day of our journey we did a “Costco” shop at Spar, and checked out the new Mr. Price (equivalent to Old Navy), before heading back to Kitwe. Back at Kopa, an incredibly hot house, and an infestation of cockroaches in the kitchen garbage that we had forgotten to put outside greeted us. That concludes our epic journey.
29.11.06
October 17
-Tonight we had pizza with eggplant on it.
-I finished grade ten. Now I’m in grade eleven taking English, Math, Digital Media Arts, and PE. Online PE. … I’m getting pretty good at exercising my fingers…
-A large spider crawled on my arm.
-Zambian Elections were on September 29.
-A few days ago some little boys came to our gate and asked to pick the manna on our tree because it was ripe. So they did. And my mom couldn’t watch because they had to climb to the top of the tree to get it. They gave us one and it looks like an apple, but has the texture of mango, yet I have nothing to compare the taste to.
-Our mango tree is starting to ripen.
-I took off my toe nail polish, and every time I look at my feet I feel naked.
-I’m experimenting with new ways to tie my mosquito net.
-I got a letter in the mail from Jasmine!
- Rainy season is almost here.
And that’s a wrap.
(Because I wrote this on October 17th I have a major update coming within the next few days. There probably won’t be any pictures though, because they take so long, and the internet as been unusually slow lately.)
-I finished grade ten. Now I’m in grade eleven taking English, Math, Digital Media Arts, and PE. Online PE. … I’m getting pretty good at exercising my fingers…
-A large spider crawled on my arm.
-Zambian Elections were on September 29.
-A few days ago some little boys came to our gate and asked to pick the manna on our tree because it was ripe. So they did. And my mom couldn’t watch because they had to climb to the top of the tree to get it. They gave us one and it looks like an apple, but has the texture of mango, yet I have nothing to compare the taste to.
-Our mango tree is starting to ripen.
-I took off my toe nail polish, and every time I look at my feet I feel naked.
-I’m experimenting with new ways to tie my mosquito net.
-I got a letter in the mail from Jasmine!
- Rainy season is almost here.
And that’s a wrap.
(Because I wrote this on October 17th I have a major update coming within the next few days. There probably won’t be any pictures though, because they take so long, and the internet as been unusually slow lately.)
