Our
mid-term break brought a most welcome rest and also the chance to explore a new
city. I love Kaniki but it is quite intense living and working within a
compound, particularly as it feels ‘out in the sticks’ compared to life back
home. So Rosie and I decided to visit Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, for a few
days.
We
arranged to travel with our friend Anna (from church here) who had to go to Lusaka
for a work meeting, but we persuaded to stay on with us. Unfortunately Anna’s
car broke down the evening before we went! As the car that Rosie and I drive over
here is only suitable for shorter journeys, it meant a five hour journey on the
bus.
I
was actually rather pleasantly surprised, as the bus turned out to be a coach with
enough seats for all the passengers - the usual buses around town are more like
vans which large numbers of people pile into! I even managed to sleep for half of
the bus journey.
We
met Anna in Lusaka as she had opted to leave at 5.30am! When Rosie and I
arrived, we felt extremely popular! At the bus station there was a huge crowd
of men shouting ‘Taxi!’ at us before we'd even got out of our seats. I literally
had to push people out of the way to escape!
Another
pleasant surprise was the place we stayed. At only 120K (approx. £12)
per person a night, our expectations were not very high. However, we had a nice
two-bedroom apartment for the three of us. We
appreciated the clean tile floors which meant we could walk around in bare feet
(I usually keep my flip flops on here!) as well as the power shower.
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| The Baptist Apartments |
The
apartment was a walk away from the centre.
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| Anna on our walk into the city |
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| Casually strolling along in front of us... |
In most capital cities, you would expect
there to be lots of historical and cultural things to do. There aren’t many in
Lusaka! The only remotely cultural thing we did was go to a big market. It was
great fun bartering and chatting to the people who were selling handmade crafts.
If you've ever been to Africa or been given a present from here, you would
probably recognise a lot of the gifts!
Another
treat was actually drinking a cocktail. Yes, just the one…I thought I’d better
not go overboard having had no alcohol since I left the UK! We had a tasty meal
out on our first evening in the city but later found out that the dinner we'd
all eaten didn’t agree with us! Suffice to say, we didn’t eat out much the next
day.
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| Dinner and cocktails! |
In
Lusaka, there are three shopping centres which each have a cinema, so we were
easily able to find entertainment. We enjoyed strolling round the shops, buying
things that we can’t get in Ndola, having coffee at Mugg & Bean (an African
coffee shop!) and seeing a few films at the cinema...five films, to be exact!
We saw American Sniper, Kingsman, Jupiter Ascending, Annie and Taken 3. More
movies than I think I saw at the cinema in the whole of last year! Yet it was
great because it was cheap (yes, I am my mother’s daughter!) and so different
from what we've been doing since we arrived in Zambia…it felt like a small
taste of home.
Our
bus journey back to Ndola was fairly straightforward, although rather amusingly
there was a young boy travelling on the seat next to us with two live rabbits!
