Out of Lusaka

Dear Friends, I'm sorry for the long period between posts - there have been a few nights this past week where I thought the evening would be perfectly spent writing a blog post, but unfortuntely we have had a bit of a problem connecting to the internet at home, and work has blocked blogspot (but strangely not facebook).

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Recently, I have been beginning to think that there is nothing to Zambia beyond the cement walls, dusty roads and occassional fields full of brown tall grass in Lusaka. It is not an all together unpleasant place to live, but it has certainly not matched the natural beauty of my homes in Monduli and Nyabyeya. Lucky for me (or at least my impression of Zambia), this past few days have given me the chance to explore the country a bit.

Thursday morning started of normally enough, working on a few projects and trying to figure out how to stretch them or who to talk with to come up with enough work for our full 9 and a half our workday. Around 5 of 11 our boss came to our desks for a quick meeting, then said he was headed out for the rest of the afternoon to Kabwe. In a moment of hope, I asked "could we come too?" Yep. We're leaving in 5 minutes. No problem! And so, we packed our bags, waited another half our until our driver could be located, and started heading north.

Kabwe is about an hour and a half north of Lusaka. It is the provincial capital of the Central Province (one of the 9 in Zambia). We were headed up there to check on the work being done on a large house that will soon be the 8th of our provincial offices. Work is behind schedule, and our job was to impress the contracters with how soon we wanted it done, and see if we couldn't get the to pick up the pace.

Leaving Lusaka, I was struck by how much of the city I have yet to see. With my daily walks to work and morning runs from home, and weekly excursions to friends houses, grocery stores, and evenings out, there are certain parts of the city that I have become accustomed too. Most of them are in sections of the city that are home to the ex-pats or wealthy Zambians, and thus are thus walled off by cement fences reaching 10 feet high with shards of glass or electric wire at the top. As you walk or run down a street, you find it takes on a bit of a tunnel appearance, a paved (or not) street, with brown sand on the side serving as a sidewalk, and brown grass that eventually turns into a brownish-gry cement wall. Some of the walls are painted to look like billboards, with advertisements for everything from cell phones, computer equiptment, or vacuums.

On our way out of the city to Kabwe, the cement tunnels turned to rivers of color as we left the expat sections of town and arrived on streets that are populated by the 1.5 million Zambians who live in Lusaka. We stayed on the main road, which appeared to be the western end of a city in and of itself. Lining the street were cement and sometimes mud houses, with small yards fenced in with stick and shrubs. In their small yards were men and women; sitting in groups, cooking, or washing clothes. There were children playing, dogs and chickens pecking about for scraps of food, and lines of hanging clothes. Every few houses there was a dirt road - sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, leading into what seemed like an endless city. And unlike the streets that I frequently travel, where there is a steady, but narrow stream of people, these streets were full of people walking - in every direction and every color.

My time is up, but more natural beauty (and pictures) to come. Thanks for reading.