Lusaka
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2007
1
9
15
Trip End
Aug 07, 2007
Lusaka, Zambia
Friday, July 13, 2007
Woke up at 5:15 and started packing - and just to keep things unpredictable, the electricity went out at 5:30! It's a good thing I didn't wait until this morning to have my bath, as there was no hot water anymore given that there was no electricity. I finished packing in the dark and we left Makuti at 6 in the morning, abandoning the full English breakfast that we had already paid for but that could not be served until 6:30. As a compromise, we got the hotel to give us a few bread rolls that we could use with our own cheese, peanut butter and jam to make our own breakfast in the car. Part of the reason for our early departure was so that we could make it to Lusaka by noon in order to get to the Namibian Embassy in time for me to try to get a visa today. I plan to go to Namibia next week after visiting Victoria Falls and passing through Botswana, but I need a visa to enter Namibia
01-Front yard of Gossner Mission, home in Lusaka
. I was unable to find any definite information in advance about the Namibia Embassy in Lusaka, but my assumption, based on past experiences, is that embassies tend to close at around noon for the processing of visas.At the Zimbabwe - Zambia border, leaving Zimbabwe was fairly straightforward - after we finally managed to find the border crossing. A huge new border crossing facility was just built but they didn't get around to putting up any signs yet, so we went first to the old border crossing point. Not seeing a single soul there raised our suspicions and we eventually discovered and corrected our mistake. On the Zambian side of the border, however, one border official who was responsible for processing the export of Helmut's car was being a pain in the ass. He seemed to take pleasure in exercising his power over us so he sent us around in circles, which ended up costing us about two hours altogether.
Once we finally got clear of the border, we came upon a major road building undertaking. It seems that the Chinese are improving the road between Lusaka and Zimbabwe in order to facilitate the export of copper from the country. So the people of Zambia get a better road, the Zambian politicians get rich, and the Chinese get Zambia's copper. A win / win / win situation.
02-Interesting local tree
We arrived in Lusaka exactly at noon and proceeded immediately to the Namibian Embassy. The good news is that they were still open. The bad news was that, to my utter shock and disappointment, the sign in front of the embassy stated that they only process visas on Tuesdays and Thursdays - and today is Friday! More precisely, I could apply for the visa on Tuesday and pick it up on Thursday. As I wasn't planning to stay in Lusaka for more than a couple of days before proceeding to Victoria Falls, this was a big disappointment for me. I tried to beg the embassy staff into giving me a visa on the spot (by hinting at my willingness to pay an additional "express visa processing fee"). They preferred not doing any extra work over having some extra money. The best they could offer me was to give me the visa on Tuesday morning, shortly after I applied for it. What could I do? If I had known this before, I might have made other plans. As it is, I need the visa - and I'm already here. I have no choice but to stick around town for the next five days waiting for my visa. It's a good thing that I have plenty of time and am in no real hurry. If I would have been a normal guy on a limited-time vacation, this could have been a trip spoiler.
After the visit to the embassy, we went in search of our (already arranged) accommodation - a guest house run by a German charity organization and whose Lusaka office is run by a good friend and Skat-playing buddy of Helmut's, a 69-year old (but much younger looking and acting) retired German journalist with an illustrious career behind him
03-Little house on the Zambian Prarie
. The income generated by the guest house is used, along with donations from church groups in Germany, to help the local poor - of which there are many.This guest house had the advantage of being clean, safe, comfortable and fairly priced - perhaps even cheap, although I never like to admit that. It had the disadvantage, however, of being a distance away from the center of Lusaka, essentially somewhat trapping us there - albeit in a very comfortable environment. For whatever reasons (at which I can only guess), the cost of a short taxi ride from the guest house to the city - a distance of only 10 kilometers, costs 11 US dollars. In Bangkok, for example, the same ride would cost 3 US dollars, more or less. I think the reason the taxis here are so expensive is because of the skin color of the taxi passengers (i.e. - white), as well as the inability and / or unwillingness of most white taxi passengers to negotiate prices. (The taxis don't have meters, so prices must be negotiated.) Also, most of the people who visit this guest house, as an example, come from Europe, and to them the taxi prices probably seem reasonable. ("Hey, it's 5% cheaper than what I would pay in Frankfurt! What a bargain!") This has led to a ratcheting up of expectations of taxi drivers when they carry white passengers, making it prohibitively expensive to leave the guest house at will. That disadvantage is somewhat offset by the fact that there is often the possibility of hitching a ride with someone who is staying at the guest house and who has a car
04-Small settlement near Lusaka
. This is what I ended up doing when I needed to go to the supermarket or the internet cafe.That evening I was able to join Helmut and Peter and his wife Brigitte and several of their visiting friends and relatives for a very nice dinner and conversation in the main house. Once again I am grateful to Helmut for putting me in this position of being able to get in contact with people who are living locally. This is something that would have been very difficult for me to arrange on my own - and there is nothing quite like the information and insights that one can gain from local residents.
07 July
Had a not very good sleep due to it having been a very cold night (5 degrees Celsius. Hey, it's winter time in Southern Africa!) and due to not having had much physical exercise lately as the result of doing a lot of riding in the car.
Late and substantial breakfast with the "family", after which Helmut and I joined Peter on a day-long tour of the project area for which Peter is responsible just outside of Lusaka
05-Cattle pens made from wrecked cars
. Here the people are living in quite primitive conditions and German church groups and charities (among others) are trying to improve the living conditions of the local people. We spent the day driving around visiting the various charitable undertakings such as schools, health facilities and such. Peter really puts his heart into the projects and progress is being made. I find it rather difficult to accept, however, the premise that some people were put on this earth to help other people survive - people who are somehow meant to be unable to help themselves. The obvious implication of these charitable programs is that "we" know what is best for "them" - and "they" are incapable of improving their lives rapidly enough without "our" help. Of course poor and primitive people are glad to accept help from wherever they can get it - particularly when it is in the form of cash. But that this help makes anything other than a temporary improvement in their lives is open to debate. One might just as easily argue that this charity makes these people dependent on further handouts. On the other hand, if the givers of the money feel better about themselves, and if the receivers of the money are happy to get the help - then perhaps it is a beneficial relationship. Still, surely a lot of money gets wasted along the way. Nonetheless, Peter and his team are doing their best to try to make things better and to instill a sense of ownership and responsibility in the people
06-Local dog
. Only time will tell if their efforts have been worthwhile.Back home in the evening, we had dinner and nice conversation again (solving the world's problems again as usual), after which Helmut, Brigitte and Peter sat down to a game of Skat, a German card game undecipherable to non-Germans like myself. I watched them play for hours and couldn't even figure out the first rule of the game, much less any strategy for winning. The only thing I could be sure of was the rule requiring the players to say "Scheiße" when they played a losing round.
08 July
Last night, I had offered to cook my Louisiana-style chicken for dinner today, so I started this day with a trip to the supermarket with Peter's sister Hanna, to buy the necessary ingredients for the dinner. As I had never cooked for so many people at one time before (nine visiting friends and relatives including myself) I needed three pans at one time to cook the three chickens that we estimated we would need to feed everybody. It was a constant juggle to get them all cooking the right way at the same time. It was also a chance to observe the effects of cooking with different pans because even though I was cooking the same way in each pan, each batch of chicken was cooking differently according to the thickness of its respective pans and perhaps also the different temperatures of the different cooking surfaces
07-A Bush 7-11
. This also allowed me to exercise my problem solving ability: I eventually realized that any given piece of chicken didn't have to remain in the pan in which it had started the cooking process, so I simply transferred some of the already-well-cooked chicken from the better pans to the less good ones and vice versa. In the end, all of the chicken ended up pretty much equally well cooked. Another problem arose after I finished cooking the chicken when the other places on the stove were needed to cook the other dishes. I then hit upon the clever idea to put all of the chicken into one big pot for, whereas it is not possible to cook the chicken in such a big pot (a pan is required), there was no reason for the chicken to remain in a pan AFTER it was cooked. Eureka! So I dumped it all into the biggest pot in the kitchen and left it on the stove to keep it warm for dinner while the other dishes were being cooked.The dinner itself went well and everybody seemed to enjoy my chicken although they were all too polite (and hungry) to have complained anyway had they not liked it. After dinner we watched a famous German detective show (a "Krimi", as they are called in German) on TV, with this episode being about a bullied young man (whose father conveniently owned a shooting gallery - thereby giving the boy plausible access to a gun in largely gun-free Germany) who became a murderous sniper after having watched too many violent videos
08-School paid for by German churchgoers
. The show deteriorated into a farce when each family member gained access to a megaphone and tried to talk the boy out of his final shooting spree before he died in a ball of flames when a nearby tank of some combustible liquid blew up when it was hit by a bullet from a police sharpshooter.09 July
After breakfast I was able to join some other guests here at the guest house for a trip to the supermarket and internet café. I hadn't checked my e-mails for about five days and there were 19 messages waiting for me, of which only four were non-joke, non-forwarded personal messages.
The rest of the day I sat around reading a great book about Zimbabwe ("When A Crocodile Eats the Sun" by Peter Godwin) lent to me by Brigitte, a voracious reader, and just generally enjoying the absolutely perfect, amazingly gorgeous weather. It's difficult to describe perfect weather with words, but just imagine the most perfect weather day of your life - sunny, cool (but not cold - nor hot). Then add to that a beautiful garden of trees and flowers and birds - and quiet - with a good book and with good, nice friends nearby. Well, it doesn't get much better than this
09-Beautiful, sunny afternoon at Gossner Mission
!10 July
I was at the Namibia Embassy at just before 8 a.m. to pick up my visa, which I had by 8:40. I then sped off with Simon, the reliable guest house all-around handyman, driver, clothes washer, etc., to the bus station to buy my ticket for tomorrow morning's early bus to Livingstone. With the somewhat intimidating chaos at the bus station ("Hey, big boss - you have ticket yet?"), I was glad to have a local with me. The ticket cost 75,000 kwacha, or just about US$20, for the six or so hour ride.
The rest of the day I spent reading, packing and planning for the next leg of my journey.
As a final comment: Peter would welcome more guests at their wonderful guest house in Lusaka so if you are looking for a place to stay there (with all of the previously-described attributes), then you need look no further than the Gossner Mission. As soon as either Peter or Helmut send me the contact details and driving directions, I will post them here.
