We finished our stay in Lusaka with a celebratory fresh goat BBQ and Nshima at the youth hostel. Nshima is the Zambian staple food it looks like mashed potato but is made of corn meal mixed with water. The goat was brought in on the Saturday and proceeded to run around the compound of the hostel until they caught it. We stayed up a bit with some of the guests at the hostel and tried to get some sleep.
We woke up at around 3:30 in the morning on Sunday the 9th as the bus left the bus station in the centre of Lusaka at 5am. We got a lift from the manager of the hostel and got there a little after 4:30 already the luggage section of the bus was completely full. So we all had to get on the bus with our luggage and find space for our bags inside the bus. In the end I took up two spaces with other volunteer’s bags and my own bag was on my lap. Other passenger’s bags were placed in the aisle which was a very inconvenient since everyone had to climb down an obstacle course of bags to get on and off. My bag was sat on my lap for around three hours until I managed to rearrange the bags.
The roads are pretty smooth aside from the occasional speed bump by a village. The bus seemed to be travelling very fast despite the road being relatively thin and having speed bumps. Thankfully it only seemed to take the most direct route round corners, on the wrong side of the road, when they could see no one else was coming. I was surprised at how hilly it is on the initial route out of Lusaka; there are many little hills either side of the road as well as travelling over them.
After about 5 hours, the first two from our party of six left and, a little after that, the other two girls left. At each stop there were people offering drinks, snacks and fruit which was useful as I had little in the way of food. After around 8 hours on the bus we arrived in Chipata the nearest local city. We didn’t get off in case the bus left without us. The bus got very hot while we were stationary as there was no breeze even from the open window. We arrived in Mambwe at about 16:00 and were met by the headteacher’s son and shown to a taxi to take us down the road to the school. Once we were there we were shown to our house.
The kids were all walking around the school and the office was packed full of children registering for the term as we went to collect the keys from the office. It was a little intimidating with so many of them around. We didn’t get shown around the school site perhaps because we arrived quite late. Once we had looked around I we went for a quick wander around the site. We met a couple of teachers who were very chatty and helpful and went home for some tea. We had some instant noodles since it was late and we had very little in the way of food. The headteacher came round at one point to give us a loaf of bread and say hi which was kind. We went to sleep under our mosquito nets that night and, despite the heat, slept very well. The next day we had to get up at 5:30.
In the next post I will talk about the house and garden.
Jack in Zambia 