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Sunday 26 September: We were offered 'dinner' at about midnight in Addis Ababa. I am not sure that is what I would have called it - lamb (more bone than meat - a lot more!) with some sauce and vegetables - but it was quite nice all the same. This was followed by a visit to a fascinating 'religious' tourist gift shop (yes, in an airport) where I was seduced by a hand crafted crib!

Then at around 4.00 we took off. About an hour later I was dragged from my slumbers by the question "Chicken fish or pasta?" I declined. Purple parking was generally uneventful and this was followed by the mild drama of the M4 being closed due to an accident.

And there I suppose ends this story - except that there are bound to be a few consequentials and follow ups - for a start I have on Tuesday to give a talk about my experiences to the next intake. And there is the final coaching - cf 16 July - was it 10 weeks ago?! And I have promised the office an article for The Slate. So maybe there will be a small amount of 'mopping up' yet!

Oh, and having returned home, it is such a joy to have an internet connection that does what you expect it to!

Homeward Bound

Saturday 25 September, Addis Ababa airport: Addis Ababa airport at 10.30 in the evening is a lot more inviting than at 7.30 in the morning. I had been idly thinking that it probably would not be raining – and it probably isn’t – but I had forgotten that at this time of night it is dark. This is an interesting place. All prices are quoted in Birrs, Dollars and Euros and you can also pay sterling. But what is particularly interesting is that some places take coins and give change in the different currencies too – rather than demanding high value notes and giving change in the local currency.

Last night’s meal went well in what I can perhaps best describe as a kind of ‘fusion’ restaurant. Between us we had sushi and chicken wings to start, followed by fish, pasta and chicken schnitzel. It was very good – I also had my first Mozi beer – beer from Livingstone ‘The beer that thunders.’ We then concluded the evening saying nice things about each other, and how much we had enjoyed the last few weeks. (Which, from my perspective, I know to be true.) I returned to the apartment thinking that it was some days since I had seen a power cut there to find a note on the mat saying that due to low pressure the water would be cut off for about half of the day (in 3 periods) – it did not say for how long.

Today packing was relatively straightforward and, having a couple of hours to spare, I called a taxi and went to the City Centre market for a (very) quick look around and a few snaps.

Here are a couple of shots of the outside area:


This next couple cost me K2,000 – the lady (the one on the right) wanted K5,000 but was willing to negotiate.

However, having got my camera out, I began to attract a crowd and local lads began queuing up to be photographed free of charge. (If I had been thinking, I suppose I should have charged them to offset the cost of the chicken photos.)

And then to Lusaka airport and a cheese and tomato toastie with some of the best chips I have had for years. At the time of drafting, my 2.16 flight from Addis Ababa to London is scheduled not to leave until 3.30 – that is another 4 hours – so off to the Internet Café to post this. (In fact, the Internet café let me down and this has had to be posted the following day!)

Last day

24 September: This is my last day at PPHPZ and will have to be my last post before leaving for Britain. It is also going to have to be a lunch time post as I have to see someone out of the office this afternoon and am not planning to return. But that is not guaranteed – there seemed just a hint of panic to finish a few things before I leave today which might just cause me to have to return. Someone keeps asking me what time my flight is on Saturday!

The plan is later to go out for a meal to celebrate (mark? – it depends on your point of view) my departure. I am not sure where we are going or what type of food we will be having. It is interesting how the guide books and even the Zambian Tourist people talk about the fine range of food available in Zambia: Indian, Chinese, Mexican, European … . I should add that the Zambian food I have had has been pretty good too!

(not taken in Lusaka, actually.)
I feel I should end with some reflections on the month but it is too early for that. And anyway it might not be raining in Addis Ababa where I have a five hour wait between flights. And then I have to find my car in the purple car park …

PS. I have just discovered that the purple trees that have so impressed me are Jacaranda trees.

PPS. Monkey update: I also told someone local about my experiences with the monkeys. He was not quite as sanguine about the encounter as I was and said they can be a bit ‘cheeky’. I suppose I should be grateful that it was a hot day.

Two days to go

23 September: I have just looked at the weather forecast for the next 5 days: the pictures show a 'cloudless sun' every day; max temperatures 31 or 32; pressure 1014mb – 1016 mb and visibility very good every day. Must be a tough job being a meteorologist here in the summer. (I did just look at Cardiff for the weekend too – it is going to be back to the real world soon!)

Sign at a hairdresser’s round the corner : Hair Treated, Dyed and Freezed – I wonder if the latter is what we would call a perm? Another offered Nails, Weaving and Fish tails – and another Dreadlocks.

And the coffee has returned – we ran out for a couple of days!

Getting hotter

22 September: It is getting hotter – it is still pleasant working in the office but less so going for a walk in the middle of the day (mad dogs and Englishmen come to mind). The purple-flowering trees are now even more purple and even more prominent everywhere. I still have not found a name for them – maybe something gets lost in the translation but no one here seems to think they are that remarkable.

Winding down

Tuesday 21 September: I have just washed my last shirts – it will be good to have a washing machine again and not to have my clothes permanently covered in brown dust. Shoes in particular need daily attention to remove the layers of dust. I am beginning to run down my (meagre) food supplies – and wondering how much (bottled) water I need for the next few days. It is also time to start thinking about concluding my assignment, farewells and future links with PPHPZ.

Time for the last few pictures of flowers. As you can see, most of the flowers I have photographed are in trees – presumably really ‘blossom’ - but not what you (I?) think of as blossom in Britain. I was told by one of the security guards here that once the rainy season begins flowers appear out of the ground. It will be a pity to miss them. I have been told that in the rainy season a lot of the areas that now appear as hard packed mud become covered with grass - and also that the roads flow with mud. I suppose it depends whether you have a ‘half full’ or a ‘half empty’ personality.

The pictures include a couple of birds I saw the other day and a tree that has strange boomerang-like growths.

Shopping

Monday 20 September: I have not mentioned before that the Zambian currency is the Kwacha which comes in notes ranging from K50,000 to K50. With the exchange rate currently around K7,500 to the pound, the notes have values from about £7 to just under 1p. This means you end up with a wallet full of notes and there are no coins in use! It is ideal for street traders who go around with fists full of notes. Such is the effects of inflation. In Livingstone, which is near to the Zimbabwe border, there is a market amongst the street traders in selling tourists 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar notes. I declined their offer so do not know what price they were asking.

The result of all this is that many prices are quoted in dollars. You still have to pay in Kwacha – but the dollar prices are converted using the exchange rate of the day.

Hera is a shot of the Arcade shopping centre - one of the newer developments in the centre of Lusaka:


And here are a couple of the shops we pass on the way to the office:

Back to Lusaka

Sunday 19 September: Back on the bus to Lusaka. I do not know if it was because it was a different crew, or just because it was Sunday, but we started the drive with a prayer for a safe journey. We then had an hour and a half of hymns on the bus music system – before it reverted to pop music and later a Rowan Atkinson movie.

Here are a couple of shots taken at Zig Zag. The one in the middle shows my room:

Livingstone

Saturday 18 September: I had arranged to contact Fumbelo Chinyama from the Zambia Homeless and Poor People’s Federation in Livingstone. The federation is of local organisations of savings groups in an area which help, support and plan the development of houses for poor people in Zambia and with whom PPHPZ’s work closely. I arranged to meet Fumbelo in the market and he took me to his ‘stall’ which was a small area with a sewing machine where, he told me, he repairs clothes. We agreed first to go to the Victoria Falls and then to visit a housing development on the edge of Livingstone. We hired a taxi driver who agreed to drive us round for the morning.

The Victoria Falls lived up their expectations as the most amazing series of waterfalls – or maybe a waterfall one mile wide. Visitors have a dilemma. Go in the dry season and see the falls and the gorge into which they empty and get only slightly wet – or go in the wet season for a dramatic experience, get very wet and see not much more than spray. I got the dry option but it is still dramatic and a quite amazing experience and an incredible gorge.



We left the falls and drove to the housing development. The federation works to help poor people save and borrow to build a home. Members can start with a one room house (at a cost of about $1,500) and then expand it as they can afford to. Fumbelo had asked if I wanted to meet some of the federation members and I had said I would love to but was concerned that they probably had better things to do. When we arrived they were together and immediately leapt up, started singing to welcome me and in turn came up and shook my hand. I was then introduced to them formally after which (through someone interpreting) I said a few words about how impressed I was with all the work they had done etc. I then asked if they would mind my taking some photographs and Fumbelo said they would be very happy for me to do that and would like to be in the photos of their houses. So I toured the development taking photos of proud owners and their houses. I have promised to send them prints of these when I get home.



I was then given a brief exposition on how to make a loo without running water and finally returned to Zig Zag.

The morning tour of the falls was a bit rushed so in the afternoon I went back to them and had a more leisurely walk around. This time I also went to ‘the boiling pot’ – a walk from the top of the falls down to the river to where the Zambezi is squeezed into the Batoka Gorge. It was a steep walk down and towards the end I rounded a bend to find a monkey (sorry, I am no expert on species) blocking the path. Its youngster on seeing me ran over, sat on a branch and (I think) posed for the camera. I know what to do when you meet sheep in strange places – and I have been briefed on responding to rattle snakes, bears and mountain lions – but I was not expecting a monkey. So, stiff upper lip, I walked towards him and gestured for him to move aside and he, grudgingly, moved his leg enough for me to get past.

On the road

Friday 17 September: I am now in Livingstone at the Zig Zag Bed and Breakfast Bar Restaurant. They said the bus would take 9 hours but, in fact, it took only just over 6. There may have been some confusion over it leaving at 9.00 which is described here as Nine hour – but I had thought of that at the time and I thought the man had said other buses took 9 hours. I had a seat behind the driver which gave a good view and also allowed me to watch the driving which was pretty good despite having his foot down at 140kph for quite a while (on single carriageway roads). It was interesting going through the wild country and through small and medium sized towns and watching the people coming up to sell us fruit and drinks at every opportunity. When we arrived I had three taxi drivers arguing and haggling in front of me over who was going to take me to my hotel.

Zig Zag is ok and the fish, the lady said bream, in the restaurant was lovely. And Zig Zag has WiFi (and air con and a fantastic shower.) Here are a couple of snaps taken through the coach window at a road junction on the way. By their very nature you have to slow down at road junctions – so there is a clear opportunity for people to sell there!

Booked

Thursday 16 September: I am not going to mention the internet today other than to say it is remarkable how different this jaunt would be without the internet even with its current irregular availability. People and help and company are just a click away which would not have been possible only a few years ago. There is not much to report though today other than tedium – such as forgetting the key to the office and having to go back for it, or a late finish leaving me hanging around. I did however book a seat on the coach to go to Livingstone tomorrow and should note my gratitude to Cosmas for his time and trouble in coming with me to make sure I got the right ticket and did not get bushwhacked by the hordes of people who hang around the bus station presumably getting a cut of every ticket sold to a punter they shepherd to a particular coach or bus operator.

Zambian Highway Code

Wednesday 15 September: I am now the proud owner of the Zambian Highway Code. I cannot say it is the greatest read – and maybe that is what one should expect. But I do not recall the UK Highway Code dealing with wheelbarrows or Scotch Carts. Coming home tonight I noticed one of the traders with two puppies in his hands looking hopefully for a buyer.

Some progress on the Internet today but it is clearly a perennial problem. I left the Country Coordinator of PPHPZ (the head of the office) tonight heading for an internet café to send an important document he had failed to send from the office.

Snippets from the news

Tuesday 14 September: There has been an interesting story in the news the last few days about an MP who beat up his wife causing her to have to spend a few days in hospital. There were calls for him to be arrested, followed by newspaper reports that he had said that beating up your partner was good for a relationship and his wife beat him up regularly too. He has now resigned as an MP “to concentrate on his businesses” and has since been arrested. In another story a grandmother has been jailed for six years with hard labour for cutting off her 12 year old grandson’s ears after he had stolen a small amount of money from her. There are calls for Zambia to invest more in renewable energy (solar, wind, bio and geothermal) because of the unreliability of hydropower on which they currently depend. And on the sports pages the headline in Friday’s Zambian Times was the UK premier league - Chelsea v West Ham in particular. The Premier League figures prominently in Lusaka from the traders at traffic lights to the Chelsea mugs in the office to this shop I snapped in Kafue on Saturday:


Still no internet – people seem resigned to it here although it is causing them a few problems. It is annoying to me though because I have had one or two people at home kindly scurrying around sending me material to use and it is now stuck in the Zain internet hub, or wherever – probably California or Beijing or wherever these things go through on the way here. Aside from the internet problems, it is interesting that we are far more a paperless office here than at home and people quite naturally use laptops in meetings, or take them to talk to colleagues, much as we would a pad or a file. Staff here have no fear of trailing leads – they step over them.

Third week

Monday 13 September 2010: Internet access was patchy for my first few days here and then improved a little. Now it seems to have given up the ghost both at work and at home where I am using a mobile internet connection. In the office, I am told the engineers say the problem is due to our using a number of different and old machines and that they are full of viruses. I am not totally convinced by this myself because I get the same sort of ‘non-response’ behaviour both at home and at work and these are different types of connection. But there is not a lot I can do about it but pile up this blog until something happens – there might just be a big post coming from home in a couple of weeks!

As if in compensation, one TV channel is almost watchable tonight and so I saw the news and now have in the background the most excruciating, old, dubbed drama which was originally in Spanish.

Of passing interest (but only to people in the office): I have just heard a mention on the news of the women’s conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association which was in Nigeria this weekend. The CPA does not normally make the news in the UK!

Another Sunday

Sunday 12 September: There was a further deterioration in the weather with clouds covering the sky when I got up and a strong breeze blowing. I tried a different church this week. I was offered a lift home last Sunday afternoon by a lecturer from the university and he had told me that I should have got a taxi to St Ignatius. So that is what I did today. The taxi driver described the day as cold and said the cloud cover might last until lunchtime – he got the second part about right. On the way there we drove past the National Assembly Hotel – an attractive looking development where, the taxi driver told me, Zambian MPs stay when they are in Lusaka.

St Ignatius is nearer the centre of Lusaka and in a much more prosperous area and was full of people from, I would guess, all parts of the city. It was much more the kind of service I was familiar with and one that would not have seemed out of place in almost any part of Britain. The church was in fact built in the 50s in the later years of British rule - and was full and had an enthusiastic choir. Its music style was British-ish, with a strong African influence supported by drums and saxophone. The photo below of the choir was taken after the church had emptied a bit (in case you think I am lying about it being full.)




After mass I walked to the Manda Hall (pronounced Manda Hey) shopping centre and crossing the Great East Road took this photo of the traders at the traffic lights.

Finding my way there, I also learned a valuable lesson. In most places I walk the sun at lunchtime lies in a broadly southerly direction which is useful for direction-finding However, this is not the case when you are south of the equator – or, indeed, in the tropics. In fact, at present, the path of the sun here appears as if it is moving from right to left in the sky – the opposite way from that in the UK. The sun is also much higher in the sky making the judgement of direction a little harder. On the way I took this photograph of these magnificent blue/purple trees which, at present, are flowering all over Lusaka.


Then on to the craft market at Arcade and an hour or so of entertainment haggling with the traders there. They are so persistent pursuing you round the stalls and even coming after me when I went for a drink.

Out of Lusaka

Saturday 11 September: There has been a change in the weather today. There were a couple of clouds in the sky and a bit of a breeze. I decided to explore out of Lusaka and had arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to Kafue which is about 20 miles away. When he arrived he had with him his brother, who was still at college, and who in fact did most of the driving. The road to Kafue was a well made, fast road but we twice had to slow down to avoid groups of catholic women walking and singing in the outside lane and holding a collection for money to buy instruments for their choir. And then we got pulled in by the police – the drivers went to speak to them but did not tell me why we had been stopped.

First we went to the River Kafue but did not have sufficient time to take a river cruise:



Across the way from the boats was a ‘compound’ an old Zambian village:




We then drove to the market in the centre of Kafue:

Two weeks in

Friday 10 September: Second week down. Today in an extension of my role I was a member of an interview panel for the appointment of a Community Loans Officer. It was interesting contrasting the approach to recruitment here and in the UK. The general approach to the interviews was broadly similar to that we follow in the office – but carried out in a much more informal way. It was also very interesting, and illuminating, talking to people about their reasons for seeking a new job because it shed a whole new light on the social and employment situation here.

Lunch was, as most days, nshima but this time with fried fish. I gather that the fish had been supplied by one of PPHP’s small businesses and Mike had fried them whole and served them with an onion and tomato sauce. They were very good and it is not as hard as you might think to eat fish with sauce in your fingers. They said the fish was bream – but I wonder if it was actually chambo which my book describes as a popular bream-like variety which is freely available in Zambia.

I thought it was time for a few more photos of my apartment - one of the garden and two of the inside:

I was given

Thursday 9 September: I was given 3 condoms today and a pen from LOVECONDOMS.ORG. I mention this because it is difficult to escape from the high profile given to fighting HIV/AIDS here. In part this is because it is one of PPHP’s roles and therefore the office is full of this sort of material. But it goes wider than that because you see posters and advertisements about HIV/AIDS everywhere here. I rather fancied the neck chain with "I’ve been tested’" on it – and was about to add smugly that, of course, I have not. But that is one of the points of this work – to get rid of the image that it is only nasty people who get HIV/AIDS.

We had a visit this afternoon from a group from Kenya who do similar work in Nairobi. It was one of the usual sort of thing: we tell them what we do, they tell us what they do, and we compare notes and look to share lessons etc. It was just like so many other similar meetings that I have been to in the UK – except for one thing – the body language was quite different. I am not going to analyse it because body language is, of its nature, personal and maybe one of the best ways to identify nationalities. Making jokes about it is likely to be offensive to someone. But take that aspect of behaviour out of the meeting and it could have been two groups from anywhere in the world – or at least, Europe.

A bit serious today – sorry. Oh, and my brief has expanded enormously today – I have been e-mailing Cardiff looking for material to crib from as I could not possibly write all they want in a couple of months, let alone a couple of weeks. Nice to feel you have something to offer though.

I have to

Wednesday 8 September: I have to recant a little of yesterday’s entry. When I came in today I was offered a couple of sweet potatoes to eat. They were very nice too. And I must also admit that I went into the kitchen and found a couple of people eating toast. But that was all the food I saw until lunchtime (which was back as normal) and I was also told that lunch is a recent innovation. Before it was cooked in the office a few people went out for food but most stayed and went without.

I was also told that power cuts happen because of a lack of power generating capacity and operate on a rota. Yesterday’s was 3 days after the last one (at around the same time of day). Perhaps I should go out to eat on Friday night.

Some snaps of the fascinating people you see on the road outside the College:

Black out

Tuesday 7 September: I had my second power cut today. It came at the end of a long day. Earlier there had been a “bit of a cock up on the catering front.” I am not sure what happened exactly but for some reason there was no food and so Mike was unable to prepare lunch. Nobody seemed that concerned – I cannot see people in the Assembly being philosophical about not having food at lunch time but it just seemed to pass without much comment. At least, a couple of people asked at different times if I wanted to go out for food or, later, if I wanted them to bring me chicken and chips. In fact my well being seemed the greatest concern to everyone. However, I am determined to fit in with the office culture, and certainly do not want special treatment, so I said I was fine – which I was actually – shored up by Mike’s coffee.

That has however drawn my attention to quite a difference in eating and lunch habits. In the Assembly life is one long chuck wagon from bowls of cereal in the morning (and throughout the day) to sandwiches, microwaved meals at lunchtime and cakes, fruit or chocolates more or less on tap the rest of the time. Here, in a week and a half, the only food I have seen, apart from lunch, was at yesterday’s staff meeting when there were two plates of (dry) crackers. Fair enough, a decent lunch is provided normally – but I have little doubt that in today’s situation Assembly staff would have been rushing out to get food from somewhere. And that is another thing – there does not seem to be the same mass exodus at lunchtime.

The upshot of all this excitement was that I arrived home at about 6.30 to be greeted by a flash and a ping and a black out. I do have a gas stove alongside the electric cooker – clearly power cuts happen frequently. But I did not fancy cooking on it in the dark and nibbled a few crackers to wait until normal service was resumed which was after about an hour.

Week 2

Monday 6 September: Back to work and I joined the weekly staff meeting. It was pretty comprehensive and gave me some very useful background to PPHP’s work – but at 4½ hours it was a long session! I gained some more information about the debate on male circumcision. It was part of a schools/colleges tournament run by the Zambian television service. PPHP had pressed to have their youth federation involved as a way of showing that underprivileged young people were just as capable as taking part in a debating competition as young people in schools and colleges. And prove it they did – they won the round convincingly and now go forward to the next round.

We also discussed my work at the meeting and my remit was extended to examining and making proposals for developing and enhancing their financial reporting systems.

I saw the weather forecast on television tonight. There is a ‘low’ over central Africa and a ‘high’ over its southern tip. This means there might be a few clouds here tomorrow. Temperatures – warm to hot tonight – very hot tomorrow. Fair enough.

It is spring in Zambia and I thought I should offer some pictures of the colour in the trees.