Mullibwanji!

Mullibwanji!

Yesterday, after two grueling days of travel , my Zamfam (Zambia family – cute name we’ve picked up from last years group) and I arrived safely in Lusaka, capital of Zambia. Despite the overflowing ideas that we would have problems with our tickets, miss our million flights out of Ottawa/London/Nairobi, be mugged or lose our luggage, we were absolutely fine!

Getting of the plane in Lusaka was surreal. Perhaps it was the fact that some of us took too many gravels and the rest of us hadn’t slept in two days, but the sky here is this unimaginable light blue and the sun is brighter than I imagined. If it wasn't for the cool winter breeze, we would all have fried by now!

From the airport, we took a standard Zambian mini bus home to Chazanga, the compound (they call villages 'compounds' here) which we will call home for the summer. The roads in our compound are unimagineably rough, so driving through Chazanga definitely makes you sick to the stomach.

Chizanga is wonderful. Our home is much more beautiful than I had imagined, and Mama Chicouti is just a gem. Initially I was quite surprised at how big our home was, especially considering the surrouding homes are incredibly poor. Like I said the roads aren't done, there is garbage everywhere you look, and everything imagineable used and reused for different purposes here.

After settling in we took a walk around the compound to get use to our new home. We were all so overwhelmed and entertained at the masses of children following us screaming "muzungu, muzungu, muzungu" (muzungu = white person). If we replied "Mullibwanji" (how are you), the kids laughed histerically or were just shocked that a white person spoke Nyanja (the main language). We've been learning bits and pieces of Nyanja, and all our Zambian friends are getting a kick out of it.

I love it here. Granted this is the only second day, I know I'll love it all summer.
I will try and post some pictures but the internet can be rather wonky, here in downtown Lusaka. There is so much more to say, but I assume that most of you have stopped reading by now! So more to come next time we head into town!

Oh one more thing! When people told me that it really gets dark here.. I definitely didn't know it would get pitch black. Last night while we prepared dinner, the village electricity shut down and EVERYTHING went black. So we spent the night with candles and our headlamps. Quite a sight!

Zikomo (thank you) for keeping in touch!