The Move to Mazabuka

Well, it seems that somehow despite out best intentions, we have managed to stay away from the blog for a fair few days now. So I’ll do my best to give a quick recap and get us back on track – we have good excuses, promise!

On Monday, we arrived in Mazabuka as planned, having caught a full coach from Monze. It was a fairly comfortable journey, until we realised, a few minutes in, that our seats were suspiciously damp. We spent the rest of the ride trying not to think why…

One of the first things we saw on arrival - waste removal, driven by donkeys (beats a bin lorry)

Bernadette picked us up from the coach stop – as it turns out, she’s really lovely (and weirdly reminds us both of the Jamaican lady in Pirates of the Caribbean, if anyone knows who we mean). She dropped us off at our new lodge, which we’d had a look in last time we were in Mazabuka and hadn’t been too impressed with. But it was cheap, and had all the necessary facilities, so we thought we’d be alright. We had specifically requested a room with a small fridge so that we could do some shopping to make dinner, so after dropping in at the Spar to get some ingredients for a pasta meal we were all set. Except it turned out that the fridge in our room didn’t actually work. Good play on semantics there – yes, we had a fridge, but it was of no use to us whatsoever.

We asked the receptionist whether we could swap our fridge with another; one would think it would be a simple task to take one small fridge out of an unused room and exchange it for our faulty one. But apparently this needed approval from the boss, who was not there. She offered to put our shopping in a fridge in the lobby, so we left the problem with her and went to drop in on Bernadette, who had invited us to come and have a chat with her where she works in a restaurant. We spent a good few hours talking with her, and then Eva and I went to a pizza restaurant (we decided to leave the cooking for the following nights). We were looking forward to this – our last pizza hunt in Monze had been in vain as the restaurant didn’t have any cheese (apparently Zambia is low on mozzarella). Although this restaurant looked a little more classy than the Food Royal in Monze, the pizzas were definitely more expensive and more stingy on the toppings.

We got back to our room as it was growing dark, and as we were sat on our very hard double bed, we reflected that it felt rather like being in a prison cell: a naked lightbulb illuminated scratched, grubby magnolia-painted walls, there were bars on the windows (although this is normal practice here) and the headboard of the bed fell over when leant on. Altogether it was a rather depressing atmosphere: we couldn’t get internet siganl, the place was crawling with lizards which terrified Eva, and we still had no fridge. On going to hunt down our shopping to have some yoghurt, we discovered it not in a fridge but a freezer! Therefore we had frozen mushrooms, frozen vegetables and frozen yoghurt – not helpful. We transferred them to another fridge in the kitchen (not the one which smelt like some form of sea-life had died in it) and went to bed yoghurt-less.

I think that night was one of the more sleepless nights I have ever had. Firstly, because we were both in a double bed, we managed to keep each other awake from fidgeting. Then the neighbourhood dogs appeared to have a night-long verbal argument which lasted into the early hours of the morning. Then the mosque nearby called for 5am prayers. All in all, not a restful experience. We awoke resolved that we couldn’t spend another night there. Due to meet Kenneth at 9am, we hurriedly gulped down some breakfast (which was a task in itself as someone appeared to have thought it a great idea to lock the kitchen with all our food in it) and headed out to find a new lodge. Our first choice was to go to the one at the end of the road, which we had seen was really smart but somewhat out of our price range; in our desperation we were ready to try out some haggling. And guess what, we succeeded! We negotiated down from 200 Kwacha per night to 170 – about the same as what we were paying in Monze. To say we were delighted would probably be an understatement.

there's even soap named after Eva

Later on in the afternoon, we went to drop in on Bernadette in her restaurant again. This time she fed us a meal – nshima (of course) with the traditional spinach relish and chicken. We also ended up being persuaded by Bernadette’s workmate Munga to join them on a night out, so after popping back to get changed, we were taken around the bars of Mazabuka with Bernadette and her colleagues, including one man (I think his name is Lingwe, but all I can remember is that it reminds me of linguine) who is the exact Zambian counterpart of one of our friends at uni – in looks they are nothing alike, but in mannerisms they are ridiculously similar. We had a really fun night – Munga has unbelievably flexible hips, and after repeatedly protesting that we couldn’t dance, we still found ourselves joining in.

We were quite excited at the prospect of our included continental breakfast this morning - we sat down to be given... two slices of white bread?! I waited in vain for even any jam or spread, but it appears that two slices of white bread are all we're worth. Oh well, can't have it all I suppose. We went to see a theatre outreach group perform in the shanty community – they work in partnership with SAPEP to educate communities about issues such as TB, HIV, violence and family planning, all through the medium of drama. We walked with Kenneth for about half an hour to meet the group in the shanty compound – this is like a whole small town made entirely from little mud (or occasionally concrete) shacks, packed tightly together, where poverty levels are especially high. After being introduced to the actors of the group, we walked to a small space between the houses, almost like a square, gathering an audience as we went. The performers started drumming and dancing to traditional songs to gather the crowd and announce their presence before they began the play. The actual performance itself was about half an hour long, and was based around the issues of HIV and TB (which are often confused by many in Zambia, or seen as a curse). It was skillfully put together, and seemed to provoke a lot of amusement in the gathered children and adults (I think some of the jokes were lost a little in translation, but it was still enjoyable). We chatted to the performers afterwards – they told us that they are often hired out by NGOs to present issues, but have problems in that they don’t have much funding, or any transport to reach further communities. However we could see that the work they did do was truly valued by the audience.

lots of children gathered in the audience

traditional dancing began the proceedings

scenes from the play

We’re back at the lodge now, having a relax and we are hopefully going to Lingwe’s this evening, as he invited us round for dinner. We’re slightly encouraged by the fact that he says he doesn’t like nshima, but on the other hand it’s probably his wife who is in charge of the cooking…

Hope everyone’s having a lovely Wednesday, and we’ll let you know how dinner goes. Bye for now!