Arrival in Lusaka

As promised here are my musings from week one of Zambian living:

After a long, mostly smooth journey (except from one slightly worrying moment when the ceiling of the tiny plane we were on to travel the final leg decided to leak all over me (I was told it was nothing to worry about – very reassuring. Not!)) from London to Lusaka via Nairobi, we made it to the lodge where we’ll be staying for the first week. It’s called Muzala and very nice and I’ve somehow landed a double bed! I’m sharing a room with a lovely Zambain girl called Cecilia – she’s great and we hit it off right away.

So far there’s been lots of laughter, card games and chicken. Chicken seems to be the meat of choice here (well when there are dozens of them just wandering around the streets…) and is served in some form every night along with nshima (pronounced with a silent ‘n’) and veg of some description – no-one’s yet managed to work out what the green cabbage-like thing is…

Day 3

We haven’t left the lodge, but are due to this afternoon, so we’ve had quite a gentle ease-in to life in Zambia. Our days are spent in long training sessions which are preparing us for the roles we’ll be taking on once we’ve been placed in our respective businesses.

Some context for those of you who don’t know/ fell asleep during one of my long and boring explanations of what I’m doing in Zambia: I’m working as a volunteer business consultant with a small enterprise. The aim is to first analyse their existing set-up and them come up with recommendations on how they can improve and maximise their potential and social impact in the often poor communities they work in.

The programme is run by Challenges Worldwide, a charity which specialises in private-sector development as part of the UK government’s International Citizen Service (ICS) scheme to get young Brits to have a positive impact on their world. It’s definitely NOT voluntourism, something that anyone who’s known me for more than a day knows is one of my pet-hates. Having railed against programmes and initiatives that send unqualified, ignorant youngsters to build schools and cuddle babies in the Global South, it took a lot to reassure me that the ICS scheme was different. But the work Challenges Worldwide do is different (of course I’d say that!), but no, it really is. A) by choosing to focus on private-sector development their mission is to promote sustainable economic growth in the communities they work in, which is about as far removed from building a shoddy school as is possible, and B) it was a programme I actually felt qualified to do – I have some experience and understanding which meant I felt I could actually be useful (as to whether I am or not remains to be seen!).

Woops, apologies for the essay there! Back to the interesting stuff.

Exploring the city

When we were finally allowed to leave the lodge and explore Lusaka I didn’t know quite what to expect. Here’s a quick run-down of what I found:

• Car journeys are like mini roller-coaster rides complete with shrieks and clinging on for dear life. Seatbelts don’t really exist, most drivers having (for some unknown reason) cut them out… There don’t appear to be many rules of the road, yet by some miracle a sort of order does exist.

  

• Lusaka is like pretty much any other big city in the world. Loud, busy and polluted. It’s also very developed with large shopping malls that are more modern than many at home. They are spotlessly clean, but also eeirly empty.
• Zambian ice-cream tastes just like any other ice-cream (yes I did have to sample it just to make sure…. hehe), but it’s still not as good as Aromi’s in Cambridge.

Until next time.

Abs xo