Party time

Mazabuka is the sort of place that you either drive through because it is only two hours from Lusaka or if you do stop here it is to refuel, grab a pizza and then go. Not wanting to be unfair to the town but for the traveller or volunteer there is not to bring you here unless it to visiting other volunteers. So as we have lots of space and empty bedrooms we decided to fill them one weekend by inviting some other VSO volunteers for a party. It was also Judy’s birthday earlier in the week so we were brought a couple of chocolate cakes which most welcome for my sweet tooth.

The House

Welcome to the palace/botanical gardens! Well, maybe the house in Mazabuka is not quite that big but Judy and I have five bedrooms, not enough furniture to fill all the space and guava, mango and lemon trees in the garden which will be great when they in season (currently only the lemons are on the trees so they go well with drinking gin). The place is slowly feeling like home as it gets filled with colourful chitenge from the local market, which make great curtains. We also have various pets – some welcome and some that refuse to leave. There are plenty of harmless geckos, too many cockroaches despite attempts to kill them off, the odd frog, something – probably a mouse – that scampers across the ceiling, and a quite a large snake (longer than a metre so it looked big to me). The snake was killed by a neighbour after he found it creeping into their house which is within our compound during one night; a lucky escape.

VSO workshop

Thought I would throw in a few photos to show that I am doing some work out here! I spent a few days in Lusaka working with some other VSO volunteers and a number of NGOs to help VSO review progress during the last year against its programme area plan for HIV and AIDS in Zambia. Aside from learning lots about HIV and AIDS, the social life in Lusaka was pretty good too.

Mutinondo Wilderness

Discounting the visit to Livingstone, this was my first opportunity to hit the road and see some of Zambia over Easter weekend. We crammed camping gear, cool boxes of food and beer and anything else we could think of into two cars as eight of us, mainly volunteers, headed north east out of Lusaka and to an area called the Mutinondo wilderness; supposedly around 8-9 hours away. The guidebook promised a place perfect for old African hands with woodlands, rivers and valleys to explore. However, as one car powered on and on towards Mutinondo we were beset by problems with not one, but two tyres, getting punctures. We had to retrace our steps closer and closer back to Lusaka in a desperate search to find a garage that was open and selling the right tyres. We found one in the end and headed back through some now familiar towns which we really did not want to see again anytime soon. With good humour we kept going, debated about whether to camp somewhere on the way as the dark descended on us and the potholes got larger, but finally arrived at camp sometime around 11pm, only seven hours after the others.

The reward was a great weekend of camping. The campsite was blended into the woodland and our group had our own fire/BBQ and raven proof food locker. Close-by there were toilets with a view and showers open to the sky. We went on a number of walks through the wilderness area, which is dominated by huge whaleback mountains (some looked suspiciously like dozing hippos in my view) that are domes of granite in shades of black, green and brown. We swam in the rivers, played under refreshing waterfalls, and went canoeing (more zig-zagging and hitting branches and spiders’ webs than going in a straight line). And we ate extremely well. I taught everyone the one card game that I know, spoons, which gradually got more competitive and a tiny bit violent as the game went on. The journey back to Lusaka could not have been smoother.

The Falls

The intention was to hit the road and escape Mazabuka but this proved more difficult than it should have been as I spent over four hours waiting for a bus to Livingstone and then four turned up all at once. Emily, the VSO volunteer who I was visiting in Livingstone, was kind enough to let me in when I eventually arrived in the early hours of Saturday morning. It was all worth it to catch my first glimpse of Victoria Falls and to get soaked by all the spray coming off the Falls.

The local name for the Falls is Mosi-oa-Tunya (The Smoke that Thunders) and it certainly does not disappoint. Depending on when you visit – either during the wet or dry seasons – your experience of the Falls will be very different, and also the views differ on the Zimbabwe and Zambian sides. Some quick stats on this stunning natural wonder – it is 1.7km wide, 108m high (Angel Falls in Venezuela is around 7 (!) times higher) and has an annual average flow of one million litres per second. During the rainy season (March to May) the flow can be ten times higher. I think that I will be back a few times to see how it changes and also to sample the numerous adrenaline filled activities – white water rafting to the flying fox.

Relief effort

We have returned a number of times to Manyonyo during the week, and fortunately the sun shined and the rains stayed away which meant the flooding subsided, and selfishlessly the journey there got easier. At the start of the week the work was more assessment and trying to form small community teams so that they could report on the current problems caused by the flooding, as well as better inform the local council when any future disasters occur.  We also asked groups of locals to draw maps of the seven settlements that have been affected - this naturally caused much lively debate of where to place houses, land, schools, clinics etc.  Towards the end of the week the cavalry arrived in the form of tents, chlorine and mealie meal for the community; all these items had to travel by cattle and cart for the last 5kms because any vehicles would have got stuck.

Part of my role during the week has been to analyse all of the information that we collected, probably because I seemed to be the only one remembering to collect the data and also I have a laptop. So here are a few facts:

• we counted 250 homes had collapsed affecting over 1,000 people
• 585 cattle have been displaced with the main concern being the spread of footrot
• over 1,000 chickens have also been affected due to collapsed homes
• whilst it was difficult to measure the impact on the land much of the maize was dying due to the flooding.  

 

Field trip

The recent heavy rains had led to reports from some communities in the district of flooding causing signifcant damage to their homes and livestock. My organisation is one of the members of the local Disaster Emergency Team so one Sunday I was asked to join the team of around 15 officials (a mixture of council departments and NGOs like the Red Cross) to visit the communities, assess the damage and determine what support was needed. After much discussion about food and drink but also the need for raincoats and wellington boots (called gumboots out here) we jumped into two 4x4 vehicles and set off for a village called Manyonyo. The journey should have taken around an hour but the road worsened, got increasingly bumpy, muddy and flooded so we arrived sometime over three hours later. This included a couple of stops to push one of vehicles out after it had got stuck and led to most of us being sprayed with mud as we tried to get it moving. 

Manyonyo is a small farming community of probably 1,500 people consisting of settlements of 5 or more homes mainly made of mud. Whilst basic they are pretty self-sufficient with maize, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and ground nuts grown in the fields, and then animals like cattle, pigs, goats and chicken kept by the families. They seemed pleased to see us even though we arrived only to assess the damage rather than to provide any immediate relief. Through the chair of the community we explained our plan and then split up to teams of two, led by the locals, to basically count the number of homes and other buildings like toilets and chicken houses that had collapsed, people affected, livestock displaced and agricultural land affected. We left with promises of returning throughout the following week to make further assessments and to provide support. The vehicles managed to get stuck yet again as the dark surrounded us and it became difficult to spot the potholes.