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.