The luggage saga

Take a closer look and some of you might be thinking that Mike was wearing the same clothes again and again during his Zambia holiday. Some of you might argue that there is nothing unusual about this but on this occasion the people to blame were British Airways (BA).

To recap, Mike arrived for his holiday in Zambia minus his luggage. BA was pretty clueless as to where his bag actually was (the UK, Zambia or who knows where?). Their customer service staff failed to contact us with any updates, their telephone number was switched off on non Zambia flight days and they were generally pretty unhelpful. Mike contacted BA by email and simply received a standard response which bore no relation to his problem. Two days before the end of Mike’s holiday we were informed that his bag had arrived though as we were in Livingstone we could not collect it. So on the morning of his return flight he finally got his bag, discovered that it had been tampered with as a few presents for me were missing and then checked in the bag for the UK. Putting aside the frustrations of the bag going missing in the first place, the customer service, or lack of it, from BA was surprisingly poor; we had expected much better. We await a response from BA . . .

Both sides of the Falls

No trip to Zambia can ever be complete without a visit to the Falls and Mike even went up in a helicopter to get the best possible view of all the ferocious water below. We were also in Livingstone on Mike’s insistence that we squeeze another country into the holiday so over to Zimbabwe we ventured. The Zim town of Victoria Falls is remarkably different to its Zambian counterpart, Livingstone. The town is within walking distance of the Falls which makes the visit simply more enjoyable and it is also very much set up for consuming the tourist dollar (not necessarily a good thing). The park itself stands out, not just from the welcoming entrance gate and the informative displays on the history and geology of the park, but also because of the easy routes that guide you around the park and highlight the major sites (i.e. the Devil’s Cataract, Livingstone Island and so on). Zambia could learn a lot from its neighbour and better do so soon or otherwise the tourists will flock back to the Zim side. Finally, we of course had to go to the Victoria Falls hotel to experience High Tea. It was good, we then proceeded to have a few cocktails and feeling lazy we stayed on for dinner too.

Thanks mate for as ever a fun couple of weeks – it was really great that you made it out here to visit me.

Bat-astic

Next it was time for more wildlife watching but of a very different kind – millions of bats! Five of us (Mike and I plus three good Italian friends – Roberto, Lucia and Sue) travelled to Kasanka National Park (http://www.kasanka.com/) to witness the migration of fruit bats which takes place in November and December every year. It was without doubt a spectacular sight as early one morning (something like 5am) and a couple of times at sunset the sky was filled with approximately 5 or 6 million fruit bats; though we were not sure who was counting them. The screeching of the bats echoed around us and for the sunrise viewing we climbed up a 15metre high hide which meant that the bats were within touching distance flying over our heads. It was all quite an amazing, surreal experience.

Luxury and up close with the wildlife in the Lower Zambezi

Hooray, another visitor from the UK! Sadly Mike arrived with a bit of a bump as British Airways managed to lose his luggage (more on that later) but he was remarkably philosophical and in a short time he was kitted out with a new wardrobe – a mix of my clothes and a visit to a few ‘green’ (second hand) shops in Maz.

First stop on Mike’s fast and furious two week holiday was the Lower Zambezi national park and Stefan very kindly lent us his 4x4 which made getting to the park so much easier. Kanyemba lodge (http://www.kanyemba.com/) had been talked up by various friends who had already stayed there and we were not to be disappointed – amazing good, great view over the river, lovely pool, luxury rooms and hippos croaking at night. We managed to squeeze in a couple of sunset cruises, a canoe safari and a walking safari on Kanyemba Island. All were fun, in different ways, though I enjoyed the canoeing the most mainly because of how close it allowed us to get to the elephants, hippos and crocodiles and observe them. My favourite moment, which we were lucky to see a couple of times, was watching tens of elephants lumber into the river, swim across almost in formation and then climb up the bank on the other side; simply wonderful.

Patience is required

Six months after my test, and after regular visits to get my paper version stamped again and again, I now have a smart, new Zambian driving licence. Amusingly it includes no driver restrictions, which means the need for wearing glasses somehow went unnoticed.

Progress

I am sure that I have moaned on the blog before, and definitely to friends and family, about how organising events here often requires huge amounts of time and effort, particularly distributing letters of invitation by hand and then reminding the same people by text a day before a meeting. However, the efforts can be rewarding when stakeholder meeting turns out as it did today. Meaning that: the turnout was good (over 40 people); we started roughly on time (less than 30 mins late); the presentations and discussions were all pretty good, interesting and with helpful inputs; and the Guest of Honour, the District Commissioner, showed a genuine interest in HIV work and the people present. So the report card should read – shows improvement, 7 out of 10 and keep up the good work.

Mazabuka Prison

Some opportunities happen by chance and the visit to the Mazabuka prison was one of these occasions. I have been to the prison a number of times before to speak to some of the officers about HIV but the chats had always been outside, away from the prisoners. This time we were on the inside, amongst the prisoners, unexpectedly part of a delegation going to inspect the prison conditions. The team included the new DC, the Mayor and various other Government officials. We had only gone to speak to the DC about him opening a HIV workshop and ended up in the back of his vehicle being driven to the prison. Nothing wrong with this given the importance of needing to address HIV issues to both prison officers and prisoners.

The Mazabuka prison currently has around 250 male prisoners (a mixture of people on remand and people already convicted and serving a sentence), who share only two toilets and are expected to sleep in two rooms which are the size of your average school classroom. By my calculations the prisoners outnumbered the mattresses (not beds) by around 6 or 7 to 1, so people have to sleep on the floor, in any space or gap they can find, and sometimes in shifts. With no fans and few windows the rooms have little ventilation and only hot, static air,especially in the current hot conditions. The kitchen walls and ceiling was black; burnt out due to the fires made using small metal braziers to cook food. I am sure that conditions are worse in the larger city prisons but from what I saw even the one in Mazabuka should act as a strong deterrent to crime.