Life in Lusaka
The drive down was similar to the life of a sardine, five people and a lot of luggage caused our carry-on’s to be lap-ons during the drive. However, the time at the game lodge that is the only building inside of a game park was very relaxing and the food was good. We then headed the last two hours down to Lusaka on paved roads and arrived around noon. (on the 7th.)
On the game drive, we saw three elephants, two across the river on an island feeding on the tall reeds and one alone the river feeding as well. They have to keep their shape somehow, so finding them feeding wasn’t too surprising. We didn’t see any hippos out of the water, but we saw over twenty in the water, and a full family near the end of where we went and then turned around back toward the lodge. As for crocs, we probably saw around five or six.
It was good to spend time with the Whit’s on a vacation setting and just furthored my thankfulness for having been able to come with them. My roomate was Jake in a tent surrounded by a grass hut, and many animals around with the location litterally 10 yards from the river. A couple around us had set up their own tent, but during the night a hippo had wandered up and slept next to the tent, so when they arrived around ten o’clock they tried revving their engine and honking but the hippo was quite content where he was laying… needless to say, the couple slept in the car. There is just something about 1000+ pound animals with large teeth and defensive attitudes that makes it useless to argue with them.
Life in lusaka has also been relaxing. We’ve been staying at the CMML flight house and went out on Saturday to see the mall and the market. The market was everything I figured it would be and was a process of just looking for cheap things that were a little better quality than the thing before it. The majority of the ‘ebony’ was shoe polish, and the ‘ivory’ was magically light!… But we didn’t go expecting to find cheap ebony and ivory, we went to experience the haggling and fun time of finding fun little inexpensive memory pieces.
They sell these ‘big five’ africa carvings and I wanted a cheap on. Unfortunately I bought it last minute, and didn’t really haggle all that much and when I got to the car I realized it only had 3 of the big five and instead it had a hippo and missed the leopard and the rhino. i wasn’t disappointed, I got it for less then five dollars, and I like the carving of the hippo with its mouth open regardless.
Now, on sunday we rest, and read books and watch the satelite TV and I leave on tuesday early morning. My flight leaves at 8:45 AM and gets into London at around six PM, I believe. I then have a night in a hotel and a flight the next day at noon, and arrive in America… at noon. It’s one of those weird flights that just rides along the time changes to make the flight take ‘no time’.
These last few days have been enjoyable and the 24 hour power, internet and satelite all of a sudden seems like a great luxury. Still, I’m still almost more content to read ’scramble for africa’ which is something like 700 pages long in small text, but written well and exciting and holds a lot more importance to me now that I”ve spent three months here and only found my heart for africa has grown larger then it was before.
So, as the day creeps on, it remains relaxing and much cooler then it was in Chit, which is certinaly a blessing since there is no pool to hide in during the worst part of the day here in Lusaka.
PS: McAdam boys rock. The end.