As my last vacation during my service, I took another trip down to Livingstone to meet up with friends for the new year.
But first, I spent the Christmas and Chanukah holidays with a group of friends at another volunteer’s site. Mimi is a RED (education) volunteer who lives in Chidiza district—about 40 kilometers southwest of Chipata district. Chidiza is known as the most run-down and smallest of the districts in Eastern in which volunteers are placed.
After baking two dozen cookies for the Christmas spirit, I headed out in a taxi with friends, Shu, Jonathan, and Jay. We knew our taxi driver, Reuben, well and were able to (thankfully) choose our own tunes for the two-hour ride (though he didn’t like The Shakey Graves and asked for The Weeknd and Beyonce instead). The road to Chidiza is by far the worst road I have experienced in Zambia, and this is saying something. During the two hour ride, not a minute was smooth sailing. There are ruts and bumps and holes and roots and rocks and erosion on every square inch of the gravel road. Lucky for us, none of us are susceptible to motion sickness—or else it would’ve been even more miserable than it was. The fortitude that Mimi shows, travelling down that rutted path in a taxi full to the brim with merchandise and twelve other humans (in a Toyota Camri) is astounding. Not to mention the inevitable screaming zampop. I don’t envy her.
We met she and Jamie, another Chidiza volunteer, at her house. She lives in an off-shoot of a bigger village, surrounded by just her host family. A nice quiet area, with an actual tree-lined drive! Her hut, is small, naturally, but was filled with books (which I spend a long time searching through) and other cute knick-knacks. She has three rooms—unlike my two rooms—one, a bedroom, one a sitting room (complete with couches!), and one a “kitchen” or storage room. We spent the afternoon talking, playing cards (spades), and cooking enchiladas for Christmas Eve dinner—a tradition from her Texan upbringing.
It was the first night of Chanukah, so Shu lit the first candle of a homemade menorah, and we repeated “Amen” after she rapidly recited the prayers in Hebrew. I had forgotten to bring any sleeping gear, so I piled her extra blankets on the concrete floor and slept with a chitenge as a blanket. Sounds miserable, but it really wasn’t so bad.
On Christmas morning, we were awoken at 5 am by Zampop being blasted from her host family’s house—she said this was unusual—must have been special for Christmas (lucky us). Later, once it’d stopped and we were sipping our coffee, I insisted on playing the five Christmas songs on my ipod to get in the mood.
Around 8 am, we gathered on reed mats to open presents with her host family. Mimi has a generous spirit and had bought every member of her family a little something. She even brought out a bottle of champagne, which she had her host-dad open. They were excited about the carbonation more than anything else. After opening presents and drinking tobwa (a fermented maize drink), we briefly watched as Shu killed our chicken dinner and then embarked on a short hike to the top of the medium-sized hills in her village.
The hike was less strenuous than the hikes near my area, but the view was much nicer. You could see all of Chidiza spread out below us and Zambia really is a beautiful place during the rainy season, when everything is vibrantly green and fecund. We sat upon a flat rock for a long while and Jay asked us each about traditional and regional foods we’d grown up with (we were all from different parts of the States—MN, TX, NC/MD, SC, and FL). It was nice to reminisce and I learned, to my chagrin, that deep-fried cheese curds really are a delicacy of the great Midwest.
We spend the afternoon playing cards and enjoyed a meal of nshima, fried chicken, and rapu for lunch. Later, Mimi, Shu, and I walked to a nearby village to see the nyao—traditional dancers of the Ciewa people. The nyao from Mimi’s parts were reknown for their skill, so it was exciting to see them put on a show. Unfortunately, it started to rain about 10 minutes after we’d arrived (even hail fell down—a Christmas miracle! Ice in Zambia!), so we didn’t see much of the dancing.
I’d made applesauce earlier in the day and Shu went to work on her latkes for the Chanukah supper. We, again, lit the menorah and repeated “Amen” when she indicated we should. The latkes were slow cooking, so we played cards while waiting on the food. After dark, we gathered Mimi’s host family and set off a number of fireworks in the fields. It was a spectacular spectacle and everyone enjoyed very much.
In the morning, we piled into the taxi and made it to Chipata before 8 am. I spent the next few days at the house with friends before travelling to Lusaka and from there to Livingstone for NYE.
I hitched down to Lusaka with Erica and David—LIFE ’16 volunteers. We had a shitty day of it—successfully getting to Petauke, then waiting in the sun for hours before hopping on a bus. There had been a bug going around in Chipata and I caught it on the bus ride to Lusaka. Luckily, I had an entire row to myself, there was no music, and the windows opened for a nice breeze. Still, I made it nearly to Chongwe before I had to crawl my way to the front and ask the driver to pull over. I had a high fever, diarrhea, and I later vomited before reaching Lusaka. Honestly, I’m just surprised this is the first time I’ve been violently ill while travelling—I’ve been pretty lucky with sickness throughout my service.
I could barely walk off the bus, but somehow made it to the hostel to meet friends, Laura and Corrina. They tucked me into bed and went to go see a movie. After getting a few hours of sleep, Laura came back and fell into bed too—she had caught the bug as well. By midnight by fever had broken and by morning I felt well enough to get on the bus to Livingstone. Luckily, I made it down there without any mishaps. Laura stayed in Lusaka an extra day and met us the day after, still feeling a bit under the weather.
Corrina and I went to eat the Zambezi Cafe for dinner—I ordered a pizza and about 10 minutes after I’d ordered, the server came out to inform me that the dough had not been made yet, so if I could order something else, that’d be great. I simply said, “no,” and we left to go to Olga’s where the pizza dough was ready, (I mean really, it was like 16, but you can’t make pizza dough for an order, come on!) We got gelato after dinner (I was feeling much better and it’s impossible to pass up a chance for gelato!) then met up with friends at the hostel for the night.
The next day, we got up early for our next adventure: rafting the Zambezi. This adventure will be documented in my next post!
Giraffes and Wild Tea 