Woke up at 7:10am. Ate CoCo Puffs for breakfast. John and Ruth left around 8am for work. Shortly after John and Ruth left the house, I heard some rustling in the house. I first thought it was a mouse or a rat but then I saw something behind one of the curtains, to high for a mouse. I went over to the curtains and discovered it was an eight inch long lizard trying to climb up them.
I took my bucket shower around 8am. It felt extra cold for some reason today. I havent shaved since May 18th and noticed I have a pretty good beard growing.
I spent some of the morning thinking about my experiences here so far. One thought concluded that to survive in Zambia, all you really need is a roll of toliet paper, a bar of soap, and plenty of drinking water. I also wished I would have learned more of the language before or while being here. I noticed that if you try to speak in the native language, the people seem to be much more recpetive and willing to help you than if you speak nothing but English to them. Trying to speak the language is also good at generating some laughs among the people which is never a bad thing.
I went up to the lab to hang out with John and Ruth until 12:30pm. I then went back to the house and finished packing up my stuff. We then went to Anna-Maria’s for lunch around 1pm. I filled up on some great pasta there. The food was excellent! Ruth left after a while but John and I stuck around and chatted. We then walked to the bus station where we waited for the Juldan (my busline) bus to arrive to take me to Lusaka. As we waited, the local kids made fun of John for wearing shorts as no one wears shorts in Zambia. One child did gymanstic tricks for us to try to get us to give him money. This reminded me of a sign I read while at Flatdogs which instructured us to not giving money to the locals because it encourages begging and that if you want to give money, you should give it to a charity organization.
Walking along the road in Mansa
The bus arrived and I boarded it around 3:45pm. John waited outside of the bus and I talked to him from my window. The bus left at 4:45pm. I was a lot more sad to leave than I thought I would be. I was greatful for this.
I arrived in Lusaka at 3:30am. I slept for a decent portion of the trip. After passing over the Tuta bridge, the rest of the trip was fairly smooth. I sat next to a local who worked at the hospital in Mansa. He said he knew who John was because he would go to the hospital requesting distilled water to clean his lab equipment.
Once the bus pulled into Lusaka, there were tons of cab drivers outside my bus window. The drivers could probably see that I was the only white person on the bus and in absolute need for a taxi ride. As I walked up the bus aisle to get off the bus, the taxi drivers followed me from outside and blocked my way to get off the because so many of them were trying to get my attention. I pushed through all of them and told them I was fine and didn’t need a ride. None of them believed me because they still harrased me for a ride. At one point the bus driver yelled at all of them and told them to leave me alone. I went to the underside of the bus to get my bag and one of them grabbed it and said he would take me to where I needed to go. I grabbed my bag from him and looked around and found a suitable driver and told him I would go with him. The driver started to grab my bag to carry it and I told him to let it go. There was so much chaos, I didn’t want anyone walking off with my bag. I held on to my bag tight and walked it over to the cab, put it in the trunk, and then left for ChaChaCha backpapckers. The taxi fair was 20 pin.
I got to ChaChaCha’s, a hostel, around 4am. I told the night worker I had a room to myself and he gave me a key and showed me to my room. I noticed I had no cell phone service — John told me to call him to let him know I made it okay. I figured I would deal with all this in the morning. I went to my room, set up my mosquito net, and then went to bed.
The bag I had on the bottom of the bus smells like fish. Many people ship fish from Lake Bangweulu to Lusaka to sell it. My bag was on top of one these bags of fish. I would not get the smell out of that bag until I got back to the US and cleaned the bag myself!