Snapshots of Zambia vol.2

Q: When do you know you've been in a developing country for too long?

A: When you can imitate a distorted TV show to perfection.
or

A: When you keep watching a program with interest even though you are unsure as to whether you are watching a gardening show or lesbian porn.

or

A: When you feel lucky that you have see-through toilet paper, and that you are able to flush the toilet regardless of the death sounds emerging from the plumbing upon this action.

or

A: When you see a woman on horseback wearing a white wedding dress and a tiara in the middle of a roundabout across the road from the supreme court and your only thought is "Awww, I wish I'd had a tiara at my wedding".

or

A: When you consider it only normal that while queuing at the grocery store the person in front of you will load their groceries on the conveyor belt and leave the shopping cart with the items they couldn't afford after all for you to deal with.

or

A: When you consider it the appropriate action for the person in the grocery store, whom you told that the milk placed on its side in their shopping basket is leaking on their shoes, to simply place it upright to avoid further leakage.

or

A: When you see nothing wrong with a nail salon being called "The Most Best Salon in Lusaka", or that the salon is a concrete block the size of a closet.

or

A: When you think that a waitress feeding her pet crocodile is not that interesting a sight.

or

A: When you instead of avoiding salad calmly take medication every 6 months to rid yourself of worms.

or

A: When you think you can never again be happy in Europe. 

Edit: And most importantly when you are okay with the fact that it takes you 4 hours to post what you've written. 

What did you do that for?

After yet another perfect bacon and banana on whole wheat and a spit-free latte at Kilimanjaro cafe at Manda Hill one sort of feels like having something sweet (even though one knows one is not supposed to have ANY sugar) and then one reads a blog post. 

Seems safe, hey? 

Not safe enough. 

One now craves, craves, and CRAVES Betty's way retro chocolate fridge cake (not a euphemism, an actual cake) and is probably insanely lucky, blood sugar and insulin level-wise that is, that the hotel room does not come with a kitchen. 

One has however yet again eaten the best chocolate since Finland - Cilla, Bateleur Investments Ltd. of Chisamba Zambia - but luckily only the one piece left on the pillow as a result of gross overtipping of the maid.

One is now almost forced to drink lots of wine to curb the sugar rush. Poor one.

Did someone spit in my latte?

I really hope I'm just developing a case of paranoia. I really do.

You be the judge.

The waitress I reprimanded earlier for not providing me with timely service at the hotel bar, today met me at the door with a sunny smile and took my order before I'd had time to properly sit down. I smiled and thought "good for her". This was to be a gooood Saturday. 

After having my necessary bottle of water and copious amounts of rooibos-tea (I'm pretending to be healthy, let's hope the lingering flu is fooled), I felt like having a latte. 

In case you have missed it before (not very likely, but anyhow), lattes in this country rock, really rock, and so does the bonus cake that comes with the latte. This coffee is awesome. I. Can. Not. Stay. Away. 

The waitress took my order, and went away. I was happily looking forward to my latte (which was gonna rock, seriously). And oh how I long for that unblemished frame of mind, as my mental state was soon to take an unfortunate spirally dip (this is not an uncommon occurrence). 

When the waitress arrived with my latte she set it down in front of me, fixed me with a meaningful stare and said: "I hope you enjoy your latte, I made it specially for you."  

Perhaps having read this about a maid using her menstrual blood as a voodoo-y spice in her employers' food (via Stepford Dreams), I was already in pretty someone's-out-to-get-me state of mind. Now... is it just me or is this the worst thing for a waitress to say to a coffee-crazed Finn who is not unwilling to entertain elaborate conspiracy theories? 

Well, maybe it is just me. Yup, pretty sure it's just me. Shouldn't probably have had all that sugary cake at breakfast... hmph... 

Well, it has been at least weeks since my last proper bout of self-inflicted housewife drama. This was long overdue. 

Thanks universe.

Did someone spit in my sandwich?

I'm still in Zambia. 

The whine, whine & moan section:

I am in a hotel (or possibly in a country) with a very fickle internet connection. Sometimes, like right now at 8AM, the connection is perfect, and other times getting beyond the Facebook sign in page seems to be too big of a task. Combine this with a hotel room television set the size of my fist and you'll have an inkling of the pain this brings. Argh! Am I supposed to, like, not have any, like, distractions, or what? Like. 

My South African cell phone sim-card doesn't work here. I recently found out that this is because I don't have 'international roaming' in my contract. Hmph - this is just another way for the South African government/MTN to not see me as an adult, not have trust in me, and to supposedly make sure that I am unable to rack up a bill too big to pay. There is a limitation of R600 or something of sort in my contract already, so I fail to see the problem, but whatever. 

I seem to have caught the flu the hubby had. I'm pretty sure I would have kicked it already if I wasn't drinking the house red wine all the time. Sporting a sore throat and a runny nose that miraculously go away at night leaving me free to enjoy the wine, but return with a vengeance in the morning. Well, I guess this one I'll have to pin on my own stupid, borderline alcoholic self. Also, I am aware of the bad decision that having four cups of coffee in the morning instead of herbal tea is, if one is out to beat the flu. Again, all me.

The room service has gotten our order wrong four nights in a row, and we have complained thus possibly angering some of the poor staff (it's not all their fault, the hubby can't pronounce 'vegetable'). Every night then we wait for something while the rest of the food gets cold on the table. And it is not that great to begin with, even when it's hot. 

Yesterday, as I was hanging out at the hotel bar, where the internet seems a little better, and really felt the urgent need for some rooibos-tea, I did not get service for a whole whopping 35 minutes. I ill-advisedly complained, prompting the entire staff to now harangue me with constant good service. However, I'm also plagued by suspicions of them either spitting or possibly wanking off in my sandwich, or my latte. But that stuff only happens in the States, hey?

Everyone keeps calling me ma'am, which is depressing, since I'm only thirty.

I'm too sick and it might be just a tiny bit too cold to hang out by the pool.

There is a through and through Texan at the hotel who considers me one of his compatriots. Ya'll.

 

End of whine, whine & moan. Beginning of the section titled: 

This is a Flippin Awesome Country

Zambia is safe and sunny (I'm told SA has gotten cold since I've been gone). 

The internet at the hotel is included in the room price, and so is breakfast. 

I love, and I mean LOVE, bacon and banana on whole wheat, which they serve at this cool cafe in one of the malls. 

Lattes in this country rock.

I have been able to go everywhere without my cell phone, which for me, coming from the land of Nokia and not really being able to remember a time before cell phones (when I was a kid my dad had a phone the battery of which took up the whole trunk of the car), is a very liberating experience.  

Being sick here with the hubby now taking care of me beats being sick by myself at home. One might argue that had I not come I would not have gotten sick in the first place, but I refuse to go there.

People here call me ma'am instead of sir, which often happens in South Africa. I know I have a haircut, that even my hairdresser calls a 'boy cut' (boycott, ha ha. Too sick to make a proper joke), but I'm still fairly feminine, especially since I got my eyebrows and eyelashes dyed. 

There is a through and through Texan at the hotel who considers me one of his compatriots. His jeans are far too tight and his shirt far too Dallas. Love it! He also has very interesting facial hair.

Sometime last month I found a blog called Zambia Express, written by two Brits living in Lusaka. I wrote to them asking what they thought I should see and do in Lusaka, since Lonely Planet wasn't too big of a help, and the cool expats that they are Jo and Kieron actually went above and beyond and came up with a whole itinerary for a week in Lusaka. How cool! As soon as I feel up to it, I'll be off sightseeing, eating, drinking and partying per instructions. I can be such a charter tourist sometimes. Snicker!

Also, I have actually been writing something besides e-mails (which I don't really do unless we are talking a letter of complaint) and this blog. It's a bit off the wall, and I'm missing an ending, but it's also pretty good. I think. Hurrah!

Cause and effect

Today has been the first day off for the hubby since he arrived in Zambia, and this only because some of the stuff he needs to make heads and tails of his work here is still in customs, and today being a holiday, it is not coming out of there before tomorrow, if then. Bad for him, nice for me.

Why then are we not on our way back from Victoria Falls? Our ambitious plan was to start off 5AM from Lusaka, be in the historical town of Livingstone in southern Zambia at 10AM, take in the town, check out the Zambian side of the falls, and be back in Lusaka around 8PM, before the roads get too dangerous. But, alas, this was not to be. 

The hubby is sick. S -I - C - K as only a man is. He has the sniffles, and oh my is he miserable. The most he could muster, since we felt the need to give the nice cleaning people at the hotel some space to work their magic (and who really wants to look behind that scene anyway), was to drive me around Lusaka with the camera stuck to my face for a change, and treat me to lunch at a pretty cool local place. However, before we stopped for lunch a thought occurred, and after making the hubby flush all of his dirty tissues and really scrub his hands with soap, it still hasn't gone anywhere. I realized that the hubby could inadvertently kill someone.

Let me explain this horrifying conclusion. 

A while back I read somewhere that Zambia has one of the highest concentrations of people with HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, I now know, this information is correct. According to Avert, 15% of the adult population in Zambia lives with this disease. I realize that the number is 3% lower than the number for South Africa, but we haven't been sick in South Africa, and at home the hubby would be just there - in isolation at home - if he was sick. Now, at lunch, by just breathing the same air with the other people in the restaurant he could pass on his sniffles to someone whose immune system would not be able to cope, and who would then become the main participant in one of the far too commonplace funeral processions that, even just in the past couple of days, I have already seen too many of. And, chances are, before attending the procession the person would in turn pass on what begun as the simple sniffles. There would be no testing and no medication.  

At the local marketplace there were far too many people selling headstones.     

When the reality finally hits home, it really floors you.  

A snapshot of life from Lusaka, Zambia

I'm at the hotel gym. I have it all to myself and I'm enjoying a brisk walk on the treadmill. On the big, fancy television there is Gladiator, the soundless version, as I am unable to reach the remote. I turn my eyes towards the smaller screen in the corner. It is emitting slightly more sound. A Zambian morning program seems to be on.

Picture this:

There are two massive, sky-blue, fake-suede armchairs with a couple of throw rugs that appear to have a Zebra-motif, symmetrically positioned over the seats and the backs. Behind the chairs, on the back wall of the 'set', is a grainy blow up of a 20 000 kwacha bill, an amount of money equal to $4 USD. On the chairs sit a man and a woman. There are newspapers and a glass bowl of what appear to be avocados on a wooden coffee table placed directly in front of the chairs. 

It appears that the woman is the host of the program. She keeps nodding her head as the man talks. She is wearing something that to me seems a prom dress, the short kind. The garment is pink, has immense puffy sleeves and a little pink lace on the collar. The picture is cut so that you cannot see her shoes, but you are painfully aware of the fact that she has not shaved her legs in a while. She has, however, obviously gotten her hair/wig done in the recent past and it sits atop her pretty nodding head like a helmet, not a hair out of place.      

The man keeps talking to the camera and to the woman. He is very serious, bald, and middle aged. He is wearing a brown plaid jacket, the like of which I have never before laid eyes on, a white shirt,light brown pants, and a tie that matches the jacket in the browns, but not in the pattern, as it has diamond shapes on it. He is in all possible shades of chocolate, and somewhat clashes with the zebra-motif and the chairs.

And, as if this scene is not enough to knock me off the treadmill, the camera cuts to the bowl of avocados. There are three of them, two on the bottom, and one positioned on top of the two. I stare at the screen in disbelief - directly behind the bowl in the picture is the man's crotch. He is sitting with his legs parted and appears to have grown a pair of green testicles and an odd shaped penis with a little black dot right on the tip.

I practically wet myself.