Thursday Jan 5
Jolly Boys is a place where people from all over stay when visiting or traveling through Livingstone. We heard several different languages and accents, and the accommodations were pretty nice. I alluded to the pool earlier, and they also have some wonderful places to lounge around and sit, propping your feet up and allowing a little of the normal flight induced ankle swelling to reduce a little. They also have a little café where we ordered breakfasts ranging from “Breakfast Sundaes” a yogurt and muesli parfait, to omelets and French toast. Juice and coffee or tea, and we were ready to finish our repacking and pull our bags out to be ready for the 10 o’clock bus.
Our driver, Eliko, handle the vehicle expertly, and the ride to Macha gave us an opportunity to see some of Zambian life outside the city. Right now it’s the rainy season which means that the view from our windows was filed with lots of green—grasses, shrubs, trees (some of which were in bloom and very beautiful.) We saw people working in their gardens, mostly of corn, or maize. They used hand tools to work the soil and the corn anywhere from shin high to knee high. Some fields were definitely doing better than others.
Bicycles carrying usually two people and lots of walkers, women with babies on their backs.., traveled the road with us. They looked patient and sometimes curious. Every once in a while there would be speed bumps in the road to slow us down before we got to a short stretch of road, seemingly out of nowhere, where there would be shops— little restaurants, vegetables for sale, clothing for sale, and in these areas people gathered.
Erika of our team met Emma, a Zambian who was helping with the hosting. Emma knew Erika’s parents when they were at Macha and remembered Erica a one of the twins who was born to Stuart and Doris while they worked there.
Arriving at Macha, we unloaded our bags and Marjorie, the hospitality coordinator, greeted us at the nurses’ dormitory. Our girls have one wing of the building to themselves, and choice to room in groups of 3, 3, and 4. They could have had more rooms and just doubled up, but chose instead to stick together. That’s camaraderie.
Supper on Thursday was spaghetti with meat sauce and cooked cabbage. We have plenty of safe clean drinking water and other than a few minor upset stomachs likely due to anti-maleria meds, and a couple of sniffly noses, everyone is chipper and bright.
This morning, Friday, breakfast, served at 7 a.m. in the dining room right next to the girls’ dormitory, was toast and jam or peanut butter, oranges and bananas. In my opion and admittedly limited experience, Zambian bananas are absolutely the best. They may be only about 4 inches long, but they are sweeter, denser and richer than what we get in the grocery stores in Pennsylvania. Still hoping the girls get to have some fresh mangoes.
Three students, Rachel, Kati B. and Casey spent some time with the doctors in the operating theatre, observing several procedures on patients under only local anesthesia. They noted the very different hospital conditions which maybe some of them can comment on once they have internet access again. I wasn’t there, and it will be much better for you to get a first hand account.
Others of us went shopping for tea, biscuits (cookies) and minerals (soda) so we’re starting to learn to use the Zambian currency, kwacha.
There was time for some napping, some reading, and some Dutch Blitz before lunch (served at 1 p.m, or I should say, 13:00.) Today is was macaroni with a little tomato cooked in, more cooked cabbage, and a cabbage slaw with hard boiled eggs. Ah. Cabbage is a staple here!
Following lunch, we had our “quiet time” when some napped, others just relaxed. We gathered for a walk out the long road to the place where Wanda was able to buy our internet access—that is, we have logins to the wifi but that’s not actually a guarantee that the internet will be working at any given point. Please be patient. We are learning to be also!
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