Chaminuka Game Lodge

Sunday – October 25: Today is another day full of things to do. There’s nothing like entertaining people that are briefly in town to get me out of the hotel and serve as the impetus to complete some of the suggestions in the guide book. It’s also a great catalyst to hang out with new friends. On today’s agenda: the Arcades market and a visit to Chaminuka.

At about 8 am, Carlos, Dyad and I ventured to the Arcades shopping center for breakfast at La Mimosa Café. We lucked out in having a cab driver that I previously made friends with, so thankfully there was no haggling over the proper fair. I don’t negotiate with anyone, let alone cab drivers, before having a cup of coffee. I learned pretty quickly that Dyad is a fan of good coffee like I am, so I felt the need to get him out of the hotel for something decent. Caroline met up with us midway through breakfast. Justin, Adam and Rene (new USAID friend) planned to join us shortly for some pre-game drive market shopping.

We spent about an hour and a half at the market, which was a very successful endeavor. After three trips to Africa, I finally bought a drum!! It’s from Angola and awesome. And now when we have guitar nights at Chez Kate we can more effectively annoy my neighbors. :) I was also quite proud to have talked the guy down to selling it to me for $45. (I saw the same drum later priced at $130. Bwah-ha-ha!) Before I knew it Dyad tapped into my bargaining skills and I was walking him from vendor to vendor negotiating prices for him. Perhaps I should change careers and become a personal shopper….nah.

Anyway, after we spent too much money, the seven of us piled into two cars and ventured the hour drive to Chaminuka, which is another game lodge near Lusaka. However, Chaminuka is much bigger and better than Lilayi. If you visit Zambia put it on your list as a must see. One of Lusaka’s richest residents turned his 600-acre estate into the grounds which comprise four lakes, a cheese factor and all kinds of animals.

The outing started with hanging out in the hilltop lodge waiting for lunch to be served. We had a good view of the grounds and enjoyed the peaceful setting. It also didn’t hurt that again it was a beautiful sunny day with a nice breeze. The lunch buffet was well worth the wait and remains some of the best food that I’ve had in Zambia. Feeling adventurous, I tried Kubu, a type of antelope that looks a lot like a deer and pretty much tastes like it too. Needless to say it won’t enter my regular cooking rotation, but at least I tried it.

After lunch the group piled into another open air jeep to take a short drive to the onsite cheese factory for a tour. We learned how the cheese was made and marketed in the nearby grocery stores. It’s a fairly lucrative business and is growing in popularity with local buyers. The tour ended with a tasting in a room that looked sort of like a cave. Our tour guide told us that it’s thought that cheese was initially discovered in a cave and the owner wanted to emulate that feeling. I’m not sure how true it is but there were some neat cave markings on the wall for effect.

Knowing my love cheese, the tasting made my day. Despite the fact the tasting happened on a full stomach, just like Jell-O, there’s always room for cheese. We had everything from aged cheddar, to “mozzarella” (read: gross) and feta. I have to say, that I have a new favorite cheese friend: Haloumi. It’s almost like Mozzarella, but a bit more salty.

We left directly from the cheese tour to go on an hour and half game drive throughout the grounds. We saw just about everything except giraffes (which they have, we just couldn’t find them). The highlight was definatley a family of elephants. The baby is the first born to elephants in captivity. His name is the Tonga word for "blessing." To see all of the pictures from the game drive click here. (Username: Kateynanna@aol.com password: pictures) I did include this picture of the sleeping lions as proof that lions are really cats. Here’s a side by side comparison to Tigger and Tinkerbelle sleeping as proof.

The trip to Chaminuka was one of the best days in Zambia I've had to date. Great surrounding and great people. If you take a trip to Zambia, add this place to your list.

Sketchy to the max.

While I have been working most of the weekend on catching up on this blog, I'm breaking my rule about chronology to tell you about a disturbing part of my weekend.

I went to the Arcades Market on Sunday for a final round of shopping. While Caroline and Justin were meeting up with me later, I decided to get an early start and treat myself to coffee and reading my book at the Mimosa Cafe. I referenced this cafe in my Chaminuka posting. As I was reading my book and sipping my coffee, I looked up to see a man at a table near mine video tapping me. He was sitting at a table with 4 others, trying to hide his video camera under his hat. I looked at him, but he didn't move. First thought was to move to the other side of the table to clearly say "I see what you're doing" and to get out of the way, but truly, I just needed to get out of there. So I packed up my book and notebook and sat with my purse on my lap until I could ask my waitress for my bill. I kept staring the guy down and he finally got up and moved...to another table where he pointed the camera at me again. Finally, my waitress appeared as did another friend of mine from USAID. I waved and he came over to the table to say hello. I informed him of the situation, paid and walked to the other end of the cafe to wait on someone from his group that was at the ATM. As we were standing there he noticed that another table of guys had a more sophisticated TV camera in a cardboard box tapping another table at the cafe.

While I have no idea what these people were up to, I reported the incident to the embassy this morning. Yikes. I wished that I either reported it to the owner of the cafe and/or walked up to the guy to ask: "What the...???" Instead, I just got the heck out of dodge, but that's probably just as well.

This is the second time that something used as an example from my security briefing has actually happened to me and thus, I will no longer make fun of such briefings.

Lilayi Game Park

On Saturday, Justin, Dyad and I went on a little adventure. Justin, who had use of the CDC Volvo, had been having trouble with the battery for a little over a week. For the record, AAA does not service Zambia. Thankfully the Regional Security Office does, but even they were tired of coming to jump Justin’s car. So Friday, the head CDC driver gave Justin a little treat…the weekend with a sweet SUV and two tanks of free gas. I really tried to get him to drive us to Botswana for the day, but instead we settled on a lodge about 10 minutes outside of Lusaka called Lilayi.

Basically, Lilayi is like a small resort/hotel with a lot of land, which means…game drives! We arrived shortly before lunch and had time to check out the grounds around the lodge before heading out. The first picture you see is a hut at the lodge selling a few curios. The second picture is the largest aloe plant that I've ever seen. They have these everywhere, but that's the biggest one yet. It puts the aloe plant I have in my office to shame.

One of the lodge drivers drove up with an open air jeep (complete with three big bench seats where a truck bed should be) to take us around the grounds to look at the animals. It was a beautiful day about 80 degrees with a light breeze. The grounds were beautiful so even without seeing any animals it would have been a really fun day, but...we got to see lots of antelope, warthogs, and giraffes!

The game drive lasted about an hour and we had lunch at the lodge after our return. We all agreed that the only thing that could have made the day better was a hammock and a nap. To see all of the pictures from the day at Lilayi please click here. (username: kateynanna@aol.com password: pictures)

Later that night Carlos, Dyad, Justin and I went out to dinner at Dil the indian restaurant. It was a nice night of conversation and food. It's nice to change up the monatany of being in the hotel with some adventures and new friends.

Another three day weekend!!

Friday, October 24 – Today is Zambian Independence Day and thus, I do not have to work…again. This weekend will be lots of fun and quite busy as some of my co-workers from back in the States will be here on a visit. Carlos (the Contracts Team Lead) and Dyad (Contracting Officer based with Valerie in Pretoria) arrive tonight. While I was supposed to go camping at Kafue National Park this weekend, for various reasons it didn’t work out. And while I’m bummed that I don’t get to spend the weekend with Nick and Michelle, I do have some happening social plans set up.

Today I spent the morning blogging by the pool and finishing up a few small grant application reviews. While Zambia is a pretty peaceful place, I decided to err on the side of caution and hang at my hotel today, just in case things get rowdy. Here’s a picture of my view. Yes, seriously this is what I look at every morning while eating breakfast. It’s a beautiful pool area and I’m so happy to have an extension to my summer. I hear it’s gotten cold back home. I have no shame in rubbing it in that I still am working on my tan.

I spent the afternoon doing laundry (with woolite in the sink) and other odds and ends. Carlos and Dyad arrived late afternoon and a group of us when over to Carmen’s house for dinner. Carmen is the Director of the CDC Zambia office and was gracious enough to invite a few newbies over for some homemade Mexican food. Yum-o! Among the attendees were – Justin, Caroline – a Public Health fellow in the CDC Office, Carlos, Dyad, and Adam – a new employee at the USAID office. There were a few others, but these are the names you will see again and the people that I’ve been hanging out with most over here. It’s nice that we band together so quickly being so far away from our other friends and family.

Carmen and her husband Jason have a beautiful home and it was so nice to have a relaxed evening with my new co-workers. In the category of random, I was asked twice in front of the group about what I want to do with my life. I guess it comes with the territory when you’re in a fellowship program doing an overseas rotation. It’s nice to have people that are concerned and available to be sounding boards. I’ve had a lot of time to think, process and plan about future career plans while I’m here. I’m finally getting to the answers phase, but these are things you’ll have to ask me to discus in person. Moving on…

After dinner, Carlos, Dyad and I hung out at the hotel bar to catch up on things. There were a lot of foreign journalists and election observers in town for gearing up for that Zambian presidential election. I don’t mind living in a hotel when you have friends to hang out with and things to do at night.

Small Grants

So much has happened in the past 10 days, I need to get up to date so I can tell you about some of the cool stuff I’ve been doing here. Get ready for a bunch of posts at once…

The week of October 20-23 was pretty quiet and uneventful. I was asked to sit on the objective review panel for Zambia’s USG small grants program. This is a section of PEPFAR money that comes to the country designated for short projects that don’t require a lot of funding to complete. Zambia has decided to fund all of their Orphans and Vulnerable Children projects through this mechanism. Because I needed to read through about 30 applications in 4 days, I cancelled plans here and there to spend more time reading through the applications. It made for some lonely nights in the hotel, but I was happy for the academic exercise.

The whole process was sort of like grading papers. But instead, I was evaluating components of a project proposal and scoring them accordingly. All applications were not created equal and there were times I had to take breaks to make sure that I was maintaining objectivity. If just gets tough to read after a while because the need for service is so great. Most of the programs aimed to paying for school fees and uniforms for children that had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. FYI – the term ‘orphan’ in these types of programs means a child that lost one parent. A double orphan is a child that has lost both parents.

Anyway, these projects look to ease the burden to the extended family for children who no longer have parents to support them. Good applications were those that partnered with health services, provided counseling for emotional issues, and targeted at least 50 percent girls. While many strides have been made in empowering women, in many cases female children are still valued less than males. One of the ways to correct this is via completed primary and secondary education. If you educate women, they are much more likely to become leaders in their community and reinvest their talents, thus working to end the cycle of poverty.

I’m reading Three Cups of Tea at the moment and it speaks to the importance of the education of girls. (Yes, this is my second shameless plug for this book. Go read it!) Reading a book like that while working in a developing country makes it all the more vivid. It was a good choice for the trip.

Moving on...a few other random funny things about reading these applications:
1) Love it when people don't know English slang terms and develop acronyms. There was one organization that named themselves the Development Organizations for Peoples Empowerment or DOPE. And yes, they called themselves DOPE throughout the application. (Although their name had no bearing on their score. :)

2) There are several programs hope to generate their own income by breeding and selling various types of livestock. I love it when they say they can afford anti-biotics for the chickens, but not the children. (yes, they did loose points for that.)

So small grant review was a good experience, but I'm glad serving on objective review panels is not a large component of my day job. It's tough and tedious!

Shopping! Shopping! Shopping!

Every Sunday the parking lot of one of the strip malls in town become an authentic African handicrafts market. For anyone traveling to Zambia in the future, this is the Arcades Sunday Market. It wouldn’t have been proper for me to take pictures of the market and it would have out-ed me as a sucker in future bargaining deals. So…let me do my best to paint a picture of the scene.

In the parking lot there are three straight rows of vendors who come early in the morning to set up their “shops.” I say shops loosely, as it really means just laying out what you have on a tarp or maybe just the ground. Some people have canopies to shield them from the sun. Others, mainly the jewelry vendors have card tables. But the vast majority are poorer artisans displaying carvings of wood and stone. Many of the women have hand made quilts. There is everything at this market. Items include: oil paintings, copper carving wall hangings, semi-precious stone jewelry, wooden and stone sculptures of animals, wooded salad bowls, drums, masks, clothing, and some people even have plants. It’s definitely a market geared toward visiting tourists or ex-pats with an expendable income.

Just FYI – Zambia’s biggest exports are copper and semi-precious stones. They have uncut stones that are really cheap. They also have several things made out of what’s called monkey fruit. It’s similar to an orange in shape and size, but I have no idea what it tastes like.

I took a taxi to the market to check it out. Michelle is going to meet me here later. Turns out she didn’t feel well after the Tuku concert either and then she went to the kitchen party. I guess, down time for her too. I took a stroll around the shops to get a feel for what is available. There are young guys asking me to take a look at there things and trying to get my attention. I repeat over and over: “No. No. I’m just looking.” Some reply with a wide smile: “That’s ok. Looking is free.” I love Zambians. They are so funny.

I spotted a necklace that’s made of what I think at the time is jade, but since have found out is malachite. It looks like a green strand of pearls and I immediately think of Crystal. While she’s one of my best friends, Crystal is a tried and true southern girl who loves wearing her pearls. I, being raised by Yankee parents and a bit of a tomboy, do not understand the pearl concept. This is an ongoing joke between the two of us and I said to her before I left that I was going to get her the African equivalent to pearls. Jackpot. I negotiated with the guy selling them, but I don’t think I got the best deal I could have. Realizing that I’m in no rush, I went to go have a cup of coffee to collect me thoughts and do some currency conversions so I know how much things cost.

Michelle met up with me and we continued the shopping endeavor. My negotiating skills were much better after I focused a little bit. I ended up with a framed oil painting for $26, a solid wood ebony coaster set for $11 and two batik canvases for $22 each. I also got a few other things that I can’t tell you about yet because they are gifts. All in all it was a fantastic shopping day. I look forward to going back in the next few weeks to check more items off of my list.

Nudge, Nudge, Nudge. Sorry I'm so behind!

Ok. I’m way behind again, so let me catch you up as to what’s been keeping me so busy….

I believe we left off after the Oliver Tuku concert on Friday, October 17. So Saturday, October 18…I was supposed to go to a Kitchen Party with Michelle. This is the equivalent of a wedding shower/bachelorette party in Zambia. It lasts most of the day and from what I’ve heard it’s a heck of a party. I really wanted to go to it to have a local cultural experience while I was here, but unfortunately the Tuku concert took a lot out of me and I didn’t feel very well on Saturday. I think traveling and getting adjusted to a new place finally caught up with me and so I just needed a day off from life. Plus, I think I might be allergic to all the trees blossoming here. They are pretty, but certainly make my nose run (sorry! over-share!) Anyway….thankfully, crappy African television decided to play nice on Saturday by showing “Shrek 3” and “Because I Said So” on Saturday morning. So yes, I spent Saturday morning in bed watching TV. : )

By 1 pm I decided to go down and hang out by the pool and read Three Cups of Tea. That lasted for about an hour because it was so hot! If I had to guess I’d say between 85-90 degrees. So the rest of the afternoon I did research on my upcoming trip to Livingstone (more to come) and other random things. I finally felt back up to snuff and the need for social interaction by the evening so I called my new friend Justin to go to dinner.

Justin works for CDC Washington and is here for 4 months doing a rotation as the PEPFAR coordinator. So he’s herding the cats known as the Department of State, Department of Defense, USAID and CDC to get them to make one comprehensive AIDS program here. Pretty cool job and he’s doing well with it. Incidentally, he went to graduate school at UGA with my friend Valerie and lived with someone I went to Berry with. It’s a small, small world. (Hopefully “It’s A Small World” is now stuck in your head.) He’s also has the CDC car and graciously drives me around from time to time. So we went to dinner at an Indian Restaurant and I called it an early night. Not too exciting, but even in Africa you need some down time.