From Livingstone to Lusaka

Our return from South Africa brought us back to complete craziness in Zambia. For the last couple of months of 2011 there was talk of Mike and I moving to Lusaka so that Mike could work on the implementation of a national database for the National AIDS Council. Momentum gathered in December and we thought that by the time we returned from South Africa we would have some clarity around this. But Zambia being Zambia, of course this was not the case.

So the remainder of January was spent sorting our move out, only to have everything happen in the space of literally two weeks. A frantic two weeks! The car needed repairs, Selina (our cleaner) needed new work, Rambo needed a home, I had to work out a forward plan with my organisation and that was on top of packing and two trips to Lusaka (500km away) to move our stuff. Glad that’s all over!

Leaving Livingstone has been difficult. Although it is a small town, sometimes a bit too small, we had met lots of great people and made some wonderful friends. Fortunately we had the opportunity to see most of them before we left at a small gathering at the Royal Livingstone Hotel where we had sundowner drinks followed by a lovely meal at Olga’s. Very Livingstone!

Mike and I with beautiful Victoria Falls behind us

Livingstone Farewell Drinks:
The people who have made our time there so much more
enjoyable than it might otherwise have been

We also made one last quick trip to Victoria Falls, definitely a highlight from our time in Livingstone. Super wet and now a tad cold, it was great to see them one last time.

Pretty Victoria Falls- I will miss you!

On the edge of the falls

Trying not to get wet

I did manage to find a home for Rambo; he is staying with his dog friends and our landlord in Livingstone who will make sure he is fed. I felt particularly lucky that our house was receiving two new volunteers, two lovely girls, one who reported she loves dogs. They were also able to take on Selina as their cleaner, which gave us some piece of mind.

Late January and early February were also filled with football fever as the Africa Cup of Nations took place. Think World Cup but on a slightly smaller scale, but nonetheless exciting. Zambia did make it to the final against Ivory Coast and against all the odds won! The atmosphere was amazing with people dancing in the streets, car horns, whistles and vuvuzela’s everywhere.

Taken during the Zambia v Ghana semi-final at VJs in Livingstone.
Obviously Zambia won

Happy, happy Zambians

And now we are in Lusaka. Our new apartment is located in an area called Kabulonga, a nice area with a great coffee/ cake shop, handy supermarket, a few nice restaurants and bars. 

Am I still in Zambia????

The Tuesday Market: A highlight of being in Lusaka with lovely
fresh vegetables, fruit, herbs and even tofu!

One of Mike's favourite road rules, the four way stop sign
intersections; a case of first in, best dressed- SERIOUSLY, that is
the rule!

Our apartment hasn't been quite as nice; it probably could be if we were going to be here longer than April and willing to put money into it, but we’re not, so it’s ok for now. Our biggest beef has been the bath/ shower. We don’t have a shower as the water pressure is so lousy so a bath/ bucket bath it is! And to top it off, the bath tub had been painted just before we moved in, but with the wrong paint, so sometimes we come out worse off than when we got in. Not the ideal set up especially with long hair but I’m managing (just).

Our new apartment in Luaska, top floor

Our new lounge. Not super homely but loving our giraffe "mummies"
in the background

Dining area/ study

Our awesome bathtub.....

.....and the even more awesome paint job they did!

Mike’s project has finally taken off with funding and location issues sorted. When he is finished, Zambia will have a national online database of all organisations working in HIV/AIDS throughout the country, as well as a way of capturing data to monitor progress against the AIDS Council’s national targets in prevention, impact mitigation, etc.

My situation has taken a bit longer to sort out. I still continue to support my Livingstone organisation who seem to have finally gotten things together. Just before moving we’d received $5k of office equipment and had two donor field assessments, having passed the desk assessments, each for $100k (Still awaiting the result of these). In addition to supporting my Livingstone organisation I’m also supposed to be working with another VSO partner in Lusaka, the terms of this still being sorted as I write. I also managed to get the opportunity to work with a large NGO here in Lusaka that I’d had previous contact with in Australia. They work in the area of education, especially for girls, something I’m quite passionate about and looking forward to helping them with when I start next week.

The second of the two field assessments conducted at my
Livingstone organisation before I left. Only 6 representatives at this
one; the first had 8 people assessing us

My Livingstone colleagues; hopefully they've learnt something
during my time there!

And so the days to leaving Zambia are going down slowly. The planning for our East Africa trip is now in full swing along with the realisation that we need to get super fit pretty quick if we want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in June.

Hurry up April!

Botswana & Namibia Road Trip: Chobe National Park and Planet Baobab, Botswana

Truthfully my holidays started a bit before our September 9^th departure across the border in to Botswana. Mum and her friend Reegena arrived in Livingstone with a week to check out the town prior to the start of road trip.

So, as a result Mike and I got to do a couple of the remaining tourist activities that we hadn’t yet done such as “Walking with the lions” and the Zambezi Sunset Cruise and others that we had done before such as sundowner drinks at the Royal Livingstone Hotel and Sunday lunch at Taita Falcon Lodge. 

Mum with the lions

The lions: Unfortunately these ones are bred in captivity

Enjoying sundowners on the Lady Livingstone Cruise

Sunset on the Zambezi River

Finally, the 9^th of September arrived and we set off on our Botswana and Namibia trip, with Mum and Reegena joining us for the Botswana part.

First stop was just over the border in Botswana, to Kasane. After a quick “lunch stop” at the border post where we had to scoff down our home packed lunch before being allowed to cross the border (damn that foot and mouth disease!), we made a return visit to Chobe National Park.

"Scoffing" down our packed lunch at the Botswana border

I won’t spend much time writing about Chobe as this was our 5^th visit. But I will say that Chobe never disappoints and hopefully the photos speak for themselves!

Monkey Tree

Impala taken it easy

Mum and me: Check out what's behind us!

After a couple of awesome days in Kasane, we set off south, heading towards Nata onroute to Planet Baobab, west of Nata.

The road south to Nata was interesting; under construction, the diversion road was narrow, slow and dangerous with large trucks coming from the opposite direction and taking up much of the road.

The road on the way to Nata: Over turned car

The road to Nata: Narrow roads

On this road we also had our first negative encounter with the Botswana Police. Set up on this stretch of road was an “Animal Control” post, at which we were forced to give up our earlier purchased rump steaks (vacuum packed), salad ingredients and apples. Apparently there are different zones in Botswana and you cannot bring such goods from one area to the other. I had a couple of issue with this as:

1. Botswana Tourism fails to disclose this to tourists, so many people run into this issue after making large purchases at local supermarkets in known tourist towns, and
2. The post was for animal products only. There was no mention of vegetable products, only the police telling us that they had to take our vegetables due to issues with fruit flies. I’m not sure if they were telling the truth or not, however no where on the post signage was there mention of vegetable products, only animal. Also interesting and a little suspicious to me, was how selective they were with the vegetable products. Things like lettuce they let us keep.

I did get a little fired up during this encounter, probably a result of my built up frustration at Zambia. But as expected I/ we didn’t win and I have little doubt in my mind that they all had a lovely dinner much later J. Local hoteliers also later confirmed that the vegetable products should have been ours to keep!

From “animal control” we continued onwards to Planet Baobab, a bush camp surrounded by giant Baobab trees.

Planet Baobab

I loved this camp and the Baobab trees that surrounded it. They are truly amazing. Most of the trees are believed to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old and are just beautiful, especially at sunset and sunrise.

The camp itself was also lovely with cute bush huts, which mum and Reegena were lucky to stay in (Mike and I camped) and a large inviting pool to chill in while gazing up at the Baobab Trees.

The pool at Planet Baobab and me in it!

One of the many huge Baobab trees

Sunset at Planet Baobab

Mike taking a picture of a giant Baobab tree

To give you some idea of the scale :-)

Unfortunately we had planned only one night there; a second night would have been great and also given us the opportunity to check out the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, which we were sad to pass by along the highway. Nonetheless, we continued on to the next exciting phase of our Botswana leg, the Okavango Delta!

Road on the way to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans

The Royal Livingstone Hotel

A couple of Saturday evenings ago we went for a couple of quiet drinks at The Royal Livingstone Hotel. We had been told so much about it, but even with everything we had been told I still wasn’t expecting what we saw.



The Royal Livingstone Hotel at night





The Zambezi River side bar on the grounds of the Royal Livingstone



The Royal Livingstone Hotel is amazing with its large green lawns, beautiful cream/ white colonial feel buildings, big leafy trees, clear blue pool and location, right at the top of Victoria Falls. As we enjoyed cold beer and Chardonnay at the bar on the edge of the Zambezi River we could see the mist off the falls. Spectacular!

Enjoying the sunset over Victoria Falls

The view over Victoria Falls

And just to top it all off, Zebra move about on the lawns behind us.

                                                            



Zebra by the pool

Zebra enjoying the Royal Livingstone grounds