59,000 Feet Above Sudan

- August 28, 2018

Dedicated to my brother, Alan. RIP

My journey to Zambia started at noon from Heathrow Airport on 8^th August 2018. I was slightly apprehensive about the trip as I was flying with Ethiopian Airlines, whom I know very little about and was due to change planes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 9 pm or so at night with only a 30 mins turn around which sounded next to impossible! However, the seven-hour journey to Ethiopia was smooth, comfortable and very relaxing. Most people appeared to be either from North Africa or Zambia/Zimbabwe and very quickly after taking off we all settled down to watch one of the many films on offer on a small screen in front of us.

I watched three films, although it did feel slightly surreal watching ‘The Man from UNCLE’ whilst 59,000 feet above Sudan!

Sadly, I hardly saw anything of Africa as I arrived late at night. Changing planes in Addis Ababa proved extremely easy as there were about 100 of us getting the onward flight to Lusaka, so the connecting plane was held back specially for us. The airport staff efficiently moved us off one plane, then onto a bus then we all boarded plane number two.

I arrived in Lusaka later than scheduled at 2.30 am feeling tired but very excited. I was met at the airport by my kind employers which was a great relief!

The first few days after arriving in Lusaka, I was given time to relax and settle into my new accommodation which was much appreciated.

The first thing I was aware of was the very warm weather, around 29 degrees and very sunny and just how big a city Lusaka is. The people seemed very friendly and relaxed right from the beginning.

I am sharing a two bedroomed flat with my colleague who is an Occupational Therapist (OT) from Zimbabwe. He welcomed me warmly and for the last two weeks has been a great house mate, answering all my questions and helping me to understand the culture a bit here.

My work began a few days after arriving and so far I’ve worked for two weeks. I work in a small clinic with the OT, a special needs teacher and a teaching assistant. There is also a receptionist, a driver, and a gate-keeper. I can’t quite get used to having a driver especially when the journey from home to work is about 5 minutes by car – lovely in a way but making me very lazy!

I have started seeing clients at the Sandi Centre and the assessments have all been done in English so far, which makes things easier. Everyone I’ve met so far has amazing English. I have a range of clients and so far the age range has been from 3 to 10. They have a range of speech and language difficulties.

I am hoping to visit lots of other centres, hospitals and clinics but so far have only been to one place.

I’m quite shocked at how expensive things are here especially when you know what people earn. The average wage is between K3000-15,000 (£230-£1150) per month. I paid the following at the local supermarket, ‘Pick and Pay’;

Rice cakes £3.15

Butter (500g) £5.38

2 chicken breasts £1.84

Small punnet of mushrooms £2.99

However, the vegetables you can buy at the side of the road are much, much cheaper so may try and do more of this and of course, only buy vegetables in season.

The other difficult thing here for people is that the electricity supply often goes off. Last Wednesday at work, we lost all power for about 5 hours and another day for about 3 hours. Apparently, this is rare and mostly it only goes off for a few seconds at a time now – let’s see! Also, in our apartment block, the water supply gets turned off in the evening so we’ve no running water from about 6 pm to 6 am which is slightly awkward. We have to fill lots of bottles with water during the day so we use these at night.

There’s also no shower and no hot running water which takes a bit of getting used to but now I’m quite adept at having a shower with a bucket of water I’ve heated in pans!

One of the highlights of my time in Lusaka so far has been a visit to the Elephant Orphanage which was great. Poor baby elephants though – they are orphaned as their mothers were killed by poachers. The Elephant Orphanage Project works hard to nurture them before releasing them back into the wild when they’re old enough.

The youngest elephant there was only about 3 months old and so cute! We watched them from a distance being fed with big bottles.

The rangers don’t try and domesticate them and have been trained in animal behaviour so they keep their distance apart from when they feed them. They drink 10 litres of milk every 3 hours can you believe – the elephants that is, not the rangers! I also saw a wild ostrich by the side of the road on the way to the Orphanage which was wonderful. They can be a bit dangerous apparently and can run up to 70kph and they’re huge so we admired from the safety of the car!