Dinner at Olga's

A very lazy morning, sat outside in the sun in our PJs writing our journals and looking through the photos we had taken all week and generally feeling quite good about things, when all of a sudden the dongle lost connectivity and a message saying we had consumed all our data appeared! There was no way we could have used it all over night, so our lazy morning was cut short with a mad dash to get up, showered and into town before the phone shop shut. Turns out the data was not consumed at all, but the phone network had momentarily gone down… happens a lot out here of course, so the guy in the shop looked at us like a couple of nutcases. Panic over, we agreed on a beer at Kubu to use their wifi and upload some blog.
Over a chips and saveloy lunch we discussed with other volunteers what we might spend the afternoon doing and many of them were heading over to the Falls. Especially the newbies of course. We decided against it in the end having seen them before both on foot and in a microlight, and opted instead for a drink at The Waterfront. We had heard about it and it had good reviews, but was apparently a little pricey… a whopping £1.50 for a bottle of beer instead of the usual 90p. We took a taxi and found a spot overlooking the hotel riverboat which was being loading up to go out for a sundowner dinner cruise. It was indeed a nice place, with a roaring clay oven ready to make pizzas, and lush green gardens complete with resident Kingfisher and Vervet monkeys. Sadly lacking in a lawn area with sunloungers (which is what we were hoping for), but a pleasant place all the same. The white wine however was atrocious and the one glass we had, gave both of us a headache so we switched to a cup of tea (yes you read that right) and then made for home again.
We didn’t have long to get changed and re
ady for our night out taking the girls for dinner at Olga’s.
“Olga's represents the final stage of an educational project for vulnerable youth of Livingstone… All Olga’s profits from the restaurant and the Guest House go to the Youth Community Training Center (YCTC), a certified school built by the diocese of Livingstone and CeLIM (an Italian NGO). The school provides qualified and certified training in electric power, tailoring, plumbing, catering, I.T., and construction techniques to vulnerable youth.”
Thankfully we had booked a table ahead of time as it was pretty rammed with a queue quickly forming outside the door. Edith, Tango and Zita looked stunning… all in dresses and heels and their best jackets on. Edith especially had made such an effort for the occasion it was hard not to feel proud of her determination not to let herself down. Given that we had all met last year in a bar and spent much of the time drinking, it was a shock when each of them ordered soft drinks. Tracey and I stuck to bottled mineral water and we each ordered a different pizza to try. None of them had been to the restaurant before and after a slightly nervous start, Edith was clearly relieved to see the table of male muzungu’s next to us eating their pizza with their hands. We all tucked in and chatted easily throughout the evening. It was nice to be able to share western food with true Zambians and give us all a night to remember.