Lazy Saturday

I woke at our usual time of 630am and left Tracey sleeping to go to the dining room and get a couple of teas. Our first lie in and after the hectic week we’d had, we agreed a slap up breakfast in town was in order. So after a quick visit to the bank for more Kwacha, the MTN shop for more airtime for the phone and data for the dongle we retreated to our usual spot at the Kubu Café and waited for Victor to fetch us Quesadillas, chips and more tea.
Abdullah arrived in town alone and so we invited him to join us for a drink and sat chatting about his work and his reasons for coming to Zambia to volunteer. Turns out he’s an ERP software engineer for a dental company in Saudi and supplies services and materials to Dentsply Maillefer – one of my customers at work, such a small world really.
After a lazy breakfast we left Abdullah and wandered the supermarket, gathering prices for all the things we could potentially buy with the remainder of the donated money… mosquito nets, scissors, sandpaper and such. We also bought some new elastic for the girls in the compound to play French-elastic with, as their manky old bit of string was well past its’ usable date.
Armed with rolls of mutton cloth for Monday’s boodling session, we took a severely dodgy taxi back to the Sunbird. So dodgy in fact that we weren’t sure it would make it, particularly after the driver started it with a fork and spoon wedged in the ignition!

Tango and Zita at the Sports Club

We met Zita, Edith, John and Tango at the sports club about 230pm – Zita had bought us traditional Zambian chitenge (long patterned fabric which they wear as wrap around skirts) and some beaded bracelets, to say thank you to us for all our support. Another humbling moment as these girls really don’t have much to give.
After a few beers we moved on to our local, the Falls Garden bar – and spent the remainder of the evening there chatting with the locals, Wayne, George and Anastazia. Still can’t get my head round the lack of toilet doors at these bars… I went to pee on one occasion and found Tango sitting on the loo texting on her phone, so I took the second loo next to her and we chatted using the enormous mirror in front of us – a very strange experience, and not one I felt wholly comfortable in – not only because I felt it would be rude to hover rather than sit, but because I couldn’t do my usual arm-wafting to stop the mosquitoes landing on my arse.

Edith and her hungover husband John

Back for dinner and a good chat with the other volunteers, another new girl had arrived, Francesca, also from Italy, and because this month’s orientation is on Monday, we understand another 25 people will be arriving tomorrow. Going to be pretty busy in the dining room this coming week.