As I’m home, I can now upload photos to Flickr again. The Zambian ones are up now, with a few from Malawi. I’ll put the rest up tonight, and the last two entries soon. Here’s the link to my Flickr account:
Malawi – Friday
August 5, 2008 at 10:47 am (Uncategorized)
Tags: Malawi, Market
Today we met at the office to work in the morning, and went into the Old Town for lunch and to visit the markets in the afternoon.
I went through the books and pulled out the old editions with new ones present, and the old pharmaceutical guides. There were several very old PDRs and similar references – that’s bad. Drug information needs to be current! The other things mostly seemed to be the usual old textbooks given by faculty clearing out their offices. Ruth was horrified when I just whipped them out and threw them on top of the shelves to be withdrawn – like most librarians, she’s not pleased by the idea of discarding books. 
These need to go, however, for space and also for the need for updated information – working tool and reference collections should be up to date.
We also worked with Koha, just to see how it did. It didn’t do well – there’s a glitch that we discovered just as we needed to leave. You can add books just fine, but it won’t add members. So, we looked it over carefully to see exactly what it did wrong, and we’ll try to find a patch Monday.
After being dropped off in town by the big Shoprite grocery story, we walked to Nando’s, a
South African fast food joint. I had a very good chicken chile sandwhich, and Ruth a quarter chicken, which took forever to come. I like this restaurant – it’s much better than our usual fast food shops.
We stood in the long, long end-of-week queue to get money from the ATM, AND IT REFUSED MY CARD! I was worried – the thing said that I had already drawn my limit, when all I pulled was 2000 mkw that morning, which is about $14, and the limit is 40,000 mkw a day. The last time this happened, somebody had stolen my card number and wiped out my checking account. Considering communication issues, that most places can’t take credit cards, and that all I had was about 5500 mkw to shop with, I was upset. Luckily I found out when I got back to my hotel and used the one next door that it was the ATM’s issue – my card was fine.
We went to the tourist curio market first – this is a group of vendors spread out at the main Post Office who sell wooden carvings, with some baskets and a few other things. Malawi is well known for its carvings, mostly made of ebony, mahogany, or teak, but most of them have the exact same things, just made by different people. There were lots of animals, especially hippos, elephants, and impala, Noah’s arks with ten to thirty little animals to go inside, carved wooden pens and pen holders, masks, boxes, wall art, candle holders, little carved statues of mothers with children, and jewelry. There are some big round boxes with deeply carved leaves and vines in them, and some tables and chairs that come apart, that I like very much, but they’re too big to carry home, and I don’t need to have to find space for anything that bulky anyway.
The vendors all say to come look, come look, looking is free! I wished that they would LET me look – they all wanted to talk me into their items. There are also a few gloomy beggars, one with a baby, and one with a disabled child. This is the most depressing part of Africa for me – it’s full of lively, active people, all very busily engaged in business or other purposeful activities, but there is also major poverty, and I’ve seen several people with disabilities that could have easily been corrected or helped begging, or struggling along the street. There was a man one day that was bent entirely over by some spinal thing, more or less crawling…
I had told Ruth that I wanted to look for a box for my business cards – there weren’t any that size, only jewelry boxes or big empty ones. So, she found the carvers with the best price and art, and we contracted with them to make me one for the next day! I would never have thought to do that, but they’re going to make me one exactly the right size with a water buffalo on the top (I really like them) and crocodiles on the sides, out of mahogany.
I also bought a mask for my collection – I don’t have one from Africa, and I really like this long, skinny one with an old man’s face. I had intended to look for gifts for people – small touristy things – but if we’re coming back tomorrow, I’ll wait and save the money for the next market, as I don’t have much left.
We left, walking well away from the vendors so that we could walk away with no distractions, and walked along the road to cross the bridge to the real market and shopping district. This bridge goes over a river that is heavily used by people to wash clothes and get water – we saw many of them. I wanted to take a picture, but there were way too many people walking in too small and too broken a path to take the space.
One thing about Lilongwe – people walk everywhere, but there are very few sidewalks – you’re usually walking with or past a great crowd of people on a broken narrow curb or in a dusty, worn trough. There are also a lot of holes or deepish gutters that have to be stepped over or avoided. I wondered how often people fell in or tripped over them, but Ruth says not often unless they’re drunk. 
I would fall in eventually if I walked around that city for long, NOT drunk – just clumsy – I’m sure.
Anyway, there’s a market there on the land near the river, for things like foods, clothes, shoes, a stall full of balls hanging in nets, etc. We walk past this to the street of shops – I’m looking for interesting fabric, and Ruth needs some hair stuff. This street has a deep ditch/gutter running right down the middle, but somehow the cars don’t get stuck in it. There are many tailors sitting outside of the fabric shops, each using an antique Singer sewing machine with a treadle. They aren’t even like the one my mother had – more like the one my Grandma has and has never used. It makes sense – this type does not require electricity.
Each tailor is surrounded by customers and hanging finished clothes waiting to be picked up – people, mostly women, buy the fabric from the many fabric shops here or the market and contract with the tailors to make the clothing they want. When I showed the fabric I bought to the people at Tidziwe, they asked if I was having it made up here – I might if I had longer! It would be fun to have clothes that someone else had made for me, but I’m taking it home and will do it myself. I wish I could have gotten a picture, but we were afraid to whip my good camera out and take one, especially considering where we were going. I got a few of the street, but none of the tailors directly.
Anyway, we walked with most everyone else to the main Market – these shops didn’t have the kind of fabric I wanted, and I wanted to see the market. The entrance was very narrow, and the ground uneven but worn down by many, many feet.
We walked past people selling clothing, shoes, auto parts and supplies, stationary, food, cheap plastic things, tapes – anything someone might want – from small dusty stalls made of a variety of woods, metals, and plastics. It was very tight quarters – not somewhere for anyone claustrophobic! There’s a constant hum of Chichewa and English, and the noises of people moving things and buying them.
The people here are more interested in selling to everyone who walks by – I still get calls of “Muli Bwanji, hello!” directed at me, but in a more general way than in the tourist market. Even though this market is more crowded, and probably less used to having white tourists wandering around, it is more comfortable for me because of that. This is where people go to buy things they’ll actually use in their daily lives, versus gifts or tourist curios, and the vendors are much more focused on the people that are specifically looking for those sorts of things than on me.
I loved visiting this market – it’s much more exotic to me, although I’m sure that Ruth will be very amused by that when she reads this – the other one was fun and had what I was looking for, but it’s a lot more like the usual flea markets and craft shows that I’ve been going to with my family since I was a child.
The fabric sellers that we went to are in a dark cave-like space with one side open to the path – there are dozens of them, with many chitonje and long lengths of fabric piled up on tables. Many of the patterns are the same from vendor to vendor, but not all. There are more tailors grouped at one end – I wanted to take a picture here, and Ruth asked for me, but they didn’t all agree, so I don’t have one. I love fabric in general, and I like seeing all the different colors laid out – most of these are the deep colors that I love best, with lots of greens, blues, oranges, and rich browns and reds.
We walked through the narrow aisles, and I quickly figured out not to touch the fabric unless I wanted them to pull the piece out and open it for me to see. We walked to the end of the aisle, and walked back to the middle – to the one seller that hadn’t pushed at me about buying the cloth. She also had some that was different from the rest. I bought two pieces of two yard lengths, one red and the other teal, each for 800 mkw – luckily, that was just about all the cash that I had left so I didn’t have to borrow from Ruth. One can become a pillow, and the other maybe a skirt, and both can provide quilt pieces. I saw a length of the fabric I bought in Lusaka – a seller had her small daughter wrapped in it, sprawled across her wares asleep. Nobody else had it, though.
We walked back towards the entrance – it was getting late – and exited past a group of people selling fruits and mandazi donuts. I wanted to try the donuts, but didn’t trust them from here – too many flies flying around and random hands. I did get a picture of this from the car when it eventually arrived.
We waited a long time for the car – the traffic was bad and the driver wasn’t sure where we were. There are so many people here! It’s a great place for people watching – I saw women and men, too, carrying things on their heads, dozens of babies held tight to backs by chitonje, women wearing bright traditional dress and long skirts, women wearing Western tight pants, men wearing loose African shirts, people buying, people selling, people just wandering by, cars, bicycles, a motorbike or two…
That night, after washing very well (Lilongwe’s market is very dusty), Ruth and her husband Mafera took me out to Mamma Mia’s, a very nice and very popular Italian restaurant. I had excellent beef ravioli cooked in sage, and we shared tiramisu for dessert. Mafera had chambo, a tilapia like fish from Lake Malawi – it was excellent (I stole a bite), and I want to get it from the Lake tomorrow when we visit. It was a very nice end to a very interesting day.
Malawi – Thursday
August 5, 2008 at 10:34 am (Malawi)
Tags: Malawi
Thursday was a quiet day – we worked on getting Koha sorted out. Osman, the IT guy who’s been working with us, successfully installed the required programs while we were out yesterday, and today we managed to get the actual program up.
He had to completely clear the registry and wipe the computer to get it to work – many people have had this computer, and it was very clogged. It’s notably faster today after he did this. I’ve suggested to Ruth that it might help to acquire more RAM – she only has 512 MG, and Osman says there’s another slot. Really she needs a new machine, but this may help with running software at least, although it can’t do much for the internet’s lack of speed or the Pen 4 processor’s slow clock speed.
Anyway, getting Koha installed is a major achievement – many of the librarians that we met told us that they had tried and failed, and asked to hear what happened when we tried it. Ruth and Osman may end up being the local gurus for it – there’s a large group of librarians in Malawi that want to try switching to Koha, and they even meet regularly, but nobody’s managed it yet with the exception of Uchizi, Ruth’s predecessor. Something went wrong with that install, however, as it was no longer usable shortly after she left – I think possibly the overcrowded registry was the problem, and maybe the fact that we don’t have passwords for any of the things Uchizi installed herself, like some of the required software. Some of that stuff wasn’t installed anyway, so someone must have removed it at some point.
The students from Malawi College of Health Sciences had their turn to use the library this afternoon again, and the room was packed! I watched them – I had wondered if they maybe were checking email or similar things just because they could use our connection for free, unlike in their own library, but they were looking up and asking to have printed school related things. A lot of it seemed to be from Wikipedia or similar sites.
I wonder if it would be helpful for Ruth to create a website that lists freely available sources that they could use? They can’t use the regular databases, as Ruth doesn’t have IP access and they aren’t UNC affiliates. They were also using the books a lot, understandably when considering their own library’s collection. It’s too bad – they use the books the most, but they aren’t who Ruth has to first consider when selecting books – that’s the UNC Project people themselves.
We also talked a bit about that – the collection development policy and what should go into it, and where Ruth can look for examples. We’ll draft out what should go into it, and work on the subject layout together, and then Ruth will create the rest. This is one that can easily be started here and then go up on Google docs when I’m back in the States.
I saw a funny thing – I heard chickens, so I looked out the window (these are open all the time). There were two people selling big red clucking chickens out of the back of their truck down below in the parking lot. Vendors… We were met by a man selling clothes out of a duffle bag yesterday at the hospital, too, and there are people selling fruit and food everywhere.
Malawi – Wednesday
July 24, 2008 at 12:20 pm (Uncategorized)
This morning Ruth and I were going to go visit several libraries, both on the hospital complex where Tidziwe is and in the City Center of Lilongwe. We left Osman, the IT man who’s been helping us, to install Koha and went downstairs to catch a ride over to the city center. Partway there, Ruth grabs my arm and told me to look – I looked, and she told me there was a baboon! I looked again, and this time i saw it, too late to grab my camera. I had had no idea there were wild baboons in Lilongwe – incredible. He was just sitting there by the side of the road, thinking baboon thoughts. Very cool.
So, we drove through Lilongwe. Lilongwe is much more like a US city than is Lusaka – it has many very standard large business buildings and shopping strips. It also, however, has people burning things at the side of the road, homeless children begging or playing at one or two corners, many more people walking around, and baboons!
We arrived at the National Library, which is a circulating library as well as the central point for cataloging in Malawi, and also a distribution point for donated books from all over the world. We started our tour in the Children’s section, which has children’s books and tables, and met a librarian who had also been at the SCECSAL conference – we’d had lunch at the same table on the last day, although I was so distracted that day that I didn’t remember meeting him. 
He was very nice to us, showing us all over the building – there is an incredibly full and crowded back room full of books being processed for distribution, an overworked tech services department, and a warehouse full of books donated by various international organizations, such as Book Aid. I think that there were more books in the back than in the front! There were reading tables in the big main room, and also in an atrium outside – all of them full, mostly with people studying for exams. They’re using a freeware version of a library management system from UNESCO, called ISIS.
Also, the UN had recently closed their library and dropped all of their materials on the National Library – so we saw that area, already set up in a big front room so that people could use it. The British Counsel had also closed their library, so many of those books were waiting to be added to the circulating collection or distributed.
Not nice – too many libraries closing. At the SCECSAL meeting, the president of the Malawi Library Association, had asked a representative of the US State Dept’s American Corners library facilities several pointed questions about whether it would close – that makes sense now. Maybe the library owners think they aren’t needed now, with the Internet, but a lot of people in Malawi don’t have much access to the Internet, and books are still very heavily used.
We also walked around the corner to visit Ruth’s sister Allena – it’s nice that she has family so close. I’m almost envious.
The next place that we went was the American Corner in Lilongwe – this is a service provided by the State Department that involves a small library with a reading room, books about the US, and cheap internet access. I never knew they existed before this conference and visit, but I think they’re a great idea. Ruth studied at this one in secondary school – people definitely use it. I knew it belonged to the US when I had to go through a metal detector to enter it – the first one I’ve seen in Africa. That’s sad.
We walked back to the British Counsel for lunch – they have a small cafe in their garden, with a woman selling the same types of Malawian food that we’d had for lunch the day before. I got beef stew, Ruth Chambo, and we ate in the garden. It was very nice.
So, after lunch, we went to Kamuzu College of Nursing to meet their librarian and see their library. To get there, we took a shortcut through the hospital’s pediatric wing.
The hospital is blue, and smells of some sort of iodine. There are many, many patients – it’s a free public hospital. The children’s wing’s entry was full of parents and children – they looked at us, then lost interest when we walked through. We walked past a yard full of parents and patients sunning themselves, another outdoor area where women were washing clothes in outdoor sinks, a naked little boy being washed off too, and then through an empty play-yard with old empty cribs stored in it. There were swings, but no children were using them – I don’t know why. We walked on through it to see a big building that would have been perfectly at home in Austin – and saw why. It was Baylor’s version of the UNC Project. I think that UNC’s looks like it belongs here more, and there were a lot more people around it, too.
There was a beautiful view over the edge of the hill that the hospital complex sits on – there was a chance of rain today, and there were dark clouds chasing behind the low hills. We walked down the road, past people pulling live chickens out of their trunk, down to the Kamuzu College of Nursing, or KCN.
It’s a relatively large campus, neat and orderly, and we walked all the way through it to the library. The library has a nice big building, with lots of study carrels, but a relatively small collection of books. It’s still much larger than ours in Tidziwe, and is entirely focused on nursing. The librarian is still on leave, so we were shown around by an assistant, and we spoke to the IT staff – they’re using The Library Company’s system.
We walked back to the other side of the hospital, and then through to the Malawi College of Health Sciences on the other side of Tidziwe. It seems to be a school for the Allied Health Sciences, and it’s one of the schools whose students take turns using the UNC Project Library, as do KCN’s. It’s also fairly sprawling, with the library in a big building all of its own. That’s where the similarities end – this library has very outdated books in no very recognizable order. Regardless, there are many students studying, and using the computer terminals. As in the other libraries, they have to pay for internet access – ours is free, and our books much newer, adding to our appeal. If I am donated any allied health books that HSL can’t use, I’m going to send them to Ruth to give to this library – it needs them.
After that last distressing visit, we walked back to Tidziwe, and went upstairs to ask a question. We found a group of people giggling over a computer – some stupid person in Blantyre took a lot of naked photos of himself and his married lovers, and then left them on a computer. An IT person took the photos and made a CD, which he then happily sold all over the country. Some of the people are recognizable, and the staff were looking to see if they did recognize them – they did, to everyone’s horrified glee. I walked in to see a certain portion of female anatomy that is not usually displayed on office computers. Porn is illegal in Malawi, and the police want to arrest the people who filmed themselves – they want to know for what purpose that was intended (!) – and also the distributors. This was on the front page of the newspaper, so everyone is looking up the webpage and waving around the newspaper. Well, it broke any tension.
Malawi – Tuesday
July 24, 2008 at 12:16 pm (Uncategorized)
On Tuesday I met “my” driver – Chola – who will be picking me up and dropping me off each day. He’s very nice, and likes photography and music, so we will do just fine.
Ruth and I talked about too many things, and worked on Koha a bit. Then she showed me around the building, introducing me to people. There are lecture rooms, offices, labs, and examination rooms with quiet gloomy people waiting outside of them – usually mothers with small children watching the too-loud televisions in the hall.
The labs were very interesting – I kept thinking of my friend Cass, who also does HIV research. The one that we went into was Level Two, and we had to wear pink robes that said, “visitor”. I met several researchers, including one who did microbiology, in the quieter lab. There were humming and throbbing machines, piles of old manuals and lab binders on shelves, refrigerators full of reagents, and at least twelve busy people in lab coats. They are running HIV tests, CD4 counts, malaria tests, TB tests, and many other things.
After the tour, we ate lunch outside – there is a woman who comes to make and sell lunch things each day. They are Malawian foods – chicken, liver, beef stew, chambo fish, rice, nsima, chips, red beans, lape greens, and more. It was very good but they give too much! Ruth was afraid that I didn’t like it because I didn’t eat all of it, but I really did. I was a little squeamish about the chicken – I hate eating off the bone – but the vegetables were great. We ate sitting on the edge of one of the concrete lined narrow water ditches that are everywhere here – dry now, because it’s winter. A whole group of other Malawians were also eating in the same area – it’s the regular lunch crew, apparently. I didn’t bring a bottle of water, though, and I can’t drink the tap water – I’ll know better tomorrow.
We had met the manager of the guest house earlier in the library – Godfrey – and he really wanted me to see it, as I would have been staying there if it had not been full. I wish I had – it would have been nice to really meet some of the other Chapel Hillites who are here. The hotel’s pretty nice, though. Anyway, we walked around the Lighthouse facility next door to see it – it looks basically like a long duplex, with a big porch.
There are goats! Godfrey keeps his own brown goat, and also takes care of one that was given to a now-departed Chapel Hill student that remains. Goats are the perfect domestic animal – small enough and hardy enough for most people to keep them, providers of milk and cheese, and eventually a nice dinner. They’re also cute, and smart, and I like them. I will still eat them, though.
We met a med student who’s there for a year with her surgeon husband who complained that the goats had eaten the mango trees that they’d tried to plant in the yard, but I still like them. She also took us into the guest house to meet a student who’s returning to Chapel Hill on Saturday – I’d met her earlier on the tour, a researcher who’s studying diarrhea (and had lots of jokes), and another student. The other duplex is full of other visitors, but I don’t know who they are. Maybe the students from Dundee – there are also three Scottish students here, from Dundee University, who work with the UNC Project.
The med student told me all about getting an article from the Health Sciences Library while here in Lilongwe (she unwittingly got a big fine because she didn’t realize she needed to pay) – she’s very thankful to us, and so Melanie, for it. I promised to tell Melanie. Ruth and I talked about possibly setting up some sort of easier method to get articles from the HSL scanned and emailed to the UNC Project Library, if we can figure out how to manage the expenses and administration of it. I will talk to Melanie about it when I get back, and then she and Ruth can work it out, if it’s possible.
So, the server keeps resetting, interrupting when we try to download the pieces that we need to install Koha on a Windows machine (it’s supposed to be on a Linux machine). Very aggravating. We managed to get all the pieces, finally, and will ask the IT people to install them tomorrow – we can’t, as we aren’t administrators on the machine.
I ate in the Indian/Pakistani restaurant tonight, and it was excellent – I kept wishing my friends Janie and Allie were there, because they would have liked it. It has mutton instead of lamb on the menu, like you’d see in the US – I really wish it was easier to get mutton at home. Cooked right (which is problematic), it has more flavor than lamb. I had Peshawari Mutton – I’ve only had the dessert-type Peshawari Naan before, nothing else Peshawari.
The power keeps going out briefly, in the restaurant and in my room – load-shedding. Luckily, this thing runs on battery in between and I haven’t lost any data.
Zambia and Malawi – Monday
July 24, 2008 at 12:08 pm (Malawi, Zambia)
Tags: Africa, Border, Malawi, Zambia
This morning Craig picked us up and dropped us at the airport. Security is so easy to go through, and so few people were flying this morning, that I went in and out of it.
The obnoxious South African passenger from the ticket office yesterday was not there, but a very inappropriately dressed Western teenager was. I wondered if she would seem so slutty in the US and decided she would. There was also a Muslim woman in a full veil with a baby, a man in Arab robes and a woman’s leather jacket, assorted business people – it is a commuter flight – and several knots and groups of tired grumpy people. I didn’t care – at least we were moving somewhere. Much better than yesterday.
They called Kasunga, Mfuwe, finally Chipata! The plane was tiny – the same as the propeller plane that Dow Chemical was flying to Plaquemine when I worked at their air hanger one summer. So, I read the air safety card and away we went, very noisily. The woman in the veil spoke when we were figuring out the difficult seatbelts and surprised me – almost no accent in English. I suppose I imagined that women who took the full veil – almost a burkha – wouldn’t speak English, or at least wouldn’t speak to me. Stereotypes!
They served juice and cheese and tomato sandwiches. I’d like to know why even tiny Zambian Airways is able to serve decent food on a one-hour flight when great big airlines in the US like United and Northwest can’t manage to serve ANY on four-hour flights? If anybody had an excuse for being short with food it would be a Sub-Saharan African company, yet they manage to be very generous.
Anyway, we arrived in Chipata, which is very pretty and green – it’s in the mountains. The airport is smaller than the one in Brazoria County that I worked at – no wonder they use small planes. Its restroom was unspeakable, but luckily I had a packet of tissue in my bag.
A friend of Craig’s and Chimwemwe’s met us and waited until a taxi came to take us to Chimwemwe’s uncle’s office – he was going to facilitate our ride to the border stop to cross into Malawi. He was kind enough to make up the difference for the taxi ride – Craig had guessed wrongly on the price. I met really kind, generous people in Zambia – Chimwemwe and Craig and their family were only a few. We were really lucky!
So, we rode to the border, passed through one police stop, thanked the taxi driver, and sailed through the Zambian side of the border crossing. The police were looking for unlicensed taxi drivers – a big problem in Zambia, apparently. We knew to get only a licensed driver with the right permit, in a blue car with red numbers.
There were backpackers, local travelers, people selling fruit and offering to change money, and safari jeeps. We dragged our luggage down the road toward the Malawian side and up into the border office. I filled out paperwork, waved my passport, and was passed on through.
While there, we saw a pair of Polish backpackers – they had failed to get a Zambian visa, and were trying to somehow get the Malawian border guard to produce one. They were very obnoxious, and finally they tried to bribe the guard! So bad… He looked completely disgusted, as were everybody else who was waiting. I saw the two jerks wandering back towards the taxis, looking disgruntled, later on. They’re lucky they didn’t get arrested.
So, we walked out of the border stop to meet our driver, coming from the UNC Project. No driver. Ruth walked out of the stop’s parking lot to go see if he might be at the taxi stand – she knew them all. Nope, no driver.
We were almost an hour late because of the taxi switch-off – the driver should have definitely been there. We were worried that they’d come and left, or that something had changed from when Ruth had last spoken to the person who’d arranged transport. Okay, Ruth would call. No minutes! She had no Malawian minutes to use to call – only enough to send one text message asking them to call. So, she did. They didn’t call. I thought maybe the building was interfering – that happens to my signal at home. So, Ruth walked across the road. No, they didn’t call.
A boy who was selling crackers – and would not believe that I didn’t want any – heard us talking about minutes and offered to get us some. He took Ruth over to a man by the side of the road who was selling them, and Ruth managed to get 100 (very few) – she also had very little Malawian money! We’d expected to be picked up by her husband Mafera at the airport, and this entire border-crossing circumstance was unplanned.
She tried again, flashing them to get them to call her back and save our few minutes. Nope! They didn’t call.
We were just starting to talk about alternate methods of getting back, when we finally spotted the driver! There had been a mix-up – he’d been at the border at 7:20, when we had to be at the airport. Finally. He was probably thinking the same thing, seeing as he’d had to drive to the border and back to Lilongwe twice today.
We drove to Lilongwe past stalls made of thatch instead of scraps, farms, brick kilns, brick houses and huts, businesses, many, many goats, small herds of cattle, villages, shops, and lots of green sedge. Malawi is greener than Zambia – at least this part of it. People dig bricks out of the red mud and make them harden by building structures to dry them out – I thought they were big storage units at first. Most of the houses here are made of brick with thatch roofs, instead of all thatch as in Zambia.
I saw several ox-drawn carts and lots of goats, and at one point it seemed like we were going to run into a herd of cattle being driven across the road. The houses seem sturdier and tidier than in Zambia, but that may be just that so many of these are made of brick, and that we are further away from the city. It’s very pretty, though – it’s semi-arid, too, but it has many more green plants and seems less dusty. There are some hills and mountains further off, but Ruth says that Lilongwe is flat, although it seems to have a lot of low hills to me. Not as flat as Houston, I say.
We got into town, and I was dropped at the hotel. My hotel is very nice and is called the Crossroads (apparently, it used to be a Cresta but isn’t any longer). It has an Indian/Pakistani restaurant associated with it, which I’m happy about – I could happily eat Indian food every day.
I changed and washed up, and then Ruth came back to get me – we went into Tidziwe Clinic, where her library is, for the afternoon. The library is very small – about half again as big as the meeting room in RMS. There are bookshelves along all of the walls, with Ruth’s desk in the corner nearest the door, three computers in the middle of the room, and one work table. It reminds me of my old library in Phoenix, the first year I was there. It was bigger, but had a similar bookcase layout. This one has windows that open, though. Distant crying babies and music drift in from them, and a light breeze and the smell of dust from the driveway.
We looked around and talked about what we wanted to do this week – KOHA is at the top of the list, followed by a formal collection development plan. The library needs more books – and several of the central texts have newer editions out, and need to be replaced. We’re hoping a formal plan will move us closer to the funding to do such a project.
So, a weird thing – I got back to my hotel and opened my door to hear a crunch! There was broken glass everywhere. I looked immediately to see that my bag looked undisturbed, and then looked down – the light fixture had fallen! There was broken glass in the entire entryway – it had smashed into hundreds of pieces. I was just lucky I wasn’t there, to either be terrified or hurt. I really don’t want to need stitches and have to go to the public hospital here. They came and cleaned it up and switched me to a new room – one of their two Suites, to make up for it. Very nice. At least, nice as I wasn’t there and nothing was damaged.
Zambia – Sunday
July 24, 2008 at 11:57 am (Uncategorized)
We missed our plane! We got there and it was in the air! It left early! No planes leave early! This one did, because apparently there are problems with the lights in Lilongwe so they have to make all of the planes arrive and leave during the day. Fine, but they never let us know! If they had contacted the people who bought the tickets, they would have contacted us – they knew where we were. Air Malawi… eAaa!
To get to that point – we got up early to watch the lions eat, walking over to their enclosure. When we got there, the two females were pressed up against the cage door, the two males in the two dungeon-like side cages. Eventually the keeper arrived, and went into the enclosure. He put two dead chickens, feathers and all up in each of three trees, then hopped back up on the second level of the cage. The lions are in a lower section – we had to crouch down low to be able to go into it the day before (yes, it did smell horribly musky) – with an upper section for the keeper to walk on so that he can pull up and latch the cage door.
He did, and three lions came charging out – the two females and the older male who had been locked up the day before. They went straight for the trees, bounding up and pulling down three of the chickens, then separating to tear them up and eat them. The younger female finished hers, then came back and pulled down two of the remaining ones, then wandering around. This was a bad choice because her father then came over and ate both, while her mother took the remaining one. She tried to eat parts that were left, or to take the mother’s leftovers, but her mother chased her all over the place. It was a lot of fun to watch, and to listen to. I got some film clips of it on my camera, so they might be interesting. I haven’t been able to watch them yet.
Then we walked back to take a quick shower and grab breakfast. This is where it began to be tight – we ate breakfast in the big room (the yellow birds were flying around and flitting down to steal fruit – I’m glad I can’t eat melon anyway) and checked out, bumping and bouncing back down the road to the highway.
We should have gotten there about forty minutes before it was due to leave – 11:00 am – which should be plenty of time in that almost-security-free tiny airport on the perennially late Air Malawi. Just in case – I was worried, used to long security lines – Craig called them to make sure for us, only to find out it was due to leave at 10:30! So, we hared down the road, rushing through traffic, only to get there just as it locked and took off.
Horrible, horrible way to end a very good week. So, we talked to the clerk – the next flight to Lilongwe is on Wednesday, and it’s Sunday. She can get us on Air Zimbabwe Monday night, IF they fly, which isn’t sure of and can’t guarantee anyway. Air Zimbabwe? Who isn’t there that day at their office, and hasn’t updated their website’s schedules since March? I don’t think so!
So, we went to Zambian Airways to see if they had a flight. They don’t, but they do have one to Chipata – a Zambian town about an hour and a half from Lilongwe. Fine, that’s what we did. We thought it was more important to get the work I came here to do done than to worry about a $186 fare – I hope that Infectious Diseases agrees!
At least we made a decision before I had an asthma attack out of anxiety, or Ruth had a stroke. Neither of us has ever had this happen before – and hopefully never will again.
So, we drove to talk to a missionary friend of Chimwemwe’s and pick up a couple of cacti – cactus and succulent plants are everywhere in Lusaka, another reason why it reminds me of Phoenix- gave three American kids a ride to the Arcades, and grabbed lunch from a Subway. Subways are apparently everywhere, with the same menu, although this one also had a hugely overstuffed hotdog thing and a chicken tikka sub to suit local tastes.
Then we walked around that same tourist market that I had wanted to look at the previous week. That was nice, but I’d rather have spent the afternoon in Lilongwe!
We DID not return to the Chrismar – instead we got a room at the Cresta Golfview, which we had seen when we picked people up every day on the bus. It was very nice – with excellent water pressure in the HOT shower! I liked the restaurant better, too – I had room service while Ruth went to a church group meeting with Craig and Chimwemwe. Chrismar was decent, but this was better – we should have stayed there instead. Oh, well – my hotel in Lilongwe will be a Cresta too.
Zambia – Saturday
July 24, 2008 at 11:53 am (Uncategorized)
Today we slept in, going to breakfast (cold sausages, of course) at 8:45. We ate slowly and wandered around, sitting outside until it was almost 11 – Chimwemwe was going to come pick us up. Checking out took forever because they had to go get me a refund from another building – I had prepaid for Saturday night back when I was in the US, but we had decided to spend it at Protea Safari Hotel! Craig and Chimwemwe had found it after another one had fallen through.
So, we went to their apartment, which is very nice and full of light. Outside on the grounds of their complex are many vegetable gardens – Chimwemwe says that people work on them or hire people to maintain them for them, but that it costs about as much as buying vegetables at the markets. I like them – we wouldn’t be allowed to have them where I live. A bunch of little boys were running races on the grounds – no shoes on, and it’s really cold! Low 60’s or high 50’s, I think.
One note – I’m writing this as the power flicks on and off – load shedding is a curse!
Craig came home, and we drove off through the city towards the safari lodge. As we drove out of the city, we saw lots of cement houses and thatch huts, scrap-built stalls selling things on the sides of the road, people walking, sitting, running along the roads, and then finally long stretches of land with small clusters of huts and houses – farmsteads and tiny roadside villages. The land is arid but not desert – it’s a lot like the area outside of Austin, Texas. I could see masses of smoke way off in some directions, but not enough to be a brush fire and too much to be a regular house or cooking fire. No idea what that could be.
We came to a dirt turn-off for Protea, with a bunch of people standing or sitting around it. I’m not sure why – maybe a minibus stop? – they didn’t have anything to sell and didn’t beg. We bounced and bumped down the road in Craig’s truck, on the left side of the road, seeing lots of scorched and burned stubble under the trees. Chimwemwe said that they burnt the underbrush off because of tics – tics in Africa are not nearly as dangerous as tics in North America, but they’re still bad.
The hotel is really nice – with lots of little individual “chalets”, each with a thatched roof. The main eating area also has a thatched roof, with no walls – we walked through on our way to the chalets. Ruth and I each have one, and Craig and Chimwemwe another. There were water buffalo and kudu calmly eating the lawn – very cool to see. Luckily, it cost approximately the same as our original hotel had – perfect.
We met back at the main lodge at 14 for a safari ride, on a jeep through the range nearby. It was odd – I didn’t see any fencing anywhere, but the animals were definitely part of Protea. Maybe they were just all native to the area, which was very populated – I didn’t think to ask.
We drove along a small lake, finally stopping at a big enclosure – an acre, they said. Lions! There are a few animals that are kept as pets at Protea, and these lions are on permanent loan from Munda Wanga, the zoo/wildlife sanctuary in Lusaka. There are four – parents and a son and daughter. They have to lock the father and the son up on alternate days – they can’t tolerate each other. The father is sad – they had to neuter him at some point, and he lost all of his mane. The cage is not good – it’s small and all concrete. They let us crawl in to see the father on his day in the cage. He growled and snarled at us – I would have too, I suppose.
However, as bad as the cage is, the enclosure is great – it has hills, trees, lots of plants, and it’s all natural looking. The lions that are outside seem to be fairly content, and they’re all a good size and have healthy looking (if they were dogs or cats) coats. If the father and son can’t be together without fighting, at least each has equal time outside. The driver told us that we could come at seven the next day to watch them feed the lions their breakfast – we definitely plan to do so. He says that they put the chickens up in trees to give them something to do.
The first thing I saw once we drove away from the lions were more of the big black crows with the white chests that I’ve been watching at Mulungushi. Then we started to see the animals – many kinds of antelope, kudu, shy hartebeasts, zebras, sables, and more. Some stood, used to seeing jeeps, and others bolted. The hartebeasts were very shy, apparently – they ran right away.
There were large groups of guinea hens, all of them running like herds of big gray dustbunnies away from us. I don’t care for guineas normally – traumatic chasing experience as a child – but I liked seeing the big groups of them safely on the ground. There were also lots of bright yellow birds – I couldn’t get a picture of them, but Ruth says that people eat them, like doves, I suppose. They’re about the same size. Her mother used to cook and sell them, anyway.
We stopped the jeep near some men who were digging – I thought to talk to them. Then Ruth said to look – there was an elephant in the trees, and she turned and came to the jeep! This elephant, a young one, only 17, was one of a few animals that were kept more or less as pets at the lodge. She came right up to the jeep, and we got down and went over to examine and touch her. She was very patient, one of the men who had been digging feeding her sugar cane and tree fungi to bribe her. She was very warm, and she had stray hairs and wrinkles all over – I hadn’t realized that they had such long eyelashes. I fed her a piece of sugar cane. She put out her trunk to sniff and feel my hand, too – very interesting.
I really liked the elephant. I was wondering if she might be lonely; elephants are very social herd animals, but they said that they’re working on getting a male of the same age. I wonder if a female might not be a good idea, too – if I remember correctly, they usually spend a lot of time with other females.
After seeing many more kudu, we drove back to the lodge. Craig went to change, and the three of us sat on loungers near the pool to talk and sunbathe – it was in the high sixties. There were some little red spotted deer-like antelope wandering through the bushes, and also one lone kudu.
The kudu was funny – he was trying to steal from a guest’s plate at the picnic tables on the other side of the pool, and a waiter chased him away. About fifteen minutes later, a cook came out and gave him a big plate of bread. That same waiter came up the path and kept having to bang a big tray to keep the greedy kudu away – the waiter looked disgusted. Then the same cook came out and gave the kudu MORE bread – at this point the three of us agreed that this was bad and unhealthy, and no wonder it was trying to steal. The small red antelope tried to get some too, but the kudu head-butted them away – they kept trying to sneak back, though. Ruth said that the cook saw some women and wanted to impress them. He impressed us alright, but in a negative way.
We met back up for dinner, which was a grill (although they called it a barbeque). It was a very cold restaurant, as it had no real walls, but they had those tall gas heaters that you get on patios and loggias – the ones that start up with a big gout of flame and then die down. They’re very effective, but not as picturesque as the baskets of charcoal from the Cattleman’s Grill. It was a nice dinner, with a wonderful cream soup to start and crème caramel to end – excellent food to end a very nice day.
Zambia – Friday
July 22, 2008 at 5:05 pm (Zambia)
Tags: Africa, Kamwala, Lobuto Library, SCECSCAL, Zambia
This morning there was an excellent photo of the four Americans all sitting at the Cultural Night, but Sarah got it. LaVerne Page (the African Studies librarian from the Library of Congress) and I both asked her to scan and email it to us.
Speaking of photos, this time I only took a disposable camera – I didn’t want to risk my good one where we were going today. I hope that the photos came out, but I have no idea.
Sarah and I decided to go to Kamwala with Ruth and Prisca. Today is only a business meeting for SCECSAL, and none of us are members. They are looking for hair extensions, for Prisca’s salon (she has a side business – many Zambians and Malawians have multiple businesses on the side) and we are just looking to look. Sarah has lived in Rwanda and Namibia before, so the market is only really new to me.
We took a minibus to Kamwala – it took us about three times as long as it would have to just drive straight, but we got to see lots of areas of the city. Somebody told me that Ethiopian Airlines was the minibus of the skies because it makes lots of stops to pick people up – this makes sense now.
Lusaka has people everywhere, walking, selling from their hands or from small homemade stalls, riding minibuses, and standing waiting for something. On the minibus, you can ride with them all – gossiping schoolkids, working people, unemployed – officially – people, men in robes, a woman in a chitenje carrying a baby with a pom-pommed winter hat…
We walked from the minibus stop at Kamwala through a taxi stop and along the street, then under a street through a dusty tunnel to the path to the Market. We walked with many other people through a stretch of dust and garbage that was populated by small sellers, who didn’t have enough to have a stall – shoes, toys, food, candy, Fanta, Celtel cards, used clothes – it was all there. The market itself is a series of buildings with open storefronts – more used and new clothes, hair extensions, secondhand goods of all sorts, fabric, tourist junk, used books, underwear, prepared food, and more. We didn’t go far into the market, but we went far enough that I could see further down that there were more foodstuffs – mounds of beans and roots piled up, and barrels of something.
The hair shops were around the edges, and that’s where we stayed. I know about hair extensions – some of the African American friends and student workers that I’ve had have told me about them. I would never have expected so many varieties and options, however. Prisca picked some at the nicest, biggest, most well-lit shop, and then some more at another smaller shop.
After the hair, we looked for fabric – Ruth wanted to take some to her mother and mother-in-law, and I love to sew. I knew that fabric would be an easy thing to pack, too. We found a shop that sold the right kind of fabric, and it was lovely – wax-dyed, cream and brown and blue and green. I got a beautiful big piece of cotton with a tree pattern – 6 yards for only $15. Unbelievable in the US.
We had to take a taxi back to save time, and Prisca and Ruth told Sarah and me to stay back while they bargained – they thought that the taxi driver would think we were rich and try to charge a lot more when he saw the two of us white girls. Sure enough, we were part way down the road when he said that fuel was more expensive and we were going too far – he needed 5000 zkw more. Hmm. Then why didn’t he say so before? I paid it so that the others wouldn’t have to suffer because of it and that there wouldn’t be a lot of arguing.
We ate lunch back at Mulungushi as usual, and got ready for the afternoon’s event. There were a bunch of possible tours set up for the last afternoon of the conference, and we had chosen to go to the Lobuto Library. This is a library that was set up on the campus of a school in the Kamwala district that is also a drophouse and group home, essentially, for street children. Street children are common in Lusaka, and commonly despised. Often orphaned or abandoned, they don’t attend school and have few options and little future.
The library and school are attempts to coax some of them off the street and into the drophouse, and hopefully provide them with a better future.
The library was begun as a project by an American who lived in Malawi and Zambia for many years, and began reading to street children. When she realized the demand, she began to raise funds for the Lobuto Library. We met the librarian – a former street child himself, Vasco was the school’s first success. He has help from a series of visiting library students from the US, and four top students who assist in the library. All four of them came to watch us and be introduced – they were all great kids, but the youngest, eleven-year-old Moonvie, was adorable. He is small, and clearly very bright with a good sense of humor – it shines in his face. He stood in the middle of this group of overdressed visiting adults, all staring at him from the edges of the story telling pit in the center of the library, and told them he wanted to be a librarian, was pleased to meet them, but first they had to sign the library visitors’ logbook!
The library is in a small round hut with thatched roof and shuttered windows all around – the windows can be opened, and there are window seats all around the building. There is a great story telling circular pit in the middle of the building that also provides extra seating. The books are sorted by subject, not Dewey, and all ages are mixed together.
They have some great books, but there are a lot of old ones – why do people always assume that donating very old and out-of-date science and health books is okay? These kids need current accurate information, too – maybe more so because their risk is so much higher just because of where they live. Anyway, if anyone gives the HSL any new children’s or easy-reading level books, I know where they’re going – we can’t use those.
I took a picture of some kids playing soccer, and some little boys playing on top of the water pump saw me and started mugging – I took their pictures, too. I hope that they come out – if they do, I promised to email them to Eleni, the project site director, for them.
We rode the bus back to Mulungushi and transferred to another one to ride back to Chrismar – it had been a long day. Some of the others took the other bus to the Kamwala Market, but we didn’t feel the need to go again.
It’s Friday, so the Chrismar has live music – Ruth and I took a walk along the road outside of the hotel to get some exercise before going. We got there an hour or so early so that we could eat – the lovely baskets of coals were out again, and it was cold. We saw a different cat roaming – a Siamese type this time.
Peter and another professor from Loughbrough came in and saw us just before our food arrived, and asked to join us. Of course we said yes. We ended up staying late enough to hear quite a bit of the music – a Zambian band that played covers of many familiar songs as well as local ones. It was a very nice evening.
The next day we are planning to go to a game lodge and have a short safari with Craig and Chimemwe, so we are off to bed!
Zambia – Thursday
July 22, 2008 at 5:02 pm (Zambia)
Tags: Africa, Kamwala, SCECSAL, Zambia
Today we had the last of the presentations, all day. There were several good ones, but everyone was so draggy from last night that many people were dozing in the meeting. I think that most everyone was there, though. We should have had the Cultural Night tonight, not yesterday – why did they do it in the middle of the conference, that everyone should be so tired today? Everybody’s wondering.
The photographer had several of me today, both from yesterday and before. Ruth took an almost identical one of me doing the white people dance, so I didn’t want to buy that one. Most of the others were of me with people I don’t know – the people who asked to have their picture taken with me and Sarah. I left those for them to have. I got one of me standing with Sarah and Peter in the lobby, though.
Today I discovered that the email connections set up at the Conference center were excellent – I wish I had known! Sorry, Mom, I used my allotted time today to make sure that my future travel things were all set up. Unfortunately, I also discovered that Jo’burg is extremely dangerous for one woman daytripping alone – so I decided to use my twelve hour layover on the way home to explore the airport. I don’t want to try risking a taxi to the museums, however excellent they are rumored to be. It’s supposed to be a nice big airport with lots of shopping and a small museum, so hopefully I won’t be bored. Anyway, it’ll have a bookstore, and maybe even wifi.
Ruth and I were so tired when we got in we just ordered a pizza – Hawaiian pizza, even called that, has made it to Africa! And is very good. Then we split up and I watched tv while typing this. Very exciting, but what I needed.
I also attempted to make my new phone work – unfortunately, I found out that it works just fine, but only in Zambia to call Zambian phones. That’s what I get for buying a promo phone – I should have asked more questions! 80,000 zkw ($24) down the drain. I did try to call my family and friends, but they’re just going to have to wait – maybe in Malawi. I’m going to keep it anyway so I have a clock and a calculator – I didn’t realize how much I used those functions of my own phone.
I’m also seriously considering switching to T-Mobile when my renewal comes in September – this lack of ability to use SIM cards like the rest of the world does not sit well with me. Also, if I had T-Mobile, I’d be able to use my phone here. Not so Verizon. Although I’d probably wrack up huge charges if I had it, so maybe it’s for the best.
Tomorrow Sarah and I are going to Ababa House, a fine-crafts shop, or maybe to the Kamwala Market with Prisca and Ruth. Or both. We’ll see in the morning.
