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!
