You never know what the day will bring :D

Friday evening, before I posted my last post, I went to the happy hour at the Waterfront hotel. It was the perfect ending for a nice but also a bit exhausting week at work :) Will and I enjoyed some few drinks while enjoying the sunset.

The lovely sunset

Will

When I came home that evening, it was back to reality = African lifestyle. We had no power ;) So, what am I doing in the compound, when the power has gone?

Well, besides sitting and waiting for the power to come back, I’m playing with my brothers. Friday it was time for playing super heroes :D

My brothers (Patrick and Jonathan) and Pleasant (he is my neighbor)

 Saturday morning it was again time for me being a tourist :) I went on a horseback riding safari with June and Brigitte. Let me say it like this, it was a nice trip, however, it was a REAL trip for tourists! That was even too much for me :D We started with seeing zebras and giraffes. It was nice but it was on the hotel area, where they feed the animals. Even though it was fine that we came so close to the animals, it didn’t feel like a real safari. And when we finally left the hotel area, we didn’t see any animals at all. Well, I think that’s just how a safari is sometimes. You can’t always be lucky to see animals ;)

Me and my horse

Baby giraffe

Zebras

June and me on our horses in the Zambezi River

In the afternoon it was time for me to attend in my first Zambian wedding. Now you maybe are wondering, who invited me? Well, actually it was kind of myself :D I heard some of my colleagues talking about a wedding, which should be held in one of the buildings, where I work. I told them that I have been told that if I get the chance to join a wedding in Zambia, I should definitely take the opportunity to see how it’s like. That’s what I did :D I asked if I was allowed to join and they said yes :) Since no one had time to join me, I went there alone. Well, I knew one person at the wedding and it was her neighbour who got married ;) Besides the fact that I felt a bit strange about going to a Zambian wedding as the only white person and with just knowing one person, it was GREAT fun and I definitely don’t regret my own invitation to the wedding at all :) A Zambian wedding is just totally different from our weddings at home. There was so much dancing! I loved it :) I took many videos. I couldn’t upload all of them. Here is just a short impression. It’s the “knife boy”. He brings the knife for cutting the cake. I just loved him :D

And yep, I know I’ve my finger on the speaker :D

Some women bringing their gifts for the bride and the groom

Yvonne and me after the wedding

Sunday it was time for me doing some washing and cleaning at home. Well, washing all your clothes with the hand and cleaning the room for dust is almost a ”whole-day-project” here in Africa :D

Here are some impressions from the compound and Livingstone:

Elephant footprints in the garden

grasshopper at the gym

cockroaches having fun at my toilet in the compound

My kitchen

A typical dinner: rice and beans

Jonathan eating breakfast and showing me his new socks (Thanks Siv-Hege;))

My washing in front of the house and Jonathan eating breakfast

Finally done with my washing

Cleaning my room (yep, that is the thing I use for sweeping)

Patrick helping me with cooking

Patrick, Miriam (my host mum), Rebeca and Jonathan

Me cooking fried potatoes

On my way to work

On my way home

Monday it was time for a normal Monday at the office. What does that mean? I was writing some reports, while the others were nursing a sick chicken :D

In my office

In the afternoon I went to the prison to visit my host dad together with my host mum. Well, I don’t know how European prisons look like, but I think they are better than here in Africa. It was nice seeing, however also a bit tough…

The prison entrance

After the prison I decided to buy me a guitar. I’ve always wanted to start playing again and since my evenings are a bit quiet here, I thought now I’ve the time for it ;)

Last week I met a very friendly old man at the golf court with a guitar. I asked him, if he knew a place where I can buy one. So we met and I bought one ;) Agugu Villa (that’s the old man’s name) offered me even to tune the guitar, while I just could do my exercise in the gym (the gym belongs to the golf court). Well, I couldn’t say no to that offer :D

Yesterday and today have been rather quiet days at work. We are doing some club visitations this week, so we can improve the sport department. Or rather, we are supposed to do. Today I arrived at the office at 8 hours. After two hours waiting for going for the club visitation, they told me that they have to do other things and the visit is cancelled. Well okay, I thought. So what was my work today? Yep, nothing! A bit frustrating…but yeah, this is Africa ;)

But the meeting yesterday went quite well ;) Even though it was spiced with a little surprise for me, when we finished :D We all had left our shoes in front of the door, when we entered the room. As I went out after the meeting my shoes somehow had disappeared :D Well, luckily it just was my Zambian tropical’s (flip flops). Apparently, one of the women’s son had mistaken my shoes with his shoes. Or at least they said that. I got a pair of one the women shoes and they promised to bring my shoes to the office during the week, when they had found the boy. Hmmm, we’ll see if they do that :D

So, right now I’m sitting at Jolly Boys Backpackers looking forward to the monthly meeting with all the sports captains tomorrow. We have to make some changes in the sport department, so the work in the sport clubs and at the trainings improves :)

And do you know what? Unfortunately, It just started raining :( Nooooooo!!! You know how much I just love the sun, even though 39 degrees every day is a bit hot :D The first rain is supposed to come in the end of October…but yeah, you never know how things turn out to be in Africa :D

TIA = This is Africa :)

Wow, the time is running so fast and 1 ½ weeks have already gone since I’ve posted the last update.

   Believe it or not, I have actually been quite busy during the last days :D

But let me start from where I stopped the last time ;)

Last week I was quite occupied with finishing my exam paper and attending more club trainings. However, Wednesday showed to be a completely different day. Since we have been told that Nowspar (an organization in Lusaka) is fixing everything with our visa and work permission, I didn’t think of my visa at all. Well, that day I was forced to :D I found out that my visa had expired on the 7^th of September, so I actually had been illegal in Zambia for almost 6 days! Oppps…I was sooooo scared, because the first reaction of every person I talked to was “ohhh, big trouble!” To make a long story short, some papers I was supposed to get and bring to the emigration office, had been sent to the wrong organization, they deleted it and I never received them. I was so relieved that it wasn’t my fault :D

However, the emigration office didn’t care about whose mistake it was…Luckily, the officer must have had a good day, since he, after giving me a big lesson about how bad and wrong it was, extended my visa with another 30 days…Puha :)

After the big shock on the Wednesday I was definitely ready to go to Lusaka and have some fun :) Siv-Hege and I took the night bus from Livingstone to Lusaka at 10:30 p.m. hours. Since the bus driver managed to cut the normally 7 hours bus trip down to 4 ½ hours (yep, he drove like a crazy person), we arrived safely in Lusaka at 3 a.m. After sleeping another 2 hours in the bus, we went to Lusaka Backpackers at 5 o’clock and were ready for the day and the weekend:)

Friday we went shopping, had a lot of good coffee (or at least better coffee than in Livingstone ;)), met Lina, Johanne and Karl-Frederik, ate waffles at the Norwegian Embassy, relaxed at the pool and ended the day with a nice dinner and some drinks :) It was so lovely seeing the others again, exchanging experiences, talk “Norwegian/Danish” and just being together in the group :)

However, the last part changed for me on the Saturday at the Nordic Sports day, where Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland competed against each other in different types of sports.

Saturday morning at 10 a.m. all the “nations” met at the American School in Lusaka. It was quite fast clear that it was going to be a big challenge for Denmark just to come close to win some matches, since Denmark wasn’t as many people as all the other nations at all. We were only 10 (all the other nations were at least 25 people) and the average age in our team was probably around 60 :D and don’t ask for the average fitness level :D…let me say it like this. They were quite happy that a young person like me was able to play all the football matches, all the volley ball matches, do the 400 meter relay, swim 1500 meters and participate in the tug of war :) However, our aim wasn’t to win but have fun :) And the day was definitely great fun! The lovely dinner at the Danish Embassy in the evening and the price for the best Team spirit and sportsmanship made it even perfect :)

Here some pictures:

Lusaka Backpackers

The warm up at the Nordic Sports Day

Volley ball, Norway against Denmark. Denmark won :)

Enjoying a drink before going to the dinner at the Danish Embassy 

Enjoying a drink at the Danish Embassy

Lina, Siv-Hege, Johanne and me enjoying the heat from the bonfire

Sunday morning I was already on my way back to Livingstone again. And guess what? Yep, Siv-Hege and I thought it would be nice to end the perfect weekend with a sunset cruise :D Unfortunately, we arrived a bit too late in Livingstone. So instead, we went to the Royal Livingstone Hotel (I think it is the best and most expensive hotel in Livingstone) for enjoying a drink, while watching the fantastic sunset with the top of the Victoria Falls in the background and hippo yawns in the front :) Well, it was the perfect “plan B” :)

Have a look, how nice it was:

Sunset with the top of the Victoria Falls in the background

Sunset with a monkey eating our snacks ;)

 Then it was time for me going back to my African life :) And well, it has been a real African week spiced with some frustrations and mixed experiences.

While I was in Lusaka, my host dad unhappily got arrested…He is one of the most popular taxi drivers in Livingstone, so you can maybe imagine that some of the many other taxi drivers in Livingstone might get a bit jealous and want him to give space and work for them. Well, the way they do it here, is to place drugs in someone’s car….Yep, that’s quite unfair but fairness is not a word they know here. Furthermore, everything is about money and it’s impossible to know how much corruption there is involved. Since, the police somehow aren’t able to promise that they are going to release him, when my family pays the bail, he is still in prison…fingers crossed, he’ll come out on Monday next week ;)

Monday morning, I got a nice surprise at work as well. When I arrived at the office, I thought it was going to be a day like all the other Mondays at the office. Well no! We were going to have a workshop with 20 girls, who are members in Kwenuha. Well okay, we can do that, I thought. But have we planned anything? NO! What am I supposed to do? Hmmm….I didn’t know! Did someone tell me? Not really…Good :) After having a big question mark in my face, I found out that I was supposed to be responsible for the energizers during the workshop. So, my task was to sit in the workshop room, observe the girls and when I see them getting tired or bored, I had to do something fun with them :) Nice task, I thought :-) However, I think the facilitator might have misunderstood my role a bit, since it ended up with me doing half of the facilitating almost every day. She used to say: I’ll just leave the girls with you. I’ll just quickly go to town and deposit a check. or “I just have to get my glasses from home” and another check had to be deposited again :D Well, in Africa it’s not possible “just quickly” to go to town. Or at least she isn’t able to do it! Two hours was the fastest she managed to do to be back again :D But I also have to say, I have barely met a more lazy person than her :D Sometimes she drove me crazy with her lazyness and furthermore, I think communication must be a foreign word for her :D

On the other hand, I actually have to admit that I enjoyed it quite a lot to facilitate and being the energizer :) The girls just loved the energizers and we had great fun :) However, it’s actually a bit sad that they don’t know about their human rights and that they actually are allowed to say no to sex or to have sex without a condom…what we at home take for granted, they don’t know anything about…that made me think a lot...

Wednesday morning I had new “real” African experience again. I woke up with hundreds of small stitches on both my calves. Hmmm, was it mosquito bites, bed bugs bites or something different? I asked Sister Perpetua (the head of Kwenuha) and she didn’t know either. So, she wanted me to see a doctor. Well, after many hours waiting in the clinic, seeing not so nice impressions and quite an uncomfortable feeling, I finally met the doctor. Well, as I somehow already knew before going there, he wasn’t able to tell me anything I didn’t know ;) (He couldn’t say what kind of stitches they were). However, I found out that they don’t know anything about privacy here in Africa (I was sharing the consulting room with some others) and if I one day have to see a doctor, it’s definitely not going to be in this clinic ;) So now I know that :D

The consulting room

Well, I think I have written enough for this time ;) I don’t want you to feel bored!

This weekend I'm going on a horse back riding safari with June and Brigitte, and I'm going to learn even more about the African culture, at a Zambian wedding I'm going to on Saturday :)  

My first Safari tour :)

Hello again! 

I know, I just posted an update. However, there is no need to worry ;) I’m not going to spam you with more than two updates in one week :D

I just wanted to share the amazing photos from the Safari tour in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park with you :)

We had rented our own car, so in a small Toyota, we drove almost 7 hours through the national park. Even though, it was way too hot in the car and the car maybe not was the best choice for the quite bad roads, we had an amazing tour and managed to see almost every type of animal in the national park :)

Here some impressions:

June, Birgitte, Siv-Hege, a rhino and me

a nice lunch

A Buffalo

A monkey eating a baby monkey...

An Impala

some nice birds

"Pumba"

A rhino

(it's actually quite seldom to see a rhino in the national park. However, we managed to meet a nice ranger, who showed us where they were hiding :) We saw 6 rhinos!!!)

An elephant

A small monkey

A zebra

A giraffe

After relaxing at Siv-Hege's pool today (I was supposed to study :D), I'm ready for the next week and for finishing my exam :) 

I really look forward to Thursday evening, where Siv-Hege and I are taking the night bus to Lusaka. Friday we'll do some shopping, both clothes and rye bread and Saturday it's time for the Nordic Sport Day :-) (The Norwegian, Danish and Swedish embassies are competing against each other and having a nice dinner in the evening). I think it's going to be a lot of fun and I really look forward to see the others from the Idretts Fredskorps group :) juhuuuu!!!

It’s getting hot in Livingstone :)

Last week started with a calm day at the office, writing some reports of the club trainings and collecting some quotations in town for the food we needed for the Fun Day. The following two days I basically just was sitting in the ZigZag Café (I don't have a desk at home and they have the best coffee in town and free Internet ;)) studying for the 2 weeks exam (I have from the 31.08.-14.09.) during the mornings and attending some club trainings in the afternoons.

The first highlight of my week was Wednesday late afternoon, where I joined the gym in the Golf Club :) It was so nice to do some real exercise. However, I’ve never been so off beat during an aerobic class :D Well, it was a challenge for me :D But the swim in the pool afterwards, in the light of the full moon, compensated for the small irritations during the aerobic class very well ;)

Thursday we had the monthly meeting with all the sport captains in Kwenuha, where we also planned the Fun Day we had on Saturday. You can’t and don’t want to imagine how chaotic it was :D When we finished the meeting, I didn’t have the feeling we had planned anything. However, I thought, “don’t be such a perfectionist and trust them. They probably know how they normally do it and everything will be fine”. Well, more to that in a minute :D In the evening I was invited to a BBQ at Siv-Hege's place (the Norwegian girl I met last week :)). It was a really nice evening, with amazing food! And I met two Norwegian girls, June and Birgitte (they are nurses and stay in Livingstone until November). 

Friday was the last Friday in the month, so instead of working at the office, I went to the club competition. Every last and first Friday in the month we are having a club competition in the afternoon. Or rather supposed to have ;) Yep, when Doreen (the head of the sport department in Kwenuha) and I went to the sports field (which by the way was almost an hour walk away from town) with one of the teams, only one other team had shown up. After sitting and waiting, we called the other teams but they had decided not to participate in the club competition, since they wanted to save their energy for the Fun Day the next day. That was, when I for the first time realised that the distance to the sport field is such an important factor! A bit crazy and sad at the same time that they couldn’t participate because of the long walking distance to sport field…

Instead of just sitting around and doing nothing, I decided to teach the children some volleyball skills. Their smiles and their motivation for learning, made my day :) It’s a really nice feeling, how you can lighten them up with such small things :)

Then Saturday had arrived and I was quite excited because of the Fun Day. I had no idea of what to expect but I was looking forward to meet all the children and do some sport with them :) At 8:30 a.m. (the Fun Day was supposed to start at 9) I was ready at the sport field preparing the rest few things with Doreen and the other sport captains. Well, guess what? Yep, I was the only one…When did the others arrive? Well, the first team arrived at 9:30 and after that, the other teams with their sport captains slowly appeared as well.  One thing I maybe should explain is that all the teams had to walk to the sport field. And since some of the teams had to walk more than an hour to make it to the sports ground, it’s “okay” they were late. I’m getting quite used to wait :D

At 10:30 the 280 children had arrived and we finally were ready to start the day :) Okay, to make a long story short, almost all the sport captains (coaches of the teams) had forgotten to bring the things for the fun games (for instance bottles and eggs for the bottle race and egg race) they were responsible for to bring. So we changed the plans and did some other warm up games instead:) Anyway, what seemed quite chaotic in my head, was apparently fine with the others :D The most important thing was that the children loved it and had a lot of fun:) Then it was time for the football, netball and volleyball matches :) It was such a nice picture and feeling seeing all the children playing and having fun!

Here are some impressions:

barrow relay race

Some kind of ball game :D

Football match

Doreen and me with the food for the children

 After lunch we had planned to do some aerobics and dance fitness. Since the children were quite tired and wanted to start walking home, we just did a short dance session. It is soooo crazy how every single child is able to move his/her body!!!! You should see them! It’s really impressive :) However, they were not able to do the worm (break-dance move) :) With that one I actually was able to impress them :D

Me, trying to dance as an African :D

All in all, it has been a really nice Fun Day, although I have to admit, I was quite exhausted afterwards ;)

But no rest for me ;) I went to another sunset cruise with the Norwegians and celebrated the birthday of one of Siv-Hege’s friends :)

We had an amazing time and ended the evening in one of the nightclubs in Livingstone!

Sunday, I finally had time to rest. Or at least I took me the time to relax at the pool at Siv-Hege’s place ;) (I actually had to start writing my exam paper for Norway. However, I’ve to hand it in on the 14th, so still some more days).

Sunset Cruise :) I just can't get enough of the sunsets!

Relaxing at the pool

So, everything is quite fine down here in Livingstone :) Even though it’s been getting really hot during the last days and I don’t know how to survive the October! Hopefully my body will adapt to the weather soon :D

This week I’ve attended more club trainings and worked on my exam paper. I'm so lucky that I can borrow Siv-Hege's place for studying and writing my exam paper :)

Studying in the shade

Taking a break at the pool in the sun :)

I really look forward to the weekend, where the Norwegians and I want to rent a car and do our own Safari tour in the national park close to Livingstone :)