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 :)