The trip to Ndola and Kitwe in Copperbelt Province

PHOTOS FROM THE TRIP
(Most of these pictures were taken for use in a training manual and are of various shops and food items--sorry if they're a bit boring!)

Friday, June 29, 2007

So today, a colleague and I set out from Lusaka around 8 AM and headed for Kitwe to supervise the listing for the urban survey. Kitwe is in the Copperbelt Province, about 400 kilometers north of Lusaka. The sights from the Great North Road, which we took most of the way, were a lot more interesting than those from Kafue Road, which is the route that leads from Lusaka southwest down to Livingstone. Almost every few kilometers, there was at least some charcoal, sweet potatoes, honey, tomatoes, reed-woven mats, or a pile of something else for sale on the side of the road. The road was smooth and straight, and the traffic wasn’t bad so I was able to enjoy the ride and not fear for my life like I would on the roads in Guinea for example. My colleague was a good tour guide and pointed out the key landmarks along the way.

We took a pit stop in Kapiri Mposhi, a little over halfway on our journey, and topped up the diesel in his Toyota minivan and got a snack – he opted for a piece of chicken while I went with the Zambian version of Gatorade and a (dry and hard) baked good shaped like a muffin. (I would have just said ‘muffin’ but that would be using the term much too liberally!) Had my first ‘pay toilets’ experience, where you have to pay 500 Kwacha (about 12 cents) to use the facilities – initially I thought this was unique to gas stations (or filling stations, as they’re called here), but apparently that’s not the case because the toilets at the restaurant we went to a few hours later in Ndola had the same set up.

En route to Kitwe, we had to meet the listing team in Ndola, a city that thrived during the peak days of the copper industry but has been going down hill since the parastatals throughout Zambia were privatized. My colleague and others had warned me that Ndola would be a rather sleepy town but much to the contrary, the place was hopping. This weekend is the annual trade fair in Ndola so lots of people are in town for that. We stopped at the Shoprite parking lot to call for directions to the listing team’s office, and Shoprite was also swamped. The meeting with the listing team went fine and then we made our way to an internet café to take care of some business.

The next challenge was finding a place to stay for the night. Again, because of the trade fair, all of nicer guest houses and lodges are booked so we ended up at Destiny’s Guest House. It could be worse, for sure, but it’s not great either – and because of the trade fair, they’re charging us about $50/night! I just got here a few minutes ago and have already seen several well-fed cockroaches…We decided to stay in Ndola for the night because the listing won’t start in Kitwe until tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be able to find a nicer place in Kitwe. Anyhow, by the time we had deposited our things at Destiny’s, it was already 4 PM and we realized that we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Our local colleague suggested the East Wing 3 and Beer Garden, so we headed there for a meal of chicken, nshima, and vegetables.

Having been spoiled at the Chita Lodge, I didn’t think to bring a towel with me, so after our late lunch/dinner, we had to brave the crowds at Shoprite so that I could buy one. I thought we would head back to Destiny’s and call it a night after that, but my colleagues were still thirsty for some Castle (one of the local beers) so we went to a nice botanical garden for a few drinks. I’m still a little wary after that migraine earlier in the week so I opted for a Fanta instead. So now, after a long day of travel and figuring out logistics, I’m back at Destiny’s and ready to get a good night’s sleep before the big day of listing activities tomorrow. Destiny’s has satellite TV, but only one receiver, so I’m at the mercy of the lodge attendant who controls the remote. Looks like a local Zambian sitcom is the show of choice tonight. Should be interesting!

We’ll have to drive about 65 km to Kitwe before the fun begins…


Saturday, June 30, 2007

Ahh, the bucket bath. It had been about 5 years since my last one and far longer than that since the last time I had to do a bucket bath with cold water! In the least, the morning bathing experience woke me up after a semi-restful night on the mushy foam mattress. The listing team was a bit slow to assemble this morning so my colleague and I waited for them at Destiny’s until about 9 AM. While we were waiting, I turned on the TV, which the attendant had tuned to ZNB (the Zambian National Broadcasting Company), for the Zambian version of “Good Morning America”. They covered quite the gamut of topics in the 30 minutes or so that I caught: a chat with a rep. from the ministry of health about an upcoming measles vaccination campaign, a random guy dancing, a correspondent’s interview with a makeup artist trying to “make a bad face a beautiful face,” comments on the “demonic powers of tattoos” and viewers’ text messages on the topic, and then another correspondent’s interview, this time with an interior designer. Very entertaining to say the least.

We got to Kitwe a little before 10 AM and the listers were on their way to get started shortly thereafter. After reserving a room at the local YMCA hotel, my colleague, one of the supervisors and I headed to get some breakfast and scope out the markets around the central business district in town. I had forgotten how overwhelming the main markets in big cities can be. There’s so much going on and so many people. We took a look at the horticultural wholesaling section of the market, which was filled with produce from within Zambia as well as from Tanzania and South Africa. Later, we drove through some of the compounds and ended up at the other main market in town, but only after the two guys I was with could stop and have their afternoon Castle lager.

By about 3 PM, my colleague was ready for a break and he thought the listers would be wrapping up soon so we headed back to the hotel. Although it’s actually quite a bit cheaper here than at Destiny’s, the rooms here are far nicer – for starters, at least the hot water works! I decided to try to take a short nap while we waited, but probably not more than 5 minutes after I closed my eyes, the music started blasting outside my window in the courtyard below: a wedding reception was getting underway…and now, some 6 hours later, it’s still pumping. Not sure what time I’ll be sleeping tonight at this rate!

Turns out the listers didn’t make it back to meet us at the hotel until 6 PM. These guys are working under such poor conditions – your heart really goes out to them. 11 of them rode in the back of a pickup truck going 140 kilometers per hour for 45 km to get from Ndola to Kitwe. And then they walked around all day doing the listing. When they met up to drive back to Ndola for the night, they discovered that they had lost one of the rookie members of the team. Not sure what happened to that guy. Hopefully he made it back to Ndola or found a place to crash in Kitwe. The team debriefed us on their progress – most of them had listed about 100 households – then they headed home to Ndola and my colleague and I went in search of nshima for dinner. Our search was in vain, though, and we ended up at one of the countless “take away” restaurants where I had a chicken shwarma and salad and he had steak and fries. I’m beat now but the music is still rocking…hopefully things will wind down soon.


Monday, July 2, 2007

Got back from Kitwe earlier this afternoon. My last entry left off with my laments over the loud music from the wedding taking place at the hotel – fortunately, things wrapped up moments after I finished writing. The listing yesterday went a bit smoother than the previous day but was not without its challenges. The listing team still only had one vehicle to shuttle around 10 listers to various locations, many of which required 20 km drives along terrible roads to reach. The listers were also using old, torn maps, and their supervisors didn’t have their own copies, making it difficult for them to effectively supervise and tough for us to oversee the job. Nonetheless, my colleague and I spent most of the day driving around to different areas that had been listed to make sure that the listing was complete. We also checked out a few grocers and supermarkets for potential anomalies and tested out a few questions on our survey. By the end of the day, we had some concerns about the logistics of the operation and wanted to meet with the head supervisor, who proceeded to get drunk and make us wait 3 hours before meeting with us. After the meeting, my colleague and I went in search of nshima for the second night in a row, this time in the central business district area, but again to no avail. He hadn’t had nshima since dinner on Friday and said that that was the longest he had ever gone without eating the stuff (and the guy is probably around 45)!

We left Kitwe around 7:00 AM this morning and the ride was relatively uneventful. Made a couple pit stops and picked up some nice produce at one of the countless roadside markets. Today and tomorrow are national holidays in Zambia so I’m going to try to take advantage of not having to go into the office my recovering from the trip and making some progress on my thesis. I’m sensing that the rest of my time here this summer is going to fly by so am going to try to arrange a trip to Livingstone and the Victoria Falls this coming weekend.