Andy's Zambian Adventures: The Bush

For the 2nd week in the bush, we camped next to the clinic Dignity had built in Mibila. This meant taking one of the worst roads (tracks) I’ve driven on so far in Zambia, and there are many bad roads here, but more about bad roads in my next update.

The programme for this week was much the same as the last week, visiting a different village each afternoon and evening, and coming back to the camp each night. This time there were no spiders in my tent, however the first night was interesting as a bush fire came within a few hundred metres of the tents, but fortunately stopped! On the second night a party somewhere in the village seemed to go on through most of the night, which woke me a few times, and then a many many goats bleating very loudly at around 5am, so all in all not the best nights sleep. This week the temperature seemed to go up a notch or two, and yet the nights seemed even colder. In the day it was close on 40 degrees while at night it was down to around 10 degrees. A difference in a few hours that you just don’t get in the UK. Between around 8am and 10am and 4pm and 6pm the temperature is just nice!

Photo: Camp set up

This week as well as meeting some of the people in Mibila village, we also visited Kepeshi (where Alice runs the school I talked about in a previous update), Chinemo a bit further down the road from Kepeshi and Millulu, which is on the way back from Mibila.

Kepeshi: Singing, dancing and football

At Kepeshi, after the main session had been done by Mark and Jon, we were able to see an impromptu performance of some African dance and music, which was great. There was also a football match taking place. Football is so popular in Zambia, and I think in Africa as a whole at the moment. I don’t believe it will be long before an African nation wins the World Cup. Most of the players play bare foot, which seems slightly painful to me, especially as the pitch is not exactly the flattest, and rarely a blade of grass to be seen with not a drop of rain for 5 months.

Photos: Singing and Football

The mobile sound system at Chinemo

At Chinemo we were greeted on arrival by African dancing and great celebrations. However, there were not as many people, as Jon had swapped two of the days around, so we had been due to go there the day after, and although a message had been sent, not everyone had heard….But no problem, we had a loud speaker in the vehicle and a microphone, and importantly a bungee rope which strapped the speaker to the top of the car, so in the style of a politician campaigning before an election, I drove around the village, while Joel spoke or rather shouted into a microphone that we were here, and basically stop what you were doing and come down to the church.

Photos: Speaker attached to vehicle and Vincent preparing projector.

At Milulu children learn lots of new games, while some of the adults have demons cast out.

At the final village of Millulu, only Mark and I joined Joel, Vincent, Casper and Daniel. Jon, Jude, Ruth and the kids headed home early, so Mark had to do all the sessions with the adults, and I had to amuse the 60 or so children, with the help of Daniel translating. So after talking to them for a bit, we played Duck duck goose, bull dog – until there were a few injuries when children started chasing each other through plants, shrubs and trees, relay races, football with around 20 per side on the narrowest pitch for the number of people playing, and then when they’d got a bit tired, Daniel asked me to do a talk about Aids to the older ones, to see if they knew about it. Slightly unexpected, but anyway it turned out that they did know quite a bit about the disease.

Photos: Duck duck goose and Bulldog (Crocodiles and Wildebeast!)

Meanwhile with the adults there had been a time of prayer going on, and around 10 people were suffering from demon possession, so a great deal of noise was coming from the church, as demons were cast out. These villages and rural areas in general are rife with witchcraft, and many people will turn to witchdoctors when they have problems here, even those who attend church on a Sunday. A few of the pastors talked about occurances of witches on broomsticks falling out of the sky here, and while I believe that evil spirits and demons exist, my western mind wants to dismiss the idea of witches actually flying around on broomsticks to fantasy. However, these intelligent men talk about these things without a doubt in their voices. - "We've seen it, occasionally it just happens here".

Sugar cane and bamboo javelin

On the lighter side of things, Casper showed us sugar cane, and we tasted the raw sugar. I’m sure not great for your teeth, but Casper and Joel cycled back to their villages at the end of the week with lots of sugar canes attached to their bike, as well as their overnight bags…. Sadly it was too dark to get a photo of this but I've observed people carring much more than this on their bikes such as a chair and table, metal roofing panels, and numerous food items.

Ruth and I showed off our bamboo stick fighting skills, and although we've been unable to follow much of the olympics, apart from seeing the 100m final last saturday, Ruth was able to show Ethan and Josh how to throw the bamboo stick javelin!