Green Zambia

Apologies, to regular visitors to this site, for my extended absence recently.

We left a very green Zambia on 9th April. I took these photos from the plane window:

The surface water will now begin to disappear and the dense vegetation, to die back, as the dry season takes hold. There will be no more rain in Zambia until November by which time these views will be very dry and brown.

In contrast, when we arrived in Cape Town I walked round a nearby lake, which had shrunk in our absence. I hope you can see where the waterline used to be...

Cape Town has winter rains, so during the next few months this lake will refill back to its previous level.

On a different topic, but not unrelated to the Zambian wet season, I took this photo as we were driving along the highway recently:

Can you see the butterfly?

Visitors of the animal kind!

The road to the Christian Vision farm passes by a small game farm. Often, especially when we have been traveling back from town in the late afternoon, we see antelope near to the boundary fence.

Recently we saw a whole herd of impala, running parallel to the fence. This was a spectacular sight. The impala are very nervous of noisy vehicles, electric windows being lowered and excited passengers (!) so capturing a photo of them is often difficult.

However, I managed to get these shots the other day - a magnificent male impala, also known as a rooibok (red buck)...

...and this female impala in a Zambian bush setting.

We had some wild creatures entering our home recently: some welcome, others not!

Pulling back the bed covers recently, our friend Steve discovered he would not be sleeping alone that night:

These stripey skink lizards are very common.

Then, we had a visit from a tortoise. It didn't enter our home voluntarily, but was brought in by our guard. I would have liked to have kept it as a pet, but Andy felt it best to return it to the wild:This is Misty, an abandoned kitten that a friend staying at the farmhouse found a few weeks ago:
But these 'visitors' were not welcome at all...

...a tiny frog in the shower. I removed it to outside and wasn't too concerned until I later found several, again in the shower. Then we saw them in the hall and even found some in the bedroom.

For the next few days we played 'hunt the frog' around the house, trying all sorts of ways to prevent them coming up the drain outlet pipe into the shower. Andy opened the drain cover and discovered hundreds of baby frogs in there, some making their way along the near horizontal drain pipe into the base of the shower.

We asked the site maintainence team to come and sort the problem out - which they did most effectively, but the result was that later that day, dozens of baby frogs were jumping around outside. Most were well camouflaged, but here are some on the green wall outside the back door:

We then discovered some in the kitchen, but we think our resident skink lizard, who usually resides beneath the freezer, enjoyed them for supper - we couldn't find any in the kitchen the next day!

So perhaps we won't be so hard on our lizard friends in future...

Zambian culture

• Zambians love special events, especially if they involve dressing up, eating good food and dancing to loud music. We have been invited to several recently, so here is a sample of Zambians having fun!

A ladies luncheon, where you spend more time standing up than sitting down...

Dancing wasn't obligatory but infectious:

Church is always an opportunity for singing and dancing too:

You expect audience participation at a concert:

...but at this one some of them actually led the dancing:

(Some of these people are radio presenters from Radio Christian Voice!)

Travelling through town, one Saturday, a wedding party was in the next lane. The three cars were decorated with ribbons and flowers, but what made it unusual was that all three were blasting their horns continuously.

• Another aspect of Zambian culture, in common with most other African countries, is the way that goods are carried on the head, especially by the women:

This is Eliza, the local lady who helps me with various household tasks. She has worked here for 12 years. Recently we were taking several bags of groceries up to the nearby cabin, which we have been getting ready for one of the South African workers to live in. Eliza automatically put the bags into a large laundry basket and lifted it straight onto her head. African women learn to carry goods on their head at an early age, so that the back muscles become very strong. By the time they are fully grown they can carry heavy weights without straining themselves.

I asked Eliza if she wouldn't mind me taking her photograph and showing it to you. She has a beautiful, typical Zambian smile:

Zambian Insects

As you can expect, living in the Zambian bush presents many opportunities for encounters with very large insects. Some of them are rather beautiful and fascinating when you see them close up.

This stick insect was clinging to the meshed door guard:


I think this is a grasshopper:

There are some enormous furry caterpillars...

...and equally enormous ants, who obviously eat the caterpillars:


This is an edible caterpillar, but I haven't tried it!

Back online - briefly!

We have been experiencing internet difficulties recently. The internet provider for the Christian Vision Farm in Zambia is located in Kenya. The service is extremely slow and often unavailable. Andy discovered that the allocation for the month had been reached, so no more availability until the 1st April. From the 18th of March we have had virtually no signal so Andy is currently trying to find an alternative provider.

Yesterday the installation of a signal from the transmitter tower on the new site directly to the farm some 35km from Lusaka, was started. Today it continues to be installed to it will be another day before he knows whether this plan will work.

There are internet cafes and coffee houses with internet facilities in Town, so whenever we come through we try to have lunch at one of them and get online, while munching our lunch.

Today being 1st April I eagerly tried to get online to discover that the signal had not improved. So I am now sitting in Kilimanjaro Cafe writing this post.

Perhaps if I was able to go to Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, I would be able to get a better signal!!