Still in Zambia

Last Saturday we were due to fly to Cape Town for two weeks, before returning to the UK. Then last Thursday a freak lightning strike put Radio Christian Voice off the air and all the new studios in Lusaka out of action. Andy and his team of technicians worked through Thursday night to restore the English service with the Local Languages service returning yesterday.

At the present time there are still lots of repairs outstanding, but progress is slowly being made.

Meanwhile, we have moved into the recently finished guest house, on the residential site behind the studios:

The guest house is the end one of a row of bungalows. On the residential site there are also three blocks of flats like this one:

The wooden planks set out on the drive are ready for concreting, which should keep the dust down.

Returning to the guest house, this is the view from the back garden:

Outside the back door there is a large sink for doing laundry washing, which I have just painted with stoep enamel (a stoep is an Afrikaans word for a step or patio area):

The sink is made of concrete fibre and needed sealing before use. The choice of colours of paint were, red, green or terra-cotta, so we chose the latter, to fit in with the brickwork and other paintwork on the house.

Without a washing machine, the dirty laundry was building up, so today I used the sink and hung it on the washing lines, which are situated between the blocks of flats, as our washing line hasn't been erected yet:

As the rainy season begins, the sandy Zambian soil turns to mud very easily, so everyone will be happier when these areas are concreted.

Living in another house (my seventh, in four years) is getting easier all the time...