Now, it occurred to me that I’ve told you a lot about what we’ve been up to and the wanderings of my mind, but I’m not sure I’ve told you much about the every day things that make life so different to home! So I thought I’d fill you in a little bit...
I’ll start with the purple trees as they were one of the first things I noticed. I don’t know if you’ve read the book Mr Silly (of Mr Men fame of course!) but if you have you may recall that in Silly Town where he lived the trees had pink or purple leaves or something like that. Well, I got off the plane in Lusaka (after not much sleep for the last 48 hours!) feeling quiet disoriented (is that the right word Penny?) As we drove out of the airport and down the main road from town there was purple trees lining the street on either side...all of a sudden I found myself wondering whether I was about to see Mr Silly painting the leaves back to green as he did in the book!! On closer inspection, it’s actually the flowers that are purple and there just aren’t that many leaves so the whole tree appears purple.
While I’m talking about foliage, I’ll mention the grass. It’s just different to home. From afar it looks green and welcoming like our grass in the summer (when it’s not muddy and wet!) However, on closer inspection and sitting upon, turns out it’s hard and a little spiky. It doesn’t consist of individual blades but rather little mini-branch type clumps that lie flat along the ground.
One must beware sitting on the grass (well wherever you are!) here as well...you never know what size or colour of beastie may appear without warning! They are so varied and intricate...most of them have the same effect on me and make me do a girly scream, wave my arms around madly and dive out of their flight path! This causes much amusement to those around and me once I’m sure said beastie has gone again!
The oddest of all creatures has to be the flat spider. When someone first told me about the flat spider I thought they were talking rubbish - how could a spider look flat...but then I saw one! Their legs lie flat against the walls and their bodies just seem, well, flat! It looks like someone has already done the work of squashing it for you. Turns out though that as a general rule, the flat spiders are safe. It’s the not flat ones that you need to squash quick-fast!!
Another thing we see a lot of is the little geckos that are everywhere! They run past your feet when your sitting eating your breakfast...and they run fast!
As soon as you venture out of town into the more rural village areas you also see chickens all over the place! People keep them in their gardens, but not in coops like we would, just bobbing around outside the house wherever they fancy. Often, there’s a goat or two thrown in for good measure!
If you’re driving in the dark in the bush you are likely to get a rabbit stuck in your headlights! Having lived in the city all my life I’d never fully understood a rabbit being stuck in the headlights...but now I do! They just run and run and run in the direction the light is shining and they can see where they’re going. If you’ve got any locals in the car, they’re all for running it over so they can eat it for tea, but us soft english folks try to let them get away because they’re cute. Generally people find it hysterical that anyone would keep rabbits as pets...not just for food!
There’s a bird here that always whistles the same little 5 note tune - I can hear it now! At first I thought it was quite cool, but now I’m sick of the sound of it as it’s what normally wakes me at about 6.30am! Most annoyingly though, it gets stuck in your head and you find yourself whistling it when the birds not around.
Today is a special day...every morning since I’ve got here I’ve looked out the window to check the weather (as is necessary back home!) and there’s been glorious blue skies. The last couple of days it’s been blue in the mornings but I’ve noticed that the afternoons have been a little cloudy. I wandered outside before to fetch something and noticed that it was raining!! Not heavy, just a few drops, but rain non the less! The rainy season should start at some point during the next month and as far as I know that means it will throw it down every afternoon for a bit.
Onto a totally different topic...mosquito nets! No problem to sleep under, just annoying that every day you tuck in carefully under the mattress to make the net stay in shape, then you squeeze under one edge (which it is impossible to do in any graceful manner) and before you know it, the net has come lose in one corner and then the net is sagging a bit. Which, although it’s no real problem, annoys me and my need to have things straight and proper! The other thing about mosquito nets is that they mean you can’t really sit on your bed during the day - well, you can, but you have to untuck the net which magically pulls your sheets out too and generally it’s more trouble than it’s worth!
I’m still struggling a bit to understand people’s accents. Most people speak english with an african twist. The letters L and R seem to be interchangeable which meant I nearly had heart failure worrying about the liver snake someone was telling me about until I realised it was a river snake and I wouldn’t actually have a snake making its home in one of my internal organs. It’s also common for people to add “ee” on the end of words such as “like-ee” but to miss them off other words that should finish with an ee sound....for instance, ten thirty becomes ten thirt! Everyone works on the 24 hour clock and doesn’t say “o’clock” so time is referred to simply as eight or fourteen and so on.
The money is the strangest though, I just can’t quite get used to it! One pound is about 7000 kwacha, so everything is thousands and thousands of kwacha! It’s quite frightening at first when you spend say 50,000 kwacha on something! I’m beginning to get there very very slowly, but it makes doing the accounts quite bizarre – there’s just zeros everywhere! At the end of the month the queues for the cashpoint are phenomenal as everyone is rushing to get their money out!
So there you go - there’s a few of the things that add up to make life here so different to at home. They are the bits that make everything both difficult and exciting! There are many many more that I can’t think of at the moment (and I’m trying not to write a ridiculously long blog this time as well!) but I’m sure I’ll tell you about them soon.
And finally...in case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to this last week, it’s been a quieter one. We’ve spent the week at home planning the next month and making sure meetings are set up and the like for the next few weeks. It’s been a chance to sit down and take a moment to work out what needs to happen before the rest of the team leaves in a months time. Last night we had a prayer meeting which went well although I’m still not quite used to the loud african everyone praying at once thing! I’m getting there bit by bit but my englishness does get in the way somewhat!
