Lusaka – Zambia’s Captial City
We had taken a bus from Livingstone to Lusaka. The ride was seven hours long, so we were exhausted when we got off the bus and into the station. In the station there was a mob of taxi drivers yelling ‘taxi! taxi!’ and ‘you! you! Get in my taxi!’. We simply ignored them because we had to get our bags. We finally made our way through the crowd and got our baggage.
One of the many taxi drivers took us to the Holiday Inn. It was like a palace compared to the other places we had stayed. We went up to our suite that we got bumped up to and off loaded our luggage and then went to dinner down stairs at McGinty’s Irish Pub. There was the most hilarious note on the back of the menu that read:
‘ Dear daughter,
I am writing this message to let you know that I am still alive.
I am writing slowly because I know you can’t read fast.
You won’t recognize the house when you get home- we’ve moved.
About your father, he has a lovely new job. He has 500 men under
him- he cuts grass for the cemetery.
About the new house, it has a washer machine in it. But it hasn’t been working too well. Last week I put in twelve shirts, pulled the chain and haven’t seen the shirts since.
Yesterday I went to the doctor and your father came with me. The doctor put a small tube in my mouth and told me not to talk for ten minutes. Your dad offered to buy it from him.
This week it rained twice – once for three days and once for four days. It was so windy that one of the hens laid the same egg four times.
Your dear mother
P.S. I was going to send you five pounds, but I had already sealed the envelope.’
The next day we went around the city. Our dad used to live here in Lusaka as a child, so we went and saw his old house and school. We didn’t see much of the house because brick walls with barbwire on top surrounded it. The school we got into without the slightest difficulty. We saw our dad’s old classroom, which was completely the same except the seats were facing the other direction, and his old play ground, which was fairly small.
We lastly saw a huge, American-sized shopping center. We were blown away by the size of the place. You name it they had it (with the exception of cars and houses). It was so shocking because most of the stores we had seen in the past week were small and/or dirty.
Tags: Bus, Kids, Lusaka, Travel, Zambia
Administrator
It sounds like the house hasn’t changed much since we lived there. The wall and wire was put up for us, they must have done a good job if it is still there.
To have a shopping center in Lusaka is another story, what we wouldn’t have done for that!
We are happy you got to see some of your dad’s growing up places, now you know why he is like he is, A Great DAD.
We had some great times in Lusaka and meet a lot of great people.
Love You Two, Hugs & Kisses, God Bless, Grammy & Papa
Hmmmm. They put wire up around the Grooms house back then? If that was to keep you IN, it obviously didn’t work.
I love to visit stores in new places. Great way to see what is important to that culture. Also love to price compare on a basic list of food items.
Hugs,
Nana