Zambian Road Trip!!
Posted
by
Kelly
on 26 Jul 2009
Goodbye Livingstone and hello to miles and miles of Zambian roads!! In the last 5 days I have travelled almost 1000 miles on a journey that has taken me from Livingstone to Lusaka to Ndola to Solwezi and out Meheba, then back, via Chingola, to Ndola where I am now awaiting the arrival of the volunteers for our summer project in the UNHCR refugee settlement of Meheba.
Myself, and former Bookbus volunteer Vicky, have travelled by “Bookbus” truck, hired specially for the occasion, public buses with hours of delays, surprisingly efficient mini buses and a free lift of 320km from an obliging Congolese motorist we happened to meet at our breakfast table! It has been a real eye opener in terms of visiting areas of Zambia where tourists or M’zungos hardly venture. Ndola and Chingola are neat and modern towns with wide tree lined roads whereas Solwezi can only be described as dusty and chaotic but it is a vibrant town with a fantastic market where we caused much amusement and attracted many inquisitive stares tramping down the road with our rucksacks, sunhats, brightly coloured clothing and a huge pineapple!!
Wednesday we spent the entire day with the UNHCR touring the refugee camp which will be the Bookbus home for the next 4 weeks. The camp is much more of a settlement having been established in 1971, there isn’t a tent in sight. The camp is 90km west of Solwezi, which is where the nearest shops can be found, so no nipping out for a pint of milk! What struck me about Meheba was the vastness. It covers an area of 720sq km… and it feels like it. It is huge!! It is home to 16,000 people, mainly Angolans, Congolese and Rwandans. During our day we visited some of the schools in the camp and spoke to the teachers about our project, everyone seems really keen to have us there. It is the first time that anything like this has been attempted in Meheba and it will be a real challenge for our volunteers, living without electricity, running water and miles from the nearest town but hopefully it will be a tremendously rewarding experience. Just the day I spent in the camp I felt that we were more than welcome and I even learnt the Angolan word for M’zungo which is Chindeli, so I guess I will be getting used to shouts of that in the coming month!!