Adventures in Africa!: Day 46

7/13/12

Friday the thirteenth!! Fortunately, nothing bad happened today.

Chris and I headed to the medical school early in the morning for our weekly meeting with the professor in charge of community medicine. For now the 6^th week in a row, he did not show up. I keep saying that we should stop going since he has yet to show up ever…but we continue to go just in case. Earlier in the week Jess and Mo (my housemates from Cornell) decided that we should host a dinner for some of our friends that we have met since being here. Jess and Mo invited several of the people that they work with at University of Zambia (called UNZA) and Chris and I invited several of the medical students. We soon found out that we had invited way too many people to actually cook for all of them in our tiny kitchen, so we changed our plans to go out for dinner instead. One of the students suggested a restaurant called Eviva, which was all Mediterranean food. Our table ended up being 12 people, though we had only made a reservation for 10, so we just grabbed extra chairs as more people showed up. It was a great dinner and a great way to get to know everyone better as well as meet a lot of new people.

Here is all of us at the restaurant!

7/15/12

Today was definitely an interesting experience. Francisca, one of the medical students on our rotation, invited us to go to church with her in the morning. This church was beautiful, it was built and currently run by American missionaries. It is an “international church” so there were many people from across the world there, but mostly Zambians. Nothing was too crazy about this church or the sermon, it seemed very “Americanized” so nothing really new. Following the service, we went back to the medical student dorms (called Ridgeway Campus), and we had meat pies for lunch. Another med student, Hims, met up with us and we then went to Mundawanga Zoo, right outside of Lusaka. It is interesting how I know Lusaka now. Everywhere we travel I’m like oh yes I have been through here before, or I know exactly how to get home from here, or where the nearest mall/restaurant is from here. I immediately recognized the zoo, it was something we had seen each time we traveled to Kafue, our 2^nd week here, and directly across from the Chilanga Cement plant, where we just went to last Monday. It was cool to finally see some real African wildlife. Everyone always imagines Africa like it is teeming with wild animals and a complete jungle. Maybe I’m just in the wrong area of Africa, but there is seriously none of that here. I have only seen monkeys in Livingstone right next to Victoria Falls, and other than that, nothing. I think that almost all wild animals in Africa are now completely concentrated in game parks, where the safaris take place.

At the zoo we saw many local African animals, zebras, lions (it was eating a cow leg…), monkeys, warthogs, porcupines, Bushpigs, etc. Going to the zoo today just made me even more excited for our safari in less than 2 weeks now! It will really be exciting!! We are staying at Leopard Lodge in chalets, which are like little houses/huts, but are very nice. The lodge only has 8 chalets, and we will take 2 of them, so I’m sure we will get to know the other people very well by then end of our 3 days there. The safari package we chose will be a stay of 3 days and 3 nights, all meals included, and 2 activities per day. Activities include literally everything, game drives, night game drives, boat rides (to see the hippos and crocs!), fishing, sunset drives, and more!! It will be amazing! Everyone we have met here that has been on a safari absolutely loved it so it is getting even more exciting as it comes even closer to being time.

The church we attended with Francisca.

African warthog!!

Cute little monkey that was freaking out at us!

All of us at the zoo.

This was our dinner!

Chris, me and Francisca.

Some of the fish we had for dinner.

This is Nshima.

Anyways, after the zoo we went back to the dorms to have dinner. Francisca told us that she basically slaved away all day yesterday to cook us a traditional, local Zambian meal. To say the least, it was interesting. You basically start with Nshima, the Zambian staple that is ground corn meal and looks like mashed potatoes, and kind of tastes like nothing. Zambian people eat Nshima with literally every meal, it goes with everything you could possibly think of. To go with the Nshima, Francisca made us gravy (which is just like a vegetable sauce…I’m still not sure why they call it gravy), chicken (which looked very strange), 3 different types of dried/salted fish (kinda made me want to vomit looking at it…), cassava, baked black beans, and fried and boiled sweet potatoes. Here, you eat all your meals with your hands (at least if you’re eating with Zambians…which for us hasn’t been that often). It is very difficult to not make a huge mess doing this, the Zambian people truly have an art for this. I don’t understand how their hands remain clean when they are basically eating mashed potatoes and runny beans and gravy with their hands. Another African mystery to me. Also, when you eat Nshima you have to run it through your hands for a long time before you dip it into whatever you are eating it with. This is also a skill that takes time to master, because for the life of me I can’t roll it up into whatever shape that they do to eat.

7/16/12

Today is the beginning of what is technically our last week on the community medicine rotation with the medical students. Next week the students will be studying every day for their end-of-term exam over everything we have learned in this rotation (I'm really unsure what they could be tested on...). Today we headed over to the Kafue Sugar plantations, about an hour outside of Lusaka. We received a complete tour of the facility and we were walked through the entire process of processing sugar from sugar cane. It was very interesting to see what really goes on in an industry. I had no idea how sugar came to be packaged like we find in the store, so it was very cool to see exactly what takes place. I’m unsure about what we are doing the rest of the week, but like Chris and I always say, “we just go with the flow” (we literally say this everyday…).