Friday *or* Prelude to Two Gals on a Bus

It has been an interesting weekend here in Zambia for us sisters. It is Monday morning, and we much less picky about out Lusaka hotel after our weekend adventures...

On Friday, after sis finished working, we hired a taxi (which involved walking down the street until a car (which was not blue - the official taxi colour here - and had no taxi-markings) stopped and offered us his services. The driver looked nice (well, everyone in Zambia looks nice, but more about that later), so we bargained for his taxi services, and drove off to an Indian restaurant which had been recommended to us by staff at the high comission.

The restaurant was not easy to find, and the taxi driver would not listen to us, who kept calling his attention to the well-marked restaurant signes posted on the road. Finally we pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, which had just opened for lunch. There were at least two dozen staff members milling about - chatting, ironing linen - and two customers. The restaurant seemed clean, and the food was not horrible, but living in the baseboard of the maroon-coloured wall beside our table was a colony of cockroaches, who kept climbing out of the baseboard and up the wall. Neither sis nor I will be craving Indian food for a the next while...

Our driver was 30 minutes late to pick us up after lunch, but when he finally arrived we stopped at a grocery store to buy snacks for the next day, and then headed to Norwood market. This market consisted of shacks tumbling against one another - there were barber shops, telephone shops, a pool hall, restaurants, and of course curio shops, which were often also tailor shops. The goods offered were far more expensive than in Zimbabwe, and the same wooden hippo that cost 3$ in Harare, was easily 30$ here. We did not buy any African crafts, however (I just killed a mosquito who was attacking me. My blood is all over the wall of the High Comission now, from the bug's stomach. Ew!) we did stop at a tailor's booth. After a bit of bargaining we settled on 8000 Kwachas for my pants to be pressed and hand-shortened (they had been sis' pants until that morning, and were extremely long on me). That is 2.50$, and they did a lovely job. The task would take about 15 minutes, we were told (actually, it took about 30), and I was given an African wrap to wear until the pants were shortened.


Now, there have been cultural differences in all of the places we have visited. In South Africa, in general, people are wary towayds foreigners. In Zimbabwe, our hotel was so fancy, that the people we spoke with were very formal to us. In Mozambique, the attitude was more Spanish - open, helpful and effusive. In Zambia, in casual conversations with strangers, we have sometimes found people to be very frank, verging on what in Canadian culture, would be considered rudeness. For example, when the woman was helping me into the wrap, she wound it around me a few times, poked at it a bit, and announced, LOUDLY: "You have a very big waist! Most people, I would just be able to tie this but your waist is just SO big!" Cry! First: My waist is NOT so big. Secondly: The shape of many local women involves a tiny waist and larger hips. Oh well, if a bit of humiliation is what it takes for the services of a cheap tailor, who am I to argue?

We looked at a Jewelry store and confirmed our Victoria Falls reservation, and then we decided to head back to the hotel for an evening in - it was a hot day and we were tired, we felt a bit nasty from the Indian restaurant experience, and the cab driver was flirting with me whenever sis turned her back. He wanted my email address. Was I married? Did I have a boyfriend? He wanted to email me, and then he told me that he can't actually write. He wanted to know about how single I was and then about my life in Canada. There was no way I was going to give him my email address. It was getting annoying! We went for a swim at the hotel and packed up our bags, and went to sleep really early, as we had to catch a bus before the dawn...