Sunday Morning

Sleep clock is adjusting.

The Great North Road. The highway (two-lane) stretching from Lusaka to Ndola.

We finally arrived in Ndola last night around 8:30 after a rather harrowing drive thru rain at times nearly unnavigable. Driving on the wrong side of the road is offputting to start with, but in the dark with mostly invisible road striping....well I have to say I'm just glad we made it in one piece.

The number of people is nearly overwhelming...walking in the pouring rain, in the dark, alongside the road....certainly unnerving. During the daylight there are markets along the highway, at times it seems like it's just one long public market rife with fresh tomatoes, butternut squash, forraged mushroms that look like chanterelles, okra, green beans, cucumbers, all beautifully displayed and inviting.

Where traffic is heavy there are young men hawking everything from car chargers for mobile devices to toilet paper.

At one point there were piles of sacked up potatoes (10kg, 20 lbs, the size of chef's), newly harvested  for around 60 kwatcha (roughly US$6.00) which struck me as being expensive given that the majority of the population subsist on 15 kwatcha a day. Other places were bundles of freshly made charcoal, the common fuel for cooking, then there were bundles of sweet potato plants which will be grown and stored.

There were two toll-plazas where the car toll was 40 kwatcha. Wierd, but you stop pay the toll, then go through a dirt d-file and then back onto the highway. With all the rain the d-file was muddy and in some places reminded you of the great black hole of Calcutta.

There are rumble strips (similar to the ones on the Thruway) across the highway marking the beginning of a town. There are speed bumps, real bumps, more  like logs of asphalt that you navigate very gingerly. "Town" as we think of a town, not so much. More like a cluster of mini strip malls with unpaved frontage and vendors selling everything and people, people, people. The mudpuddles are horrific in some places.

 The Weather 

Okay, so it's the Rainy Season. Even though that moniker, Yesterday was a beautiful day--sunny, breezy, in the mid-70s for the most part. We didn't hit rain until we were underway fromn Lusaka to Ndola. But we were told that it wasn't the next Great Flood....

Doubly so, to boot.

Everything is lush and green. The corn is tall and tasseling out. Missed the mango season which is a pity, since they aren't really farmed but forraged in the wild. There are pumpkins and squash planted in the gardens along with the corn. Strange bugs feeding on the pumpkin blossoms.

Sunday promises to be interesting. The first trip to Hope Village, some few kilometers outside the city in what Charles referred to as a "shanty town". Full report later. Right now off to shower and get dressed to go to breakfast at Charles and Margaret's apartment.