Zambia Journal - Aug 21, 2005
I doubt any more of this journal will make it to the internet before we get back to the US but since its supposed to be for me anyway I guess I’ll keep writing.
We went to St. Clare’s Roman Catholic Church this morning. It’s Bernadette’s church as well as a few other people we have met over the last couple of weeks. Some from the ZANCOB board, and some from the compounds nearby – Ng’ombe and Garden. The church itself is in the Roma district, which is typical in that it sits in the midst of wealthy Kalundu where Mulungushi is situated, and poorer townships like the Garden and Ng’ombe compounds we have been visiting this week. The service in English thatwe attended was sandwiched between two other services that were being held in Nyanja the language spoken by most of the people around Lusaka (although there is a lot of Bemba spoken and a little Tonga which is what the villagers spoke in the Southern Province we visited). Although it was what I imagine a typical RC service to be it also had some wonderful singing that I can’t imagine in a western church.
After walking back to Mulungushi and extracting myself from by white shirt and tie a few of us headed off to walk through the University of Zambia campus that is situated on the other side of the Great North Road from where we are staying in Mulungushi. The wind was strong and the dust was blowing everywhere filling the sky with particles enough to filter out the worst of the equatorial suns rays and reducing visibility to less than a mile. I can’t claim to have seen a beautiful view yet while we’ve been here – Zambia is dry, dusty and everything, including the trees, is covered with a murky brown layer. The other unattractive thing you see everywhere is trash, garbage and rubbish strewn everywhere and some of the larger piles on fire, all of which adds to the unattractiveness of the landscape in the city and on the main roads. We finished our walk by going through a stretch of garbage and worked our way back to the Arcades Mall were we could find a US style restaurant where the only thing we had to avoid was the raw veggies they put on our plates for decoration.
We went to St. Clare’s Roman Catholic Church this morning. It’s Bernadette’s church as well as a few other people we have met over the last couple of weeks. Some from the ZANCOB board, and some from the compounds nearby – Ng’ombe and Garden. The church itself is in the Roma district, which is typical in that it sits in the midst of wealthy Kalundu where Mulungushi is situated, and poorer townships like the Garden and Ng’ombe compounds we have been visiting this week. The service in English thatwe attended was sandwiched between two other services that were being held in Nyanja the language spoken by most of the people around Lusaka (although there is a lot of Bemba spoken and a little Tonga which is what the villagers spoke in the Southern Province we visited). Although it was what I imagine a typical RC service to be it also had some wonderful singing that I can’t imagine in a western church.
After walking back to Mulungushi and extracting myself from by white shirt and tie a few of us headed off to walk through the University of Zambia campus that is situated on the other side of the Great North Road from where we are staying in Mulungushi. The wind was strong and the dust was blowing everywhere filling the sky with particles enough to filter out the worst of the equatorial suns rays and reducing visibility to less than a mile. I can’t claim to have seen a beautiful view yet while we’ve been here – Zambia is dry, dusty and everything, including the trees, is covered with a murky brown layer. The other unattractive thing you see everywhere is trash, garbage and rubbish strewn everywhere and some of the larger piles on fire, all of which adds to the unattractiveness of the landscape in the city and on the main roads. We finished our walk by going through a stretch of garbage and worked our way back to the Arcades Mall were we could find a US style restaurant where the only thing we had to avoid was the raw veggies they put on our plates for decoration.
posted by Rodney | 5:18 PM
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