August 19

Just rambling a bit these days. Most of the focus is on the house but I am still not settled into a regular routine schedule and find myself up at odd hours. Just now I suppose anticipating an early rising to leave for Lusaka. We want to be on the road by 6:00am. If all goes well then we can be on our way back by noon. Traveling to Lusaka is tedious at best. Too much traffic (both vehicle and pedestrian) and everyone seems to be moving around with little regard for others on the road with them. It looks like NASCAR on the streets but at a much slower speed. People are moving in and out and cutting in front etc., anything to get ahead of everyone else.

Pedestrians are everywhere; people selling various items standing in the line between traffic at lights. There is a casual indifference with the pedestrians. They walk very close to the travel lanes and do not seem to be in much of a rush to move out of the way. To me it seems a really hazardous environment especially in Lusaka but it is not much different in Siavonga except for those trying to sell things. I am certain that I will eventually get used to it but I am not sure how comfortable I will become about driving in it.

Charles Phiri will not return from Kabwe until tomorrow. I do miss him being around and will be glad once his farming chores are finished so we can move forward with our program. We still have well aprons to build and another well to drill in Mufulira in the Copperbelt. That project has been on hold for way too long and needs to be concluded.

Back from Lusaka (as you can see I am doing this over a couple of days)…what a trip! I took the old truck since we were picking up materials for the house plus I wanted to see how it did after some work was done on it. We had a flat before we even left Siavonga. Africa can be really hard on vehicles and tires. We changed to the spare and had the tire patched. I wanted to be on our way by 6 but that didn’t happen. Later in the day we had another flat (the same wheel) in the middle of Freedom Way in Lusaka. In the middle of traffic and congestion…let your imagination run for a minute… This resulted in purchasing two new tires as the last thing before we left town.

I had hoped we could be on our way home around mid-day but we missed that by a long shot. However we did pick up pretty much everything on our list at not quite what I hoped for regarding cost. Ok…not quite is not accurate…truth is pretty much nowhere near what I hoped for.

I purchased two a/c’s for the house and a hot water heater. Then I picked up a booster pump with an on-demand switch for water to the house and a water filtration system. Then there were more fixtures for the plumber and paint for some of the rooms etc. We got pretty much what we planned to on the trip. I did not get back to my room until around 10:30pm so it was a really long day.

I did see something on the way back that I remember hearing about in the past. As we rounded a corner coming down the mountain in the dark there were a number of items in the opposite lane in the road. What happens when the big trucks are moving very slowly up the mountain thieves will jump on and cut ropes holding bags and such which then fall into the road and they steal them. I had heard about it but had not seen it until last night.

I am really liking the rock work being done on the floors and the walls of the master bath. The floor to the bath should be done today then they will move on to the floor in the office.

There are two builders doing that just now. One however is also doing the plumbing. They will move through doing the walls (plastering with concrete to give a smooth surface) and floors. The electric should be completed by the weekend (I hope).

In what I hope will be my last major expense I hope to take a truck to Lusaka on Friday and purchase the wood materials for the ceilings. After that it will be a bit here and there since my funds are running out for the house.

I hope that I will be able to bring my paperwork to immigration on Friday. Charles needs to provide a letter along with the needed forms and fees.

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