Well it's been an... interesting last couple of days. fun, scary, frustrating, tiring are all words i have used at different point of our trip so far...
Thursday morning Lina and i left Sakeji shortly before 7am. i let Lina drive while i woke up, which happened rather quickly as the roads are still rather bumpy! we only had one slightly terrifing moment when we got stuck in the mud in a HUGE puddle. however, my father's past words of wisdom helped us get out of a sticky situation without even getting ourselves muddy! (i wasn't really looking forward to pushing the Patrol!) We arrived in Solwezi and went to the hotel we planned to stay at only to find the were all booked up, as were several other reputable establishments... eventually we found a place with a room that looked decent enough for one night. we had both been looking forward to the AWESOME showers at the Solwezi hotel so were extremely disappointed to find the shower had NO hot water and very little water pressure! In Solwezi we managed to get our Provisional (beginner) liscences which allows us to drive for 3 mths. we'll be trying for our full liscences next thursday. Lina dyed my hair and then we dressed up and went out to a fancy restaurant for supper. Not a complete waste after all... the steak was AWESOME and about 1/2 the price i'd have paid at home!
Friday we left about 7am (this time i was driving) heading for Chingelo School. The drive seemed to take forever this time, not sure why. We made one roadside stop where i purchased a couple chairs for my porch/chota. We stopped in Kitwe to run a few errands, the first was to see if we could take our drivers test there. after giving us the run-around and making us fill out another form, they informed us that we had to finished the test in solwezi because that is where we had started it. sigh... TIA. We had to make a stop to order some baby chicks which will (unfortunately) be making the return trip with us (to later become supper during the term). When we stopped in Shoprite to pick up some lunch a boy told me he would watch the car "real nice" - Zambian "parking security". i didn't want to argue so i said 'fine'. when we came back out we didn't recognize our vehicle b/c a bunch of teens had washed all the mud off! of course they (at least 6 of them) wanted to be paid for this. I told them no b/c i didn't ask them to clean it in the first place (yes, i'm that mean). i did however pay the boy who watched my car a few kwatcha which he found great pleasure in showing to the others. We finally made it to Chingelo at 4pm-ish and enjoyed a nice cup of tea; my first ALL day, which for me was pushing it! Kukena (a Sakeji alumni) took us on a nice walk/tour of the grounds. it was so nice to strech our legs after all that driving!
This morning we slept in... till 8am. after a nice breakfast we set off once again, this time for Lusaka. Lina and I continued working on our 'truckers' tans, switching driving to 'even out' the redness of our arms. We made it into Lusaka after 4 hrs of uneventful driving and were greated by teh sights and sounds of 'big city life'. We're quite proud of ourselves for being able to navigate the city so well and only got turned about once, but quickly figured out where we had gone wrong and found the CMML Flight House rather quickly after that. We've had a rather enjoyable day doing soem light shopping, eating ice cream, discovering and enjoying KFC (yes, it was just as good as Canada!) and ended the day with a Latte from a nice new cafe. Sigh... life is good. :D (for pictures, check out facebook)
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