so the buying part of our trip went well. The visa part was no problem at all. However, the liscences have given us trouble yet again! i gave up in Solwezi when the guy told me that to convert my liscence I needed to hand over my Canadian liscene to him (YA RIGHT!), so after giving him a piece of my mind (and embarrasing Lina) i stormed out and decided i'd had enough of Zambian burocracy! Lina on the other hand is a little more of a go-getter then me and decided to try again (without me around ;) ) in Lusaka. she went in and stood in the many lines and worked her way through the whole rigamarole. she even made them book her driving test for the next day. So yesterday the plan was that she would get up early, take her driving test while Hannah and I packed everything up and prepared to head home. we'd then pick up the new kitten i have adopted and head back up north. of course this is Africa (T.I.A) and nothing goes according to plan. Lina was told (after a bogus test) that she had passed but needed to come back either Thursday or Friday to pick up her pass certificate. after much pleading etc she wasn't able to get them to budge. Unfortunatley we both had dental appointments booked for this morning in Kitwe (about 6 hrs drive away). after much phoning around and stressful decisions, it was decided that we head to Kitwe yesterday. get up early, do the dentist thing and then head back to Lusaka to complete business. things still didn't work well. it took us awhile to get everything in the truck as (of course) we'd bought 'too much'. we had to stop and purchase a tarp and rope to put stuff on the top rack of the car. we had a somewhat hilarious incident shortly after leaving Lusaka where i noticed a package of TP fly off our car and bounce down the road. of course this happened at a time when the road was divided and we couldn't turn around! by the time we got stopped the toilet paper had been scooped up by some keen entrepaneur (sp?) who will no doubt be selling it on the street later. anywho, amid much laughter we stopped the car and re-did the tarp. because we had taken so long getting away, by the time we got to Ndola it was pretty dark, except of course, for the high-beams of everyone's vehicles driving at me! we got a little misplaced on the round abouts and went round about a few times before we figured out where to go. of course it would be much easier if there were actually signs and street names, but hey, what do i know.
we were rather tired when we pulled in last night. after much advice about how to deal with "our situation" we went to bed.
this morning Lina and i got up bright an early and had to unpack the roof of the car as we didn't want anything stolen while we were getting our teeth worked on. this ended up taking longer then expected so we went without breakfast.
I'm not really a fan of dentists but this one wasn't too bad. actually she was pretty nice as she showed me exactly what she was doing and stuff. i went to have one tooth pulled and one filling filled and left with no teeth pulled and 3 fillings. she added up all the costs and showed me the bill 610. I asked "is that in dollars?" and she said, "oh goodness, no! that's kwatcha, K610,000" (which is about $130!) i couldn't believe how cheap it was!
after lunch we headed back out onto the highway towards Lusaka. thankfully nothing 'eventful' happened on the way down. we're praying tomorrow is pretty uneventful as well! if all goes according to the new (many times reviewed) plan we should arrive back home at sakeji on saturday afternoon.
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