Zambia Diary
Written mostly by Johnny, Feb 7, 2007.
It’s ten to nine on a Saturday night in Mfuwe, a time when one would be contemplating going out on the razzle in Edinburgh. Or being halfway through a posh homely dinner. But here that’s already late, and normally we would have been in bed by then awaiting another early call and a trip to the Mfuwe National Park. But now all has changed - although the floods are abating, there are no roads open yet that go into the Park. And even the approach area is an animal sanctuary due to so much grass going under water in the Park itself. So there’s no point in an early morning game drive. The company we keep in the “refugee camp” - that is Kapani Lodge - is really very entertaining and we stay up and talk till late. But Grant is in Chipata (where? - it was called Fort Jameson in old colonial day) for a few days buying the supplies for the clinic roof repair and all the other stuff we need. An email from Grant sent this morning said that he was likely to be leaving at about 2:00pm this afternoon. But factoring in optimism, last minute shopping, terrible roads and Grant’s and Festus’ timekeeping, I am not surprised that he isn’t here yet. The road can take two hours in good weather and with an adventurous driver, but up to a whole day if unlucky. I guess that they either are out of luck or haven’t set off at all. Of course it has been dark since six thirty, it’s always dark at six thirty, and tonight there is milochi, a type of rain that goes on for hours. So I gave up waiting for him at eight pm and came back to camp and ate. I am assured that the driver is a “good guy” and will bring him here if they are here or on the road. I had been waiting at the clinic in the evening in the hope that they would be arriving in time to unpack the truck tonight and that we would have some time to ourselves tomorrow - out of luck. The wait was lovely - cool milochi winds and not too heavy rain, a glorious sunset and lots of Zambian noises and smells. There was an inferno in the yard of one of the houses - flames as high as the thatch - that’s where they bake the bread (it seems a terribly wasteful way of doing it - why isn’t an oven constructed? - it isn’t as if wood collection was easy work), in another quarter there was a shop with a guttering candle selling the sort of stuff that people need late at night, the family was sitting on the shop front eating their tea as shoppers came slowly through the night. In another direction there was a church service with the wonderful singing that people do here, smells of cooking wafted over from the watchman’s house and neighbours. It was a magical couple of hours but Grant didn’t come, so here I am in camp, and tomorrow we unpack instead of having a day off.
The clinic renovations have started quite well. We are now working with all of us cuddled in the Antenatal clinic and, although it’s a bit on the cozy side, it's workable so far. I don’t know how we will cope with a crowd or an emergency - fairly well as long as it’s not raining. But if it rains, half of the area of the clinic becomes unusable because of the leaky roof which is, of course, why the work is so necessary.
The water levels are going down and some reparation is now possible. Some people are at the stage of mopping up and repainting and rewiring but it’s the practical things such as septic tanks overflowing, roads being lower than the properties etc. that are holding up the white population of the camps from moving back in to their previous camps. Some of the local houses, although serviceable in the rain most years, have totally collapsed this year due to the foundations not being able to cope. Grant’s favourite wee house is in total ruins. It had lovely abstract paintings on the outside wall, and the wall itself was a lovely earthy-yellow colour. Some of the crops that were only saturated have started to dry out, but where the fields were by the river and the water rushed through, the crops have been totally destroyed and lost. We have had delegations and visitations by several high and mighty people from the Central and Local Government, but what will happen of them is not known. If it’s declared a disaster zone then insurance claims become a problem for visitors, and this is a tourist area and visitors are needed.
I think it is not a disaster as there is no loss of life directly attributable to the floods and even the consequences of the dirty water are notable by their absence so far. The environmental health technician with whom Grant went out on Sunday last week has the responsibility for chlorinating the water supplies - perhaps he has really done it! What ever the cause might be I am not seeing an overwhelming number of cases of the appropriate diseases. The malaria is awful, lots of really ill people most of whom recover amazingly well despite our almost total lack of drugs. It’s criminal but we had no standard drugs at all last week - I used our private supply of quinine from the Safari Association to give to the really sick to get started as time is not on ones side whilst they collected the necessary cash to buy the rest. We still have no “kit” - the selection of the standard drugs that will do adequately for the common illnesses and there is no sign of it. The last one was in November. So we make do with complex and less effective drugs that cost more, drugs that are really good in niche situations but not necessary for the routine case. But, God bless her, Jo Pope the joint owner of a nearby lodge was coming up yesterday. She’s a great person for making things happen - she heard that I was trying to get them another way (more of that anon - I am still very cross about what went on there and I need to analyse it a bit more before exposing it to the light of day), asked what I wanted, bought it and paid for it out of a charitable donation that she had received and brought it up on the ‘plane yesterday. Now that’s useful!
This doesn’t read as a particularly visual letter but I will get Grant to add some photo’s - I wish I could show you the roads but I can’t really get a true representation of the real horror of what they're like. Although I have enough money to buy diesel for the Doc's vehicle, and the tanks at the filling station are full, the pumps don’t work because there's no electricity, so I am restricted in how far I can drive and so cannot go out there on the bad roads to take a special picture for you. We are getting a lot of waders eating their way through the frogs in the drying waters. To-day there was a pair of storks circling over the road catching the thermals and going higher and higher. It was a lovely day with bright hot sun till the milochi hit us. The elephants are haunting the road to the village and there is a spectacular solitary male who terrifies the people walking up and down the road, so I find myself giving a lot of lifts - oh boy, do the returning fishermen and their fish smell strongly!
I hear that there is snow in Surrey - it all seems so far away but rather nice. We are well and bearing up fine - last night a quiz, to-day the rugby and tomorrow a birthday party thrash - most people here are real “doers” and don’t take kindly to the enforced boredom when they know that there will be so much work to do very soon.
So it’s love from both of us - that is provided that Grant ever comes home - it’s now a quarter to ten and definitely too late to be on the road - I will expect him tomorrow, hippos and elephants allowing.
Note from Grant: In fact I must have been on the road when Johnny wrote this. We were told that we would leave Chipata at 11.00 hrs. So I then estimated that we would leave by about 1400 hrs. In fact we left at 1900hrs. A long bleak, bumpy, adventurous journey in the dark.
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