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Lusaka, Zambia
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This place was Great
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the boys at the shop and me
I walked about 5miles during the week from Kabulonga to Kamwata market place to sit in my little playstation shop. The roads are red and very fine silt. I pass by the teaching hospital everyday. For two weeks they had no water. I see people carrying pans and buckets of water on their heads from across the street to their relatives who are patients in the hospital. I am white so I stand out in this non-tourist town. Even though there is an embassy district, whites do not mingle. I'm asked for a job everyday from someone. I arrive at the shop and set my backpack in a corner. I take out natches(mandelinas or oranges) and give to the ragged children. I give kwachas so some of them can play a game. They are all boys. Girls do not enter the shop. Girls are busy doing errands and chores for their mothers. I am a curiosity in the shop, but soon the boys are involved in their play. Sometimes I take a cab home. Sometimes I walk. The cab drivers have come to expect me leaving the market around 4pm. They shout at me for a fare. I usually shake my head and smile. Today I have giant blisters on the pads of my feet. I walk all the way home, limping and sore. I see my friend Alice who lives across the way from the house where I stay. She always smiles at me and tells me good things. Today her son got a job at a grocery store. Lusaka is smokey. There are small garbage fires everywhere. Sharon the maid asks for money after I arrive home. I need to see a doctor, I'm sick, she tells me. She looks thin and she rubs her stomach. I wonder if she has AIDS. Her husband works in Malawi and comes home every few months. I watch the Zambian news. Landowners have razed the cinderblock shacks of some squatters. They have no where to go. Children play on top of the rubble. Dinner tonight is nshima and fried tomatoes and onions. I see a few fish heads in the pot. I am always hungry in this country.
Today I bought oreo cookies in the export section of the store to take home to the kids. I give them a bag and they eat them. I don't see evidence of the oreos the next day. No bag in the garbage. It is the same when I buy real butter or some kind of treat. The next day there is nothing left of it. Where do they take it? I wonder if they take it to their friends or trade it for something else.
'Madame, do you need a maid?' a young lady asks me one day as I walk. We are near the Canadian embassy. There are nicer houses around here. Everyday someone asks if I need a maid.
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Lusaka Fun Centre
Posted
Aug 26, 2006
by bugsy
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