October

We took Lizzie, Tori and Joe to the airport (sad day) on Sunday evening and then moved house on Tuesday morning - no problem - no pressure there then!!! Actually it was easy as we just packed everything and piled it up by the door, and at 7.30 the following morning we had lots of Chodort boys to load up the truck and make two trips to the new house, all of half a mile away.

Our first day - temporary furnishings for now

We soon settled in and enjoyed finding homes for everything.  Chodort gave us some furniture made in their workshop; a wooden sofa and chairs made specially for us and also a spare dining table with four chairs and a 3 metre long work table.  We made that into a double desk in the window of the spare bedroom, so that turns it into our office come workroom as well as somewhere for friends to stay.  The house is small but perfectly formed, that just about sums it up really. It is built to a very high standard under the new management (!) and is light and airy with cream tiles throughout and freshly painted white walls.  There is a fitted kitchen, a Chodort custom made special, and all the woodwork was made by Chodort staff and students.  Even a fully shelved pantry with plumbing for our precious washing machine, woo!

 

Small but perfectly formed - our blank canvas

The garden, well, when we moved in it could be described as a square of rough gravelly earth, not a particularly pretty sight.  We had great plans for this as we had grown quite a few cuttings from our previous garden, and we had divided the lovely tall banana palm as well, giving us two new small plants.  

Felix's nursery

We made a trip to what we like to call Choma Garden Centre.  Not quite Chichester Garden Centre, but a good find that had been recommended.  Some years ago a very smart and jolly Zambian gentleman, by the name of Felix, started to sell a few plants in the open space in front of the Post Office, and he also planted a lawn there and tended the neglected flower beds.  The area he cares for has now spread and become a lovely green part of Choma town, the only green part in fact.  We had a few visits to Felix, very enjoyable, and then on his advice took the plunge and bought some plants including orange, lemon and nachee (tangerine type fruit) trees, passion fruit, bougainvillea and hibiscus, as well as an umbrella tree, lemon grass and some herbs. Oh and a proper king palm tree in a pot (concrete one?!) made by Felix, What a shopping list - irresistible - we loved it.

Our back garden, barren and bare except for the washing

 Felix told us that the trees needed deep holes .... waist deep holes.  That was a worry until we asked Eric, the favourite of our three night guards, to dig these for us. He was brilliant, and we paid him the going rate per hole, £1.20. So with help from him and the other lads on the site, everything we had bought was planted and the garden had begun. Some friends of ours brought some grass runners for us, which are planted in a line and then spread out to create a lawn – elephant grass – not how we would plant a lawn at home but, well, TIA.

Hole Number One - still looks like a building site

One of the farmhouse gardens

Jane was still very much enjoying being part of the Kalcho Art Group – (so named after Kal of Kalomo where some live, and Cho of Choma where others come from) thanks due to my friend Sue who gave me a lift every week.  Virtually all the members are white farmers’ wives who love to paint, and we visit each other’s houses to paint and they have beautiful farmhouses, in lovely tropical lush gardens and grounds. We invited Sue and her husband and some other friends to lunch one Saturday in November (whoops wrong month) and they brought us enough plants to start our own nursery, it was amazing, so those quickly went in as well, and our garden was complete, if not overflowing. It was just what we wanted, and we loved watching it turn from a barren wasteland into a tropical paradise. It was important to get everything planted in time for the rainy season which begins in November, and we knew everything would flourish. 

A freezer? Now there's a gift

Something was afoot down at Chodort.  Preparations were being made in and around the church there, St Stephens. They were for the inauguration of Reverend Esther, a ceremony that the whole community was looking forward to with great anticipation. We arrived around 9am (having been told it would start at various times, 7.30 or 8am). Part of the service included gifts being presented to Reverend Esther, and these were varied and, well, not quite what we expected.

Now we wouldn't have thought of that  - floor lino

General milling around in the middle of the service

 These services include not only singing, prayers and sermons but speeches too, and are not short.  In fact, quite lengthy.  When people get restless they just wander off and have a stroll round, or a chat, so we joined them and found quite a lot of activity going on, including lunch for 200 or so being cooked in the usual way, over an open fire by about 20 women.    

Paul having a chat with Edward's wife

Boys of the Boys' Brigade - no one even expects them to stay still for long

Paul and Oden discussing progress on House Two

Since we had moved into House One, the emphasis now on the site was to get House Two finished, to enable a sizeable rent to come in to help finance the site.  Eventually, as we have probably said, the income from the whole site of 17 houses is to fund the running of the college, where the fees are heavily subsidised  The students are given a chance at Chodort, as they do not have to have finished their education at Grade 12 to enrol.

October is the hottest month of the year in Zambia, with temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, and we would be on the veranda as much as we could. 

Two weeks on - our dining chairs and cardboard box table, with
the laptop providing internet Radio 2

We were enjoying our new house and garden and gradually getting the garden planted.  The early evenings would bring a dilemma – whether to sit outside on the verandah and plan our garden, have a leisurely walk around our new district, or ... get a meal ready before the power went off at the usual time of 6.30 pm.... The latter would often win as needs must ... cheese and biscuits again otherwise.  We were soon organised enough to have a walk and get a meal ready before we lost power.  YES, we would beat the system!

It was decided that we should separate the housing part of the site from the prospective new college part, so Paul was put in touch with a local guy who supplies bamboo fencing, popular and inexpensive. 

Our house (only the left side!) from across the site before the fence went up