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| Roadside co-operative woodcarving stall |
As we may have mentioned (constantly) the internet has
been touch and go – you touch it and it goes!
It’s been hard to update the blog, but here goes for now. We wrote this some time ago, and it dates
from when we were collected from Lusaka on the last Friday in February.
We arrived on Friday after a
tiring but fascinating drive from Lusaka to our new home. It was a long
straight road, through the African bush with very little traffic compared with our UK roads, but the feature we noticed was the amount of people walking along the road
often laden with bags and baskets. We
wondered where they were all going! We
stopped at a roadside co-operative (a collection of about five stalls) and
looked at fantastic African woodcraft for sale – elegant giraffes and fat dumpy
hippos. Were tempted to buy some but resisted!
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| The road to our house |
A temporary house had been arranged for the first month and this was
a challenge on the first day. It is fairly cramped and basic with water that
fluctuates on and off and electricity power cuts are fairly frequent, although
this applies to everyone! We have spent
time jollying the place up and it now suits us a bit better. The good news is that this is very short
term. The principal of Chodort Training Centre where Paul works is leaving in a
few weeks and we are due to take his house over. This is very comfortable,
spacious and will be a good home for us until a new principal is appointed at
some point in the future.
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| Chodort Courtyard |
Whilst this will be a great thing for us, we will be sorry to see
David and Rhoda leave. They have been here for thirteen years and are the
driving force behind Chodort Training Centre as well as the new housing
development which will help provide funds towards running Chodort. They are
being very kind to us and are helping us to settle in to life here. During our
first week we were introduced to all the local important people – District
Commissioner, the local Bishop, the Reverend of St Stephens UCZ (United Church
of Zambia) Immigration Officer (we still need a work permit!) and applied for a
local driving licence.
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| Paul with his trainee Odin outsite the first and second houses |
There is plenty of work to do here on the site; the first house is
due for completion in May. There is no machinery used here. The biggest
resource is a plentiful supply of labour, so everything is done by hand and therefore
some jobs take a lot longer than in England. This is a complete change and is
going to be a challenge, as is raising the standards of workmanship – but
that’s what we’re here to try and help with!!
Well this has taken a whole morning to do, things WILL improve!
