Coming to an end...FRIENDS

By and large, I'm absolutely ready to leave my house where nothing works, the constant sweating interspersed by rain that's like being in a swimming pool, and the job that I've never really understood because my colleagues are more than capable of doing it themselves on the rare occasions that they come to the office.

But this weekend all the closest friends I've made here came down for a farewell party. Mum, Dad and Beth had been visiting all week, and bathed in the glow of alcohol and lots of my favourite people I started to get quite emotional. If any of my family (VSO or genetic!) are reading this then thank you again for making my life so easy and enjoyable. I guess next year will be a bit like the last one - lots of my close friends living on the other side of the world. But I'll have the internet all the time and be able to keep in touch...maybe it won't be so bad!

(This post's not supposed to be about work. But if anyone's interested, so far this week everyone's still working very hard, the appraisal system I set up is working brilliantly and my colleagues have written by far the best funding bid I've seen all year based on all the preparation work we've been doing all placement. I have a warm fuzzy sense of achievement.)

Coming to the end...WORK

I'm not sure if it's frustratingly bad timing that my colleagues seem to be working much harder now that it's almost too late for me to be able to support them with anything, or whether it's simply taken a year for my influence to lead to a tangible improvement in working culture. Probably a little bit of both, and it's certainly good to see staff and volunteers working harder. Last week some funders visited, and we took them into the schools to see the peer educators at work. It was good to see the young people asking questions about the spread of HIV, although worrying to see how much misinformation is still rife even though it feels like there are so many NGOs working to educate people.

My colleagues also host a weekly radio programme about sexual health issues, where they join up their classroom work to reach a wider audience, by answering questions on air that were posed in the schools earlier in the day. It's very difficult to evaluate the various projects in place to educate young people about sexual health, but it seems to me that my colleagues are doing a good job.

It's also great to see that more fundraising is happening in the office. After much encouragement and explanation that it's important to have project ideas before seeking funding, we now have some clear plans and I'm confident that some of our bids will be successful.

In Zambia it's important to celebrate success wherever you can - this week my boss thanked me when someone resigned - he said it's thanks to my insistence of formalising our management systems that our colleague resigned rather than simply not coming to work. I guess that means I've made some progress?!

'It's hard, relocating to a country that doesn't work'

Packing the visitors in before I come home, this week Harjyot came to stay. It's was lovely to see her, and be the first of our 'Africa girl' friendship group to spend time together in Africa!

Unfortunately for her, she caught me at a particularly difficult week and we spent most of our time sorting out the daily domestic crises. No hot water, then my housemate going on holiday and locking all the saucepans and kettle in her bedroom, then the water going altogether, and then finally a powercut. So we went to lots of restaurants, I showed Harjyot round my empty office (more on work in my next post), but we did have a lovely time at the Falls and having afternoon tea at the Royal Livingstone Hotel.

I guess with only 3 weeks to go it's inevitable that I've mentally moved on already. And although February in the UK with no job, no money, nowhere to live and no boyfriend might be a tad depressing, I'm really starting to look forward to it now!

Guest post II from Ian and Katie

(We know you're not really interested in everything we did, but it has pictures...)

We knew it was rainy season before we arrived, and our luck held with our decision to visit the Falls on Saturday. Most days there has been a heavy shower in the early afternoon, but Saturday stayed fine in preparation for a very rainy Sunday. The rain had raised the river levels to make the Falls spectacular.

The length of the Falls and the fact that they straddle the Zam-Zim border makes it impossible to see the entire width (except from the air, which we discounted on cost grounds). Even so the first view of the edge of the Falls was impressive. A network of paths and bridges allows visitors to view the Falls from various different angles, with the closer bridges immersed in spray (think monsoon rain) from time to time. My camera got drenched and the display broke (I thought it was a goner, but dried out and recovered the next day).You can also climb down to the base of the Falls (the boiling pot) and look up at the Falls and the border road / rail bridge far above. The outer scenic path stops right next to the border bridge, and
as we arrived the sun broke through allowing us to see the famous rainbows formed in the spray. A Zimbabwean trinket seller had enterprisingly stepped through the razor wire to tempt us with offers of copper bracelets and 50-million-billion dollar bills (or something like that). Tempting though his shortcut was, we walked back and exited Zambia through the official border post (the bridge itself is a no-mans land). For our efforts we got a scrap of paper with the number 3 scribbled on it and an official stamp, which the border post collected and waved us through. 20 minutes later we were back at the other side of the razor wire short-cut and strode out onto the bridge. As well as a great view of the Falls and gorge below, there is a bungie jump platform in the middle of the bridge. After refreshments (but no jump) at the nearby cafe, we headed back through the border control, merely having to say we had been on the bridge to gain entry back into Zambia.

Another expert taxi negotiation later (Emily has definitely got the knack), we arrived at “The Waterfront” hotel for drinks and food. No sunset this time, but still a very nice evening looking over the river at dusk.

Guest post from Katie and Ian's blog...

For our first two nights we stayed with some friends of Emily's as there were already other guests staying at her house. Mike and Lauren made us very welcome and we all went to a local restaurant that evening. We also got to know their newly adopted stray puppy, Manky (Emily is adamant the correct spelling is “Manqui”). Although he lives outside on the porch, he was still small enough to slip through the iron bars on the front door gate to sneak in to the house whenever the opportunity arose.

We spent the first couple of days wandering around Livingstone realising how expensive everything is and working out what we wanted to pay for. While we did that we had a look at the museum and the crocodile farm; the crocodile farm was very fun and interesting. They're reminiscent of dinosaurs, immune to all diseases and seriously mean. The guide assured us that the oldest crocodile was now too overweight to be any danger of lobbing people into the water with its tail (owing to its weight) and hopped into the enclosure to prove this by picking up the tail. Given how tightly he was holding onto the fence, though, I'm not sure he was totally convinced himself. We learned that poking a Crocodile with a long stick elicits a violent response, and that the surplus baby crocodiles become sought-after oils and fashion products. He also let us buy a couple of slabs of meat to feed the crocodiles, since it wasn't feeding day. We also got to see and handle some of the baby crocs and snakes in the attached reptile house.

Having finished the tour we stopped for a drink while we decided what else to do, and having finished our drinks we deduced from our experience the day before that a sky that colour meant it was about to pour with rain, and stayed where we were. We used the time most profitably by deciding which tours we should spend money on, and concluded that we'd book a walking safari through Zig-Zag, a local guesthouse run by Emily's friend Lyn. We wandered down to Zig-Zag to wile away the afternoon with a beer in very comfy chairs (even Ian looked like he was about to have a nap), and book the tour ($70 p.p.). Sadly the morning walking safari left at 6:30am (well after dawn, but much earlier than we'd got up so far this trip). Plenty of locals were already up, including kids heading to school for a 7.15 start. When our 4wd picked us up, we were the only two tourists booked for the tour – with four staff (tour guide, ranger, driver and trainee tour guide) we certainly weren't ignored. The ranger came complete with a rifle to shoot into the air if we got into any sticky situations with the local residents. Not only did we get to see lots of game animals close up, but also lots of interesting commentary on the birds, flaura, fauna and poo. We can now tell the gender of Giraffe droppings from their shape. We were also shown tree frog nests, velvet mites and termite mounds. We didn't see the (very rare) white Rhino, although apparently the reserve has two new baby white Rhino. The elephants and buffalo also eluded us. There are no big cats on this reserve., but we did see just about everything else (Zebra, Giraffe, Impala, Warthogs, Wildebeest, Waterbuck, Bushbuck...). Along the Zambezi river we also saw crocodiles, hippos and three types of kingfisher. Lunch on the riverbank concluded a very enjoyable morning.

In the evening we decamped to a posh hotel on the riverbank to watch the sunset while sipping cocktails and beers. Very civilised. You might be wondering why there has been no reference to the Falls yet. We promised Emily to save our visit there until the weekend so she could come along with us to show us the sights. We could see the spray from the edge of the falls from the hotel terrace, but so far no sight of the Falls themselves...

Correction

Whoops. I have been reliably (and a little squeekily) informed that it's Mum's bread sauce. Guess I've been away from the traditions too long...

Happy new year!

I'm back in Livingstone now after my last holiday of the year. It was horrible to be away from my family over Christmas, but I had an awesome time on Zanzibar. It's very different again to other parts of Africa - Islamic, so different influences. Also the nicest beaches I've been to anywhere in the world, which as you can see Santa enjoyed playing on on Christmas day.
And here I am with friends having our Christmas lunch, on a spice tour. It was very festive seeing how cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg grow, but definitely made me miss Dad's bread sauce! And Christmas dinner was different again, with a big group of us meeting at a more Middle Eastern restaurant to enjoy spiced fresh fish while curled up on floor cushions.

For new year we headed up to the northern part of Zanzibar which is more of a beach resort. New Year's Eve (I beat the UK to 2011 by 3 hours) saw us at a massive beach party with fireworks over the sea.

All in all much fun, but hard to understand the speed at which 2010 raced by. I've got 6 weeks left in Zambia now, and have started writing my end of placement report. It's pleasing to see that I've achieved more than I thought I had, but there's plenty more to do and I'm pretty sure 6 weeks won't be long enough. Can't wait to see friends and family though...