A Quick Jaunt to Zambia

The big downside to living in Rwanda for me has been that after being here for seven years, nearly all my friends eventually leave. It's a heartbreaking experience every time and it means I have to re-make friends constantly. However, the (only?) upside to this situation is that I now have good friends who live all across the world. My friend Diana moved to Zambia over a year ago, and since then I've been trying to find a time to visit.


Three weeks ago, I finally had the chance after a work retreat in Kenya, and I landed in Lusaka after an early-morning flight. I haven't travelled in Southern Africa very much, and I was awed at how different it felt compared to Rwanda. Diana picked me up in her RAV-4 affectionately named Suzie-Q. We threw my (excessive) luggage in the trunk and headed to Kabwe, a small city about three hours north of Lusaka, in central Zambia.

One of the things I love about visiting friends in a different country is that they have unique insights into things that you might not otherwise know about. As we drove past several cement block factories, Diana pointed out to me that they usually had small Turkish flags on their signs and several had Turkish names. She explained that a few Turks had started cement block factories, and now Zambians just sort of associated Turkish bricks with being higher quality, and even the companies that had no affiliation with Turkey would name their brick shop a vaguely Turkish name or paint a small Turkish flag on their sign. 


Even though it was my first time there, Zambia felt oddly familiar to me, and I tried to put my finger on why. After Diana pointed out the trucks with company names like "Cargo 2 Congo" and "Zalawi", we passed on the tarmac road, I realized that one of the reasons was that Zambia, like Nebraska, is a place people often travel through to get to other places (I believe the kind term East and West Coasters give to places like Nebraska is "flyover territory"). For my friends from other states who have been to Nebraska, most have merely passed through on a cross-country road trip, down the endless straight expanse of Interstate 80, on their way to other places.

Nebraska or Zambia? 

Like Nebraska, Zambia was very flat, with large expanses of maize growing in rows as far as the eye could see. It felt quite different from Rwanda, where land sizes are tiny, the landscape is mostly green, lush, and hilly and most farming happens by hand.

About halfway to Kabwe, we pulled into a place called Lime & Thyme, which I would have missed if Diana hadn't already known where it was. Behind a grove of trees was a peaceful little restaurant with a broad, green lawn and a lovely shaded porch. I was sort of stunned at the selection of dishes offered at the restaurant considering it seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere. They had a long selection of brunch items, smoothies and other drinks, and in a few fridges and freezers lining the room, everything from fresh cheeses to kombucha to handmade ravioli. Insanity, I tell you! 

Breakfast at Lime & Thyme

Kabwe, Zambia

We finally arrived in Kabwe and pulled into Diana's house, which I finally learned to pronounce the Zambia way (Kab-way) and not the Rwandan way (Kab-gay). I was exhausted from the red-eye flight and promptly took a multi-hour nap while Diana headed to work (sorry, Diana!).

The next morning, Diana and I walked to her office. Kabwe was a small city, and the streets were pretty peaceful. One of the things that surprised me was the absence of motorcycle and bike taxis, which are ubiquitous in East Africa, from the biggest cities down to the most remote villages. Perhaps because Zambia is such a big country and the distances are far more vast, I only noticed cars and trucks on the streets of Kabwe.

Kabwe also felt much more developed than most places in Rwanda. There were even a couple of fast food restaurants and a pizza delivery place (being able to get a pizza delivered to your house is the pinnacle of development, in my humble opinion :) It was also an adjustment to be in an English-speaking country. Even though English is taught in Rwandan schools, most signs are in Kinyarwanda around the country, and I'm accustomed to translating when I read signs or speak to a shop keeper in Kigali. In Zambia, pretty much everything seemed to be in English.

We both worked for awhile at her office and then at noon Diana and I walked to get lunch at a nearby grocery store, Shoprite. On the way she pointed out Kabwe's most famous (only...?) tourist attraction, the Big Tree. I was surprised to find that the Big Tree was actually a national monument called "The Big Tree" and apparently is featured on one of the Zambian Kwacha cash notes. This is what I came for, people! 

After staring at the Big Tree for awhile, we headed to get lunch at Shoprite, which was packed at lunchtime. Diana informed me that this was the lesser Shoprite and that I should wait until we went to the proper one after work. Diana pointed out that there were people right outside the store selling some of the stuff you could buy inside. Apparently, the lines could get so long that it was worth it to some people to pay a few more kwacha for what they needed outside rather than wait in the queue inside. 

We got our lunch and headed back to the office for a few more hours of work, and then went to the real main attraction of Kabwe (sorry, Big Tree): the even bigger Shoprite a little outside of the center of town. If you're reading this from American right now, it may be hard for you to comprehend my extreme excitement about grocery stores, but if you're reading this from Rwanda you might understand my elation. Rwanda is a small, landlocked country where transport isn't always easy and the costs of importation are high, so you can't always find the grocery items you might want (ahem, cheeses). Sometimes you'll find the items you're looking for, but it will take going to five different stores to find what you need. Sometimes certain products are just not available, or it's so prohibitively expensive that you have to make do without it.  

When we walked into the bigger, badder Kabwe Shoprite that evening, I'm fairly certain my jaw hit the floor. They had everything I could possibly want to eat or buy. The fluorescent lights illuminated the rows upon rows of produce and the shelves upon shelves of jars and cans and bottles of all sorts of foodstuffs. There were things I couldn't buy in Rwanda even if I wanted to: peaches and plums! More than five cheeses to choose from! I couldn't contain myself and seriously considered joining our Zambia program as I gleefully perused the aisles. 

The cheese selection in Kabwe, aka Team Zambia's #1 recruiting strategy. 

We bought some wine and cheeses and bread and headed to meet up with two friends who previously worked in neighboring Burundi, Daniel and Laure. It was great catching up and hearing about their lives in Zambia. And then, because it was Friday night, that meant one thing: pizza night! Back when Diana and I both lived in Karongi in rural Western Rwanda, our community had a longstanding tradition of pizza night Fridays. Community members would take the time to roll out the dough, normally topping it with shredded Rwandan gouda, the only kind of cheese available, and bake it in the pizza oven behind the communal house. I'm fairly certain that this situation classically conditioned us, and Diana has kept the tradition alive in Zambia (albeit getting pizza from a small lodge in Kabwe and skipping the gouda :)

We jumped in Suzie-Q and headed to meet up with a few friends and colleagues at a nearby restaurant/hotel. We ordered some pizzas and I tried the local Mosi beer, after the real name of Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya. My badass friend Andrew was traveling by motorcycle from Nairobi, Kenya to Cape Town, South Africa, and he was passing through Zambia at the same time, so we got a chance to catch up about his epic trip so far. He talked about his ride so far through Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia and his plans for southern Africa, and I mentally calendared in an African solo motorcycle trip when D'Assise goes off to college. After we were stuffed with pizzas and Mosis, Diana and I headed back to her house to rest up for the road trip to Lusaka the next day.