Zambia World Wide

Next morning we were awake very early, the sun was streaming through the windows, the birds were singing and although it was only 05.30 it was already getting warm. Although it would be a busy day it seemed like a good idea to have breakfast outside on the stoep and then sit and enjoy a few moments just taking in the view. The day was organised by the company, there were many things that had to be done before I started work. We were picked up from the house and driven into town where we opened a bank account, registered with the immigration department and then had a conducted tour of the shopping centre. The afternoon was our time, most of our neighbours came by to welcome us and have a chat, which was nice as we didn’t feel so isolated. Next morning I started work and Jan went into town with two of the women she now knew from the day before. We still found it strange to wake so early to bright sunshine and warm mornings. On the Friday morning I was informed that our packing cases had arrived and been cleared by customs. We arranged with the company to borrow a van on Saturday morning to collect the packing cases as this would give us the weekend to unpack and put things away. We were naturally quite excited at the thought of having our own belonging and could hardly wait for Saturday morning to arrive. Once we had our own stuff we felt much more at home and began to settle. The first two weeks I had to work a lot of overtime which made it more difficult to get organised, there were still a number of things to sort out but we just didn’t have the time. Jan did find a house servant, looking after Gary and doing the housework plus the washing and ironing was hard in those temperatures. The house servants name was Lamek, he seemed a really nice guy and stayed with us for some time. There seems to be a belief in UK that to employ a house servant is wrong however a good house servant soon becomes part of the family and is usually treated as such.

The first two/three weeks were difficult as we had still not managed to find a car, this was a real tie as we were restricted as to where we could go. The people we had met since we arrived were very good and with their help we managed to get about locally, but we still did need transport of our own. Although without our own car we were restricted, we still had a lot of fun. We did find a car and it was a Cortina MK3 1.3 litre. in the years to come we were to make good use of the car and it’s reliability was amazing. The company social club was in walking distance from our house and the facilities were many and varied ie. Nine hole golf course, tennis courts, bowling green and sports field plus the lounge and bar facilities. Friday evenings we would have a get together at the club, the kids would all charge off to play together while the parents would sit in the sun, have a drink and a good gossip. Usually about 18.00 we would light a braai (B.B.Q.) and start cooking, which was always good for a few laughs and generally a good time was had by all. There were a number of other activities organised from time to time, bowling matches, golf competitions and tennis matches in which most of us would take part. I suppose we were quite a close knit community, even so there were few problems we all seemed to get on reasonably well together.