Zambia World Wide

We are now well into December and preparing for Christmas, we brought some of our decorations with us from England. Other decorations we made ourselves which was fun as Gary was old enough to help. We went out to the Forestry Plantation and selected a tree, unlike the Pine trees we have in England the trees here are Spruce. We were determined that this would be a better Christmas than last year, we have now settled in and become accustomed to the climate. We also know many more people than last year, we were also good friends with Keith and Eileen who were the first couple we met when we arrived over a year ago now. We also had invitations to house parties and dinner dances. Christmas day was much better than last year, we had a buffet lunch at midday and a roast in the evening when the temperature was lower. We went to a buffet dance on New Years Eve at the company club which went on well into the morning. We celebrated the New Year twice, once at midnight and again at 02.00 which was midnight in England.

Jan was now 7 months pregnant and it was now time to discuss Cissy’s future, we didn’t want to part with her but we had known from the start that monkey’s are jealous and possessive animals. Cissy had become very attached to Jan and Gary, even I had to be careful how I approached them if she was about. Although she was a very gentle and affectionate creature, we knew that when the baby arrived she could through shear jealousy attack the baby and probably try to kill it. It was a risk we couldn’t take, the real problem was that she was now so tame we could not return her to the wild. This meant we would have to find a family who would take her on, and give her the love and freedom she enjoyed while with us. Although it took some time we did find a family who we thought would treat her as we had, so with much sadness and regret we handed her to them. Over the years we did worry about how she was being treated and if she was happy, however we felt it would be wrong to contact the family she was now living with.

I think now would be a good time for a brief tour of Kitwe and the surrounding area. The main town is centred in and around Kuanda Square, at one end is the public library, along each side are a number of small shops. At the other end is the main shopping area, ZCBC is the main store which appears to be full of a large variety of goods, until you walk around the store and find the shelves are stacked with large quantities of a very small range of goods. Opposite the store there is a row of smaller shops which are mainly Asian owned they tend to sell clothing or hardware, the post office is also on the same side. Further down is ZOK another state owned store, ZOK tends to sell a larger variety of goods but generally of poorer quality and little in the way of foodstuff. The banks and hotels are situated at the rear of the shopping centre. I don’t remember all the districts but Nkana East is where we were living, at the bottom of which is the Kafue River. The Rokana Copper mine is situated in Nkana West and to the north of Kiwe are the industrial areas. We had not lived there long before we realised that when the main items of food were in stock we would have to bulk buy. Once they sold out it could be months before new stocks would appear again. The main items which always seemed in short supply were sugar, butter, cooking oil and flour. There was a fruit and vegetable market at the edge of the town centre which always had a good variety of both. There are butchers shops, though the meat was limited to beef and pork, chicken was available from the state stores or local farmers. There were also two bakeries which baked fresh bread daily. The train and bus terminus was to the west of the town centre. Kitwe was a pleasant place to shop as all the streets were lined with trees which were mainly flamboyant and jacaranda. It was also a town that was spacious and had plenty of parking, there were also many small parks scattered throughout the town. Just outside the town limits there were a number of shanty townships. These were mainly to the north and the houses were built with pieces of sheet metal, scrap timber and cardboard or any other material that could be used. The townships were mostly lived in by Africans who had left the rural villages to find work in the towns, unfortunately there was little work in the towns. Having left their villages and the rural life, they were reluctant to return. They came to like town life and to survive they would do whatever work they could find, which was usually short term and poorly paid. Most of the shanty townships were built near the rivers and streams, which is where they would do their washing and collect water for cooking etc.