Zambia World Wide

One morning Carol, a friend of Jan’s came round for coffee, Billy was in the garden. He came into the lounge and saw her sitting on his sofa, he jumped onto the sofa beside her and got his head between her and the back of the sofa. He had so much strength in his neck that with one movement he pushed her off the sofa and onto the floor. On another occasion Linda another of Jan’s friends came round and having parked on the driveway came into the house. By this time most of our friends were a little wary of Billy and when coming to the house would look to see where he might be. Linda asked Jan where Billy was, she replied in the garden. Linda stopped for a while and then left, within a minute or two she came back. She was not too happy and said can you get your goat off my car. When we went outside there was Billy, sunbathing on the roof of her car. I lifted him down and Linda drove off, she still didn’t look too happy. Fortunately there was no damage to the car.

There are a couple of more incidents involving Billy which really are worth a mention. One morning I was cleaning the swimming pool, Billy as usual was nearby. Suddenly I was sent flying through the air into the middle of the pool. When I surfaced, there was Billy standing on the spot I had been earlier. He had head-butted me into the pool, it was almost possible to see the grin on his face. You might have heard of “Mary and her little Lamb”, well we had “Jan and her little Billy-goat” and everywhere that Jan went, so did her Billy-goat. One afternoon there was a breeze blowing, so Craig decided to go fly his kite on the waste ground opposite the front of the house. Jan meanwhile was in the pool with Billy standing close by as usual, she heard Craig call out and went across the road to see what was wrong. Craig needed the toilet, so asked her if she would hold his kite until he got back. There was Jan standing on the waste ground, wearing a bikini and flying a kite with a goat standing beside her. At that moment a young couple who had arrived that morning walked round the corner, there was not a child in sight. By the time Craig returned from the house they had disappeared from view, we did wonder later what they must have thought about the kind of people they would be living and working with, I think that’s enough about Billy.

About 2km. off the Kitwe/Ndola road, just past the Luanshya Tee was a tar road to the left. It is rare to find tar roads out of town and so we decided to follow it, to see where it went. When we reached the end of the road, we found a memorial in a large clearing, the clearing had a superb lawn and a number of flower beds around the memorial. There was a large plaque at the foot of the memorial which explained the reason for the memorial being where it was. On the 18^th September 1961, Dag Hammarskjoeld who was the Secretary General of the United Nations was on a peace keeping mission to the Belgium Congo (Zaire). It was during the rainy season and there was a violent thunder storm, the aircraft lost all communication and wandered miles off course. The memorial marks the spot where the aircraft crashed, and there were no survivors. The aircraft was so far off course, it took many days to find the crash site which was in the Ndola West Forest Reserve. It was a lovely peaceful place to spend an afternoon, we would walk among the trees, the lads would play football or “hide and seek”, after which we would usually have a picnic. Over the years we visited the site on a number of occasions, but never saw any other people there. On our way back to Kitwe we would stop at the Fisenge roadside market, so that Jan could buy her boiled groundnuts, yams and maize cobs. During our travels around Zambia we often bought food from the local markets and always had fun, usually with a great amount of banter. We also found the food to be good and very reasonably priced. The children were always made welcome, not many Europeans would stop at these markets, but we always found people very friendly and enjoyed the experience.

After leaving the market we would usually drive on to Luanshya, the road leading into the town was lined with trees, which were of course Flamboyant and Jacaranda, which was quite a sight when in flower. The town was quite small and laid out in a grid pattern as are most of the towns in Zambia. Although quite small, the town was spotlessly clean and consisted of mainly small shops, there were fewer goods available but it was a nice shopping area to wander round and browse. Through the town and out towards the copper mine was the swimming pool. The swimming pool was surrounded by grass and shrubs, we spent many a pleasant afternoon there. Driving on from there we passed the mine township and the mine and came to the Collier Monument. The monument is not spectacular but the story about why it is there we found interesting. In 1902 a prospector who’s name was William Collier shot a deer at that spot and found copper. The mine is called the “Roan Antelope” mine, driving on through the mine area we followed a long conveyor-belt which was many kilometres in length and went to Baluba Shaft and then on to Maclaren Shaft. We were quite fortunate as many of the places we went, I had found through travelling the power lines while working.

For some time now the Chinese have been building a railway from Kapiri Maposhi in Zambia to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. We have been following the building of the railway with some interest, as it is a massive project.