And there the similarities end. My new living arrangement is somewhat like a castle. It's behind the double padlocked iron gates and locked doors of a house within a 'compound' behind a wall and a 'guarded' gate, (the guard is not of the 'active guarding' school.) Perhaps surprisingly (surprising that I got this far) on Friday evening I found myself locked in the lounge - as a final precaution my new house mates had locked the internal doors. It was a new experience to be locked in to a part of my own house until 2 in the morning.
On Thursday I spent some time with colleagues negotiating a ludicrously high interest loan from a Micro Finance business in the middle of big, dusty, crowded Soweto market. This place has the dubious honour of the following description in my guide book, "notorious for robbery and pickpockets, if in a car, wind windows up and lock doors." I'm still planning my work here, but essentially I'll be proving the concept of paying cotton farmers with vouchers rather than cash; increasing security, reducing costs and hopefully increasing their buying power.
On the weekend I had the privelege of demonstrating my footballing prowess alongside some locals at the local Polo fields, where I hear Prince Harry's Zambian girlfriend can be found, (no further references to British Royalty will be made in this blog, but needless to say there was some interest in a wedding this week too.) On Sunday, Aaron Ramsey demonstrated how it's really done and gave me an excuse to describe where Wales was to amassed Arsenal and Manchester United Fans. Pretty passionate support here for both teams. One fan, who I named "Rooney" almost broke a table in anger.
The highlight came today however as I ventured slightly out of Lusaka city centre on the road for Kafue with some new friends. The best description I have for the farm we visited is 'shady' but after travelling along a track past discarded trucks, trailers and diggers you find yourself presented with a pinkish house with a back garden set against the backdrop of the bush, complete with Zebra, Buffalo and Impala.
Amongst the plastic dark green furniture in the back garden were two white Lion cubs. Beautiful. There are only 300 of these left in the World and I got to pat numbers 301 and 302. Needless to say I'm very pleased about this. There was one other Lion who was 9 months old in an enclosure and snacking on a chicken. Needless to say he was not so pattable.
The fabulous day ended with Ethiopian food and dicussion of cows and termites' contribution to global warming as well as the Crocodile that crashed a Congolese plane and the lady who, expecting to rescue a puppy from certain death in China, asked to buy it, which the retailer misunderstood...
A small note to end on place names that I have enjoyed so far: Wonga,(like the .com), and current no.1 Kalingalinga.
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