What’s happening?

Hard to believe a month has gone by since I’ve actually written something, I know a few people are wondering what exactly is happening, if I’m OK, and so on and so on. Rest assured, I’m alive and well in Lusaka Zambia – still. That’s right, what was intended to be only a short stay has since magnified into a renewal of my visa for another 30 days (and hoping for another 30 day extension after that) before I set forth again to go through Zimbabwe.

‘But what do you mean? I thought you were riding your bicycle around the world?’ – True! But 2012 is a different year, just like all the other years, and I’m trying new things on to see how I make out. In 2009 I raced down the Pacific Coast in time so that I could close off the final aspects of my job. In 2010 while I did some really good distances I had the timeline of beating the weather before being trapped in 10 feet of snow somewhere. 2011 had me riding on a clock to be present at a wedding ceremony. I can’t stand timelines, schedules, and even alarm clocks – I’ve liked to do things on my own accord for quite some time without external interference (and don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the previous 3 years time line issues) and now I am in a position to take it easy, not try to race against a clock, or prove to someone that I’m doing what I’m doing – the whole traveling thing is about looking forward to the next day, rather than counting down the days till it ends. So when opportunity arises like the position I am in, I would be silly to not take it, what else do I have to do?

I’m still staying with the German couple at their restaurant in Downtown Lusaka. They’ve given me my own private house, taken care of meals and drinks for me, and enjoy my company and I rather enjoy theirs too – As a thanks I rewrote their website for everything they’ve done for me in a day after they told me that they have been paying someone for  3 years to put one together for them – they are obviously happy about this! I spoke a bit about the fact there was a baby monkey being reared, and since that time I’ve took on some of the responsibilities for taking care of this squirmy little creature. Mojo is her name, and now 5 months old and what a bundle of energy. Bounce Bounce Bounce Bounce from tables walls chairs your body to climbing through windows, grabbing things out of your pocket (repeatedly if you make a fuss over it she’ll go for the same thing over and over again and show it to you), constantly coming up to you and peeling back your lips to see if you are hiding food in your mouth, and many ridiculous games of hide and seek or whatever tickled her fancy. Such a fun creature to help raise, however it was time for her to go to the Munda Wanga Zoo and integrate with other monkeys as it really is  a 24 hour job to take care of one of these things, not to mention making sure she didn’t run off and harass the customers while they eat dinner. The only problem with this was that the Zoo didn’t really have their ducks in order and in my mind treated her unfairly upon arrival – placing her into a cage for a small bird while she screamed and howled trying to understand what had happened to her freedom – not to mention the loss of 3 “always around” people to play with. Of course they wanted to do tests to her to make sure she didn’t have TB or anything else, but if I had known this was to happen I would have brought her into the zoo for the work, and then back home while results came back. Finally, the Zoo wasn’t giving clear answers as to what was happening, so a stealth trip down to the Zoo was in order to go and see her. She cried and screamed for 20 minutes while only a finger could be able to massage her back, head and rest of body. I snuck in a few bushels of grapes as well even though there was a significant amount of food (watermelon, oranges, apples, squash) lying around in this small little cage. The stress of her being in the cage had obviously made her only eating just the bare minimum and after she saw the grapes ate for a full 15 minutes, something I’d never seen before. It’s too much stress to keep going back and seeing her while she needs the time to integrate, and certainly wouldn’t have gone so soon if she wasn’t trapped in the small birdcage – Today she’s in General Population with a few other younger monkeys and in 4 weeks I’ll head back to see her. She won’t forget.

I took a trip on my bicycle west over to the town of Mumbwa, to go and visit someone who I had met on the Couchsurfing network. Originally once crossing into Zambia I was to head there first, but side-tracked by the little boy getting hit and decided it was in my best interest to head to a safe zone first. Not wanting to back out of what I had committed to I made the 160km trek in two days and spent time learning about how she (Momo) had come to Zambia and what she was doing there. Working with an Aid organization based in Japan she was working with the many HIV infected people of this country providing assistance by means of support, financial assistance and drugs to further improve their lives. 1 in 6 people in Zambia are presently infected in the country which ranks them at #6 in the entire world for total infections. I have spoken to many who have become infected with this in the past 15 years, yet are still alive thanks to the government providing the drugs for free. Unfortunately times are changing and cutbacks are about to occur leaving many people in a lurch. When I speak to them I sometimes ask some touchy questions on how they feel, overall energy is, and about their family life. Most if not all of their partners are infected as well, yet some of their children have been spared even after being born while both were infected with the disease. I speak a lot about prevention and how the difference of how only .1% of our population in Canada has been infected with this life ending disease and about our prevention techniques – not sharing needles if you inject drugs intravenously, and using condoms when engaging in Sexual activity. I can’t help but listen in shock when I hear the excuses that “Condoms don’t work”, and “Circumcision is what we do to avoid becoming infected” – There is still a large lack of education on how to prevent this from happening, and from what I understand the infection rate is rising again after many years of decline.  I headed back into Lusaka after spending a few days in the pouring rain waving at many of the villages I had passed through on the way in – many of them remembering my name, telling me to come and stop for another coffee but was on a mission – I did the 160km in less than 8 hours including taking a small amount of time to rest along the way. Coming into Lusaka on a friday afternoon during rush hour is an experience in itself, and I filmed the entire experience on my camera. It’s a long watch, but shows me hopping curves, jutting into traffic and trying not to hit any pedestrians during this high speed race to my destination. You may here the odd curse from me as I come close to being thrown off my bike, so plug yer ears, yo. All in all this is how typical city riding with a loaded bike is like from the view of my handlebars.

Since the the time of dealing with the Monkey, building the website, and fixing my bicycle (I changed the oil on the Rohloff hub, cleaned all the bags thoroughly and made sure the wheel was good to go) I’ve been meeting a healthy handful of friends in the area and shring some laughs and memories around the country as we headed out on road trips to see some of the natural beauty of the area, learning how to properly break open coconuts to have a taste of some of their tasty water and meat, and a healthy dose of nightclub hopping. The nightlife scene in Lusaka is vibrant and absolutely wild when the lights go down at the clubs offering a mixed variety of music from around Africa with minimal western music to be found. I can’t understand the majority of it but my friends have been good at explaining some of the songs to me which when translated sound downright ridiculous which makes for a lot of laughs. I’ve been checking out a lot of the restaurants in town, surprisingly some of the Mexican and Italian restaurants do quite well with their business, food offerings, and presentation at reasonable prices. I’ve also done some serious work on the new project I’ve started “Bicycle Touring Hub” making all the components work nicely, look cleaner, and some cool features like location based campsite finding, more themes for people who want to have a trip journal (Basically all the features you see on this website are made available to people) and even free email address @bicycletouringhub.com. Lusaka is a place I could settle in with its friendly residents, cheap housing costs and business opportunities for someone with my skills – however not for now, I’ve got the world to see.

The big thing that has been happening in Zambia however has been the African Cup football (soccer) matches. Starting in late January the cup involved all African Nations and saw Zambia rise to the very top beating out all other Southern African countries which didn’t even place in the quarter finals whatsoever. The country suffered a major loss in the ’90s when heading to the finals in Gabon their jet airplane lost an engine and crashed into the ocean killing the entire time forcing an emotional rebuild of their team. 17 years later Zambia returned to Gabon to play against Cote D’Ivoire to see who would take home the cup. We’ve been watching the games at the restaurant on the big projection screens and the skill level of the players and their opposition has been something else. Halfway through the final game a large thunderstorm moved over Lusaka bringing rain and the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard, knocking out Satellite reception for 10 minutes, thankfully at the start of the game. When it came back, it saw the two teams deadlocked for 120 minutes before going into Penalty kicks. Zambia beat Cote D’Ivoire 8-7 in the penalty kicks handing them over the title of champion where the entire 2.2 million people of Lusaka roared in excitement, putting the thunderstorms loud booms to shame. Thousands of happy people lined the streets and celebrated yelling, cheering and dancing everywhere, also deciding that going into the work the next day was out of the question. I headed out into the throngs of people and staggered back home with a huge grin on my face at 9am catching a few hours of sleep before going out into the party where the Zambians alternated between singing their national anthem, ‘All people of Zambia are one!’ and other positive slogans. I’ve never seen so many soccer jerseys, flags and dressed up people in my life! It’s not going to stop either, as tomorrow the team flies back in, where it is expected that hundreds of thousands of people are to line the streets towards the airport. I won’t miss it. Of note, is that there has yet to be a car overturned, building window smashed in, and groups of hooligans intent on destroying the cit. I’ve yet to see Africa be unsafe, yet only seem to see this sort of behaviour in “civilized, 1st world countries“. The worst thing that happened to me when I was hanging out on the side of a car window is that a group of 200 people swarmed me and started tickling me while I was trying to film this action OOh.

I received an email the other day from the Police Officers in Livingstone, who invited me at the end of March to go on vacation with them to the Western Province to a tribal gathering. My fear of a visa running out was quickly squashed when they offered to make sure it was extended so I can attend, I can’t believe the friendliness of all the people who I have met in this country, making it a very memorable experience and hard to leave. Eventually I will get moving as I’ve still to dish out the clothing from the funds I donated through this website in Zimbabwe, and make my way up to Europe. But for now, I’m going to live in the moment and take in whatever I can.