Lusaka and the Hostel from Hell

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We really started to count our blessings for meeting Raz and Uzi whose itinerary was very similar to ours, even more so when the offer of a lift was extended almost indefinitely. The distances in Zambia, Botswana, and Namibia are BIG. If we were to stand any chance of seeing anything besides the inside of a coach or Matatu it was starting to dawn on us that a car was needed and a 4X4 preferred. The fact that Raz and Uzi were on that route and on the same budget and timescale as us was suberbly lucky, we all got on really well and enjoyed doing and seeing the same things. Food and petrol/travel costs were also less all round so everyone was a winner. I seriously think that if we hadn’t bumped into them we would have seen what we wanted to in Zambia, then headed East into Mozambique and gone South along the coast instead (distances still big but more in between places and we’d have devoted more time to the country).

At this point in time we were headed South for Lusaka; Adam was still mistakenly under the impression that his parents had lived in Lusaka and that he was born in Kitwe, in actual fact they also lived in Kitwe, something that unfortunately we didn’t find out until we got to Lusaka as we had zero phone reception in Mutinondo. There isn’t a whole lot in Kitwe to attract the casual visitor, it’s main attraction is the enormous Copper mine right next to the town and possibly the classic Basingstoke-esque 70’s concrete architecture, so Raz and Uzi were understandably not too keen on doubling back on themselves and driving the couple of hundred km’s from Lusaka to Kitwe.

After a bit of deliberation (Adam would’ve really regretted not going to Kitwe if we’d have been so close and not gone) we had decided to head off the following morning by bus (6 Hours) to Kitwe, find the hospital Adam was born in and the house where his parents used to live there the following morning, get a bus back to Lusaka that afternoon (6 hours), then get another bus from Lusaka to Livingstone the day after that to meet up with the lads (7 hours) to do Vic Falls and continue on to Botswana. Aaaand rest.

It wouldn’t have been so bad but the hostel we stayed before and after our mammoth genealogical trek was called Chachacha. And it was a hole. Well maybe that’s a bit misleading. On the surface it looks nice, it has a nice bar out front with a small pool, it has internet, a camp site with nearby toilets and showers, and an equipped kitchen which you can cook in.

Fair enough except the staff were some of the rudest we have come across so far. Ask the receptionist a question or ask her to ACTUALLY do something other than sit on her arse behind the desk and you felt like you had just asked her to run backwards up Everest with a large smelly mule strapped to her. The internet was constantly taken up by the staff and chums, whose finely honed indifference to any guest who showed an interest in using said machines could only have come from years of astute practice. I actually nearly laughed out loud when she showed us the ‘campsite’ and asked us not to pitch our tent on the grass, a straggly 2 ft square area of patchy grass that looked like a pet had been using it as his favourite pit stop for a few too many years that was currently being revived with a sprinkler. You could set your watch by the toilet and showers no longer producing water, meaning you couldn’t wash, clean your teeth, or flush…. after 8 at night. Now we’ve used some pretty disgusting toilets so far and if the establishment is a hole then usually the toilet is too, but you can only imagine what they looked like after a couple of hours of use when some of the guests weren’t feeling too well. Hmmm yes not too good.

The staff claimed that the local water board turned off the supply on them every evening, but they had a cistern full of water and a pump which they could turn on upon request. So why they didn’t leave it on overnight is anybody’s guess.

The Kitchen may well have been the reason for everyone’s (Adams during the Kitwe busathon and later Marianne’s) stomach problems. You see the staff, obviously extremely overworked already I mean sitting, internetting and Mango prodding with a large stick are all very exhausting daily tasks, have no responsibility of cleaning the kitchen. Fair enough, but there should be someone who quickly checks every now and again that it hasn’t reached the point where a Hazmat suit would be preferable to an apron.

A group of Pakistani NGO’s had cooked themselves ”food” the previous evening and left the kitchen smelling strongly like a dead thing, which was exactly what it turned out to be funnily enough. A bowl of slightly wrinkly raw fish cunningly covered with a plate so no one would find it tucked onto the shelf along with a chickens foot in a pan, accompanied all of the curry covered plates and cutlery they had used which were strategically spread all over the kitchen shelves. Lovely.

We tend to use the Lonely Planet thorn tree as a source of information and recommendations when we go to new places and try to keep a record of our experiences up to date to return the favour to all those that have helped us. We weren’t going to pass up the opportunity of putting up our own ‘recommendation‘, but it seemed someone had already beaten us to it. Surprisingly the owner of the establishment had taken great offence at the mere suggestion that the place he was running was any different to the criticism it was receiving on the LP website which to us shows an arrogance that borders on stupidity.

We can wholeheartedly NOT recommend Chachacha. Please, Please, if you are going to Lusaka do not give these idiots any of your money you will regret it.

Anyway, rant over. Sorry, catharsis and all that.

There’s not a lot to say about the trip to Kitwe really, the bus journey was fairly uneventful apart from the 40 min break at the halfway point at Kapiri Mposhi. It’s at this point the local religious nutters have realized that if they clamber onto a bus that isn’t going anywhere for a good half an hour, they have ample time to spew lunatic fringe Jehovah’s witness style ideological bollocks at everyone present regardless of whether they are interested or not, and attempting to cover all of the possible dialects on the way. Then they try and get money out of you. It’s exactly what you need after listening to monotonous Zambian music at ear-splitting, speaker-distorting volume for 4 hours.

The loony bible thumper that got on on the way back from Kitwe, realizing that Adam was staring blankly at him, asked if he would like him to cover English as well as the 72 other Zambian dialects so that we could follow what he was talking about. Adam flatly declined and deliberately put his earphones in and listened to The Crystal Method at full volume for the rest of the ad-lib sermon. We were sure from that point onwards his soul was being consigned to eternal damnation and providing much of the source material for the rest of his speech.

It was cool to see the hospital where Adam was born which is now Chinese owned and run strangely enough, but the Nkhana mine is still alive and kicking following the global resurgence in the price of copper. Just around the corner is the small estate of flats where his parents used to live which are now public housing, we couldn’t find the exact house as the numbering has change but the houses are still there if in some dire need of some TLC.

It was a bit of a whistle stop tour really but we’d have struggled to find much else to do in the area so we headed back to Lusaka that afternoon.

We had one more fantastic evening in Lusaka then it was on to Livingstone to meet back up with Raz and Uzi and complete our non-stop 3 day Busathon. We were glad we had ticked Kitwe off but it was good to get off the buses and back to the relative luxury of the back of the Nissan.

Here is our travel map: AdnMaz Travel Map

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Photos

Flower
pink frangipani - smells nice

Comments

[Maria Capellades]

Everything is so run-down...
It is shocking (although not surprising) to see how all infrastructure in all of Africa you have visited is completely run-down and looking terrible... side-by-side with great natural landscapes are these towns and cities and roads that looked so depressing. I know that these are very poor countries indeed, but I reckon corruption is more the cause for the state of affairs rather than lack of money.

[Darren]

Funny
Kitwe is awesome. Zambia is awesome, Maria's sociological observation, not so much.

[Dina Cormick]

re photo of Sinozam Hospital
Hi there - I was born in Nkana and my mother worked for many years in what was then called Nkana Mine Hospital - your photo of Sinozam Hospital is the same building. Years ago I met some Zambian women who when they heard my surname were thrilled to tell me that a photo of my mother "Nurse Cormick" was still hanging in the entrance of the hospital. I have tried to obtain a copy of the photo unsuccessfully. Just wondered if you ventured inside the hospital and maybe saw the photo or better still took a picture of it... a wild wild hope! Dina

[ADnMAZ]

Photo of Sinozam hospital
Good afternoon, Unfortunately I didn't go inside which I regret not doing. Long story but we didn't have long to stop. We needed to catch up with some friends in Lusaka so only stayed a short while then hopped on another (very long) bus ride. I hope you find the photo you are looking for! Kind regards, Adam