Blogs from Livingstone, Zambia, Africa - page 17

Last pictures loaded until I get home! They have been added to :Getting Down to the End and Final Days. Enjoy! So let’s see…where did I leave off? Friday night we had an amazing night! Yara, Harriet, Jenni, Catrin, Tobi, Phil, Tom, Warren, Tim, and I all went out on the town! We started out at Limpo’s near our house and ended up at Step Rite for dancing. Basically it was just a big party and a lot of fun! Saturday was Zambezi Sun until it started pouring and then Sunday was rafting! I wasn’t going to go because I’ve gone rafting before, but I am soooooo glad I did! It was absolutely amazing! And when I say amazing I mean spectacular! It was a great river and we had a fun group! (Yara, Harriet, Tim, ... read more

We had a really early start yesterday from Lake Kariba to drive to Livingstone, our base for four days at Victoria Falls. We were staying at Grubbies Grotto, a cool friendly little campsite popular with overland trucks. When we arrived at the campsite we were immediately sat down to watch a DVD of all of the activities on offer at Victoria Falls before we then had to say which we wanted to do during our stay. Initially looking at the list of activities I thought I would do a Microlight Flight over the falls and also go to Livingstone Island which is the closest you can get to the falls at the moment. Watching the DVD I saw the details of the White Water Rafting and the sky dive. Originally I had planned to do the ... read more

I'm now in Livingstone having arrived yesterday. The first thing we did was head to the falls. Unfortuneately, it's the dry season at the moment, so we saw absolutely nothing from the Zambian side. This was the first real dissappointment of the tour so far. In fact, Livingstone turned out to be a total dissappointment, and my general feeling is that this place is a bit of a tourist trap. For example, the local currency is the Zambian Kwcha but is useless because it can't be exchanged anywhere outside Zambia, so everyone uses the US Dollar (or SA Rand or Botswanan Pula), which is accepted here. However, for 40000 kwchas I have been charged anywhere from $10 (the right price according to the exchange rate) to $15 (wtf?). Everything is overpriced here, at least compared to ... read more

I'm on my last week of volunteering! Hard to believe! The time has gone by really fast! So where did I leave off? Last Friday morning I had Mwandi Home-Based Care. It was my first time on a home-based care other than Maramba. The houses in Mwandi were more basic, mostly made out of mud and sticks instead of bricks and concrete. More what I was expecting the compound areas to look like. I think Maramba is more affluent (comparatively, of course) than the rest of the compounds. We saw 7 patients. I haven't had any extreme cases. One guy had deep splits in his heel and toe that were probably almost a centimeter deep, but that's about it. Most people have HIV and/or TB. The roads are all sand. And not just sand, sand like ... read more

Yesterday I was at Linda in the morning again. There were so many mothers with their babies to get weighed! It was insane! It's because it's the end of the month so they all are trying to get their babies weighed before November (because they have to get them weighed every month). After the appointments, the diagnosis and treatment of every patient is written in the register book. I got to help do that for a while. It was kind of hard because doctors here have terrible handwriting, just like in the States. I think it would be easier to recognize the drug names if I knew the commonly prescribed ones. In the afternoon I had reading club again. Today we had the morning off because it's voting day so the schools were closed and the ... read more