Lusaka and the end of an era

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We left our campsite really early and we warned by the driver that the road would be very bumpy. Unfortunately I ended up in the worst spot to be in on the truck on a bumpy road. The seat right at the back by the door. A few hours later and my worst fears were realised when we hit a huge hole in the road a I was thrown 2/3 feet in the air, hit my head on the underside of the overhead lockers and then scraped my leg down the metal front of the seats on the way down. It hurt! A massive purple/yellow/blue/black brusie has now formed on my leg. Get rid of one bruise and another one never seems to be far behind. I have now developed a bit of a reputation for being ill or injured in some way at any one time. Things which never happen to me at home seem to plague me here.

After hours of boring driving we arrived at our bush camp at 2:00pm. Way t early to set up camp on the side of the road as we would attract far too much unwanted attention. So, a group decision was made to push on and drive another 6 hours to get to Lusaka, giving us a day to explore the city too. The campsite seemed like a nice place and we spent the night having a nice dinner and talking about who we thought would win the election the next day. Early to bed as we had a new place to explore the next day.

Yesterday we got up fairly early. The first thing I did was walk over to the bar to see the news of who had won the US election. When we saw the result everyone was so pleased. One guy walked in, looked at the TV and said 'thank god, the world should hopefully be a safer place now' - my thoughts exactly. After watching this for a bit we headed into town. This is definitely the most developed place we have been by far. There are good shops, including clothes shops (thank god). I managed to buy a nice skirt and dress as I didn't find anything nice at home before I came out. It is my tent buddys last day today which is really sad so we basically just hung out together all day. After we were done shopping we popped to the Irish bar to check to see if anyone was still around to grab a taxi back with. This was at about 2:00pm. A couple of the guys were still there but rather than get a taxi back we were sucked into staying and proceeded to spend the next 6 hours getting very very drunk. Realising it was 8:00pm, that dinner would be ready at camp and people may wonder where we were we headed back. When we arrived everyone was saying how worried they had been about Marion and I (being well known as not being big drinkers) and that they had wondered where we were. They were not worried at all about the boys and they automatically thought they would be in the pub getting pissed. Ha ha!! Nice to know they care. We had a good night back at camp playing a weird version of charades. At one point, one of the guys we had been getting drunk with was struggling and said 'can I just act it out?'. Ha ha. Don't know what he thought you were meant to do in charades. Doh! We headed to bed fairly early as we were too drunk to stay up much later. An hour or two later the rest of the guys on the truck thought it would be hilarious to round up all the dogs on the campsite (about 3/4 of them), open our tent, throw them in and then close the tent door again. So, this was what Marion and I woke up to! Everytime we managed to get one out, another one seemed to be thrown in. After about 10 minutes we decided to give in and pose for photographs to get rid of them. Then we sat there chuckling as we heard them do it to tent after tent. Ha ha!

So, after a very drunken night, Marion left this morning and I am now without a tent buddy. It is the end of a (very funny) era. I have spent a long, hungover day on the truck with my new little mascot bought for me by Marion. Driving back out of Lusaka there were signs everywhere celebrating Obamas victory and advertising victory parties. We arrived at Lake Kariba campsite at about 5:00pm. It is a really small, peaceful campsite with a lovely little bar, swimming pool, volleyball court etc. Ah - the volleyball court. An impromptu game of volleyball broke out on our arrival, girls versus boys. In my hungover state I chose to watch rather than participate and watching the girls absolutely smash the boys. There are bruised egos in camp tonight and rumours of a rematch to be had.

Tonight is my first night alone in my tent. I have to admit though, the benefits of being able to sleep diagonally across the tent, and take all my stuff in there without it being too crowded will possibly outweigh the drawbacks of having to put it up and down myself everyday. We'll see how long it lasts though!

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