Latest news

Wednesday 1 September: Driving (well being driven) back and forward to the office we have been assailed by all manner of vendors offering newspapers, fruit, vegetables, mobile phone top up cards and a range of household goods including chest expanders and souvenir Chelsea Football Club clocks. The vendors walk up and down between the lines of traffic staring hard at drivers and passengers hoping to pressurise them into a sale. There was a certain irony today in the vendor at one set of traffic lights having copies of the Zambian Highway Code on offer. (I would have bought one actually if it would not have looked a bit touristy to my colleagues in the car.) The roads are busy places – on the side next to the central reservation there are ladies with brushes sweeping up the dirt, of which there is a lot in the dry season. It struck me as a dangerous occupation. I was told they did not get paid very much. To my mind the risk level would argue for paying them a lot – but it is a curious reversal of market forces that in an area of high unemployment the riskier jobs pay the least.

I have been looking at budget figures today. The Zambian Kwacha currently trades at about 4,750 to the $ (sadly, these days the dollar not the pound rules here.) This means that a sum of, say, £100,000 converts to around 675m ZMK or, if you include the cents, an 11 digit figure in a spreadsheet. This in turn results in very big (and impressive looking) figures in financial tables. They are also not easy to understand.

Lunch was an excellent fried chicken with rice and green beans accompanied by further discussion of proposals for compulsory male circumcision.

My not drinking sugar in tea or coffee is regarded as something of a curiosity.

Cockroach update: sadly I think he (or she) has died. It looked as though he had slid back over on his back and this time there was no good samaritan to hand.