My Journey to Kitwe

Friday: an early 6.30 am start from the Heathrow Ibis for my long trek to Kitwe, in north-west Zambia, flying London to Lusaka on Kenya Airways, with a 12 hour stop-over (overnight) at Nairobi airport. The stop at Nairobi was not as bad as I'd expected. Although the airport was crammed full of souvenir shops and woefully short of good seating areas, at least Kenya Airways had a decent (and free) transit lounge for economy class passengers, which had all the staples for comfortable human existence: a hot food counter (pies and sausage rolls), a small bar, a TV showing World Cup football and free WIFI internet to help while away the hours. I even managed to sprawl across 3 seats for a couple of hours, in a failed attempt to sleep.

 

Saturday: Not such a great start to the day; my flight to Lusaka (via Harare) was delayed two hours. But when it finally got going there were great views over Kenya, Tanzania, Mt Kilimanjaro, Lake Malawi, Mozambique and the Zambezi River on the Zimbabwe / Zambia border.

                                                                                              

I was met at Lusaka airport by Matthew (fellow AfID volunteer who'd arrived early that same morning with BA) and Mwape (Matthew's colleague from Salem Village Project). Unfortunately, the Salem Village vehicle that was supposed to pick us up at the airport had broken down; so instead of a fairly comfortable 4 hour car journey to Kitwe, we had to catch the bus instead …. quite an experience, especially after such a long journey from London.

 

Waited 2 hours at Lusaka bus station for a bus to arrive and fill (buses don't set off until they're full) and then another 6 hours drive in darkness on pot-holed, bumpy roads in tiny seats, with no leg room and worst of all the complete back-catalogue of 70's comedy 'Mind Your Language' on TV playing on continuous loop.

           

Arrived at the guest house in Kitwe at about 11.30pm, some 40 hours after leaving my hotel room at Heathrow and unfortunately too late to see England's first World Cup game against USA (which I later found out was actually a blessing).