Hello Zambia!

When I first heard I was flying with Ethiopian airlines I had a few images conjour up in my brain - and not many were that positive. However on arriving in Terminal 2 LHR I was impressed to realise that they are a part of the star alliance group, so maybe not all that shoddy after all. I killed an hour or two wandering round aimlessly with everybody else in the duty free before settling down to read my book until the gate opened. Thankfully I was flying to Africa, as the replica London Taxi looked a bit too breezy for me!

Once I got onboard I managed to stay awake for long enough to see the lights of London pale away before heading off to a deep sleep. That's the beauty of working 5 night shifts in a row - the ultimate plane sleep strategy! Landing in Addis Ababba for 3 hours was interersting in that there were lots of beautiful mountains to see on descent and they also had state of the art Ebola testing on the way in. Basically temperature measurements for all passengers.

On the deck in Ethipoia

Ebola check

 Then it was re-board the flight and a quick 3 and a half hours later (well it was quick for me as I was still asleep when we landed!) I'm back in Zambia. A beautifully hot, sunny day to welcome me back to the home of Vic falls!

Inevitably there was the recall that the word queuing means mass scrumaging in Zambia and isn't widely understood. Being Welsh and a dab hand at getting served at the bar during the 6 Nations this was not much of an obstacle and then I breezed through security on the strength of my old work permit and a little bit of broken Nyanga chat, dredged up from the back of my mind. I must work on getting it up to scratch asap though. 

Mike the taxi driver filled me in on the election shenanigans by virtually yelling at me on the car journey - this was basically as the radio reading the constituency and media reports were full blast. And this was not in isolation, every car seems to be tuned in to the news here. And it was actually interesting to hear people speak passionately about politics (as well as corruption and personal gains!) It was refereshing to hear the way the media questions were answered by all parties and the electoral commission - who to be fair have had a difficult job with the huge rainfall keeping people at bay, disrupting getting the ballot papers to the correct places etc. So it sounds like only 1m of 5m have actually been able to vote - but that was partly due to them running the election on the people registered 5 years ago. Apparently there are people in their early 20's that arent allowed to vote as they were underage at the last one! Crazy! Inveitably there will be a new president as of circa 18.00. Lets hope it doesn't all kick off then! It seems unlikely as Zambia has been stable for 50 years and is full of level headed people. However I have bought some essential supplies if there is to be lockdown.... a pint of milk, some bread and some Mosi - so I should survive for the next fortnight!