Kachipu Village

There's a man called Benson who works as a gardener for a couple of my colleagues and over the last few weeks I've become friends with him. He and his sons Daniel and Ferdinand have helped me with my garden a bit (more on that later) and he's just generally a really sweet guy. He has good English too, so it's really nice to be able to have a proper conversation with someone who doesn't work in the hospital.

He lives in a village a mile or two down the road from where I live and every now and then runs "village tours". This basically involves his kids picking us up in the ox cart (I think the same one the manure came in!) and then him showing us round the village, watching a dance/singing and then eating dinner that his wife makes.

This is Danger, one of our dogs. Or at least there are a number of animals who live on the hospital grounds that seem to be fairly communal and beg for food from whoever's silly enough to give them any - silly because as Kate, the latest arrival, discovered feeding them means they come scratching on your door at 5am! 

Danger decided to come with us to the village, uninvited, and spent the entire journey running between the oxen barking at them and biting their legs! I'm seriously surprised he didn't get kicked or impaled on a horn. Then as soon as we arrived in the village about 10 local dogs saw him and chased him round very aggressively for about 10 minutes! None of us were too upset - we tried to stop him coming, he's not unfriendly but can be a bit bitey, so isn't very popular!

The children in the village were VERY excited to see the mzungu and ALL wanted their photos taken about 20 times. I suspect they don't have mirrors so it's unusual for them to see their own faces.

So excuse me for the barrage of photos! This is the tip of the iceberg  just the ones where they stood still long enough to take a half decent photo!

 

About 10 minutes into the tour these boys came out, apparently dressed as ghost warriors  whatever that means! One thing travelling has shown me is that kids really are essentially the same wherever you go.

The girls put on a little dance for us. I took a video but the internet definitely won't cope with that!

This is my favourite picture from the day. I love how serious they are.

The girl on the right is called Margret Zulu and she insisted on holding my hand the entire tour. To be fair lots of kids insisted on holding my hand, but she was the most persistent!

These women saw me taking pictures of the kids and wanted photos too. Then they wanted a photo with me, which they thought was HILARIOUS! I know they look very serious in the photo, but between snaps they were wetting themselves about getting a photo with a mzungu! Then they saw their brother and called him over for a photo too.

Collecting water

Benson is the man with the white cap, and the other mzungus are L-R: Alex (medical student), Adam + Sammy (both surgical SHOs), Kate (physio) and Robin (another medical student)

After looking round the village Benson's daughter Christa got the kids sitting down to sing us some nursery rhythms. None of the kids were really paying much attention, there was a lot of wandering about, but it was cute. I love how in this picture every child is moving except one who's looking at the camera.

 Then after the singing we had a candle lit dinner, made by Benson's wife, which was delicious. I'll do a blog someday on Zambian food!