Dr. Livingstone I Presume?

We were up at 5:00am and we are now on our way to the beautiful Victoria Falls. Our seven hour journey cost around $15 USD, but our bus is immaculate and the driver actual keeps time. At our current pace we should arrive around 2:00pm, just in time to visit the Livingstone Museum and meet up with Colin’s cousin Thwambo (our host for the next couple nights) when she finishes work at 5:00pm. 

During our bus ride I have noticed that several things are very different between here and Malawi. In Zambia they sell lots of really cheap oranges, rather than small and expensive tangerines. They also have a much larger Muslim population and presence of little shawarma stands serving middle eastern spiced meats, sauces, and veggies, all served in a pita.

We arrived in Livingstone a few minutes after 2:00pm and decided to go to the Livingstone museum, the largest museum in all of Zambia. We learned the history of Zambia, the evolution of different tribes and languages, and the history of David Livingstone’s travels through Africa.

I learned the following characteristics about Zambian time periods:

Stone Age – rocks, bows, paintings 

Iron Age – villages, crops, animals, metal tools, pottery, tribes

Zambian trade – copper for gold from Zimbabwe and manufactured goods and spices from the Far East (such as India)

I also decided that two activities I want to pursue while I am in Los Angeles are Pot throwing and Glass blowing.

Did you know Zambians used to wear Bark cloth? No wonder they liked to import cotton so much…

Colin (the couch surfer we stayed with in Lusaka) helped us get in contact with his cousins Thwambo and Betsie who have agreed to host us during our stay in Livingstone.

Bestie and Thwambo are amazing. Thwambo came and picked us up from the gate of the general hospital and escorted us to her home. Her home lies on Zambezi youth road just behind the hospital in a beautiful little gated community. Her and her sister are renting the place from family friends and they have done a lovely job fixing it up and making it feel like home. They only had a couch to offer us, but the size of the couch was really large and Andrew and I will definitely be able to sleep on it very comfortably. We had a great chat with Thwambo about her life in Zambia and about the cultural and historical importance of many Zambian places. Thwambo works at a local bank in Livingstone and is the second oldest of five children.

Later in the evening (after we returned from a win feast from jollyboys backpackers) we had the opportunity to sit down and cook dinner with Thwambo’s sister Betsie. Thwambo was off with friends, but we had a great time getting to speak with Betsie about her life in Zambia. Betsie is a preschool teacher in Livingstone and she absolutely loves her job.

By about 10:00pm Andrew and I decided we were tired and wanted to go to sleep so that we could wake up early an head to the falls. We cuddled on the couch in two semi-soft blankets to keep out the cold from the African winter and proceeded to drift of to sleep. Tomorrow will be a good day.

Betty talked about some of her favorite Zambian dishes with us today at dinner. Chibwantu is a Zambian drink made from corn meal, sugar, and a type of indigenous tree bark that smells like rootbeer. Obviously she loves nshima, but specifically she likes it with a vegetable dish called delele. Delele is made from okra, tomatoes, onions, and salt simmered together in a pot.