Livingstone to Lusaka - July 1st

July 1st, 2008:

Short: Visit the Royal Livingston hotel, Expensive Groceries, Send the photos, Terrible roads, better roads, Arrive in Lusaka during a power outage, wonderful dinner with a Zambian friend

Long: We bid farewell to Sven and the German girls this morning and headed directly to the Royal Livingston hotel. The hotel is popular and we wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I unfortunately forgot my camera, but in short, the hotel is good and the location along the Zambezi even better. You can actually see where the falls drop off from the location.

Heading back into town we stopped at the Spar (Grocery store), and stocked up on some supplies. As mentioned before, prices are high. As an idea, cereal (In this case Fruit Loops) ran a whopping $7 and store brands around $5. After breaking the bank we headed into town to mail the photos. Zambia’s post office didn’t seem to have been updated since the 1920’s. The person behind the desk still licked every stamp using his tongue…That’s got to get rough.

Finally finished with errands we hit the road to Lusaka and soon grinded to an abysmally slow speed. The first 60 km’s between Livingston in Lusaka was terrible, with potholes so bad that many vehicles were using the unpaved shoulder to drive on. It looked like bombs had been dropped along most of the road. Luckily though, after the first 60 km’s were hit decent road and our pace improved. We passed through quite a few small towns on the way, stopping at one to grab a coke and a photo of some “Nikolai Vodka”!

This road was very different than those we traveled in Namibia, in large part because the number of people was far more. Almost the entire drive we passed people walking or biking into, or out of, towns. You had to be very vigilant in order to avoid hitting people, animals, or other cars. We saw quite a few accidents along the way. Interestingly, accidents are not always removed. In some cases the shells of autobuses and trucks were left along the side of the road, with every conceivable item of value stripped from them. Also, during the first hour of the trip passed a lot of people standing along the road waving and pointing at the road. We probably passed ten people doing this routine, and we simply waved, until we realized what was going on. Villagers would come out to the road and dig holes, using the dirt to fill the potholes. They weren’t waving at us, they were asking for a fee in return for filling in the potholes.

We made decent time and driving into the outskirts of Lusaka right after sunset. As we began entering the city the highway changed to four lanes and then to six. It was extremely dark and difficult to see anything in the road and we soon realized that all of the street lights and traffic lights were out. The streets and businesses along them remained unlit until we arrived into the center of town, relieved we hadn’t hit anything or anybody. Within minutes we arrived at our hostel and were able to park the car in secure parking. The rest of the evening was very amusing.

Before leaving for the trip, Nikolai posted a notice on Smallworld, a private networking site, informing others that he would be traveling through Africa. One of the people that replied lives and works in Lusaka, and we arranged to meet him for dinner. Sipho picked us up at 7:30 and took us to Rhypsody, a nice restaurant in one of the main, upscale, shopping areas. We had dinner with Sipho and two of his friends, both of which were high school friends, one from Kenya in town on business the other from Zambia. We learned that Sipho and his friends went to university in the U.K. and then each came back to their respective countries to work. Sipho originally worked for Barclays and Arthur Anderson, before working in the booming mining and real estate industries. Titus works in Kenya and was even flown to Harvard Business School to discuss one of his businesses during an Africa business conference. Sipho seems to know quite a few people in Lusaka, he said hello to at least three while we were in the restaurant. We also learned that Sipho’s father used to be the Zambian Ambassador to Sweden, as well as the governor of the Central Bank of Zambia (At one time his father’s signature was on the Zambian currency).

I won’t go into detail on the entire conversation, but it was interesting and entertaining. Here are some tidbits: Zambia economy and the “Shoe test” (You can tell how well the economy is doing by looking at a Villagers’ feet), The Rwandan president, China involvement on the continent, Chinese workers, Angolan oil, America’s involvement in African oil and conspiracy theories, Angolan military dominance, Zimbabwe, Mugabe, and Sipho’s two heart attacks (He is only 39!). I will briefly expand upon a few of these. China’s involvement on the continent: He states that before China, bidding for oil, in oil-rich African countries, was extremely one-sided. Western companies would come in and demand a price. There was little competition and the African country lost out. In the past few years this has changed, and he gave the example of China coming in and bidding 5x the asking price of a U.S. company for oil rights in Angola. He states, the new market is much more beneficial as now the prices really do reflect the world market. He also had an interesting take on Chinese workers in Africa. There is clearly some angst from African workers towards Chinese workers. We saw this in Namibia as well. His comment was, “A Chinese worker can come here and do the job of twenty Zambians better and faster with less complaining. That is just the way it is”. Interesting. Rwandan president: Sipho told a story about the Rwandan president, whom he referred to as a “benevolent dictator”. He told of how the president was so upset that International Organizations, and in particular U.S. Aid organizations (Who have a strong operation in Rwanda), were spending aid money on 4x4s, that he impounded every vehicle and auctioned them off. He says the Rwandan president fully appreciates the aid, but that it must be used wisely to spur change. His rationale for auctioning off the vehicles was that international organizations spend money on operating items that are not needed. “You do not need a new Toyota Land Cruiser to ride around town”.After dinner Sipho even picked up the bill. It was an awesome night with great people. Sipho has invited us to his brother’s place for drinks tomorrow night, and Niki and I now think we will probably stay another night just to join them.