English blog entry 4 workpermit/license/bats

High time for another English blog entry.

Work permit and license

I could of course translate the entire story about getting my work permit and license, but I won’t, as I’ve spent enough time on workpermits and obtaining the license as it is (-; In short it meant I needed a huge amount of patience, submissiveness and standing in a lot of cues. The work permit was a lot of hassle, because -according to someone at immigration- an English translation of one of my documents hadn’t been included in the paperwork. My colleague wasn’t allowed to show were it might be in my file. After some weeks she finally managed to convince someone to have a look at my file. Of course the document was just there. Anyway I have it now, so hurray! Just like I was celebrating getting my provisional license after two mornings going from desk to desk. I guess it keeps a lot of people at work having so many desks, but I understand the main reason is to avoid corruption. The more people there are that have to deal with your files, the less likely it is you cheat.
In one of the cues, when I wasn’t realizing I was supposed to demonstrate my theoretical knowledge for driving, I got some unexpected questions. Luckily they weren’t that difficult, though they were quite funny.
‘Out of all the signs on the wall, which one is most important?’
Me: ‘Well uh, maybe the one where you have to stop, or the one that you give way?’
‘Wrong, all the signs are equally important’
‘Of course sir, you are very right, they are of equal importance’.
An approving nod indicating he’s happy with my response.

‘And looking at these signs, do you use the same in your country?’
‘Yes sir, except the one with the wild animals, we don’t have them’.

Which are the three things you have to have in your car?
He was happy with the shared responses of Lieve and myself, being: a danger triangle, your license, and a spare wheel.

I was supposed to be exempted from doing an exam, which in the end I was, but only after paying for doing the test, making an appointment for the test, showing up 10 km outside of town at the day of the test, to finally get a signature there from someone exempting me from the exams.

Millions of bats
Finally I gèt to see something of the country! Together with Nadia (UK), and two French girls (Elise and Laurence) I went on a trip to Kasanka National Park (somewhere around the corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo). The trip took about 6 to 7 hours, but the road towards Kasanka is luckily of excellent quality, quite an impressive stretch of tarmac with very few potholes. I enjoyed the trip itself a lot, for one as it’s great to have met some nice girls with whom I had a lot of fun, and secondly I really enjoyed the country side. Nice green hills and African villages. The last stretch was about 15 km through the National Park, where allegedly there are leopards, elephants, crocs and hippos. Too bad they don’t show themselves during the rainy season. It’s raining cats and dogs though, so when we reach at the campsite we decide to change to the rooms they have in typical African huts. They’re quite nicely done: basic, but clean. And better than all these fancy lodges that you have to pay a fortune for. They’re doing a lot of good work at this campsite, making everything ecologically friendly and organizing a lot of educational activities for schools. We’re impressed by the beautiful veranda from where we overlook a swamp area where we can see quite a few birds. And it’s a great place for sundowners and games.

Around sun set we go to see the bats, as that’s what we came here to see. After half an hours drive, a nice climb in a panoramic tree hut and a walk through a bit of jungle, we arrive at a field from where the bats can be seen. At exactly five past six, as predicted, we start seeing the bats, increasing in numbers, until there’s a big swarm of them above our heads. They’re eating the fruits from the fruit trees and leave the trees completely skinned. There’s a lot of local initiatives to ensure the fruit trees aren’t cut down, so that the bats will keep coming to this places. They estimate about 8 million bats, the largest number of fruit bats in the world, visit Kasanka NP for two months every year. The sky becomes increasing pink and beautiful when the sun is setting and it’s a beautiful background for watching the bats. We drive back in the dark over the slippery paths of the NP, which is a bit tricky as the car doesn’t have 4WD.

When we arrive back the cooks have made a delicious meal. They have a great system here, you bring the food yourself and the cooks prepare it. As they’re about 50 km away from the nearest town for supplies, they can’t stock a lot of food, so it’s advised to bring your own. Better than our small camping gas any day!

The next day we enjoy a warm shower, despite not having electricity. The guys boiled the water for us and poor it in a container on the roof. The guide finally shows up at 12.00, and is kind enough to admit he was hung over (it would have been more rare if he wouldn’t have been), so we don’t expect too much of him. On the contrary though he’s quite good and shows us some great places and birds. We enjoy a nice ‘game drive’ through fields with yellow flowers and red hats, with loads of puku’s (some kind of antilope). We also take a walk through a bit of jungle and walk through a beautiful kind of tree that has curly branches, which looks a bit like mangroves, quite exotic looking. The guides shows up up a ladder so we end up on a platform looking over the treetops. The BBC crew built these platforms, when they made a film out of the bat spectacle. When we reach the platform we are completely stunned as above the tree tops there’s millions of bats flying around. We thought they’d be sleeping! We are now a lot closer than yesterday. It truly is a stunning site, like being in a Alfred Hitchcock movie.

After this we drive to a place where the guide knows there’ll be some ‘baby’pythons. Well even a baby python already looks a bit scary, though the guide thinks it’s fun to play around with them. He gets bitten (a very tiny teeth in his hand), but knows that pythons are actually not poisonous –they just become dangerous when they’re big. Anyway we were chickens enough to quickly move away when they came past us.

At night we drink cocktails and play games. The cooks prepare a braai for us and even manage to turn the ingredients ‘apples’ in an incredible apple crumble pie. Not bad(t) at all this weekend!

Work trip

The second trip to see something of Zambia within a week. This time it’s for my work. Together with Anne, who is working for an internet provider I visit Charles Lwanga College of Education. She’s an ex-vso’er so it’s good to share some experiences and we see some potential to work together on some projects. The trip is quite nice: green hills, here and there a lost little baobab tree. It’s about 4 hours towards the direction of Livingstone. Mostly the road is good and I don’t understand why I see a lot of trucks stranded on the road – later I hear they’re usually either drunk or overloaded. The last stretch of 11 km is a gravel road (though that may be to good a name for it), and we realise that if it rains here it may become rough. Especially when we see a dam which functions as bridge. The water is almost over it, so we’re just hoping this will not be a problem when we drive back. Later, on the way back, it turns out the bridge has indeed flooded, though the water isn’t very high and we still manage to get through. It’s a good thing we’re in a RAV4.

When we arrive at the college we’re warmly welcomed. The college is planning to start e-learning so I thought it would be useful to visit them. We’re guided around the college which is beautifully located and very well maintained. There’s a big church, which has been built in the 60s and quite a modern library (though the books are mostly old). Every teacher has a computer, which is quite a luxury here (even at home that’s often not the case). After that we’re supposed to give a presentation to the staff. I had no idea what they wanted to hear so just prepared a basic presentation about e-learning, which seemed to go down quite well. The entire staff had come together for this in the staff room. Staff rooms are quite funny here (I remember something similar in Uganda): there’s a large room, completely empty in the middle, but with lounge seats all around the walls.

In the evening we ate nshima (the Zambian staple food: something like steamed maize) and chicken in the nice guesthouse at the college. We went to a small local bar near the college, which was quite funny. The bar was a room with a pool table and speakers that filled the room. The pool table appeared to be a gathering of all kinds of insects and around us big bugs were buzzing around. The music was loud and when we planted ourselves in the disgusting looking seats, these ‘lounge’ chairs were a bit harder than we expected so we had quite a ‘landing’, was quite funny. Anyway, despite the authencity of this typical bar, we decided to take our second beer to the guest house.

The next day we had a useful meeting with the distance education committee in which we made a lot of plans. We planned a workshop somewhere in January, for which I’ll probably need to come back. After the meeting we went back to Lusaka. On the way, we picked up some women who were waiting in the rain for any incidental car passing by. One of them was a girl who was planning to visit Lusaka for the second time in her life. So rather than putting her on a bus we gave her a ride, which made her mother very happy and probably saved them a lot of money. On the way we stopped in Mazabuku and had lunch with a VSO volunteer there that Anne knew. We treated the girl, all in all it must have been quite an exciting trip for her.