... or it’s not that easy to arrive, Zambian version.
My cousin is doing a one-year voluntary work in Zambia, and sometime last autumn her twin sister, mum and a friend decided they would visit her in Lusaka. I knew they planned their trip for February, and I thought at that time how great it would be to join them, but since I didn’t know what and where I would be doing at that time, I just hibernated the plan at the back of my mind.
Until about two weeks ago, when the idea suddenly resurfaced. First it appeared just as an innocent hypothetical thought, but gradually the little devil on my shoulder whispering “join them!” grew louder and louder, and since nobody I consulted could offer me a compelling reason why not to, eventually last Tuesday I found myself buying a plane ticket to Lusaka, and on Sunday night I was on my way to the airport. A girls’ ride! :-)
Admittedly, even though I was just “next door”, my itinerary was far from direct: I hopped from Entebbe through Kigali to Addis Ababa, and then finally to Lusaka (worth finding this on a map if you are in the dark in the geography of the Dark Continent); but I didn’t mind the extra hours, and for the price of the ticket I really couldn’t complain. Besides, in the mode of a personal added benefit, this itinerary involved passing through Ethiopia, a country very high on the list of places I would like to visit – and even seeing it from the air was exciting enough. To a point that I actually took pictures from the plane, something I do extremely rarely to never (let’s face it, all those photos are kind of same). In fact, not only that – I couldn’t get hold of my camera at the beginning, so the first picture is actually taken with a mobile!
I found the landscape fascinating, though.
Until landing in Lusaka everything went smoothly, but in the spirit of my recently established tradition of troubles with arriving to my destination (like in Rwanda), the journey had to have its share of adventure.
As our plane approached the terminal at Lusaka International Airport, I saw that all around the main airport building the grounds were fully packed with masses of people, and more and more were continuously streaming in to join them. Some were only metres away from the planes, and even the towers with lights were covered in people who had climbed up.
My initial thought was on how the airport security could be so incredibly relaxed, but immediately after it dawned on me that the previous day Zambia had played the final of the African Cup of Nations – and seeing the masses draped in green flags, with piercing logic I figured out that Zambia probably won the match.
As it turned out, not only Zambia won – for the first time in history – the African Cup of Nations, but a plane with the victorious Zambian national team was expected to land a short time after us. How typical of me not to have cross-checked my travel schedule with key sporting events. Excited football fans came to the airport in thousands to greet their team, and the day was spontaneously declared as holiday by a big proportion of the population: if you think football is popular in Europe, you should see the passion with which it is followed in Africa.
My cousin is doing a one-year voluntary work in Zambia, and sometime last autumn her twin sister, mum and a friend decided they would visit her in Lusaka. I knew they planned their trip for February, and I thought at that time how great it would be to join them, but since I didn’t know what and where I would be doing at that time, I just hibernated the plan at the back of my mind.
Until about two weeks ago, when the idea suddenly resurfaced. First it appeared just as an innocent hypothetical thought, but gradually the little devil on my shoulder whispering “join them!” grew louder and louder, and since nobody I consulted could offer me a compelling reason why not to, eventually last Tuesday I found myself buying a plane ticket to Lusaka, and on Sunday night I was on my way to the airport. A girls’ ride! :-)
Admittedly, even though I was just “next door”, my itinerary was far from direct: I hopped from Entebbe through Kigali to Addis Ababa, and then finally to Lusaka (worth finding this on a map if you are in the dark in the geography of the Dark Continent); but I didn’t mind the extra hours, and for the price of the ticket I really couldn’t complain. Besides, in the mode of a personal added benefit, this itinerary involved passing through Ethiopia, a country very high on the list of places I would like to visit – and even seeing it from the air was exciting enough. To a point that I actually took pictures from the plane, something I do extremely rarely to never (let’s face it, all those photos are kind of same). In fact, not only that – I couldn’t get hold of my camera at the beginning, so the first picture is actually taken with a mobile!
I found the landscape fascinating, though.
Until landing in Lusaka everything went smoothly, but in the spirit of my recently established tradition of troubles with arriving to my destination (like in Rwanda), the journey had to have its share of adventure.
As our plane approached the terminal at Lusaka International Airport, I saw that all around the main airport building the grounds were fully packed with masses of people, and more and more were continuously streaming in to join them. Some were only metres away from the planes, and even the towers with lights were covered in people who had climbed up.
My initial thought was on how the airport security could be so incredibly relaxed, but immediately after it dawned on me that the previous day Zambia had played the final of the African Cup of Nations – and seeing the masses draped in green flags, with piercing logic I figured out that Zambia probably won the match.
As it turned out, not only Zambia won – for the first time in history – the African Cup of Nations, but a plane with the victorious Zambian national team was expected to land a short time after us. How typical of me not to have cross-checked my travel schedule with key sporting events. Excited football fans came to the airport in thousands to greet their team, and the day was spontaneously declared as holiday by a big proportion of the population: if you think football is popular in Europe, you should see the passion with which it is followed in Africa.
Even before disembarking from the plane it was clear to me that getting from the airport to City of Hope (the Salesian sisters’ home for girls and community school on the outskirts of Lusaka where my cousin is working and we all were going to stay) would be far from easy or fast.
The whole airport was pulsating with euphoria. When we got off the plane and walked towards the terminal, the crowds started cheering – though it was obvious we weren’t the team – and we had to pass through a corridor of excited fans to enter the airport building (now I know what it feels like to be a football star). Even the lady at the immigration desk who stamped my passport had a green football scarf tied on her head.
Like I had guessed, nobody was waiting for me in the arrivals hall. I tried to call my cousin, but couldn’t get through, and since I saw no point in taking a taxi to get stuck in traffic and possibly miss the car coming to pick me up, I sat down on my backpack in front of the arrivals building, and waited. Next to me, also sitting on her backpack, a grey-haired Irish-French lady was waiting as well for someone to pick her up, and we started chatting. Eventually through her mobile phone I managed to get in touch with my cousin, who told me that the whole city was completely jammed because of the footballers’ arrival, that they hadn’t left City of Hope yet, but that someone would set off now for the airport to pick me up, so I should just wait and watch out for sisters/nuns in yellow T-shirts (if you speak Czech, my cousin's perspective on the day is also worth a read).
What is proper African travelling without waiting, so I made myself comfortable and enjoyed the atmosphere around – good or bad luck, I was in the middle of place thousands would love to be! – and in fact the following three or four hours that I spent at the airport were pretty interesting. After the lady with the backpack left, I talked to one of the fans about Uganda and Zambia, then to two flag-draped youths about being married or not, I made friends with a tourism stand lady who ended up giving me a big brochure about Zambia, and in one of those incredible small-world coincidences I even met a former work colleague from Madrid and spent some time gossiping with her.
Finally, halfway through the afternoon (I landed at noon) I saw three Salesian sisters in yellow “Zambia’s no. 1 fan” T-shirts arriving at the airport: my transport was here! At first I felt slightly guilty that they had to fight through all that traffic jam to pick me up, but then seeing that it was three of them who came – a number that clearly wasn’t necessary – and how excited they were to be there in the middle of all the “action”, I realised that this was really just a welcome excuse for them to come to the airport and watch the footballers arrive.
And so instead of heading to City of Hope, we went to have a look around the airport, and the sisters started to ask all the officials which way the football team would come out and how we could best see them. By that time the airport grounds were even more packed, and everyone was expecting the team to arrive any minute. Some people even climed the trees to get a better view!
We roamed around for a good while, but even Salesian sisters weren’t able to get any reliable information on the team’s whereabouts, and finally one of them suggested that we should get going, because once the footballers arrive the road would get crowded very quickly. I internally applauded, because first it looked like the sisters wanted to spend hours at the airport just to catch a glimpse of the representation, and leaving ahead of the crowds seemed to me like a very sensible idea – especially because I had spent the previous 16 hours travelling and in spite of all the excitement around I was starting to feel quite tired.
The airport parking and exit road was already starting to fill up with people clapping, dancing and celebrating, and trying to grab a good spot close by to see the team passing.
Fortunately, after that the road was still perfectly passable, except for some cars and fans gathering on the sides, and we drove on for a few kilometres, the sisters hooting and greeting the crowds (the sight of a Salesian sister blowing a vuvuzela from a car window was invaluable).
But just when I was already thinking how well we managed to get out, and I was imagining the good shower I’d take and the tank of water I’d drink, the sisters suddenly declared that we would actually stop and wait for the football representation to pass. My vision of the shower quickly foamed up.
And so we joined other fans, and stood in the scorching sun for about 20 minutes waiting for the national heroes. Gradually the flow of traffic got denser, with more and more cars, vans, and trucks packed with people draped in national colours, and the fans kept cheering at every single one of them.
I expected that the national team would ride in some sort of a fancy and colourful bus or something, so I didn’t pay a detailed attention to every one of the vehicles passing by; and so it happened that after yet another couple of trucks swished past us, the violent screaming around made me realise that THAT had been the team. After all those hours of waiting I actually MISSED them!
Totally oblivious of who was inside, I only have two smudged pictures of the team-trucks (I think) that I took by a pure coincidence.
As could be expected, the trucks with the team were immediately followed by a dense mass of cars, and by the time we got back in our car (which took us 10 minutes: one of the sisters had crossed on the other side of the road and afterwards couldn’t get back to us) and managed to get on the road again (another 10 minutes: the sister who was driving was very un-Africanly cautious), we could drive only about 300 metres before the road was completely jammed.
By that time a shower already seemed light-years away. At best we could advance at a slow walking pace, with people filling the little space there was left between the traffic and climbing on the cars - including ours - to get a free ride; and it took us another four hours of painful journey to reach Lusaka, cross the city and arrive at City of Hope.
But perhaps Africa taught me (even me!) some calmness and patience: surprisingly enough at no point of this Odyssey I felt worried, nervous or stressed. In fact, I quite enjoyed the whole experience, though I did feel quite tired towards the end. Yes, things might take longer time in Africa (and they usually do), but after all they end up resolving themselves (and they did). I turned up in the middle of a pulsating celebration, witnessed an emotional moment in Zambia’s sports history, and (nearly 24 hours after leaving home) I finally managed to join my aunt, two cousins and their friend for two undoubtedly fabulous weeks.
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