Zambia (IV.) - A village in the middle of Zambia

Coming to Zambia, the original plan was not to “do” much: with the exception of seeing the Victoria Falls (and of course the zebras), the idea was more of a relaxed family-bonding African-daily-life-exploring fun trip than an activity-packed safari holiday. But just as the completely unplanned things turn out to be among the best ones, at the end there was much more in our Zambian journey.

Through a link which was never entirely clear to me, my cousins had been in touch with a Czech girl who had visited Zambia before and knew a community-run project in central Zambia. This girl had collected some books for this community, and asked my cousin Barča if she could bring them along with her from the Czech Republic to Zambia.

And so we found ourselves with a backpack full of books, a telephone number of someone called Joseph, a recommendation from this girl, plus some free time, and we thought – why not take the books directly to the village and visit the project? We all agreed it would be very interesting to get a glimpse into the life in a normal Zambian village, something a bit different from a usual tourist trip.

The organisation of the visit proceeded in a typical African way. After trying to call several times (joys of mobile network in the African countryside – the call was always dropped after a few seconds) and an attempt at emailing (their email never arrived), the whole thing was arranged via a total of three text messages – so as you can imagine, we had only a very vague idea as to where we were going and what was there waiting for us. We only knew that we had to reach a town some 3 hours north of Lusaka called Kapiri Mposhi, and someone would wait for us there to take us to the village, about 35km further.

The journey proved to be smoother than we expected. Our bus looked fairly decent, they even had five seats together reserved for us (a standard bus here has rows of three seats on the right and of two seats on the left), and after the necessary 10-minute passionate prayer of the mobile bus-preacher (“our life is in God’s hand”, “Lord, thank you for the fellowship on this bus”) we set off.

Again I feel compelled to praise Zambian drivers – unlike with the killer buses in Uganda, here I didn’t feel I was going to die on the road any minute. The only out-of-the-ordinary element was a fellow passenger who probably had a bit too many of those small plastic sachets with that cheap foul alcohol they sell here, and who kept talking in a loud voice non-stop the whole three hours until we got off (and probably continued afterwards). First we thought he was talking to someone, but after about 20 minutes we realised that the whole bus is intensively NOT looking at him, and thought we were quite lucky we didn’t understand a word of what he was saying.

Eventually we arrived to Kapiri Mposhi…

… and surprisingly enough, there actually was someone waiting for us – Joseph, with whom we had been in touch via the three text messages before. He rescued us from the crowd of shouting taxi drivers and locals (“muzungu, taxi”, “muzungu, you go where?”, “muzungu, you are beautiful”), took us for a coffee, and then organised a taxi to take us all directly to Kashitu village, passing first through the main nicely paved road, and then through fields, African bush and high grass.

The welcome we had in Kashitu overwhelmed us completely. We hadn’t even got out from the car when a group of local women came to us, dancing and singing, and each of them gave each of us a hug. As guests of honour we were then taken to the village office/community house/project building(?), introduced to a few other people, and listened to another amazing singing performance.

We were served tea, coffee and some bread – to recover our strength after such an exhausting journey – and Joseph and Bonniface, who seemed to lead the whole thing, suggested that they show us around the village, school and the surroundings before lunch.

Kashitu is probably a fairly typical Zambian village or community – which means it is very different from the concept of a village as we know it. At the first sight most of us wouldn’t even tell that there is any village at all, just uninhabited bush. But when you look closer, you discover houses hidden in the grass, spread over kilometres.

The first stop on our community-tour was the school: our guides showed us the slightly scary-looking old school building with Tim-Burton-like classroom…

… and afterwards the new school building. At that moment there were no classes going on, but a meeting of the parents-teachers association, which gave some of the local kids the opportunitiy to run around and observe the muzungus from a safe distance.

We went to see the (two) school classrooms, talked to one of the teachers, and then our guides beckoned us to enter a small dark store-room with an iron bars door. For a moment I hesitated, thinking how very nasty it would be to be closed there - but the dark cave turned out to be the office of the (deputy) headmaster (and a store-room at the same time).

We had a nice long chat with the deputy headmaster, about the school system, the challenges the school and the pupils face, why they drop out, why it’s difficult for many to continue their education, and what the community is trying to do about it, and took the photo of honour.

Our guides showed us the school surroundings where new houses for the teachers were being built, and the water pump which serves both the school and the nearby houses (by that time the kids were no longer observing us from a safe distance but ventured closer to demonstrate the use of the pump).

We checked out the (only) local shop…

… and admired some of the highlights of the local village architecture (mark the lions guarding the entrance of the house).

This community project in Kashitu is what I think a “community project” really should be about - the community trying to help itself.  Whereas most educated people leave (and left) the village as soon as they get the chance, there are a few of them, our guide Joseph among them, who decided to do the opposite – stay and try to improve things. While occasionally they get help from outside, most things are done by the community itself.

They work on the main areas that touch the village life – education (the local school only has classes until grade 9, and very few children are able to continue their education if the next school is over 30km away); nutrition (they organise counselling and courses on nutrition, as well as help with identification and treatment of malnutrition of children); agriculture (connected with nutrition); HIV/AIDS (a very frequent issue in Zambia, especially in villages connected with social stigmatisation); and water and hygiene.

When we finished the tour of the community and returned to the host building, we already had a lunch prepared on the table – a really delicious local meal consisting of pieces of chicken, cabbage and nshima (a compact flour “dumpling” very similar to Ugandan posho, ugali in Swahili).

And after lunch the official ceremony took place - we formally handed over the backpack with the books we had brought for the community. As it turned out, apart from books this Czech girl had also sent a laptop; my aunt and cousin had brought some coloured pencils and pens, and so to universal applause and more singing we gave everything out.


As any special occasion or celebration requires, a programme entailing dancing and singing was prepared for us for the afternoon. About 25 children from the community, some of them still in school uniforms, were ushered to sing for us, and I definitely recommend you to listen to them here:

With a mixture of fun, pride and embarrasment they performed some traditional dances, and after a while a few of the local women joined in with the children.

Once the performance was over, all the kids huddled around us – a muzungu is always an attraction – and a ritual of introduction took place. All five of us shook hands with every single child present, and with every one of them we had the following conversation (probably extensively practiced before): “Hello, how are you? – I’m fine, how are you? – I’m fine. What’s your name? – My name is XXX. And what is your name? – My name is XXX.”

An inevitable photo-shooting session followed, which was probably as much fun for us as for the kids around. Especially Míša (read Misha), the friend of my cousins, who is a photographer, has a photographic studio and specialises in taking pictures of children, made many new friends.

And we also discovered that my cousins Barča and Krista weren’t the only twins present!

After the bustle around the novelty of the muzungus calmed down a little, one of the community members invited us to sit down in a circle with the children, and converse about the Czech Republic and Zambia.

With the help of our translator, we told them about our food, our weather, about four seasons…

… we tried to explain the concept of winter, ice and snow – I had some pictures in the camera with countryside covered in snow, and I showed them around, though I’m not sure the white stuff covering the ground and the trees made much sense to them.

We concluded by saying that unlike in Zambia, we don’t sing that much and we definitely can’t dance as well as they can. Which was a mistake, because everyone immediately started insisting that we sing and dance. Barča and Krista (who unlike me have a certain musical ear) eventually agreed to sing a song, and encouraged by their relative success they got up to perform a bit of polka in the mode of our typical dance. Míša and I then followed with an attempt at Viennese waltz.

We earned widespread ovation, and we concluded the successful evening programme with a group photo.

With that we were left to enjoy some “free time” before dinner, and to prepare our sleeping arrangements (which wasn’t as straightforward as might seem at first: we were given probably the best room in the whole of the village, which however was equipped only with one double bed. And we were five.)

There seems to be this very stereotypical thing about Africa and sunsets - but it's true that that evening the sunset (which we admired from the vicinity of the local latrine) was magnificent.

The dinner which followed turned out to be a complete feast of local food, with five or six different dishes ranging from vegetables, meat, beans, eggs with some sort of a sauce, nshima and pasta, all so delicious that even though we weren’t really hungry, we ended up eating as if we hadn’t seen food for a week. I was tempted to ask for recipes, but I doubt I could reproduce any of the dishes in front of me. After an intense day, and in spite of the slightly crammed conditions, we slept really well.

And the next day all that was left was to say goodbye and thanks to our hosts, and head back to Lusaka. Since the weather was nice, instead of taking a taxi as we did when coming, we decided to walk the 3 km towards the main road, and then catch some transport to Kapiri Mposhi. This way we could see a bit more of the community and enjoy the beautiful day, and so with our guides Joseph and Bonniface we set off.

Obviously, not only we could enjoy the walk, but also everyone around could enjoy the sight of a group of muzungus walking around, a clear highlight of the month. To make the most of our presence, we were even called off-path to take a picture of men working on the railway tracks.

And so we followed the railway for a while…


… and then plunged back into the high grass with occasional scattered houses and crops.

We visited probably every house on our way, stopped for a chat, and shook hands with every single person above the age of four that we met.

After a good walk we reached the main road, and while waiting for some transport to pass by, we stocked up on some more fresh groundnuts and a bag of mangoes from the local women selling by the roadside.

We had to wait for a good while before a minibus in the right direction appeared (we ate nearly all the groundnuts in the meantime – this is what I meant by saying that not always you get to boil them), but eventually we arrived to Kapiri Mposhi…

… and after a while were already inside a bus heading back to Lusaka.

Our visit to Kashitu definitely wasn’t a trip you would find on a standard visitor’s itinerary to Zambia – and I think that’s a pity. While it’s good and interesting to see animals and the nature, or do the safaris, that only shows you one very small side of Africa. Meeting the people, talking to them, seeing the way they live is an experience altogether different – and I think it’s more fascinating than seeing a lion. It probably isn’t quite possible to do this kind of visit as part of the group mass-tourism – but that’s also one of the reasons I prefer more local and low-key travelling. Visiting Kashitu was exactly in the-unexpected-is-often-the-best category.