mobile malaria project

Day 23: Lusaka to Ndola

by
published on
Sunday 14 April 2019 | Distance travelled: 321km (2526 km total)

We woke after a very relaxing night at Pioneer. Today's mission was to get the car all packed up again and drive up to Ndola in the Copperbelt region. We are planning to work up there for a few days early next week, so we thought we'd drive up today to make sure that we can hit the ground running.

We dropped off Jason at NMEC to pack up the lab equipment that had been running over the last couple of days and Isaac and i went to find a table to take with us up north. We ended up at a Builders Warehouse - a sort of B&Q - in a mall that we'd visited on a more or less daily basis. Zambia is covered by these malls, which are both popular and lifeless. They certainly don't feel very African, although the supermarkets and shops within them have African fare.

We found a table and stool for Jason to work on and I spent a good hour trying to work out the perfect positioning for it on the roof. The new equipment strapped down, i got to work securing the other bags to the roof, whilst Jason and Isaac finished with packing up the lab equipment.

 

We waited for Jacob Chirma to join us. He's a Ministry of Health official who's been tasked with looking after us in the Copperbelt and whom we were going to give a lift up to Ndola. He's a really nice guy and our conversations over the preceding few days had left me feeling confident that our work would have longevity past our trip. It was 5 hours or so of driving to get to Ndola, but once we were here, just as it was turning dark, we all took our bags to our rooms and headed out for some food.

Sundays are, strangely, my least favourite day of the week. It's the day that I feel most homesick as all around me people are happily spending time with their families, and it's when I feel most guilty about not being with mine. It's fascinating that Sundays have the same feeling here as they do at home. The weekend is defintely the time to hang out with one's family and it's when I miss them the most.