We had a day or two to spare so we took a trip to a local village to experience village life. It's not really an organised trip, you just turn up and ask for the head woman, She charges you a tenner and makes arrangements for someone in the village to put you up and give you a tour of the village. They don't put on a show for toursists so you see village life as it is, or at least it's as close to normal as it can be with us paying to be there. Best of all, they haven't learned to hard sell you carved things you don't want, they didn't try to sell us anything actually.
The tour began around the village school. We met the deputy head (who is also the girl guide commissioner for the area) who told us about the pupils - 320 in total from the ages of 7 to 16. It follows the same principals as the english school system with the pupils divided in to grades based on their age. Unfortunately, the kids were also on their school holidays so we didn't get to see them in the school but we got a pretty good impression of how it all works - they wear a uniform, there are school prefects, clubs and associations. The school is very much dependant on outside funding to buy books, provide food to the pupils etc but they make the most of what they have.
After the school tour we visited the rest of the village. As it was a sunday there were lots of people at one of the 7 churches (each a different kind of church). It was nice to hear the singing. Also, as it was a Sunday the rest of the village was fairly chilled with people sat around in their family groups talking and passing the day.
All going well. Until lunch time. The night before i'd had a very bad belly and could only just cope with the idea of eating very plain food. Thought it would be ok as all Zambians eat is Nshima which is as plain as it gets really. However, for lunch with our Nshima they gave us a dish full of around 60 tiny fried fish in sauce. We'd been to a local market a few days back and seen these things piled up in their thousands on market stalls, covered in flies and stinking. Made my weak western senses contract at the time. So, to be presented with a bowl of them after a night of running back and forwards to the loo nearly made me cry! Still, chin up, rolled up my nshima and made a good show of putting it in the sauce, pushing it around and avoiding the thousands of littlle eyes looking back at me from my plate. At one point though, our guide saw that I had one of the evil beggers on my nshima and as pushing it off may have caused offence i had to chow down on it: gip gip gip. Thankfully it just tasted of salt and not much else. Phil, though, did us proud and happily chomped away.
The rest of the day consisted of wandering around the village, meeting the locals, seeing how the women collected the water from a local well and carried it back on their heads, seeing the children play and the kids play football. We also met the Head man from a neighbouring village. Both he and his wife and friend were fairly schozzled on locally made alcohol (read phil's description in rate the local liquor on the left). They were very friendly and welcoming (in the way that only happy friendly drunks can be) and at one point i thought they were going to ask me if they could adopt phil they took to him so well.
We had our evening meal which was nshima with veggies and actually pretty tasty this time. The guide taught Phil how to make Nshima. He did a good job of it although making it seemed strenuous rather than tricky! Then one of the villagers told us some very odd stories and quizzes before bed time. We were staying in one of the local huts - made of mud and a straw roof. There is no electricity so made our way with candle light. Meant the stars were amazing. Could see the milky way so clearly. I spent the night hidden in our mosquito net watching all the massive spiders (and they were massive despite what phil may say) and other bugs crawl around the walls whilst Phil snoozed away. Thankfully, my belly had righted itself and i didn't need to spend the night running to the hole in the floor behind the village!
So, visiting the village was in all a top experience. Until then, we'd seen Livingstone but given it's tourism its not representative of Zambian life. Seeing the village life was much more 'real'. Subsistence living is definately tough, but people there are very chilled and family orientated. There was lots of music, chatting and laughter. The people were friendly and curious and we were made to feel very welcome. Would be interested to see if and how it has developed in 10 years time.
To finish off a good day we saw two elephants at the side of the road as we left. Made me smile much.
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