Are we there yet?? - First impressions

Africa is a big continent. We flew overnight for 10 ½ hours, leaving Paris at 7 pm, arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa, the following morning at 6:30 am. During this time we flew back across France, crossed the Mediterranean Sea, flew over the expanses of North Africa and the Sahara Desert, then toward the equator and the countries of equatorial Africa where we passed into summer, continuing further south across central Africa and then down nearly to the tip of southern Africa. I am used to flying overnight in the East-West direction, crossing multiple time zones in the process. This time it was a multi-hour overnight flight North-South, crossing dozens of countries, but only moving one time zone –- South Africa and Zambia are only 1 hour later than Paris. We then got another flight, going 2 hours back north, to Lusaka, Zambia.

By “we”, I am referring to the four of us that traveled together from France. We presented four different passports at border crossings: a colorful collection from Switzerland, Benin, Tahiti, and the USA. Although we lacked an Asian in the group, we were in some aspects the face of modern worldwide Christianity. The people with whom I traveled are the President, General Secretary, and an Executive Secretary of the Cevaa mission organization.

We also moved from winter to the southern summer. When we landed at 6:30 am, the sun was already high in the sky and the temperature was very agreeable. All the capitals of southeast Africa are located at high altitudes. Johannesburg, for example, is on a plateau at 5,750 feet and Lusaka at 3200 feet. This gives very moderate summer temperatures.

Johannesburg was rather dry, but Lusaka is in the summer rain zone. The plane had just taxied to a stop when a heavy rain fell for about 5 mn. The people here say the rain usually starts in December and this year it didn’t start until January, so they are glad for the rain. It doesn’t rain all the time, often there are short, heavy showers, but the most useful object I brought with me is my umbrella. The rain falls quite steadily in the morning, followed by occasional showers mixed with sunshine during the afternoon. What surprises someone from the northern hemisphere is that the rain is WARM, so it doesn’t matter as much if it falls on you or not. The main inconvenience is that whatever is not paved quickly turns to mud. There were few sidewalks in much of Lusaka, so the side paths were now paths of red mud. There are parts of the country that are totally inaccessible during the rainy season because any side road that is not hardened quickly turns to deep mud. All this makes it surprising that the church conference Centre where we are meeting is so impeccably clean! Young women in attractive blue uniforms are continually wielding mops to clean off terraces, entryways, and floors. The cleanliness is impressive.

After landing at Lusaka International Airport and paying for our entry visas (“in US dollars, please”), we met up with other members of the group that had arrived earlier and were all treated to a meal at an Indian restaurant. That was the first indication of Africa’s multiculturalism. As the bus made its way through the streets of the capital, I saw signs that a street renovation project was sponsored by the Japanese. Further on, all the signs around a construction area were in Chinese, with a placard indicating that this project was sponsored by Taiwan. (More later on the Africans’ feelings about the Chinese)

One of the first surprises was that Zambia uses the British system of driving – vehicles drive on the left side of the road – another reason to be glad I don’t have to drive myself anywhere.

This part of Zambia may be at a relatively high elevation, but it is not mountainous. On the 2 ½ hour bus ride from Lusaka to Kabwe, we crossed a flat plain dotted with grass and trees, some densely packed, others quite scattered. In just a couple of places we drove past big fields of maize or soybeans. I didn’t see any animals of any kind anywhere along the route, not even a dog.

The road was nearly perfectly straight. Several times we went over a series of 5 speed bumps to slow down traffic, and we drove by 3 police checkpoints where we were waved through. When I asked, the lady beside me said these were used to find drivers that were on the road without a drivers’ license and to verify other legal papers.

The thing that impressed me about the road were the number of people that were walking along it, everywhere, not just in the cities. There were groups of schoolchildren in their uniforms, groups of young men, some families, women with children… But, for the whole 2-hour ride, it was only in the most isolated places where there were not people walking on the apron alongside the road. For the most part, the homes along the road consisted of a one-room square made out of cement blocks with a corrugated tin roof. In a few places, I also saw groups of round, stucco-like huts with thatched roofs. An alignment of numerous one-room square buildings would appear from time to time with colorful signs painted on the fronts – the shopping center! Otherwise, we went through no “towns” as such for the 100 km (60 mi) drive.

We had wondered ahead of time if we would have Internet access at the Centre. As it turns out, we are fortunate when the electricity stays on. The bus arrived at the Centre around 6:30 pm on Monday Feb. 1, as night was falling. The person in charge then started a generator so they would have lights allowing us to check into our rooms and eat supper. I got up in the middle of the night and found the lights were off again. The generator must have been turned off. The electricity came back on, without the generator, around 7 am. For the first few days, there was some period every day, usually during the morning, when we were without electricity. The Zambian bishop explained to me that these blackouts are voluntary. There is not enough energy and infrastructure to provide electricity to the whole country at the same time, so there are regular rolling blackouts. And I was thinking there might be Internet! Everyone communicates via cell phone. Land lines are hard to install so everyone jumped directly to cell phones, which seem to work well.

The conference center we are staying in - Diakonia - can handle quite a few people. Housing is in a series of “flats” consisting of a living room, bathroom and two or three bedrooms. Each bedroom has 2 single beds. There are 12 flats in all, in addition to housing for the personnel. The dining room has tables set up for 48. All of this is found in one large U-shaped unit that is quite spread out. The conference room is in the center of the “U”. A team of young women clean all of our apartments every day, as well as the meeting room, reception, offices and other buildings. There are two young men that work in the reception office and several people for cooking and serving the meals. It is clear that this Center offers employment to young people from the town.