May 29th

So today marked my first solo trip from the capital Lusaka to Solwezi; a total of 600 km. I completed the trip in 6 cars/ trucks in only 7 hours. I figure this was a vast improvement from the 12 hours it took Ellen and I to go the same distance last time. I road in a car with a Chinese man who spoke no English, but seemed to really like fish since he kept stopping on the side the road to buy them from different vendors. I think in the hour I spent with him he bought a total of 12 fish; the freshness of the fish I feel is questionable because there was no water nearby.  I also got a hitch from a South African trucker.  Much to my surprise he was not racist; the first and only South African I have met who did not care either way if a white women was to marry a black man.  On the risk of making a gross stereotype I thought that just about all white South Africans were racist, but happily I was proven wrong. As the gentleman so eloquently put it “there is way to much shit in this world to give a damn about who is marrying who, let’s try solving something that actually matters for a change.”

We are fast approaching burn season in Zambia. This is the ever so fun season where the whole nation is set on fire.  It is tradition to burn all the elephant grass that lines the road ways and fields. There are so many fires that the air becomes heavy with smoke and ash; an asthmatics death trap. Walking down the road with a wall of fire on either side of you can almost send you running to a church to avoid an eternity of fire and brimstone. It can also make you walk a lot faster.  The reasoning behind this fiery inferno is unclear. Some say they burn it to catch the field mice, some say to reduce the amount of snakes, others say they do it because their parents did and they are just too lazy to cut it down.  Ill I know is that they are slowing poisoning the soil; leaching toxins into the ground and making the overall landscape ugly.