July 4th (Wednesday)

We went up to Kairba today with plans to speak to Mr. Katota about needing to go to Zambezi to renew our visas as they are set to expire on Friday. We went first to Mr. Katota’s office but found that he wasn’t there yet. So we went to Kariba to do ward rounds for awhile before returning to his office at Old Hospital. We heard that JR, Dr. Ros, and Alison’s friend from Northern Ireland (Janice) were coming on the plane scheduled to arrive at 11:30am. Which that is nice as others are leaving and Dr. Lipsi, Alison, and Kate need some back-up. Dr. Mwansa and the 3 men who visited from Canada left on the plane that would bring the aforementioned people on the return flight. We managed to speak with Mr. Katota and he was indeed going to Zambezi today so he said that he would call to make sure there was someone at the immigration office but that likely we would have to go with our passports. So Dr. Lipsi heard we were going and he gave us his passport for us to try and get his visa renewed as well.

So, after tea break I got a sample they wanted to send to the lab at the Zambezi hospital, Nicole went to change out of her scrubs and into a skirt, and Fiona broke the news to Dorothy that she couldn’t help with praziquantel administration today and Dorothy took it surprisingly well. Fiona also went and talked with Ruth and was able to get some kwacha from her so that we could have some money with us that we could actually use. We all loaded up in the truck and were on our way to Zambezi. The road from Chit to the tarmac is at times rough but we actually caught up to a convoy of vehicles from South Africa returning home as they had been in the Chitokoloki area to attend a Catholic conference. They had left not too much before us but we were able to catch up quite easily and then Mr. Katota passed them. Their license plates were interesting, 2 of them were throne_4 and throne_2 and the other was just random. We were fairly quiet, just watching the beauty of our African surroundings with the occasional question from Mr. Katota to us or vice-versa.

We arrived in Zambezi roughly and hour and a half after we headed out. The person at the immigration office knew Mr. Katota so I think that helped the smoothness of the process. She never asked any questions about what we were doing. She just wanted to know when we were planning to leave to return home. Fiona then asked me for Mr. Lipsi’s passport. Then she asked the immigration officer if she could renew another visitor’s visa from Chitokoloki. She gladly did that, so that was nice. After we were done Mr. Katota asked us if she treated us well and we assured him she did, and he said, “good, or I would get after her if she didn’t.” Then Mr. Katota got some diesel (roughly $1.20/L, similar to back home). He filled up a few jerry cans and stopped again at the plaza that the immigration office was located in to pick up the mail for Chitokoloki.

Then we went to the hospital where we talked to a few people there and then Mr. Katota took the sample to the lab. The hospital looked a lot rougher than Chitokoloki’s hospital… but I would say it was probably larger in size. We then went to the market where Mr. Katota said he had to do some shopping for awhile so we could get out and look around or shop if we wanted. So that’s what we did.

I was looking for a Zambian jersey, but no luck there. We ended up buying food (not the healthiest of food either but we needed to get something for lunch and there wasn’t a lot of healthy options). We bought vanilla cream biscuits and lemon biscuits (cookies), Fiona got gingerbeer, Nicole and I got cokes, and then we got this long doughnut-like bread thing that had this creamy, buttery, sugar mixture stuffed in the middle to share. We liked it so much that we decided we wanted 6 more, hahaha! They were only 2 kwacha each and we also got 3 dinner buns as well. We ate in the truck and then shortly after Mr. Katota returned and we were headed back to Chit.

Overall, it felt shorter on the return trip. But since I was quite full and then the last half of the trip was typical bumpy African roads it wasn’t surprising when we got back that my stomach was feeling uneasy. Mr. Katota stopped at his house and we saw a cute little puppy and decided to get out as he was close to the market at Chitokoloki. We wanted to get granadilla concentrate as we were obsessed with it since the night we had it at Alison’s.

It was about 3:30pm so we thought perhaps Dr. Lipsi would be done at the hospital so Fiona and I walked to the McAdam’s house (where he is staying) while Nicole went on to our house. We knocked on the door but he wasn’t back so we decided we would just bring his passport the next morning to the hospital.

When we got back to the house I was really feeling like my stomach was rolling so I laid down and then decided I needed to take some gravol and have a bit of a rest. So, I was lying on the couch and the girls had supper. Then I had a shower after my rest and felt much better. I had my supper afterwards and it stayed down. As we were reading in the living room that night we heard a four wheeler and a knock on our door. Nicole went to get it and it was JR, we hadn’t seen her in about a week but she came by as Fiona’s friends from Chingola were trying to connect with her but couldn’t so they contacted JR. Fiona called them on JR’s phone and they were discussing options of how she could go visit them. They couldn’t come up with a plan that was feasible so Fiona decided to ask around to see if anyone was planning to go at least as far as Solwezi. After that we then headed to bed.//

PS The man who was casting us out the other day -we call him “the happy man” because he brightened when we came to see him in the morning while doing rounds. He exclaimed “I MISSED YOU!” Alison thought he must still be on ketamine, hahaha!