The Holiday

It's been a little while since I last updated my blog and I will try to give a short account of the happenings during the past weeks, starting with my easter holiday abroad.

We decided to explore the region, in which we are, during our days off, and our main destination was Livingstone, Zambia, where I months earlier had been teaching at Linda West Basic School. The trip, however, did not go exactly as planned, and some days in advance we discovered that our plane, which was scadualed to leave on Wednesday, was cancelled. As this is the short version I will only mention that our uncertainty lasted untill we reached the airport that Wednesday, and after six hours waiting , we were put on a plane to Joh'burg in South-Africa. We spend the night at a luxurious hotell, paid by Air Malawi, as our meals also were. - And I must say that Joh'burg has got the most delicious Ostrich fillet;) Anyway, it worked out quite well for us.

We arrived in Livingstone the following day, and it felt good to be back again. During our stay we were able to meet the "Namibian Girls" (which is actually 3 Norwegian girls staying in Namibia on the same program as us), and of course my friends from Linda West. I took my travel companions to see the school and to meet my former students, energic as ever and still singing "Per Spelman", the Norwegian song I thought them. I was glad to learn that several of my students had improved their reading skills since last time I saw them, and they were eager to read for me.

We also enjoyed other activities, as hard-working students should on their holiday, such as canoe trips on the Zambezi, Sunset cruise, relaxing by the pool and eating the most fabulous choclate mousse at Chanter's (really, it is worth the trip!). And, of course, we watched the spectacular Victoria Falls, which I could hardly believe was the same as the one I saw last October. Mosi O' Tunia is the local name on the falls, meaning the "smoke that thunders", and it really did! You are able to see the cload of water from miles and miles away, and we got soaking wet despite our rain coats. But fortunately we dried quickly when sitting down having our lunch in the warm Zambian sun.

One of the days three of us went to Zimbabwe for a horse back safari and a lion encounter. The day started with a morning ride of four hours in the national park, for my part on a black stallion called Storm, whom not at all lived up to his name. He was meak as a lamb, but had the disturbing habit of running through every mud hole that was in front of him. During those hours we managed to see several animals, among them an elephant (only a tree separating us from the big and grey fellow), and getting a sore bum and aching feet. But it was worth it. After that we spend some hours in Victoria Falls Town, which is entierly a tourist made city, looking at prices reaching up to several billions because of the major inflation. In the afternoon we got picked up for the lion walk, which is exactly what it sounds like: walking with lions into the bush! The number of lions in Africa has sunken drastically the last decades, and this was a program to secure the animals existance. Cubs are bred in captivity and gradually accustumized to their natural habitat, where they eventually are set free and have cubs on their own. So we took them for a walk, and the lions displayed just how lazy a big cat can be and laid down in the shade of a bush as soon as they had the oportunity. But at least we got to pet a lion, which is not quite like peting my own cat (thinking of the size and the possibility of getting an unwanted close encounter with a much larger claw), but it'll do:)

On Wednesday the 26th we went back home to Zomba, and what happend there is another story...