-Well, Monday I met with the District Commissioner who said he would talk to the District Education Head. I then talked to my Forestry counterpart about finding a ride to Chipata or maybe directly to Lusaka for a dental follow up and then for In Service Training and he said he’d get back to me about a ride tomorrow.
-Tuesday I packed up and debated bringing a load of my stuff to the BOMA that day so as to lighten the load on Wednesday but finally decided I wouldn’t do a trip that day. I studied a little chinyanja and read a little, then went to the dimba (garden) and watered everything really good.
-Wednesday I got up at 400 hours and had a slow ride with all my luggage to hopefully find a ride as I hadn’t heard back from the Forestry officer as a result of insufficient cell service at my site. I just missed one government vehicle that was going past me as I rode in. No one in the forestry or education commissions knew of any vehicles headed for Chipata that hadn’t left already so I started walking towards the market to see whether I could find anyone there. As I was halfway there, I saw a SUV coming my way and I flagged it down. It just happened to be going where I wanted to go so I had a ride, although it was going to be a little bit before they left. They were with the health department and were just in the district to do checkups. I got to Chipata around 1200 I think and they let me off at the bank because I was down to k100,000 and the bus plus taxi was going to cost more then that. Then I worked on a web photo album with the hopes that I would be able to upload it in Lusaka if the Wi-Fi system had been seat up yet. Then I went to the market to stock up on vegetables because they are way more expensive for the most part in Lusaka and then went to bed because it would be another early rise tomorrow.
-Thursday I got on the bus to Lusaka for k30,000 more then last time as a result of petrol prices going way up. Then I sat on the bus for till almost 1600 hours. When I finally got off for good, I got waived by a taxi (instead of waiving too one) and he took me first to the place I bought my battery and a florescent light as the bulb for the light had gotten broken. He then took me to Shopright where I stocked up on granola, and then finally to the guest host were I was to spend the night.
-Friday (today) I walked to the PC Zambia headquarters around 700 hours and found that there was, in fact still not Wi-Fi. I met with the doctor who said I had an appointment with the dentist at 1000. I then met with the General Services Office (GSO) about what the next step should be on finding a tree wheeled cargo cycle, then at 1000 went o the dentist who basically said that it was still the same problem as the last diagnosis had been and suggested that I get Senseodine toothpaste that has something in it that is supposed to help sensitive gums. Then I met with my APCD who said that next week during IST we would do some more looking into companies that could make the cycle I’m looking for. I then had a lunch in the cafeteria there of lepu and kapenta. After that good lunch, I went to try to find someone who had been helping me finally file clams on the insurance I had on my camera that died. While I waited for here, I tried to download podcasts on the PC computers but it was annoying because the mp3’s I was trying to download would open using Windows media player instead of downloading. I finally met with the person who knew about the insurance company and we filled out everything with her writing something that would hopefully substitute a police, airline or embassy report. I then went back to my trying to download podcasts and successfully got the computer to not auto play using windows media so I could download two podcasts instead of one at a time.
I now am going to go back to the motel and sleep as I am very tired for some reason.