Tag Archives: Zambia travel diary

Zambia Travel Diary – Last Day

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2015.09.22 02.02  There’s someone screaming on the plane. Not constantly, just every now and then, but imagine a man’s voice sounding like a baby that’s almost crying. Also the movie I just watched left me with a bit of a bad feeling. I know I shouldn’t be scared, and I don’t know if it’s offensive that I am, but I decided to take a short walk and must’ve walked past where he sat so he started screaming and clawing with his hands (he sat a few seats in by the windows though) and I jumped and almost ran a few steps. Now in my seat with my heart still hammering, but it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think I could have gone to sleep anyway and now at least I’m not stuck in some middle stage.

This made me think of what a good story idea it would be to have someone mentally ill try to take control over a plane, and then make it really disturbing (Not to judge this man in question, literally don’t know anything about him), but the story idea creeps me out even more.

09.09 We’re landing. I can’t decide how much I mind. But I do want to take a walk through the forest behind my house. Just a short one. Because that’s a part of me and my childhood, but not, never, part of the frustrating feeling I want to move away from home for. (Sidenote: The 2nd Law by Muse on low volume is a very suitable background for flying today)

16.32 It wasn’t as cold as I would’ve expected when we stepped off the plane. Sweater was quite enough even though I could feel the colder air on my face, clear and crisp. It’s definitely autumn, but the leaves are still green, the sun still brings warmth to your face and the sky was blue. It could almost be a spring day, one of those early ones when you make an attempt at walking barefoot but the stones are cold under your feet. Or an early morning at a summer scout camp, or taking a break from skiing and having your body warm and the sun reflecting on the snow to melt your icy face even though the air is cold. I love these things so very deeply.

I did take a walk when I got home, even though it had started to rain and drops slid down my face. I found some colourful leaves then, that showed me that maybe this is autumn, but I don’t mind, that’s what I had expected. I am, however, gonna take a warm, long bath now. (I realise right before getting into the bathtub that my hair still smells like Zambia)

21.52 I’ve never been very patriotic. I love and very strongly dislike my country in the way you do with things that are what you are, yet so very different and they don’t understand. I love the way the world looks now, with the possibility to be international and unbound by cultures and borders, belonging everywhere and belonging nowhere, and it was first recently that I realised that regardless of the rest of my life, I will always be Swedish. It’s too late, I’ve already spent too much time here. I still try to ignore it though, maybe because most of the time I don’t even feel it. It’s like what I wrote earlier, that I don’t feel like I’m coming home, I’m just going to a different country. Lies, lies, how could I believe that it wouldn’t affect me to see it from the sky, forests and small fields surrounded by tiny red houses, like toys my brother played with when he was younger. How could I believe I wouldn’t react to the smell of it, like I’m inhaling lakes and forests, or the way everything is green green when we drive from the airport under blue sky dotted with tiny clouds, the sun shining down on my from the side window and the air bright in my lungs.

I feel like this is the thing I will never remember, and always be taken back by. I can see it, the type of life I want, filled with travelling and differences, and the way I always forget until I’m welcomed home, like the way I was welcomed home today while walking through the forest, the rain drawing tears on my cheeks like a sacrifice, like a purification, like a reminder that you’re here and you’re tiny, these forests knew you before and will bloom for many afters.
It’s a weird thing to have, such a big home.

(And I’m happy now, curled up and warm under white sheets, with the misty and dark autumn night outside. It’s different, jumping into autumn like this, because I like time to long for things, like eating chocolate and savouring each tiny bit, but now I’ve mashed it into my mouth and life is big, grander, great and waiting for me outside the door.) Goodnight.

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Zambia Travel Diary – Day 7-8

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2015.09.12 20.04 We haven’t had electricity all day so we went out for lunch. I had some fruit salad thing with yoghurt and honey, because when your parents pay you might as well.IMG_2941

I’ve thought about sensitivity today. In the way you use the word when describing personalities. I pick up others’ feelings so easily, as if I constantly go around just waiting for something to exchange my own ones with. Or like I have no guard, just let it change me. I thought about it because I can get so annoyed with people who complain a lot and really radiate that they’re unhappy or irritated. And usually it’s not their fault, fault is such a flawed concept, it’s just that they don’t work like that and might just need to say what they think even though they might not feel it very strongly. And maybe it’s something I haven’t thought about because I take for granted that everyone is like me, and so it turns into the height of egoism, to constantly go around putting people down. And maybe part of why I dislike conflict so much, I can’t inflict pain without hurting.

Completely unrelated, but because the power’s off we’ve been introduced to our housemates; the cockroaches. It presents the perfect test of relationships, killing cockroaches. Something I would like to do with a possible future husband. When everyone’s a bit irritated with each other and someone feels something in their hair and you scream and don’t know who’s gonna koll it or who’s gonna have the few flashlights you own. I’m not even kidding. I’m curious. Would you kill the person with the spray that’s made for the insects? Then they probably weren’t made for you anyway. In all seriousness though, I’m gonna stop writing now, it feels like the light attracts the bugs.

2015.09.13 21.53 I really want to go to sleep, so I’m just gonna do a quick recap of the day in list form, since that feels faster.

  • This morning I actually remembered my glasses, and the outfit combined made me look like a pretentious hipster. My dad confirmed that by saying I looked like someone who could sit and read at a café in New York.
  • We spent 7 hours in the car, heading from Lusaka to Livingstone and the Victoria Falls. We bought sugar canes as a snack along the way. Also, when we stopped to eat sandwiches, someone jumped off their bike and just stood a few metres from us, watching us eat. We’re like exotic animals.
  • The hotel we stay at is amazing, I like it here. But when pulling my shirt up to see what was itching I realised that I have red rashes all over my upper body. I’ve been feeling weird the whole day, so I think it’s just heat rashes because my body hates me and is always either too warm or too cold, but I’ll have to look it up when I get home and see if there’s something I can do about it. (Edit: I haven’t)
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Driving through Zambia

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Buying sugar canes

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Zambia Travel Diary – Day 6 – The Wedding

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(2015.09.10 23.16 Night before the wedding. I’m slightly nervous, or maybe more worried, just hoping everything will be okay, that nothing will ruin their day and that I won’t make a fool out of myself. I’m sort of tense, waiting, anticipating, so I don’t even know what to write about that. But I just put the alarm, and glanced at the clock in different time zones. It’s different when travelling, when the earth itself has shown differences beneath my feet. It’s morning in Tokyo. 6.23. In my head I can see the sun rise, sweeping the map from one side to the other. I’m not at home, I’m in the world now, a dot on the map, so I suppose I should sleep before it gets me.

(I bought a new book today at a shopping centre, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou which I’ve wanted to read forever. It also changes the way I write, maybe to much, when I’ve just read something in a specific style. And maybe specifically when I write in english since it’s not my mother tongue. I really should sleep.))

2015.09.11 (technically 2015.09.12) 00.18 I wanted to think something as I sat on the stage at a (sort of) traditional african wedding reception in Zambia. It would be a lie to say I came up with something eloquent. Quick words to capture the motions and lights. Colour and clothes comprised. But I knew I wanted to shape something out of the word ‘different’, this weird adjective that has captured this journey in general and is meaningless and everything. Different just means different. Everything is. It’s a comparison.

I was a bridesmaid. They picked me up at 7.30 to go do our hair. I wrote a note on my phone while there:

10.58. The wedding is in one hour. We’re in some random saloon where they seem really surprised by styling a white girls hair. But they’re good. It’s not the same ‘every corner needs to be clean’ feel as in Sweden, which is quite nice actually. I wonder if we’ll make it in time though. Not as much for my own sake as for the others.

This was back when I was still tense, when nothing had happened yet and everything was to come. A to do list of nerve-wracking (that I blame my bad writing on) that made it difficult to wait.

Everything ran smoothly. We were late to the church, obviously, and for everything else, but everyone always is and that way the time-culture here that doesn’t work still kind of does.
Then came the party. We were the intro, walking in dancing and then quick out to change for the main dance. After which we were going to improvise. Together with one of the guys you had to stand in the spotlights on the dance floor and shake your body. I just did my best and hoped it lived up to the small expectations of a white girl. It was quite fun, not gonna lie. And then the guy leading the whole thing spoke some more.

As a bridesmaid I sat on s small stage at a table next to the wedded couple. When they introduced all of us though, the guy leading it had to say that I obviously couldn’t return from Zambia without a man. He proposed. I said no. He told me he would ask me something in another language and I should say yes. I said no. Hopefully in a way that made it fun.

It was really good though. I would consider the other bridesmaids my friends now, and so many people were very kind and perfectly polite. A lot of them aimed their eyes at my face and not my words. But some looked at my face and stayed at that and maybe we all just hate being looked at. As if people don’t even try to look for a soul.

But at the end of the day, the bride and groom were beautiful. I love living outside my comfort zone (even it it makes me irritated at the people in it when I come back) and I think that I learnt. And I should write more but I’m in bed and the power’s out so I need to turn off the flashlight, because my eyes are (repeatedly) falling shut while trying to come up with something good to end this with.

(On my wedding I want flowers wrapped around my tiara and a lot of sun and blankets and friends playing me songs and reading me poems)

Zambia Travel Diary – Day 5

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2015.09.07 11.36 It’s easier for me to feel alone here because I don’t understand. It’s foolish, maybe, of me to look at people and think I know them through my first judgemental presumptions. But I do. And usually they’re close to me. Most people I see, I see a lot, and I like to imagine I solve them like puzzles even though maybe I don’t. Here I can’t even pretend. I look at people and my mind doesn’t trick me into believing I know what’s inside their heads when they look at me. I know that we’re similar all over the world, humans with sparkling nerve-endings and weird theories, but cultures still manage to change us until we don’t recognise each other. Myself as much as anyone else. I wish I could be here long enough to learn how they think, and that we could look the same and erase any visible distance.

12.00 My book is so good. The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman. Like daang, it might be one of the best ones I’ve ever read.

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22.16 The streets are different here. If you were to drive to the sister of the woman my uncle’s marrying, it’s a right left right left, and you pass by kids walking around in school uniforms, people selling fruits and marble columns. And I found a nice book store today, in one of the slightly fancy shopping malls. Self help book after self help book and tons about business and career, but they had some fiction too (That’s what you need, learn to see from that, learn to see from that).

(2015.09.08 00.04 I just finished my book, The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman. I think it’s one of my favourites. It’s small in a way, not high and mighty, bigger on the inside. Not bound by logic in a way that’s inspiring, and magic seeping through every letter into my heart.)

Zambia travel diary – Day 4

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(2015.09.05 I’ve got the world’s greatest grandma. She says she doesn’t care what colour her hair is so when I added some pink to mine she said I could add some to hers too. I put it at the back of her neck, because she suggested a pink fringe but I think it would’ve made mum a bit mad.

(Okay, so apparently that’s all I wrote that day))

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My grandmother. This picture doesn’t look like her. Not like her personality, the way good photos sometimes do, but it looks like someone so I like it anyways.

2015.09.06 I’ve lost count of the days. Or the energy to count them. Maybe that says more. I’m in that moment of wanting to express everything, because what even is my life, at the same time as I’m living a lot, thank you very much, so I’m not sure as to when I should find time for that expression.

Today I went to a kitchen party. It was different. Try to imagine the most stereotypical traditional african party, but then mixed with I don’t even know. It’s one of the ceremonies leading up to the wedding and the woman getting married is brought in covered with a chitenge (piece of fabric in bright patterns that they make clothes of or just use as it is around the waist) and then there was something about the groom being led in to uncover her and give her gifts, but they did it in a bit of a strange order. No one knew exactly what was happening except for the older woman who led everything and walked ahead of us while dancing (shaking her booty). Everyone simply did what she said while everyone cheered and they played loud music on the drums and sang. We laughed a lot.

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Where I sleep and/or hide from insects

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Lizard next to the shower, they’re everywhere but since they don’t crawl into beds or suitcases they’re my homies anyway.

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Ego pic before the kitchen party

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Warm nights (but wrapped in a chitenge anyways). Night!

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Zambia Travel diary – day 2

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2015.09.03  10.55 (Technically, even though my understanding of time is a blurry mess by this point. We ate lunch at 1 am). Kenya airspace. This journey has been a journey. Because I love travelling, I really do, but there is a point where your body feels so weird from lack of sleep mixed with not being able to go anywhere that makes me itch. I shouldn’t complain though. We just flew by Kilimanjaro, life’s pretty good. A weird thing I’ve thought about though: It feels like I’m not leaving anything at home. Some things that would be a bit heavy of course, my books and creative stuff, but everything I use on a daily basis I’ve brought with me. Apart from my bed (which I’m regretting). But I could live like this. I could. From a bag with my favourite clothes. Laptop and camera and notebook. I could.

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Streets of Lusaka

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20.05. Lusaka. It feels like it’s the middle of the night. I’m sorry for my ungratefulness. For being spoiled. For intending to make all this about me. It’s difficult to be so far away from your comfort zone, but I know that I need it. Let me grow from it. I thank God for showing me people beyond the ones who think just like me.

Zambia Travel Diary – Day 1

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Arlanda airport, Stockholm, right before we left

2015.09.02  22.32 Vienna. It’s raining outside. Sky black, bright lights. Lamps are blinkin all the time, greens and reds, guiding the airplanes home. We’re not staying here, not really, we only stopped by to refuel (I think) and in half an hour we’ll be on our way again. Next stop is Addis Abeba in Ethiopia. We won’t have time to leave the airport which is a pity because apparently (according to my friend) that’s the only way you’re allowed to add a place to the list of countries you’ve been to. Anyway. Not the point really.

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Then we’ll continue to Zambia where we’ll land some time or whenever, I don’t really know, probably should have checked that. But it’s been a good flight so far. Good food. You get blankets. I don’t think you’re allowed to keep them but I might anyway. Will keep you updated. (As I write this I know that I didn’t steal the blanket. Did on the way home though.)

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Packing packing packing before we left

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Watched the latest Avengers, it was okay, will probably like it better with good picture and sound quality

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Airplane food isn’t actually that bad I think, at least not after having eaten in school for 13 years. I think it’s good even, maybe even more because I’m usually quite hungry on planes, for whatever reason.

Gonna try to sleep, so bye, will write more when I get there!

Zambia Travel Diary – Intro

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2015.09.22 I’m writing this on an airplane that has just entered Swedish airspace on my way home from Zambia, Africa, where I’ve spent the past three weeks without any internet or TV. What does one do  on those evenings in a land where the sun consistently sets between 18-19 and you can’t walk out by yourself in the darkness? Not a question my generation is great at answering (though still can answer better than many people freakin’ think). So I read a lot and as a natural consequence wrote a lot and it turned into some sort of travel diary, and during the next month or so I’ll be publishing it here, every now and then. You’ll be able to find it under the tag Zambia travel diary (if you were to lose it) and I really hope you enjoy!

Sneak peek:

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