Nothing too exciting today. I spent my Saturday morning doing my favorite things – drinking coffee and reading – and one of my not so favorite things – laundry. We decided to go to the Lusaka National Museum downtown. We hopped on a minibus and began our little adventure downtown. Everything was going fine until we had to switch buses. The bus stopped at Ima Towers (I think that’s what it was called) – the main bus stop in the downtown area. The guy on the bus who handles the money told us to go find a bus going to the hospital and we’d be able to find the museum from there. Then, we had an uncomfortable three or four minutes of having no idea what to do. Whenever we’ve taken buses in the past, we’ve had handlers coming at us asking us where we wanted to go and then directing us to the correct bus. This time, we were facing fifty buses with absolutely no clue which one was going where and no one was stepping up to help us. We sucked it up and started asking around, and soon we found the right bus. We jammed ourselves into the back of a very stuffy, teeny tiny mini bus and took the thankfully short ride up to the museum. We crawled out of the bus, shouting, “Yes, I’m married!” to the interested men on the sidewalk and hurried off to the building. The museum wasn’t quite what I expected. For one thing, I’m sure we got ripped off on the price. The website says $2, but we paid 20,000 kwacha each, which is around $4. The man gave us a speech I really didn’t understand…he asked us if we were residents, and then asked if we had proof that we were visitors, like a drivers’ license from another country, then said it would cost us $5, then 22,000 kwacha, then he just landed on the 20,000 kwacha amount. Anyway, not a big deal, but it was a very confusing few minutes.
The museum had some art – some beautiful paintings and interesting sculptures. I don’t understand art at all and was interested more in the historical aspect, so we kind of zipped through that and went upstairs. Then we found the exhibit on witchcraft in Zambia. The history of it was very interesting to read about. There were a few displays of things that people use for divination and other things. What was strange to me was that everything was just sitting out in the open and all the descriptions of everything were just typed up onto a piece of paper and stapled on a board next to the items. Certainly a little different than what you’d see in an American museum.
One sobering exhibit was a bus with twelve or so people in it. Some of the people were made out of all white material (we couldn’t figure out what it was…duct tape? Plastic?) and a few were made out of red. They were in a bus and taped onto the bus was the explanation for it. Statistics show that one out of four people are infected with HIV/AIDS (that’s what the red people represented).
Our trip back was painless. We figured out the bus stop quicker this time and stopped at Manda Hill to get groceries and eat some dinner. On our way back home, the bus we were on was comically small. All 6 feet of me was jammed into the smallest back seat ever. My knee was stabbing the poor man in front of me through the seat. At one point I started cracking up because I was trying to get money out of my purse to pay for the bus and it was nearly impossible because my arms were so loaded down with groceries, plus I was wedged between Rachel and the window. Then, getting off the bus took some work, and just when I managed to unfold myself and stand up straight, my purse fell open and important items like my camera and phone fell onto the muddy asphalt. Some nearby taxi drivers jumped to help, though. One exclaimed, “I love helping ladies!” which made me laugh quite a bit.
After that, it was movie time, Bananagrams outside (I finally won!) and admiring the extremely bright moon.
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