Around Monze

When in Monze I choose to walk. This allows me to take in everything around me and to meet the local people. I attend church at Our Lady of the Wayside which is about 1 ½ miles along the Livingstone Road.

Returning into town I sometimes use the railway line – in Zambia this is treated as a footpath!! The area around Monze is flat. When walking outside the town I can usually see the water tower and the mobile phone towers giving me confidence that I can find my way home.

I meet animals along the main road as well as the side dust roads. Donkeys, as well as oxen, are used to pull carts. This one shows a clear cross - sometimes claimed to be a sign that a donkey carried Jesus on its back.

One of my favourite places is a small lake a couple of miles to the west of Monze. I enjoy sitting and observing all the activity. There is a good range of birds – pied kingfishers which hover before diving for fish, african jacanas which dive in and out of the light scrub, there are wide-billed storks which look prehistoric, plenty of cattle egrets and the occasional snake eagle which can stop still and hold their position using the wind.

Cattle and goats come to drink, sometimes brought by local children.

Children often come to see what I am doing. They take my binoculars and hand them around, but they are always handed back when they have finished looking through them.

In recent years the lake has become virtually dry before the fresh rains arrive.

Looking through some of my many pictures from Zambia helps me recall events, that because of my aphantasia might not come to mind. There are many special memories.

It is quite difficult to know how to relate some of the stories. My friends in Zambia are generally very poor. There challenges are big and some are no longer with us.

The photo below shows me with John. This was in fact the first ever photo that my friend Diven took. (Diven wants to help me write his book – we have had a lot of adventures over the years!)

It was 2006 and I was doing some work at the hospital (At this time I had a work permit – another story!). I had collected a number of computers with issues! I think I sorted some of them!

John lived not far from the lake and wanted a well.

Chris

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