Adventure City

Lusaka never ceases to surprise me with all the western style things it has to offer. I mean really, what’s a good city without a water park? Adventure City is just that. Hidden away in the hills on the outskirts of town, it’s a lush oasis of sorts, winding paths between shady trees and thatched roofed shelters, and of course, swimming pools and water slides. These are not just any pools though, they are big, uneven shaped, lazy river type pools with waterfalls in the middle. The highlight is the two water slides. One of the curvy sort and the other of the straight, fast drop sort. They both descend from the same platform, into the same whirling pool. Unlike water parks at home, which hire bored high school kids to carefully regulate how many people climb up the stairs to the top of the slide and when each person can head on down, there is nobody watching. Children would push their way past me, running up the stairs. They’d go down two, three at a time, practically crashing into each other at times. Feet first, head first, backwards. Cheers would go up for some particularly daring leap down the slide. It was, interesting. But definitely loads of fun. I can’t remember the last time I darted down a water slide. I never imagined it would be here.

It got me thinking about what socioeconomic class somebody from Lusaka would have to be in to attend a place like that. With a K20,000 entry fee (about $6), it’s no Six Flags or Disney World, but for the cleaning lady at the clinic who told me she makes K260,000 per month for her and six children, a day at Adventure City seems very much out of reach.