Canoe Race in Siavonga

I know you’ve all been waiting eagerly over the weekend to hear how it went.

The race consisted of 15 clues, stopping points along the way from the starting point on an empty beach several kilometers down the lake shore to the finish line at our lodge, Eagle’s Rest. Each stop was worth a different amount of points. Rowing a figure 8 around 2 large rocks in the water known as “the pimples” was worth more points than running to the bar at Lake Kariba Inns with a large fish tank. Sometimes we had to figure out clues and aquire things, like buying a smoked fish, or picking up a stone off an island. At the end, they put together our finish times and the cumulative number of points to declare the winner.

The press boats followed us the whole way. That’s right, representatives from ZNBC, Radio Phoenix and various newspapers were there the whole way to watch and record the whole thing. I’m famous now in Zambia. People are stopping me in the streets saying, “You’re that chick from the canoe race!”

Okay, not really. But it is going to be broadcast on TV tomorrow morning and again on Friday evening.

The winning team was a team of three locals who have essentially been rowing for their entire lives. They crushed everyone and won by 20 minutes or so. But coming up into second were my two supervisors, Steph and Jennie, who rowed amazingly well and solidly beat the Fogarty intern Jen and her husband Ben, who we affectionately refer to as “The Bionic Couple.” (In any given conversation with them, you might hear something like, “Dude, that time I did the 24 hour triathlon on Palau, I was totally stoked!”)

Well, I didn’t come in 1^st or 2^nd or even 3^rd, but 13 isn’t bad considering we capsized about 2/3 of the way through the race and lost our clue sheet and the smoked fish. At least we didn’t come in last. Perhaps it was appropriate that we were team “Capital Fisheries.” It seems that we were embracing the spirit of the water. Although from looking at the jazzy shirts they gave our team (see picture), they might have thought we were going to a golf tournament instead.

Other than the race, there was plenty of time for rest and relaxation. Siavonga does not have the advantage of elevation like Lusaka does. It was HOT. The bright sun and intense heat had us all awake by 6 am each day. I think I spent more time in the water this weekend than I did sleeping or eating. But when I was sleeping, I got to sleep on a houseboat, on a bed on the upper deck outside, with just a mosquito net between me and the breeze off the lake, which was pretty darn neat.

The evening after the race, we had dinner and an awards ceremony at a different hotel in town, one that had also sponsored a team in the race. It felt a bit like the Club Med experience I never had, and certainly like nothing I’ve experienced in Zambia. We ate dinner by the swimming pool, large grill with fresh fish, reggae music blaring, surrounded by palm trees, with the waves of Lake Kariba crashing in the darkness below us. There was a definite vacation/holiday spirit, with people dressed up, dancing. I could almost imagine it was a seaside town. Something I’ve definitely been missing in this landlocked country. Post dinner dancing turned into people being hot, which turned into some of the guys jumping in the pool in boxer shorts, which turned into more people being pulled into the pool in their clothes, which became an in-pool clothed dance party, as we listened to a live performance from Crisis, “the best rapper in Zambia,” or so he says. With lyrics like, Damn look at your body lookin’ all blown out, nice titties, beautiful eyes and nice thighs I can really see what he’s talking about.

Like many resort towns by the water though, move a little away from the hotels and it’s a different world. It felt much more like the little villages we passed on the three hour drive south from Lusaka. The cinder block homes, some with thatched roofs, look particularly inadequate compared with the fancy lodges, inns and hotels across the road. The landscape down there is generally brown, dusty, dry, steep hills with patches of green desert plants. The lake makes it humid. Despite the beauty right on the lake, the combination of the heat, dusty hills and humidity would definitely lower it on the list of places I would want to live.

Despite the heat, it was still an enjoyable weekend and as always, when I leave Lusaka for the weekend, I wasn’t particularly in a rush to come back. But compared to the heat over the weekend, Lusaka felt delightfully cool when we returned.

Next Conservation Society Event: A James Bond movie premier gala evening.

Canoe Race for Wildlife & Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia

It's going to be a fun weekend...

http://www.siavonga-zambia.com/newsandevents.htm

Not only is CIDRZ representing with 12 teams, that's 24 people participating in the race/scavenger hunt, but it's going to be on national TV! And viewers will be able to text in to support which team they think will win. I don't know if there will be any footage online, but if you are so inclined, take a look around the ZNBC website or the Radio Phoenix website. The only catch is having to advertise our respective teams' corporate sponsors. I might be representing something like Barclays Bank, or perhaps Total Petrol or even better, Zambeef. But at least they're putting their money towards a good cause.

Weekend summary and pictures to come on Monday. A winner's trophy perhaps?

Integration Implementation and Lusaka Loves Obama

After months of planning, it has begun. As the doors of Bauleni Health Center opened on Monday morning, there was no longer separate ART and OPD departments. There is just the integrated OPD clinic. 3 days in, it’s going surprisingly well. Even on Monday morning, Steph and I left the clinic by 11 am, because there was nothing to do, they didn’t need our help, they had it all under control. In the first three days of operation, Bauleni is at a point that it took Ng’ombe at least a month to reach after they integrated in July. Everybody who works at Bauleni knows where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to be doing. The waiting area is quiet and orderly. Every patient is having vitals taken. Every patient is being offered HIV testing. Every patient is being seen by a clinician. On day 1, already, an inspiring story about the integrated system improving clinical outcomes:

One feature of the integrated clinic is that every patient who comes to the clinic is offered the opportunity to get an HIV test, every time. Because the national HIV rate is close to 20%, and even higher in Lusaka, knowing somebody’s status is essential to correctly diagnosing them when they present with certain symptoms. On Monday, a healthy appearing young woman and her 3-year-old son were offered (now) routine testing. She had come to clinic because her son had passed a worm in his stool but his health history (and hers) was otherwise unremarkable. She agreed to test, with a why-not- it’s-just-part-of-my-visit-now kind of attitude.

I’m not sure that she was expecting the positive result for both her and her son. From what my colleague Julian tells me, she took it surprisingly well. In fact, while most patients who receive a positive test result usually take some time to absorb the news and return for enrollment in the ART program, she calmly asked, “Well, what do I need to do next?” and then went directly to the enrollment room.

And there it is, our integrated clinic identified two HIV+ people who may otherwise have not been diagnosed until much further on in their disease, when they began to be symptomatic. Will this improve clinical outcomes? We believe it will.

On a totally unrelated note, there were an amazing number of tired Zambians this morning, even more tired than I was. While I only woke up at 4:30 am to catch up on election returns, many Zambians I spoke with had stayed up all night long watching. This morning, at work, on the van, at the clinic, there was a palpable excitement in the air. If there was any discontent in this country about their own election outcomes just days ago, this one certainly left everyone a bit happier. When CNN showed clips of the election party happening in Kenya, they could have just as easily turned the camera to O’Hagan’s Irish Pub here and seen just as wild a celebration. Indeed, it is a happy day in Lusaka.

And the winner is...

Banda, by about 30,000 votes. Forget waiting two months after election for inauguration, Banda was sworn less than two hours after the official annoucement of election results, complete with visiting heads of state, fighter jets flying in formation overhead (the entire Zambian airforce?) and a 21 gun salute that we could hear from our second Stitch n' Bitch Lusaka over in the Showgrounds yesterday.

The results were somewhat surprising, if only because Sata was ahead for a good 2/3 of the counting process. Was there vote rigging? A lot of Lusaka residents think so. But who really knows. Despite his promises to incite violence if he lost, Sata hasn't and things here have been surprisingly quiet. This morning, the workday went as usual, the CIDRZ nurses went out to the clinics, CIDRZ transport got us all there the normal way, and driving through the neighborhoods was like driving through on any other day. It seems that even if people aren't happy about the results, they are accepting. Much in the way that even if they didn't like Mwanawasa, they were respectful of him, in his sickness, in his death, and in his mourning.

It might also help that people here are looking forward to the US elections tomorrow. Everywhere I go, people ask me about Obama. O'Hagans, the Irish pub here, is even having an all night party and breakfast on Wednesday to watch election results. If Obama was running for president of Zambia, he would win by a landslide.

Election Update

Elections were held Thursday. In anticipation of any potential civil unrest, we got off from work Thursday and Friday. Things here are still quiet though. The votes are making their way in from around the country to be counted, but there hasn't been a winner announced yet. Once again, the public access quality of the national TV station ZNBC keeps me laughing. Yesterday they had a very serious report from election headquarters, explaining how results from polling stations were being faxed in from around the country, how results were "pouring" in. The camera then pans to a line of fax machines, and every once in a while, one sheet of paper would come slowly through the outlet. Then they talk about these women whose job it is to sort through and verify, and they show some heavyset women sitting right next to the fax machines, picking up the papers from the outlet baskets and putting them into piles. Very official I tell you. Those reports are then intermingled with specially made music videos of Zambian men and women dancing outside various government buildings, singing about the wonderfullness of Zambia. It's enough entertainment to keep you going through the days and days it takes to count all the votes, should you want to watch election coverage for that long.

We probably won't know who the next president is until Sunday or Monday. To keep you occupied until they announce the winner, instead of ZNBC election coverage, you can enjoy my pictures from Busanga that just went up. Click on the pictures link to the right. Enjoy!