12 January 2006

Thursday was very much uneventful. Our only accomplishment was securing tickets back to Nairobi on January 24. The travel agent took nearly an hour to get us tickets because she entered all of our information into a command prompt type system; there were no name, address, number fields as we’ve come to expect in the U.S. Instead, she would enter info on a command line and file it using key commands since Kenya Airways does not have an online registration system. They don’t accept American Express, either.

After purchasing tickets, we headed to the internet café to check mail and attempt to put the blog online. We checked email, but there was so much that we had to reply to that the blog never got online at that time. With email checked and running late for our meeting with Raja at UNZA, we returned to the Kepa compound to get a taxi, but once again our taxis were being chased by the police. The taxi finally showed up and we were once again at UNZA campus.

It turns out that the first time we’re late, Raja is on time. Unfortunately, he had to leave so was not around when arrived at 11:20 for a 10:30 appointment. With the OCW hard drive still being offline, we had nothing to do and decided to have an early lunch. The Mingling Bar on campus offered hot dogs, burgers, and polony (bologna) sandwiches. Marta learned yesterday that pork is not the food to eat in Zambia; besides, the hot dogs looked way to pink to be cooked properly. We decided on hamburgers. The hamburgers looked nice from a distance – the usual meat and bread, plus vegetables. Once we bit into them however, we discovered that they were pretty cold and a little pink on the inside.

Once again, Marta was unsettled by lunch at UNZA. (Both times, it was her decision to eat there.) I on the other hand have a stomach finely trained by years of unhealthy eating. The pinky burger didn’t faze me one bit. Perhaps it’s because I eat chocolate, Fanta orange, Coca-Cola, and apple juice for breakfast (in that order, by the way). I bought Frosties (Frosted Flakes in the U.S.), but they don’t taste right, so I stopped eating them.

With lunch over, we decided to check in with Raja. Unfortunately for me (my dad, who pays my cell bill), the university had no outside line we could use. So I had to call Raja from my phone. According to Cingular’s website, this call cost about $3.99 per minute. The call lasted less than two minutes, and we learned that Raja was at the bank which was for some reason very crowded. He had no idea when he would be at UNZA. So, we decided to explore the campus and take lots of pictures. LOTS of pictures because it’s such a beautiful campus.

After our adventures around campus, we returned to the server room to do what we do best, check email and facebook. After about an hour Raja finally showed up and we took the hard drive, once again, to Aaron to be checked out. Aaron wasn’t there, so we left the hard drive for him to look at. With this task completed, Raja dropped us back off at the university while we waited on Aaron and he ran a few errands. Around 5 PM, when the university closes, Mr. Kalebwe took us back to Kepa. Raja was tied up and Aaron was still working.

It was raining and I must say that Kalebwe’s driving scared me, especially since I was sitting up front with him and his defrost didn’t work very well so we couldn’t see very well. On the way we stopped for fuel and a fast food dinner. Marta had Subway which she was excited to discover tasted just like...Subway! I feel it’s very hard to contaminate or improperly cook fried food so I had ZamChick fried chicken. After getting our orders to go, we were once again in the car. When we were leaving the shopping center Kalebwe was having a bit of difficulty getting to the exit. When we made it around a certain turn, a woman said from her window, “It’s one way!” To this Kalebwe replied, “It’s raining!” I didn’t know whether I should get out and start walking at this point or just start laughing (which I’m doing as I type this). The weather being what it was, I decided to take my chances in the death seat.

By the graces of the African driving god, we made it back to Kepa safely. There wasn’t much to do so I read a few chapters of “Memoirs of a Geisha” until the power went out. I have a new understanding of “pitch black” after this experience; I could see nothing. Marta, on the other hand, had her laptop as a source of light, so I decided to see what she was up to. She and Lea, our Italian house mate, were discussing literature. Since my collection of readings includes everything by Tom Clancy and Dan Brown, I was pretty much left out of this conversation. Eventually, the way all conversations have a habit of doing, we were on the subject of race/ethnicity. Lea had a hard time understanding that racism still had a place in America. I also explained to her the election system in America and how race can play a role all the way down to local city elections. Eventually, we ended the night with her explaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus ended the uneventful day.