North to the Copperbelt

Julia’s birthday was fast approaching on the 15th of July. I wanted to see our other project site anyhow, so I got on a bus headed for Ndola to celebrate and explore. The bus system here is something of a mystery. One arrives at the station and is immediately set upon by crowds of young men yelling, “Madame, madame! Where are you going?!” In his desperation to get you to board his particular bus, a man will try to grab your luggage and stow it on his vehicle before you’ve agreed to anything or know exactly what has just happened. Ostensibly there are departure times for these busses, but the reality is that they will leave when they are full of passengers or when the driver is good and ready. Hence the touts’ fierce attempts to convince a potential passenger that his bus really is the one you would like to board this fine day – the sooner he gets it filled, the sooner he is done.

I had it on good authority that I should ignore these guys and take the Eurobus, which theoretically left “on time” with some level of reliability. As I waited for two hours on the stationary vehicle while it filled, I thought perhaps I had been misled, but it turns out that this is relatively standard, and was much better than the four to six hours I might have whiled away on another bus.

The trip was really lovely, and since I had been there so early, I had a seat right up front from which to watch the abundant activity along the side of the road. We passed villages of huts made from clay and grasses, most of which were the color of the earth around them. Occasionally, though, it seemed that someone got his hands on some sea foam green paint, and there you would have a sort of tropical island of color in the middle of nowhere. We went by Zambeef cattle ranches, rural health clinics, police stations with goats wandering in the yard, and fields brought to life in the dry season by irrigation machines with pterodactyl wings. The bright green crops ended abruptly where the watering stopped, colliding with the ubiquitous dust that could be a billion pulverized burnt sienna Crayolas. A woman in her bright chitenge wrap and a baby strapped to her back emerged from a field carrying an enormous bale of grasses on her head, her hips forward as she stepped deliberately, appearing entirely regal on the whole. Bored-looking people sold charcoal packaged in old mealy-meal sacks with woven nets of grasses sealing in the goods, and as we neared Kapiri Mposhi, bottles and bottles of honey were for sale on wooden tables. My sweet tooth would have had me buying some, but to my dismay, we did not stop to placate it.

In Ndola we celebrated Julia’s birthday with delicious Indian food and Castle beers from South Africa. The city is much smaller, more quiet, and prettier than Lusaka, as is the Central Hospital. Julia works there, and another intern, Naomi, works in the neighboring city of Kitwe. (That’s the two of them posing in the Ndola Hospital hallway.) I had a chance to tour the maternity section of the hospital and to meet some of the nurses who worked with our study. We saw twins just as the second cord was being cut, and though I probably should have been watching what was going on with the mom, I couldn’t take my eyes off those tiny, perfect, still-wrinkled people in their bassinet. It may be that pediatrics is more my calling than obstetrics.