In the Copperbelt

Am currently in Kitwe in Copperbelt Province. Got here by plane from
Lusaka. When I checked in I asked for a window seat, but was just given a laminated card instead of a boarding pass... must be like EasyJet, I thought, where you sit where you like.

Ha! The Lusaka/Ndole run is done by a 16 seater plane that bounces around the skies in a way that does your hangover no good at all. So everyone had a window seat. And everyone had an aisle seat. And if you
got bored of looking out your own window you could look out the pilot's, or watch him twiddling things in the cockpit. A very tall young man in a fetching blue tank top wobbled down the plane with trays of 'cocktail juice' and bags of crisps which are kept in a cupboard at the front, and shouted in my ear to tell me how to open
the emergency exit if we crashed, as I was sitting over the wing.

Ndole airport is basically a shed and a runway, and I was off the
plane and into a 4WD within about 30 seconds, and off to Kitwe on the quietest dual carriageway in the world. Everything in my room here is leopardskin pattern, apart from the rather incongruous wooden kangaroo on top of the wardrobe. And there are condoms in the bedside cabinet, which makes a change from the usual Bible.

Off to see some home-based care projects while I am here, and the
programme manager is taking me by the hospital tonight -- if you say you're coming they take you round the private wards, so we're going to have a look at the state funded bits.

jo