Research in the streets of Lusaka

So the other day, about a week and a half ago, sometimes the time flies even in Africa, Chris and Tove went on a hunting trip around town to see what we could find. Lucky for us, it didn't rain, it had been raining heavily for weeks. The streets had not recovered and there were water everywhere, but good for us that there are always guys hanging around, helping with parking and looking after the car, trying to make a couple of pin (1 pin = 1000 kwacha = next to nothing).

First stop was a shop that sells solar panels to find out where they get their solar panels from. We want to find the source so that we can find out the actual cost of everything and what we need to run the lodge on solar panels.

We find the solar shop. But it was a very sad moment when we discovered that we can't run the whole thing on solar. According to the lady we talked to, fridges and stoves/kettles and what not can't run on solar. It will ruin the solar system, unless you have particular solar run equipment, which is, still anyway, hard and expensive to get a hold of. Basically that means all heating and cooling devices. We can’t run a bar and restaurant without fridges and freezers. The cooking is okay, we’re planning on using gas anyway.

So we just faced it there and than, we need electricity, power from ZESCO. There is power at the next farm, so will not be too difficult, but it is just not what we wanted for our Eco lodge. We’ll use solar panels for lights and for the chalets, and as much as we possible can, and hope that we’ll see some development in the usage of solar panels in the future.

Next place – swimming pools. Just checking prices. And when we’re escorted into an office and greeted by a guy with a proper South African accent that is when we know that this is going to be expensive. It is. He is talking somewhere around 40 000 Us Dollar for a proper sized swimming pool. And that is just for building it… He’s joking. We figured we have to find out how to build it, and than teach a few local guys in Monze how to do it!

We also progress on to find out about electrical fencing, once we have building and start to move our stuff to the farm we need more than the bob wires which are surrounding the place at the moment. By the next day Chris has already been given a quota by e-mail for fencing the whole farm, and it’s not cheap, of course, we’re looking at something like 100 million kwacha.

We drive to pick up Laura from the office; she is working for UNDP and has heaps of experience with projects and project proposals, and than back into town for lunch. After lunch we drop her back and go shopping before it is time to pick her up again.

What a day! Feels like we have driven around the whole of Lusaka 5 times, but it was quite productive and a good days work for being in Zambia ;o)