The Sani Foundation & Downtown Lusaka

The Sani Foundation

As I've now been here for a week I thought I should write a few lines on the organisation that is hosting me and how I am (hopefully) being of help to them. 

The foundation is about a twenty minute walk from my apartment, and lies at the bottom of a nice,

Entrance to the Sani Foundation on Monkey Close in the 
Ibex Hill district of Lusaka

tree lined close. The office opens at 8am, with the trainees arriving shortly afterwards.  The work of the foundation centres around three stations; the kitchen, the garden and the workshop.  It is in these stations that the very dedicated and capable teachers work with the trainees to give them skills that will hopefully see them able to gain employment.  One particularly nice element is that the kitchen station prepares a lunch for everyone and at 1pm everybody - staff and trainees - sits outside and has lunch together.  The lunch is based around nshima, which is made from pounded white maize and is served with a vegetable relish as well as a protein source (we've had chicken and soya pieces so far), and is eaten with the right hand. This is great as it both means that I don't need to concern myself with

The foundation building

arranging lunch but is also an opportunity to spend time with the whole team.  After lunch, the trainees sit in a circle with the teachers and there is an activity such as saying what they did at the weekend or singing a song. The Friday activity is always a great excitement as this is when the trainees are awarded points for what they have done in the week, and these are added up towards the Trainee of the Month award.  I've only seen one of these so far and have been assured that they can become quite emotional events. There are about twenty people in total on site at any time. I'm still learning all the names, and apparently my name is a mystery to a few people and I found out today that I am sometimes just referred to as "mzungu" which is "the white man" in the local language. Still, 

The much appreciated kitchen station team

it's better than being called "equinsu ocha"!

In terms of my contribution, it is, of course. very back office. I've been working with Chewe, who is the Operations Coordinator who takes care of the finances as well as being very involved with the running of the foundation. As my professional career was always in the corporate

In the office with Chewe

world, it did take a bit of adjustment to allow for how an NGO should function. In short, I had to restrain my "let's do a full line-by-line Balance Sheet review" instinct and rather consider everything in the context of the size of the organisation and not come up with elaborate and over-the-top mechanisms (which was always my specialty!). Everything is helped by the team being very capable and very committed, and at times I think they are teaching me more than I am them.  It has been nice to get back to building spreadsheets again, and I'm pleased to say that I haven't lost my touch in that regard, and I even got to write some macros which caused me a worrying amount of pleasure.

I like to think that we've made quite a bit of progress in this first week and am looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

Downtown Lusaka

So far, a trip into the centre of Lusaka is the highlight of my sightseeing, which, as Lusaka is a very sprawling city, is almost 10km away from my apartment.  I'm nowhere near adventurous enough to

The Freedom Statue, Independence Avenue

manage the public transport system here and the apartment complex has set me up with a reliable taxi driver called Jeremiah who ferried me downtown.

I started off at the National Museum which was larger than I had anticipated and ran through the whole story of the country from pre-history through to modern times. After that I walked round to look at the Freedom Statue which is one of the key monuments in the city.

I then went into full culture-shock overload with a walk up and down Cairo Road, which is the main drag in the centre of the city.  I was surprised to find that there were no tourist shops but rather many many mobile phone shops. The one thing that did strike me is that I have yet to see a Starbucks, a Costa, a Caffe Nero or indeed anything similar, so, it does seem that there is at least one part of the world that has not been taken over. I also have to be honest and say that I have adopted the archetypal British tourist's fear of overseas dining establishments, and safely had my lunch at a branch of the fantastically named Hungry Lion fast-food chain.

After Cairo Road, I then decided to embrace Africa fully and bravely headed off to go round the nearby markets which straddle Independence Avenue.  My courage didn't rise to the level of trying to

The markets off Independence Avenue

buy anything because, as best as I could tell, the pricing system was somewhat random. I learned today that there is a local expression in which you say that someone has "become European" when you mean that they have "become rich," and so I was a bit worried that the rate card applied to my purchases would not be to my advantage. 

As with everywhere I've been in Zambia, everybody in the market was incredibly pleasant and friendly and I can't wait to get further out and about.

Gratuitous picture of Paris

To close off this post, I thought I'd share this picture of our little boy.  His geography isn't the best and

he doesn't know exactly where I am but only knows that his father is far away. So, he has been sending me a selfie every day to let me know that he's thinking of me, and I thought this was a particularly good one (not that he ever takes a bad picture as he has Wendy's genes).

On that note, I'd best close now but stay tuned for further instalments!