Meeting the WaterAid Team in Zambia - Monday 13 Feb

Well the flight didn't disappoint and those 10 hours flew by - literally. And what fantastic news - the Zambian football team won the African cup yesterday. Unfortunately a crowd of 2 thousand strong supporters seem to think that the team are on our flight and have somehow cleared the perimeter fence and surrounded the plane. A great welcome to the county but not so good for the pilot who has had to cut the engines for safety reasons - will we ever be able to disembark I wonder?

A couple of hours later we've cleared customs and are heading to the WaterAid office in the centre of Lusaka. The Zambian WaterAid Team - lead by Paul - seem a fantastic group of people and we spend the next couple of hours learning about their structure and the great work they carry out. And then we're off down to Monze in the Southern Province - courtesy of some pretty nifty looking 4x4s.

A quick lunch stop followed by 3 hours of traveling sees us arrive in Monze and we go to check in at our hotel for the next 5 nights - The Golden Pillow Lodge. I hadn't been able to find out much about it before leaving home and although it doesn't look that interesting from the outside it's a pretty impressive hotel on the inside (my room is perfect - much better than I was expecting).  There's a bit of a mix up about when and where we are meeting the local District Commissioner but we finally do and spend some time with him learning about some of the problems Zambia and the local area in particular face. Hopefully we'll see some of these issues over the next few days.