My First Game Park

As I write this post in Macha, the young children are noisily gathering for the Bible school session on my back porch/yard. It is hard not to go out and say hi, but the electricity and therefore internet connection has been down most of this weekend, so I feel I need to take advantage. Their teacher (a local youth) has just arrived and order has been restored. A little scolding, a prayer and now a song. I will write with their joyful noises as my background music.

After my nurse's exam on a Thursday, I had to stick around Lusaka to go to immigration on the following Monday. This was the perfect opportunity to e-mail my friend Linda who I met on the plane and see if I could come for a visit. Luckily, it was good timing for Linda, so I had a wonderful day, including an overnight with her and her family just outside Lusaka. I got to see my first game park, and get a window into a different part of Zambia, the white culture.

Linda's husband Ian is a third generation Zambian. His grandfather came here in 1902 from Scotland to work as a railroad man. He bought a piece of land along the railroad in what was then a rural area and now is just on the edge of Lusaka. The Lilayi farm is a big agricultural operation with four generations of the Miller family currently living there. There is also a worker community there of about 30-40 families. The two big crops I learned of were cabbage and seed maize. If I remember right, about 30 years ago they bought the neighboring farm and converted it into a lodge and game park. When they did this, they were one of the first, but now there is quite a bit of competition.

When I first arrived, there was a polo match going on. There are apparently 4 polo clubs in the country and they have one of the nicest fields there on their farm. Linda pointed out and/or introduced me to a few of her family members and then we took off in an old open jeep land cruiser for my own private game ride. I saw zebra which was probably the most fascinating for me. There was one who was quite compliant in posing for a picture. I also saw hartebeest, puku, bushbuck, waterbuck and duiker. All of these, I believe, are from the antelope family, but are of different sizes, coats and horn designs. I also saw a couple warthogs. The grass was still tall, so Linda says we probably missed a lot. My only disappointment was we never saw the giraffes, not hard to miss, and apparently not shy, but we did not see them on our ride. At the end we went to some stables and saw some orphan elephants who were very cute. We weren't supposed to touch them, but they tried their best to make us break the rules,  reaching out and flirting with their trunks. Did you know elephants have pregnancy gestation of 22 months?!?!? The babies are usually 200 pounds at birth.

We made it back by dusk and joined the polo players in the club after their match. We had a home cooked meal there provided by one of the player's and his wife.  Then Linda and I headed home for tea and pastries which I had brought along. Ian joined us later and we talked politics of all things. He had had a few drinks with his team mates, so I think social etiquette was pushed to the side. He seems like a compassionate man and told me his perspective of some of Zambia's recent history.

In the morning I took a walk about a bit of the farm. I talked to one of the workers who was in charge of the cabbage seedlings. He said each week they plant 280 trays of cabbages with 200 starts each. This is all year round! They are six weeks when planted in the field.

After the walk I got to meet one of Linda's sisters-in-law who is an anthropologist and works in hiv/tb research. Most of her colleagues are medical people and she has been to Macha before. Linda and her family are very gracious folks. They treated me like one of the family. Perhaps we will see each other again.