The three of us—Jen, Cheri, and our guest Ashwini—were arriving for this first part of the trip on different flights, all scheduled to land at 8:30 a.m. in Johannesburg. This would give us about 45 minutes to make it to our next flight into Ndola. Lines were long and slow through passport control and security. Jen and Cheri found each other in the first line, but no Ashwini.
No one could tell us if a flight had arrived from London; at the gate the agent is announcing the final boarding call. Such disappointment, first that we won’t all get to Ndola together, and second that we would have to abandon our guest in a strange city.
Asking the agent if we could have just another five minutes, knowing we would wait for a good long while outside on the bus that would take us to the plane, she generously kept the door open.
Just as she was letting us know we needed to board the bus, we saw Ashwini at the top of the escalator. Whew!
Our next miracle was that all our luggage made it to Ndola with us. From the bus taking us to the terminal we could see our welcoming committee waving to us. Quite a crowd of them in fact.
Part of the new routine is setting up Castle Lodge with everything we need prior to our arrival. Here a Castle Lodge employee helps Theresa bring in our supplies.
Through customs at last, we got to greet our friends. Everyone had wanted to come meet the plane, and somehow they had decided among themselves that they would take turns over the next several visits. This group was comprised of Theresa, Veronica, Ethel, Charles, Martha our financial consultant, and, of course, Muyunda our news correspondent/driver. We all piled in for the short drive to Castle Lodge.
Muyunda took photos of the team waiting for us to arrive.
Hugging our friends as we arrive
Ah, home! Eunice was ready for us—brand new screens on the windows and clean mosquito nets. After unpacking we made our first trip to ShopRite to lay in our grocery supplies. Theresa had brought over bottled water along with the necessities she keeps here for us, such as a water dispenser, hot pots, hot plate, and towels.
Arriving at Castle Lodge.
Internet here is much slower than usual, and it’s usually exceedingly slow. We’ll arrange for Godfrey, our local IT genius, to come by and see if he can figure out what’s going on, but everything else seems in good shape. As usual, we decided to stay up as long as possible in an effort to get into this time zone with a good night’s sleep coinciding with a Zambian bedtime.
We did amazingly well, and at about 9:00 p.m. it was time for showers and bed. Oops, too late. No water! Yep, we’re home!