From Zambia, With Love

by Alan Perlman
on August 2nd, 2010
1 Comment

And just like that, I’m off again.

The flight this time is short, but I still find time to nap. I’ve always had a strong propensity to doze in the air. I think it’s the altitude. It must be the altitude. Plane seats are the pits. The landing jars my head to the left. I awake, groggy, bleary-eyed, limbs slow to react. I look out the cabin window. The sun is setting, and the clouds, a mélange of rose and distant grey, are stretched thin, like elongated taffy, stretched flawlessly between the sun and horizon. It’s just, one of those scenes, you know? Simple, but picturesque, calm and reflective.

I’ve been on the road for almost a week now, but home feels so far away. For the next month, I’ll be skirting around southern Africa; Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. Six cities, thirty eight days, and seasons two through five of The Wire. For rainy days, of course.

The travel, amazingly enough, is work-related. I’m conducting cost-of-living research. I collect prices from supermarkets and pharmacies, car dealerships and clothing outlets, utility companies, furniture stores, restaurants, all in an effort to capture the expatriate lifestyle in different cities around the world. I meet with real estate agents to understand the executive rental market. How’s supply? Where are expatriates living? Can rents be negotiated? I ask automobile agents about how VAT is calculated with imported vehicles, how long they take to arrive from other countries, whether or not expatriates need a 4×4. Sometimes the roads are just awful.

My company researches this so that other organizations, internationally-operating organizations, can better adjust their employee compensation packages. In the end, it’s all about the prices. In a place like Lagos, Nigeria, where inflation jumps around like Jack’s magic beans, wages must be altered appropriately to compensate for the changes in spending patterns. That’s the gist of it.

My first stop is Lusaka, Zambia. It’s a tame city, ever-sunny, sleepy in the evenings, amicable, the kind of place I’d be interested to shack up—did I phrase that right?—for a couple of years, the kind of place one could enjoy a nice, lazy meal. You could get some serious reading done here.

I hit the streets, my senses adjusting to faint, familiar signs. The smell of diesel. Broken, sun-bleached pavement, blanketed in dust. Metal fences, slanted and corrugated. Young girls and boys, walking to school, pleated collars and plaid skirts. Street hawkers selling mobile phone cards, newspapers, dog leashes, plastic helicopters and sunglasses. Billboards, lots and lots of billboards, showcasing banks and communications companies with printed slogans like, “Some people look for opportunities. Others create it.” Heartening messages, but with a strange, inert blankness. Advertisements, well-intentioned, but banal, awkwardly phrased, seemingly ineffective.

I’m driven down Great East Road, a finely paved thoroughfare that shoots past two of Lusaka’s largest shopping centers. Arcades, as it is known, boasts a cinema, supermarket, restaurants, a few cafés, several shops and a casino. Manda Hill, just down the road, is under construction. The renovations are set to be completed by November 2010, but many of the people I speak with are dubious. In the Nyanja (or Chewa) language, Lusaka’s local vernacular, Manda means graveyard. I never learn the particulars of that fact, but decide it would be prudent not to hang around for too long. I hop into another taxi, this driver explaining that Great East Road is aptly named. It runs all the way to the Malawi border, through Malawi to Mozambique. Hearing that, I think what it might be like to cruise the entirety of the road, to Mozambique’s eastern shore on a motorcycle, a light but adequate bundle of cargo strapped securely above the back tire. Extra diesel jugs balanced among food and clothing.

The kind of travel I do is bittersweet. I’m in a place for such a short time that it becomes incredibly hard to represent it to others. I try to stick to what I see and hear, letting the observations speak for themselves, but I sometimes get side-tracked, romanticized, my bias and natural prejudices slipping through. I have to choose my words carefully. All travel writers do, especially a temporary visitor like myself. Who am I to wax philosophical about someone else’s country?

With that said, I’ll say this. Lusaka is worth checking out. People are friendly, and from my limited perspective, content and cheerful. The food is cheap and delicious. The vibe is not nearly as intense as other parts of Africa. I felt safe, unbothered, wishing I had more time to explore and chat.

These were my thoughts as I landed in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the second leg of my trip, tired, but energized by the most radiant sunset I’d seen since departing America.

Alan Perlman

Alan Perlman travels the world as an international cost-of-living surveyor. When he's not hunting for the price of female undergarments in places like Syria, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, he's hanging out in Boston, MA, staying active, meeting people and brainstorming business models. You can read more about Alan and his plans to conquer life at his blog, The 9 to 5 Alternative.