Zambia

Posted by flyingforkosovo On February - 25 - 2011

After my mechanical stop in Lubumbashi, I was on my way to Zambia and very excited to hear the sound of my airplane working well again. Thanks again to the team at ITAB in Lubumbashi for everything that they have done for our mission.

Compared to my last flight, the flight to Lusaka, Zambia was a short one. I arrived around noon to find great weather and beautiful countryside. As I was flying over, I could see lots of farmland and farmers taking care of their crop. Later I learned that this is typical of rural Zambia. It’s weather is considered tropical and the rural populations tend to rely on subsistence farming tosurvive.

What a difference I felt upon landing at this airport. The runway was excellent and I could already see from the outside that this airport was more modern than the last one. Once inside it felt like any European airport. Things seemed to be working well, everything was well kept and clean. The terminal was modern and everything was well organized. Such a big difference between two neighboring nations.

In no time I was out of the airport and off to the hotel. What a joy it was to take a taxi ride to town. The driver had a uniform on and his car was nearly brand new. After I arrived at a hotel within my budget, I was off in another taxi to get some work done before days end.

One thing that I didn’t expect here in Zambia, was to meet people from back home. Mevilda Jerjlija and Indira Jerlija were wonderful ladies from our country who have been living in this country for about 40 years or so. What was interesting about meeting them, was that I was reminded yet again that even in Africa, there are people from our country who are successful and work hard to prosper in life. I never cease learning lots of interesting thigns through my travels, things that I would have never even thought of beforehand.

Things like seeing throughout Africa that ‘Tito’ was quite popular here and seems to be somewhat of a local hero. Many times now I have seen roads being named after him. Remember, our former nation was visible around the world back when it was strong enough and at one time had lots of embassies. Now that we have all split up and Yugoslavia does not exist, Serbia has taken over that real estate and has sold some of it. Our former embassies are are prime real estate in some countries. Here in Zambia, I got a chance to visit our land myself and it seems like an excellent location, just closed down and waiting to be sold. I’m pretty sure that any money that is made through those transactions goes right to Serbia – or do you think that they might split the money with us and the rest of the former Yugoslavia? What do you think my friends? I highly doubt that we will ever get anything from that. Maybe it’s because no one has ever thought about this? I can imagine that our people and our government might not be aware of such things.

Thanks to all of my media friends and their bosses here in Zambia for their time and dedication towards our cause. Thank you to the team at Muvi Television: Ms. Corinna Paolini, Mr. Paul Shalala, Zefaniah Zulu, Costa Mwansa, Brian Mwal and Betty Nguluwe. They all played a big role in talking about Kosovo on their talk show for hours and hours. They were great about expresssing to their people and our government that the people of Kosovo would like to be accepted as an independenc nation by their country. Thank you to the local radio station staff: Ms. Monde Phiri with QFM; Mutale Kani with Radio Pheonix 89.5 FM; and Lweendo Himdonde Chiko with Radio 5 FM, 89.9 Mhz. Thank you to the newspapers: Charles Musonda with Daily Mail Zambia; thanks to Linda Myondo, David Mataka, Charles Chisala; Elias Shilangwa with Monitor Newspaper Zambia; Roy Habaalu with The Post Newspaper; Obert Simwanza with Times of Zambia and finally, Mr. Anthony Mulowa.

Thank you to Mr. John Mulutula at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was comprehensive in our discussions and mentioned that he supports the people’s will for independence in Kosovo. He dedicated a lot of his time and agreed to hand deliver our letter from Vlora Citaku to his boss the Minister himself.

Mr. Mario Kandalu, my taxi driver was wonderful with a great character. He helped me a lot and knew the city well.

My friends, Zambia is a very nice place and quite functional. Though outside of the urban areas, many people still live on less than /year, the cit I’m in still looks clean, organized, has a good infrastructure. I can see that lots of progress has been made since Zambia was known as the British protectorate, Rhodesia. I had a great experience and it is a place that I would feel comfortable living in for a little while. The people here are quite nice and friendly too.

Another thing that I really liked was to look at the nice blue color of the high octane AVGAS. I was able to fill my plane with it which gave me a small sense of joy. The bigger joy that I got though, was that it was very cheap – only US for a liter. The only place cheaper than that so far in Africa was in Malta.

The next country is Botwsana. It will be the first country on this trip that hasn’t need a landing permit to land our plane.