Letter to my sister from Mukinge 2001

Dear Bea,
Thanks for writing back. It seems like I should have a lot of free time but I always fill it. Today (sat the 7th) I had to iron my underwear as well as the rest of my kit. Had it washed yesterday & dried on the line (no dryers) and today I get to steam to death the mango fly eggs which were laid on it yesterday. It seems that if you don’t they hatch & mistake you for unripe fruit. Two rather painful instars later they emerge as maggots.
Went to the provincial capital yesterday, Solwezi. Luanda chief’s residence and all. He is Chief Solwezi, no less. Town looks like a clip from “A Girl like Alice” and your average western. Fewer horses and more people. Met a man who was starting a training school for older orphans, walked out to the site 2 miles away. He was a foster child of one of the missionaries at Mukinge. An interesting afternoon. Drove back with r hand drive. Only thing I couldn’t remember is to use the turn signal instead of the windscreen washer. Every time I forgot great peals of laughter from the 9 MH workers with me.
Zambia is a lot like one's prejudices suggest and not. A women in kesapis (1x2M brightly printed cloth, skirt cum baby-carrier, pot holder, table cloth, blanket, diaper (nappie here) carrying a load of wood on her head. Road side vendors selling corn on the cob roasted for 50Kwacha (about 1.5cents), beggars, piles of small dried fish, post polio paralytic limbs, cataracts, cobras (as road kill), lines of army ants (local name is pishuti), goats lying in the roadway, brilliant flowers, fruit on the trees, dust, bicylcles built for one but carrying three peddling the bare pegs in bare feet, malaria. It is also drinking a coke on an open veranda with painted disney characters wishing me a "cool yule" next to an advertisement for condoms. Wish Roz a happy bd.