mirror dancing

Three things combined to make our last night in Zambia epic: booze cruising, heart-to-hearting and mirror dancing.

The whole group!

You are probably as shocked as I am to see “booze cruising” on that list (well… some of you). It’s funny; when I arrived in Livingstone I had every intention of doing as many thrill seeking and adrenaline pumping activities as possible. So when the whole group sat down to plan our activities my list included rafting or kayaking the Zambezi, gorge swinging, abseiling and other similar death-defying feats. And although Katie and Trevor were on the same page as me, the rest of the group kept saying two words, “booze cruise!” A little confused but not wanting to be left out, I signed up for the booze cruise. 

And it turned out to be a lot of fun. We met some hilarious recent graduates from England and a few local Zimbabweans who were very interested in GRS. We also got to see a gorgeous sunset while cruising down the Zambezi. But my favorite part of the cruise was getting to have a heart-to-heart with Katie, one of the interns in Johannesburg. 

Katie and I have both been in similar situations recently. We are both the intern in charge of M&E (collecting and analyzing GRS site data) and Skillz Street at our respective sites. We also both really enjoy talking about work (throughout our heart-to-heart other members of our group kept passing us and demanding that we, “stop talking about work! We’re on vacation!” And we both have had to deal with similar frustrations regarding the people we work with and GRS as a whole. We talked for close to two hours and I would have happily carried on our conversation all night, but we both agreed that we should at least try to socialize with other, less work-enthused people. And I think we both managed this last part rather successfully. 

After the cruise our group headed into town to see what the nightlife in Zambia was like. It was pretty similar to the nightlife in Kim; not too many places to go, awesome music playing at all clubs, and no white people. What was different Kim however was the presence of mirror-lined walls. And instead of dancing with people, Zambians stand in front of these mirrors and watch as they dance alone. It’s a bit odd at first and more than a little frightening when you see yourself in a mirror and realize, “oh dear… that’s what I look like when I dance…” but all in all the mirrors simply add to the atmosphere, creativity and hilarity of the “going out” scene. 

Mirror dancing!