A tale two cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I am in the city of tops with no bottoms. I am in a place where when a meal comes with a "Coke" in the picture you can't ask for a "Coke Light" and to even think of uttering the question is on the border of absolute idiocy--yet it taunts me sitting there so cool and smug in a silver can just out of my reach. Where the B-rated movies reign on the movie channels and Cricket is the king of sport television. I am in Lusaka.

I have been here laid up with a wicked nasty infection on my left leg that has left me hours to contemplate the juxtaposition of my life in the village to my squalor in a hotel in Lusaka. And what a squalor it is. For reasons beyond my control I've spent an entire day watching T.V. A task that causes a sharp mind to dull and rust. This was the first time in over five months that I actually watched T.V. It was neither good nor bad, but completely numbing. To compare this to the village; I have spent an entire day just sitting, however, I was thinking, so I wasn't exactly going brain dead.

Here, I haven't cooked anything in days --because I don't have a kitchen or fire handy--where as in the village I would have had to of cooked atleast 12 meals, requiring me to light 12 fires, cut vegetables 12 times, and most likely collect water from the well at least twice. No one expects anything of me here, no one on the street knows me, and although I'm still an ethnic minority, I'm not even a second thought to my other ethnic minority members or anyone else for that matter. This is different--a lot different. In the village and even in the Provincial Capital children yell after me (nothing horrible or mean), people notice my comings and goings with a almost religious intensity, and fellow foreigners make eye contact that insinuates our solidarity.

Well, considering that I'm going to be here for another few days and I'm feeling very lack luster about writing at the moment, I'm going to retreat back to my sanctuary of remote controls and hot water that I didn't have to heat.

Oh, and I got a cell phone. You can call my parents to get the number. I lost everyones numbers that I had in my old cell phone in the US. If you send me your number I'll send you text message of the lastest information of my life. It can be a little Emily ticker like on the bottom of news and sports stations, except it won't be streaming or possibly as convient. Either way, the option exists.