Monday 5th October 2015 - Livingstone (International Teachers' Day)
This morning young Alan told us he wasn't going to school because it was a teachers' day. At this stage, we thought it must be something like our School Development Days. Anyhow, we had decided to go to the Museum so off we went. As we got closer to town we could hear a brass band playing and then near the main street we could see that there was a parade happening. It appeared to go on for ages and when we asked someone what the parade was all about we were told that it was Teacher's Day.
The parade was made up of teachers from their various schools walking down the main street carrying their school banner. They were all in various uniforms with some of the women quite brightly dressed. When we caught up with them we followed the parade to the Ministry of Education building where there was a rally happening. We watched several performances: one school group singing "We are the World" to different words; a troupe of girls doing batten twirling; and what looked like a military brass band playing. We left them to it once they got into some official speeches.
After coffee at the Kubu Cafe, we walked to the museum which was interesting but had no air conditioning and was a bit stifling (no photos allowed inside). They had sections on the ancient and modern history of Zambia including quite a section on their independence struggle. There was also quite a bit on the environment.
We popped into the attached craft shop where we bought some authentic Zambian crafts much cheaper than they were being peddled on the streets and in the markets - bought a stone box, another hippo, some salad servers made from zebra wood and a stone egg painted with a giraffe and boab tree. Outside we did some business with some men wanting to sell us copper bracelets and malachite bangles. It's interesting talking to the street traders, they are all educated but Zambia (at least this part of Zambia) has no industry so there are no jobs, tourism being their only opportunity for an income. It's a bit sad really as they are friendly people but the continual hassling to buy things does detract somewhat from the ambience of the place. If one had lots of money it would be productive to employ people to clean up the rubbish lying everywhere. There is certainly plenty of that!
Back to Kubu for lunch (Tropical chicken salad again - just as good as the first time) and then back to Gloria's for a cold bath (we have a huge bath in our cabin), a lie down in the air con and a good read.
