My African indentity tested

Sitting in my office at The Big Issue and thinking about my upcoming trip, I really looked forward to going back to a third world country, or the real Africa as Capetonians call it.

Looking back, I think I over romanticized what it would be like, walking in the dusty streets, using toilets outside and bathing with cold water, just like the way I remembered it from when I was growing up. I liked to think of myself as a real ghetto girl who could handle any kind of lifestyle. I expected I would get to Zambia and just perfectly fit in and adjust. Me and Jorrit had even spoke about how we were going to stay at cheap crusty places to save money. But even before I reached Zambia I realised that maybe I had been living in Cape Town for too long.

The real Africa already started testing me when we boarded the bus from Windhoek to Livingstone. It was nothing like the comfortable air-conditioned sleepliner with lots of leg space and nicely reclining seats that we had boarded from Cape Town. The heat on this bus was unbearable and made me question whether I was actually up for this.

And it did not end there. Once we arrived in Livingstone, at the humble guest house where we planned to spend some days, heat-wise the worst was still to come. I had a fan in my room, but it did not help much at all. It was only blowing around hot air. It was so hot that I could hardly sleep at night. Walking outside during the day was almost impossible, as after some minutes I would feel sick like was going to faint.

I started getting so frustrated. I found myself constantly complaining about the heat, the fact that the water tasted funny and was just too hot to drink directly from the tap, not wanting to walk after 10 in the morning in fear of the sun burning me... For two days I was a sweaty moaner. Until.... I discovered Freezits :).

Freezits are small plastics containing frozen lemonade, sold by the road side in different chemical flavours for only 500 ZMK (Zambian Kwacha), less than a rand. My discovery of Freezits suddenly made the walks to town bearable, as long as the little girl who sold them at my corner was there, and had another one for the way back.

With the heat out of the way, I finally got a chance to enjoy Zambia. I thought I had settled in and had become real African after all, but when I arrived in the capital Lusaka I found myself obsessed with hygiene, wanting to wash each and everything I bought from a street vendor, even my Freezits and bottles.

On top of that I just couldn't handle the crusty toilets and bathrooms of the backpackers that we were staying at, which was not even a run down crusty place like we had imagined, but quite upmarket and above my budget. The toilets smelled and couldn't flush properly and had flies all over them, the doors to the shower could not close properly, let alone lock. They was nowhere to hang your towel while you showered and the walls and the floor looked like the kind you never want to ever get your skin to get in contact with. As if that was not bad enough, the floor was just always flooded with suspicious looking water.

I was so disappointed in myself, considering the fact that I thought I was so ghetto. And the fact that my all my Dutch friends seemed so cool and down with it, or rather pretended not to be bothered by all this.

Maybe the Cape had slowly but surely turned me into a coconut, unable to cope with the realities of the real rough Africa. Just when I thought it could not get any worse. I moved to Chawama compound, one of the poorer suburbs outside Lusaka, to live with a family in their small little home. No running water, no electricity, no bathroom and no proper toilet, just a small hole outside that is shared by whoever wants. Slowly but surely I adjusted to it and even started appreciating it more and more, to the point that I am now totally loving it. So...maybe I am still African after all. You can take the girl out of Africa, but you apparently can't take Africa out of a girl... ;)