Day 1 continued: WaterAid Briefing

10:45am Local Time – WaterAid Briefing

We’ve arrived at the WaterAid Headquarters in Lusaka in our convoy of seven 4x4’s which will be our mode of transport for the duration of the trip. Getting out of the airport was an experience as the hoards of Zambia fans that were on the runway started making their way back into Lusaka and decided to attempt to cling onto any moving vehicle they could in order to hitch a lift home. This made for some very interesting scenes involving pyramids of fans clinging onto the back of 4x4’s and vans.

We’ve just sat down with the WaterAid Zambia team to be introduced to the team, introduce ourselves and to hear a bit about the in country programme. Paul Kapote from the WaterAid Zambia office introduced his senior management team consisting of; the Technical Manager, Finance and HR Manager, Advocacy and Communications Manager, Policy and Research Manager and Monitoring and Evaluation Manager. They then gave us a background to WaterAid’s work in Zambia (the first country WaterAid had a project in) which began with a one off project in the early 1980’s which would be followed by an established project responding to a severe drought in 1993/94. Since then WaterAid have gone from strength to strength in Zambia working in the southern province of Monze and the Northern province of Luapul.

Once the meeting finished we grabbed some lunch from a local fast food outlet and jumped back into the 4x4’s to start the three hour journey to Monze where we will be spending the next 5 days.