Family Fun Day!!

So Lucas is in the middle of potty-training. We are giving him stickers on a chart for every time he does his business (in the potty). Ten stickers = a treat from the treatbox. Well he filled the whole chart so we planned a family fun day. Now, there are really very few fun things to do in Lusaka. If you want to drive an hour or so to various lodges, game parks, or national parks (where you'll spend a couple hundred dollars) then you can stay busy for a year or so. However, if you are on a limited budget you have these choices: local lodges or large restaurants that may have pools or playgrounds, the zoo, hmmm. That's about it. There is so little to do for families, children and schools that we should have known that in a city of 2+million people the chances of visiting one of the city' s few attractions for a quiet relaxing getaway would be impossible.

We started the morning by driving way out to Adventure City (for you PNWesters, think sketchy Zambian Wild Waves). We arrived at exactly 9 hours (opening time) and discovered bus after bus after bus of high school students lined up to get in. The idea of spending the day with 500 mostly naked, mostly unsupervised teenagers sent us running. We changed directions and headed to the zoo instead (which also has a pool). At Munda Wanga we discovered bus after bus after bus of elementary students. We decided that would better and walked around the grounds. The zoo is pretty weak. But you can get very close to some of the animals (I learned that I can imitate the call of the banded mongoose) and the zoo grounds were pretty quiet. When we headed to the pool and playground area and discovered total mayhem. It was still pretty fun. The kids from all the schools played at one end of the pool and so I felt like we were a fair distance away from the huge amounts of pee that must have been happening in that end of the pool. The crazy, exotic, and rare Mzungus (white people) swimming in a pool with a hundred Zambian kids at a time where a huge attraction - better than the lions and zebras. The parents, teachers, and administrators took lots of pictures of Lucas playing with the kids and posing him with their children. All over Munda Wanga you could here the kids yelling "Luka!" He took it in stride and we had a fun day. But next time we'll pay 5 bucks and swim at one of the local lodges if we need a quiet day.