Deppert.se

Dear friends!

I am sorry for not writing to you earlier – but I have been working from minute 1 that I have been in Lusaka. I left Sweden on Sunday September 12, landed on Monday September 13 at 6am and went directly to work and started working at 8am. And that has been my schedule since. Work is really really busy. There is hardly one day that I am not working late – even though my working hours are clearly stipulated in my contract. But I am used to this back in Sweden and as long as work is fun, I do actually not mind.

So, what am I then doing? I work as a trainee to the trade, promotion and information officer here at the Swedish Embassy in Lusaka, Zambia. My main aim is to promote Sweden and Swedish issues in Zambia. This includes, on a more hands-on basis, promotion of a Swedish Week in December, the logistics of a mining delegation and a promotion delegation as well as attending various meetings and lunches. I am basically always on the phone or writing mails – chasing the right people is one pf my main tasks. I will let you know more about my work when there is actually some progress to report (I do not think that any of you are interested in knowing how many phone calls I made in order to get hold of the centre management of a store – only to find out that the person I am looking for is on leave for a month, which leaves me with the only option to start over and chasing the deputy manager…).

Otherwise, life in Zambia is good. No, actually, it is great. I found a place to stay for the next three month, I have made new friends at the Embassy, I always have an after work activity and I have already been on my first safari. This is how I want life to be – busy and fun. :)

The people at work are great and we spend time together after work as well. May it be just walking home (takes 55 minutes), shopping groceries, going to the gym, going to a restaurant, going to see a movie or something else – I am never really alone but always in good company. There are two other trainees here, and we naturally spend almost all our free time together.

And that was also how we ended up on the safari. Just a quick get away over the weekend – fabulous. We went close to the national park of Lower Zambezi. Both the sunset cruise and the walking safari gave us some stunning views. Lots of elephants crossing the Zambezi river (into Zimbabwe!), hippos laughing at us, monkeys in the trees, birds of all kind – it was worth every single second.

So, to conclude my first letter from Zambia – it is great. I am sure that my letter will be more diversified later on, telling about some of the less great sides, but for now you can all be assured that I am fine and that I am having a great time.

Cheers,
Ulrike

Yesterday, I finally managed to o something hat was planned for a long time: I saw the second X-Files movie. While the plan was to re-watch the entire series before seeing that movie, we decided not to. Reasons for that are:

So, with some ice cream in front of us, we were all set.

And yes, we enjoyed the movie. Of course, the whole relationshipper-thing, which did surprise us a bit as we had not seen the entire series, could have been skipped. And the story could have been a bit better. But there was still some old X-Files feeling over it and I highly enjoyed both Duchovny and Anderson on the screen.

In contrast to my brother’s opinion, I would actually see the film again – but I would be sure to be more prepared on the background this time.