Friday, October 9, 2009


Muleshani, we have been in Ndola just North of the capital, another 8 hour very hot van ride Wed to get here. It is in the 90's hear and sweltering, but we are staying at a great lodge called Kapps lodge with showers and air conditioners! During the day we drive to a city just West of here called Luanshya, a copper mine city, and go to a suburb called Mpatamato - this is a very impoverished area especially lately with one of the coppermines closing - lots of young men roaming the streets and the sex trade is large here. This has one of the highest HIV rates in the world. We spent the last 2 days in a clinic set up by a community center called Mpatamato. Here, if you can see this older woman's neck, traditional healers are big here and do lots of "tattooing" or cutting to relieve evil spirits. But in this case just created a keloid, and very large painful scar, which unfortunately little can be done for. There is still lots of evil spirit talk especially in the older folks and rural areas.

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