Kumyumba (home) and a day in the distro truck

Simon, my flatmate making nshima in the kitchen.

I moved in to my new place on Mberere last Saturday, finally a place to call my own for the next six months. Simon, my flatmate is a Zambian artist who does batik art, paintings, jewelery making and a whole bevy of other curios (he works at a market dubbed the curio market for arts and crafts).

The weekend was chock-full of parties, dinners and loads of fun followed by a Sunday of extreme exhaustion and a slight hung-over state. I seem to be spending far too much time at the malls, more so than I would like, but as I explained before, the malls are the places to be here. Frankly, after getting overcharged 7,000 kwacha for an Irish coffee at Rhapsody's and fighting about it for half an hour, I'll be spending more time elsewhere at places in town.

There is the option to go to Livingstone this weekend but I think I am waiting on that - I still don't feel settled yet. My week at work has been productive - I am taking things day by day and have had meetings with my boss and he has told me that he wants me to revamp the mandate and remodel the editorial policy for the paper; big job over the next six months which will hopefully end in a relaunch of the paper complete with a solid design and logo, as well as a focus on the tag-line of The Monitor which is not communicated at all through the stories that are featured.

Yesterday I spent the morning with Lloyd who takes care of distribution - I went around with him to all the different vendors and found out how they make their money - off commission from selling each paper and they only make 500 kwacha! That means they need to sell at least seven papers a day to make even one dollar Canadian's equivalent. And last week we didn't sell so well because The Post had the same headline as us and everyone would pick up the daily before ours.

The company vehicle on the road for distribution

I feel as though the dynamic at my paper is divided like I was saying - editorial board and then my boss who takes care of business; what puzzles me is that he runs the issue review meetings. We have agreed that I will teach him about the editorial side of newspapers and the basics of journalism since he has the human rights thing down pat; hopefully this will mold the hole that seems to exist.

Meanwhile I love attending press briefings...the free and delicious Zambian food is certainly a huge draw and I'm learning the way of the Zambian economy at the same time.