Minibusses

To get around Lusaka, if you do not own a car, you are basically left with two choices: Either the minibus network or taxis. Minibusses suck (after you had your share of intercultural experiences), but they are cheap. Taxis are easy to find (basically every man driving a vehicle is a taxi driver - they'll honk at you, wave at you, stop right in your way) and very convenient, but expensive. For an 8 km ride you pay around 40.000 Kwacha at a rate of 6650 Kwacha to the Euro - that's about 6 Euros for a ride from my home to my office. So, minibusses then.
Minibusses seem to serve only two "lines" that connect the residental East to the businesses and offices in the Western part of town. Here is one of these Minibusses:

When the ride starts at Woodlands Stadium, around the corner from my home, it's usually only a couple of passengers in there. There are 11 passenger seats, including the one next to the driver, the windows are open, the ride is pleasant. But every bus has a "call boy" working together with the bus driver as a team with one big aim: Cramming as many passengers as possible into the bus. It's usually 18 of us, excluding the driver and the call boy (...yes, I also asked twice, but that's how they call themselves), when we pass the president's compound a couple of kilometers down Independence Avenue (or Burma Road). And to do that, that is to get the bus full to the max, the driver honks at every single pedestrian on the way, the call boy shouts and waves. At the semi-official bus stops he is usually gone for a couple of minutes to find additional customers. It's this whole procedure (including the bus driver honking and honking and stepping on the gas again and again till the call boy finally comes back to the bus with the latest customer, followed by a seat reshuffling involving half of the bus) that makes a bus ride of 7 km last around 45min. Yes, there is also the traffic jams, but these the bus drivers circumvent artistically by using the ditches to the left and right of the streets.
I am most of the time (actually, with so far only one exception) the only white guy on the bus. And I am (at first at least) getting the white man prices, sure enough. So every morning I have this little conversation: "To the mosque, please." "Four pin [that is, thousand]." "Three." "Ok, let's go." From somewhere in the area around the mosque I am then walking to the office for about 20 min. And this is what everybody does a lot in Lusaka: Walking. Our office aid, for example, Mr. Biggs (don't know whether you write it like that - that's how I imagine his name is spelled) walks 90min every morning to the office, leaving his house at 5.30 to be here in time when the first of my colleagues arrive. So walking then is actually the third option, for seemingly any distance.

Lusaka

In the background of the blog you are seeing - at least for as long as I am staying in Zambia's capital - a map of Lusaka. The little blue line indicates my way to work. I have rented a room in a small house in Woodlands to the right of the map, close to Woodlands "Stadium". My office is in the FODEP building in Rhodes Park, Omelo Road, to the left, closer to "the center" that is actually just a street with shops, Cairo Road. The office is an hour's minibus ride away from my home (more on the minibusses later on).

Lusaka as captured from google maps

In the somewhat richer parts of town (that is, anywhere besides the "center" and the "compounds" (later more on these, too)), people live inside the walls of their properties. On their property, they have a simple house (the black middle class) or a large house, a pool and sometimes even an extra "house" for the maid (the richer black people, white people and most of the expats). At the gate, there are dogs (the black middle class) or a guard and dogs (the richer black people, white people and expats). A gardener is taking care of the often large amounts of flowers and trees on the properties (again, not for the black middle class).
Living in Lusaka is, for those that can afford it, like a redneck's dream: You drive your 4x4 (80% of the cars in the streets) from your farm-like property to the mall, where everything from supermarkets to restaurants and bars and clubs is concentrated, or to your air-conditioned work place and back.
For those without cars, it's a hassle: You have to walk long dusty roads along walls after walls, with in some areas guards being the only people to greet on your way, until you reach a minibus station and drive to some other place in the city from which you most likely have to walk again 20 min to your final destination - as the minibus network basically has two routes connecting the residential East of the city to the office area in the West. Doesn't sound like big fun? That's right. But I am getting used to it. And once I am at the office, there is interesting work to do. (Finally, no more diversion.)