Alcohol

A few days ago, I was trying to flag down a taxi on the main road near my flat, and when a cab pulled over, a man got out of the passenger seat holding a beer bottle in his hand. It was eleven o'clock in the morning.

On Saturday night, a group of us approached some taxis parked in the corner of a gas station. Noticing that one of the men there had a bottle in his hand, we asked "Who's been drinking?" One quickly stepped forward and proudly announced, "I have been", while another stumbled away.

The trash piles are filled with cartons that an outsider might assume had been used for milk, except that in this part of the world, milk comes in bags. The local brew, a maize/millet beer called Chibuku Shake Shake, comes in the cartons.

It seems alcohol has a much greater presence and tighter hold on Zambia than it did on Rwanda.