Living cheap in Lusaka

So I think I may have finally figured out how to live cheap here! The bulk of my expenses now are on chocolate milk shakes, eating out, CAKES! and all these small snacks that i just cant resist especially on weekends.

So if you ever find yourself in Lusaka, then these may help you out:

1) Meat is expensive! Like reallly expensive and I never buy meat unless it's on sale and the good news is that meat often go on sale BUT i recently found out that the sales in the grocery stores here don't last even for a few days, it might only be just for that one day. So if you go to a store and find sausages, polony or bacon on sale; get it! And then just keep it and use it when you want to. I did that just a few days back, and now my lunch for the whole of October is settled, and I only spent slight less than RM 20 on it!

2) CAKES are expensive! The bakeries here trample over bakeries in Malaysia in a HEARTBEAT! Every single bakery I've been too has been awesome! The cookies and cakes and pies are all so fresh and tasty and truly home made. But the normal price for a cake in bakery would cost 20,000 K which is about 4 USD which is about RM12. Now that's a little too much for me. Recently, I've found that Pick N Pay, a supermarket all over Lusaka, kinda like the Giant in Malaysia sells big pieces of cakes as well in their bakery and for a fraction of the price which is 4,950 K which is slightly less than RM 3 and if you go at the right time; usually on weekdays at night; you would find these nice slices of chocolate cake with raspberry jam which are absolutely yummy! But every now and then if you wanted to go for pieces of cakes which are slightly more pricey with better variety then the bakery at Kabulonga Shopping Centre has tonnes of really amazing cakes and also Mint Cafe in Arcades Shopping Mall.

3) Milkshakes are like Milo here. Hardly any shop/cafe/restaurant sells hot chocolate or iced chocolate. Coffee is huge here. So anyway if you wanted something chocolatey; milkshakes are the way to go! I've been trying out milkshakes all over Lusaka to see which is the best. Now, I've been following the Lonely Planet's guide to discovering Lusaka in trying restaurants and cafes and also going to nice parks. It's been good so far; all the restaurants I've tried based on lonely planet has been nice and all the parks I've been to based on Lonely Planet has also been nice! But they got it wrong with the milkshakes! They suggested this small cafe in Arcades Shopping Mall called La Mimosa. I tried the milkshake there but not only was it expensive; 17,000 K but it was also so not chocolatey. The best milkshake so far in my opinion is the chocolate milkshake served at Sandy's Creation (a garden/park) for 15, 000 K. If you want something cheaper; then the milkshake at Steers (the McD of Zambia) is not too bad for 11, 000 K.

4) Chicken Shwarma's are the best bargain yet. These are like kebabs in these Lebanese bread kinda wraps but the nicest thing about this meal is that although it's cheap; it's soooo filling! They stuff it with cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, FRENCH FRIES, 3 different types of sauces and lots of grilled chicken meat (they are not selfish with the portions). The local restaurants sell this for 10, 000 K.

5) Always the biggest dilemma for me is when someone invites me to dinner around here. Sometimes I don't mind spending that minimum 50, 000 K on a meal just to try it out, but some days I want to save that money for something much better over the weekend. Now in Malaysia, mamaks are cheap. Well you should be able to assume that you don't get anything close to a mamak here, well at least not when another foreigner invites you out for dinner. You'd probably end up in a fancy foreigners-only restaurant where Indian food, Chinese food, Korean food and Zambian dishes are just so unreasonably priced. So the best thing to do is order Tea. It's so far the best value; only 6, 000 K and you get a whole pot, not just a glass as opposed to ordering coffee or Coke (which both costs more than tea). They usually serve this local brand called Five Roses tea with fresh milk and brown sugar, and it usually lasts me throughout the dinner.

6)  Veggies! Veggies are important. I need them anyway ever since I've been trying to cut down on my chicken meat, I've been trying to eat more vegetables. The only problem with vegetables are that they're harder to cook into tasting yummy, meat is easy! Also cause every month or so, my Korean doctor neighbours strangles a dog by the swing at the back of my apartment; in celebration of the month end I suppose but whatever the reason and however much I cant stand the thought of a poor dog suffocating to death and then being chopped up and grilled and eaten; that's not much worse or better in fact than the processed chicken meat we get from the store. At least they catch and kill their own meat. So with all of these reasons; veggies are now even more important!

Okay so, veggies are best bought straight from farms here which is totally amazing because it doesn't get any fresher than that. The best farm I've been to so far is Sugarbush Farm run by some white people. Their prices are very reasonable and they give you a whole big bag of each vege that you get. I bought from them once but it's really not practical if you're cooking for one so nowadays i buy veges from the other local markets around Lusaka. I just went for one called the Dutch Reformed Church Saturday Market that happens every last Saturday of the month. It's filled with veges, fruits, arts and crafts and glorious FOOD! I mostly sat down there and kept eating all kinds of things for the 2 hours, but on my way out I bought some fresh carrots, tomatoes and onions for a good price and they're fresh and they were sold by the locals!

Some other markets you can get fresh veges and spices are : Soweto Market, Tuesday Market and Thursday Market. It's like the pasar malam here just that they only sell stuff up to 6pm. This place goes dead at 6pm; after 6pm it's only the fancy foreigners that are out and about eating their fancy dinners at the fancy candle lit restaurants.

It's good to support the locals, so veges and fruits and all you could even buy them from the roadside vendors that sell pretty nice and fresh stuff if you spent some time looking.

7) Nshima (pronounced sheema) ! I can't stand beef, and I don't need to get hooked on another meat thank you very much but living here completely not eating beef is going to be a challenge so I've eaten my share of beef here. They seem to find requests of changing the beef to chicken somewhat rather strange. So anyway, the local cuisine here is Nshima. Now it's really not all that awesome; it's just a softer version of Idli and then they eat it with beef stew and some vegetable relish. If you need to try this, Pick N Pay sells it at a very cheap price (8,000 K). The portion is not that big but hey for a taste it would suffice. Now. for the real deal; I've found this awesome place nearby my place that has a Nshima buffet. They open every weekday from 1230 to 230pm but the food is usually only ready at about 130pm. It will cost you 30, 000 K but you get three scoops of Nshima (too much for me!) and then you get to choose your veges and from three different main dishes (village chicken, beef stew and fish). It's called Heritage Trails and it has my name written on it one of these days for lunch!

That's about all the cheap things I've discovered here. My hunt will continue for cheaper cheaper things!

Is the grass greener in Zambia?

Not particularly. It is comparing job opportunities because I get to work as a physio here with a decent salary as compared to Malaysia.

But the hard unavoidable truth is that even with the salary, and the nice secure saved up life I would be coming back to in 2 years; being alone almost makes it all not worthwhile! I've come to learn quite a lot about myself living alone, away from all securities and familiar faces and places; I'm no good alone!

Maybe life is no life at all; with no one to share it with all the time all day everyday and being poor is way better when you're surrounded by just LOVE! I can remember all the awesome times I've had with my family and friends, it was when we were all broke talking about life and making jokes with the cheapest cup of tea in the cheapest mamak stall or a public park...and just laughing really hard!

The highlight of my days are coming home and skyping with my family back home; just some interaction talking about my day listening to their day! Thankfully my job serves me well as I do talk and listen to stories when I treat patients; but nothing like home i suppose.

Zambia has certainly been an experience; totally unexpected one that is. I pictured local Africans walking around in colourful festive clothing and street parties with loads of dancing and drum beating every other day and instead I am faced with what seems like a totally Westernised culture everything from clothing to restaurants to shopping malls. Ah, it's saddening really. The locals live in shacks beside the roads and the rich foreigners in ridiculously priced private home that employs these locals as maids or drivers or guards.


Its hard to imagine any local worker earning minimum wage which is about 700,000 Kwacha ( 140 USD) living comfortably in this city of Lusaka, where everything and I mean EVERYTHING is at least 2 to 3 times more than it is priced there in Malaysia. I was talking to the nice lady that comes to clean the Physiotherapy centre and as well as my temporary home, Carol and she walks for an hour every day to the hospital and back home just to save on transport money cause even the crappy van buses here are expensive and those are the cheapest, most dangerous way to get around town. She has 3 children, whom all go to government schools because they're free but very badly equipped with teaching aids as well as qualified teachers. She earns 700,00 K and with deductions for NAPSA (the EPF equivalent here) earns 500 000 K and support her children and herself and lives with her mother and her siblings in a small flat. She says buying rice, cooking oil and some beans takes up most of her money already which I can totally imagine being true as I faced a similar situation heading to the grocery store last weekend to pick up some stuff to cook. As I emptied my shopping cart for the cashier to scan, not even 1/3 through my cart, the bill reached 100 000 K and I only had 100 000 K in my wallet. I had to ask her to stop scanning more items, put my cart aside,pay for the items that she has already scanned , run to an ATM and withdraw some money and come back and pay for the remaining cart.

The problem according to Abraham, the hospital's driver that tells me where to get really cheap local food knowing i'm a hobo and teaches me all the easy routes to places I wanna visit, started about 10 years back when all of a sudden there was a surge of foreigners coming into the country and prices of all things went up double-fold and more. All the prices of groceries and everything else  was priced according to the US dollar so a bottle of coke only costs about 1.5 USD but thats about 7000 K and about RM 4.50 for what costs RM 2 back in Malaysia. I am just not used to the prices here and will NEVER be! But foreigners find it all to be really cheap comparing the prices here and from where they came from, so it's all good.


Ah and it's the typical shitty cycle of all foreigners treating the locals like servants and lower class people, making them the help and nothing more; no opportunities for the local to build businesses or to make extra earnings; nothing. I'm probably the most hobo foreigner here because I refuse to eat in those fancy fine dining places I can find anywhere else in the world and would never spend so much for food I can get on the streets of Malaysia for far much less anyway. So I'm on a mission:


1) To buy local produce and fruits and vegetables from the roadside vendors

2) To volunteer my time to any local NGOs or voluntary organisations that may need extra hands! (I've found one; a patient of mine runs a local school for the children of underprivileged mothers!)

3) To show almost all other foreigner here that it IS possible to be nice and civil and friendly to the locals, and still be treated with respect and get things done as this is a two way process!


Africa I'm sure is beautiful and it's people even more so; if it wasn't for all the crazy money making advantage taking foreign employers here. Everyone complains about how laid back the local Zambians are; maybe it's just us who's overworked hyper senses cant rest knowing we're not making money every single second of the day. It's so tiresome this whole money making business, how everything is a business; healthcare and education even.

It's about time we took a step back and assess where all that money making has lead us to; to a lifestyle only adaptable for the absolute rich expats ; a widening rich and poor barrier and where the average person is not able to live off her monthly salary and buying groceries from the cheapest grocery store in the city is still ridiculously priced.

The Woes of Unemployment

Recently graduated, it was shocking that the life we had all dreamed about; of a comfortable paying job, with a modest car to get around and enough money now finally to take AirAsia trips with friends and enjoy life -- had to DIE!

We (a few of my classmates and I) took a slight break, maybe about a month after our studies ended, to just enjoy ourselves a little, take short road trips, with the balance of the PTPTN money we had. Little did we know, that life outside that Harrier 9 of us squeezed into for our epic journey down south, was a web of frustrations and connections and impossibility for job prospects.

As soon as we decided to find a job, and started applying for jobs in hospitals since it was a dream of many to work in a hospital setting; everyone told us that's where the experience is! But as we sent the emails of resumes, and waited for the phone calls that would call us in for the numerous interviews we deserved; none did! Nada, Zilch, ZERO phone calls!

Then slowly, the worry in us grew, we thought ah maybe hospitals are all just waiting a little while more to employ us eager fresh graduates. But then, slowly as time went by, still....NO CALLS! And then, one fun afternoon, after a lunch with a lecturer of ours, we found out that we were alone in this battle of employment as a lot of my other classmates were in fact employed and even fought over by a few hospitals and institutions.

We had to sit down and analyse what was wrong with us. The one obvious reason came up; we just weren't very Chinese. Apparently all employers of major hospitals preferred Chinese employees. I remember we were told numerous times that it just gels with the majority of patients that the hospitals drew in. I'm sorry, but we apparently weren't on the train that changed the national language of Malaysia to Mandarin/Cantonese. If Cantonese/Mandarin was so important (nothing wrong with that!) but then it should be implemented to be a compulsory language to learn in schools, so everyone gets equal opportunity.

Then the small centres that we did apply for jobs at, paid us so little that it was impossible to buy a car to travel to the centre and then pay our heavy debt of ptptn and also to be able to LIVE! Centres wanted to pay us RM 1500 even for a full day 6 days a week job. What utter rubbish!

Then we also found out, that it was impossible to obtain an interview in major hospitals that would most likely pay you a fair amount of money, without some connections. We had to make sure connections were sought out and effort was taking in making connections. The whole thing became so tedious, that all we could talk about when we met up, was how frustrating applying for a job as a Physiotherapist in Malaysia was.

The problem is that our government, ministry of education and ministry of health, never screens, never denies new colleges that spring up like mushrooms all over Malaysia offering courses like Nursing, Physiotherapy and many other allied health science courses. With no control over the number of diploma graduates being produced every year in these fields; Malaysia has done what seemed to be impossible; saturated the field of allied health sciences so much that you see unemployed physiotherapist as well as NURSES. Two jobs that are highly in demand almost anywhere else in the world. Bravo!

With diploma graduates of nursing and physiotherapy being produced in the thousands only around KL; jobs are becoming more and more scarce and because it is so saturated, employers now know that they don't need to pay very high as much as a graduate deserves since jobs are so hard to come by, anyone would jump at the opportunity of the first job they obtain. So it starts; the payment of RM 1200 - 1500 for diploma graduates.

So now, what do we degree graduates do? We're all high and mighty convincing everyone we have to better than a diploma graduate but with no regulation in job designation of a diploma and degree graduate, why would any employer want to higher a degree graduate and pay you more when they could higher a diploma graduate and pay less? The set of skills we learn are almost similar in fact. But okay, so some employers have been hearing about a rumour of a Bill that might be passed station diploma graduates would be assistant physiotherapists and degree graduates only can be qualified physiotherapist, so to be safe, they hire a few degree qualified physiotherapists in hospitals and centres. But again because it's so saturated, and they need way fewer degree graduates than the ones that are produced; employers cap their pay at RM 1800.

So the vicious cycle continues, as we take these offers of RM 1800 and continue to go deeper in debts that we cant afford to pay off, cause cars take 10 years to pay off, ptptn loans take 20 years to pay off, houses take 20 years to pay off....we fall into the trap of leading a life full of debts till we finally die.

Dreams of travelling are slowly pushed aside, as we are now faced with a difficult question; to do what we spent the last 4 years studying and have grown to like and have passion for but earn peanuts, or to do something totally unrelated (like work in a call centre) and easily make twice the money and be able to travel and do things in our lives before we kicked the bucket.

I am saddened when faced with this question, as I feel no person should be but Malaysia has made this part of our lives. Many of my friends chose the latter, not by choice but by circumstances. We may get lucky breaks, but not all of us are that lucky. If this country does not change, we'd be stuck with our children and children's children worrying about the same thing and going through the same experiences as us, and unemployment would come to an absolute high that this economy and country would not be able to do anything else but crumble.

Soulmates.

I never believed in soulmates. I don't think there is the ONE for me, or I am the ONE for someone else.

Recently though, as the few last months of college life drew nearer something changed.Well a lot of things changed actually. 4 years suddenly felt like it had only been 4 days! And I started to realise as i looked around me, that i felt such an amazing closeness to my friends. It made me stop and think about these new feelings.

And in that short span of time, the bond that grew between us girlfriends was so overwhelming, so refreshing so  unconventional. We did not hold back in expressing our affections, our love and our flaws. And surprisingly, as I heard them all, I only had love, true undying love for these wonderful women.

I quickly realised that these women, these talented potential amazing women were , had to be my soulmates!

Could that be possible though? I was always told that soulmates were your romantic life partner. Yes my partner would definitely be my soulmate, i cant think of a reason why i would want to be romantically involved with anyone who isnt, but would he be my only soulmate? I don't think so, and I don't wish that to be so.

But that's all that's different really, the romanticness. I love my sistas but I am not as romantic with them but in every other way possible, we're so compatible. We understand each other, we click. They are everything I see in a partner for life! PartnerS. It made me realise all my previous soul sistas that I wish i made the effort to express myself to.

Soulmates were not meant to be gender specific, they're just meant to be the most perfect, amazing people you can see spending the rest of your lives talking to, laughing with, laughing at, travelling, sharing and having a companion that understands you and is as compatible as anyone can possibly get! Regardless of gender, regardless of romantic-ness, regardless of physical/sexual attraction.

It's been an awesome journey these couple of months! Journey filled with self discovery and new found love for the amazing people around me.

I've learnt to always show and express how i feel about my friends, and i've learnt to accept new relationships or rather new types of relationships and to think that it is possible that there may be 101 different types of relationships in this world that my feeble mind may not be able to comprehend,

as it has taken me 24 years to discover this.