As I write this I’m sitting in the Chit Chat Café, on Omelo Mumba road in Lusaka. The crowd is a mixture of shirted expats with sunglasses on their heads, and laid back locals enjoy a mellow Sunday brunch. The Gotan Project is playing on the stereo. It’s a cross between Africa, Italy and Brazil. I love it.

Eating breakfast with me are Brigida, Laura and Sue. Laura I wrote about last time; we met on the plane from London, and have been regularly chilling the fuck out in Lusaka. Sue is her friend, an Insectologist (I think it’s supposed to be Entomologist or something like that, but she basically is into insects and chemicals and farming, so insectologist will suffice). Brigida is a woman I met on a plane – this time on my way from Ethiopia to Zambia (one leg of the return journey from Bombay). She is an Italian marriage and relationship counsellor, specialising in sex therapy (I’m serious). She is genius. We got on brilliantly on the plane, and when she got to Lusaka and discovered that Ethiopian Airlines sent her baggage to Gambia by mistake (easy error, Gambia/Zambia), I invited her to stay in my spare room until they returned it. So we are now friends, and on Thursday I took her to Boys’ Night at the pub – at first they were annoyed at me for breaking the gender rules, but when they found out what she did for a living they wouldn’t let her leave…

I’ve moved into my new flat, which is, to put it simply, lush. It’s not particularly beautiful, or well furnished, but there’s something very homely about it, and it’s split over two floors with old marble stairs. More than anything, it’s indescribably calming to have a place of my own, to truly settle into this city and country, to feel like a resident more than a tourist. I’ve been shocked by how welcoming the community is here – already I have quite a few people to hang out with, to call on a Friday night or have drinks with while watching the rugby. I’m guessing that all the ex pats here are bored of each other and are happy to see a fresh face…either that or I’m fucking cool and everybody loves me the moment they meet me. Or both!!!!!!!! J

I’m trying to make more Zambian friends. I only have one or two at the moment, including a wicked guy called Jau who is a friend of Sophie’s from London. It feels weird to have mostly white friends in this country – but then that’s frequently true of foreigners here. My other African experience, in Uganda, was far more grassroots, I was travelling round the northern province of the country with a camera and a notebook and a cocky smile, and I met a lot more people who were proper locals. It’s fucking cheesy isn’t it, the desire to meet the natives, but it’s a strong craving for me right now. I meet plenty of Zambians through work (you have to differentiate here: Black Zambian / White Zambian….there are plenty of Caucasian locals) but the relationship is a professional one, I would feel weird having a beer with them and telling them absurdly dark jokes about jesus and gay men (etc), just like with most work colleagues. So if you have any black friends, do put me in touch!

My trip to Bombay last week was special. Short, sexy, even a bit spazzy. I spent as much time as possible with Shloka, who is as short, sexy and spazzy as ever, and that made me very happy. I even managed to crash her annual office party, where I made friends with the fattest cameraman I could find (he had a white ski hat on, danced for several hours straight, and told me to ‘rock on’ several times in an accent that I have been trying to imitate ever since). That plus a lot of other things I can’t write about in the public domain, and so it was a beautiful five days, well worth flying across the middle east for.

This weekend I go to Victoria falls, the biggest waterfall since babs’ last spout of diarrhoea. It is supposed to be insane. I will post pictures, and some of my flat too if you’re lucky. Next time I also promise to write a bit about how the Chinese are colonising Africa and also something on Alain de Botton’s “The Art of Travel”, which is my current (brilliant) reading material.

Right – almost time for me to go back to saving the world. Peace out.