Zambia : "E" for effort

Zambia is trying to build a middle-class economy.

The Kariba Dam is a hydroelectric dam in the Kariba Gorge of the Zambezi river basin bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe. At 128-meter high and 579-meter long, it is one of the largest dams in the world and controls 40 percent of the total runoff of the Zambezi River. (Source: Xinhua)

It was built by the Italians in the early 1950s.

On the road from Lusaka to the Kariba Dam, there are some Zambian attempts at a fledgling motel system. We stopped for a bite to eat at one of them, and I asked to see some rooms. The rooms went for something like $25 a night and were rough attempts to mimic a western-style Motel 6 grade of accommodation. A bedroom area, with a couple of beds, maybe a mirror, a bit of a light of some kind. A bathroom with a shower, a sink, and a toilet.

As the manager showed me the rooms, I noted the features and suggested that he might want to consider adding toilet seats to the toilets. He appeared to make note of this.

The point is, they're trying. But they still fall short of what a westerner expects, and they probably charge too much for a typical African to pay, so who's going to stay there? Maybe they had toilet seats when they first opened and they were opportunistically stolen by the first guests; I don't know. The whole place has a half-finished feel to it, and I was told that this is typical; they plan, they start, and their plan is to finish things off with the money that will start rolling in.

Except, very often it doesn't.