1 July, Monday: Day at the Farmers spit braai

We woke up to the smell of Carly making sticky cinnamon buns in the kitchen. None of us have ever had such delicious home made cinnamon buns for breakfast. It was by far one of the best breakfasts we've had, what a treat! We are going to leave the Stones double in size if we carry on eating on like this. We were supposed to be on our merry way, continuing our cycle trip down to Lusaka. However, its a public holiday in Zambia and all the expat farmers are gathering today around the dam on a farmers land and having a lamb spit braai. With a slightly damaged scull and an opportunity to meet the Stones friends and obviously when we heard lamb SPIT, we decided to have ANOTHER rest day with the Stones. It was so worth it. We had such a fun day.

We travelled about half an hour on a dusty gravel road, eventually going through a mere gate and driving through newly planted wheat and arriving to a beautiful well-looked after garden, going all the way down to a stunning dam. As we got our the car, the lamb that had been on the spit for an hour already, had us all drooling. About 10 young families were there, with all their children and it was so cool to meet such different people. Some farmers were ex Zimbo's having had to flee their country 15 years ago, or legit Zambian families who have been there for generations. The Browns, who hosted the day is an adventure-junkie and has all the toys, of which includes a few paintball guns and set up a course for the day. There were about 15 children aged 6-13 yrs who were all so excited and had their team against the dads and Chris eargerly joined in, getting nailed all over his body. All the ladies made a team as well and it turned out to be a very fun day paintballing while the lamb cooked. The GnT's kept on coming and things got really festive. Late afternoon the boat came out along with all the toys and Chris jumped at the opportunity to slalim ski. It was so much fun, but the water was freezing, I was definitely not going to get in. The water was so flat and the sun started setting, ending the day so magically.

The spit was supposed to have taken 5 hours but a typical farmers braai, we landed up eating in the dark and then the party started. The music was cranked up and instead of getting our dancing shoes on, we threw the flip-flops off and danced with the kids and their parents. We got home late into the evening, luckily driven by Gregg because there was no ways we would've made our way through the farmlands in the dark back to the house. It turned out to be such a fun, festive day and meeting new people and hearing their stories. It was definitely well worth taking the day the off to just have fun and get involved in the farming community lifestyle.