Downtown Kitwe

Life is slow in the city! This is Kitwe city centre on a lazy Monday afternoon. Kitwe, although not the Regional Capital, is the biggest city in the Copperbelt region of Zambia. Originally built in the bad old colonial days with the money from the rich copper mining industry, very little has changed except for the slow deterioration of the streets and buildings over the years. A can of paint and a paintbrush seem as much a foreign concept to the city fathers as does the cleaning out of the storm water drains before the rainy season starts! The roads are a minefield of potholes and badly done patches and the shops are, for the most, a messy mixture of security bars and unwashed windows. So sad really, it must have been a pretty little city in its heyday!