Golfing at Nchanga Golf Club

We have been golfing here in Chingola at the Nchanga Golf Club.  It happens to form the back property line for this house.  Here are Tom and Mary with our house behind at the 6th hole.  We know because the tall narrow pine in the background is just inside our neighbor's yard.  The building visible on the left side is the clubhouse.

Below are a few more pictures from today's game, including the monkeys.  These are the same ones who frequent our yard.

The peanut gallery ... The most frustrating part of our game was eliminated when we decided not to employ the caddies.  Unfortunately today the golfers behind us had caddies who felt compelled to walk ahead of the golfers, and come right up to where Mary and I were hitting.  Just another instance of feeling like we are specimens in the zoo, and something to stare at.  At least we weren't paying them to do the same thing.

The course is nice.  There are nice wide fairways, some interesting dog-legs, lots of water hazards, and plenty of sand bunkers to keep it interesting.  When we lose a ball, rather than hunt in the surrounding dense foliage, we leave it to the monkeys or caddies to find.  It is not worth getting up close and personal to the spiders and snakes.  Tom calls it strategic advertising.  So far we've left behind some Fortune Minerals, CNN, and several other balls from Tom's travels in Canada.

We attempted a game a week ago, but were rained and bugged out.  Tom stuck it out, after the rain abated, but Mary and I headed home to get away from the gnats and flies.  The nice thing about the way this course is laid out, we have several options to trim holes, or just golf a short game with easy access back to the clubhouse and parking lot.

Did I mention the price?  To join the club we paid ZMW200 ($38) per month, a full year at a time.  Since their fiscal year begins in August, we paid a prorated amount.  Each game the greens fees are ZMW10 ($2), except on Saturday there fee jumps to a whopping ZMW30 ($6) each.  Mary gets to golf for free.  You can easily see this is not a rich man's sport here.  For about $900 we can virtually have unlimited golf.

March 8 we also played, and remembered to bring the camera  ... 

Remember, Mary golfs as a leftie, otherwise this would be very odd:

This is one of several storm shelters on the course.  Until we had to duck into one last weekend we thought the roofs were metal.  They are actually a concrete product.  Inside there will be found remnants of fires, likely from guards or people working on installing the new waterline crossing the entire course.