My Culture Shock in Zambia as a Ghanaian Part 2

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hey, so today we're going to be doing my culture shocks in Zambia part two. I love love love the response, the feedback I had on the first one, which a lot of you agreed with, you know, pretty much all of the points that the five points that I raised in that video.

[00:00:17]I still have a few of you saying that I sound like a Nigerian or that Nigerians and Kenyans sound the same, but I'm just going to leave you to it because I have enough people saying that we totally sound different. So, I'm not going to bore you today on that. But today we are doing part two. Now, in case you're coming across this video for the first time, my name is Naa Ashiokor. I'm a travel vlogger. I'm a travel curator as well. I love to travel and I document my travels. And so, I was recently in Zambia. I had such an amazing time.

[00:00:47]Three weeks, oh my god. And I was in Mongu for the Kuomboka ceremony. I was also in Livingstone. Got to experience the Mosi-oa-Tunya Falls, also known as the Victoria Falls.

[00:01:00]I was in Lusaka, where I had the cheetah interaction, elephant feeding, so many things, you know, at Chaminuka. I had such a blast, really, guys. I did my first video about my culture shocks in Zambia because I was really shocked about some things. I mentioned five things in that video. If you haven't seen it, go to my channel.

[00:01:20]Right here. The video just before this one. Go check it out. And then, when you're done, come check this one out as well, okay? So, now we're going to be talking about extra five things I was shocked by. Yo, this is something that shocked me in Zambia because I didn't see this coming. Zambians mention the time differently from what I'm used to in Ghana. In Zambia, they use the 24-hour clock format.

[00:01:49]Whereas in Ghana, for what I'm used to, we use the 12-hour clock format, right?

[00:01:55]And so, what is 3:00 p.m. here in Ghana?

[00:01:59]A Zambian will say it is 15 hours. Now, this confused me in the beginning. Like you're speaking with airlines, you are calling Airbnbs or hotels, dealing with restaurants or acquaintances you're meeting and they're giving you time in 24-hour format. Dinner is for 19 hours.

[00:02:23]The event is at 18 hours. Check-in is 14 hours.

[00:02:29]What?

[00:02:31]Oh, this is going to be like 22 hours.

[00:02:35]Initially, I was like, an event is 14 hours? What are we going to be doing?

[00:02:40]You know? Because I thought that was like going to be the duration for the event. I didn't know they were actually stating the time the event was going to start. So, this was a little confusing for me in the beginning. And then finally, it clicked. And when it clicked, it now took me a little while to adjust. I just didn't know Zambians had this military clock formats. I had no idea. That was really interesting. That was fun to adjust to. And I'm going to be honest, at some point I started to like it. I started to like it very much because it felt like some adult's in upgrade.

[00:03:21]>> [laughter] >> At some point, I started to say it before they will say it. As though I I were a citizen or I'd been living there for a while. Yeah, I really started to like it. My culture shock number seven, yo, I lost count trying to keep up with the number of malls, shopping malls in Zambia. To be specific, Lusaka. What?

[00:03:46]Listen, there's a mall everywhere, every corner. What What exactly is going on?

[00:03:53]What exactly is going on in Lusaka?

[00:03:55]There's East Park Mall, East Park Mall.

[00:03:58]I think that's my favorite so far. It's a really big mall and the variety there, I really, really love that mall. It's just I love it. And then there's Waterfall Mall, I think so. There's Garden City Mall, yes, there's Garden City Mall, Long Acres, yes, I think there's Long Acres.

[00:04:18]There's also um Arcades, I'm not sure, but I think Arcades there's a mall also like that.

[00:04:24]There was a time I I was looking for tripod because I lost my tripod and I was just looking for one so I put online and then this person would say, "Go to this mall. Go to that mall. Go to this mall. Go to that mall. Go to that other mall." You know, I was so surprised at the number of malls in Zambia. In Lusaka, I would, you know, we'd be driving somewhere and then I'll see a mall. We'll be driving off somewhere else just a few minutes past the other one, I'm going to see another mall.

[00:04:53]Like, of course, like I said, the East Park is my favorite. It looked to me that that's the biggest mall in Lusaka.

[00:05:01]I could be wrong. If you're Zambian, just let me know. But of all the, you know, malls that I was at, East Park to me felt like the biggest. It was beautiful also and it was the busiest so I loved going there.

[00:05:15]Um aside that, it just had, of course, I guess because it was the biggest, it had a lot of variety as compared to other other malls and lots of restaurants.

[00:05:26]When you go to East Park, you find lots of people there also. I think it's a great place to just meet people, possibly even meet um other foreigners as well. And there were lots of things you could do at the East Park. They had this chess and giant chess that you could play standing, you know, that That really interesting.

[00:05:46]There guys who play flutes on the weekends as well. It also felt family-friendly. I just I don't know. I really love the place. How many malls exactly are in in Lusaka? Tell us. I was so shocked by this. Guys, Zambians love chicken. And that's not the shocker.

[00:06:06]Hold on. Just stay with me. I'm going somewhere. It's not a shock to see that, you know, a country loves chicken. The shock to me was as a Ghanaian to find out that almost all of the chicken that is consumed by Zambians in Zambia, they're locally grown chicken. That's is dope.

[00:06:28]Locally grown fowls. If you're watching this as a Zambian, this may be like, "What's the big deal? It's no surprise."

[00:06:34]Now, let me wow you. Coming from Ghana, we import a huge percentage of the chicken that we consume, especially frozen chicken. Over 80% of the chicken that we consume is imported. If you do a simple Google search, you're going to find out Ghanaians consume about 80 to 95% of imported chicken. The chicken we eat in Ghana that's locally grown, that's about 5 to 15%. That's how much of imported chicken we consume in Ghana.

[00:07:06]Get Do you understand the shock I was in? I had a lot of chicken in Zambia.

[00:07:10]And you can tell when chicken This chicken is, you know, we call it house chicken. Shea shea wo.

[00:07:18]>> [laughter] >> You can tell shea wo from like a foreign chicken. You can tell the difference.

[00:07:24]The ones I had, they were firm, just soft in the right areas. They were just really good. And I just kept seeing the same type of chicken, the same type of chicken everywhere I was going. I went to I remember I did the road trip from Lusaka to Mongu. We made a couple of stops on the way, and there were lots of people by the roadside selling chicken, selling chips, selling nshima, and I was buying chicken a lot on the way. And you could tell that this chicken is different. I went online to search how much of the chicken that is consumed in Zambia is imported. And I was surprised to find out that Zambians import maybe just about like 1 or 2% of the chicken you'll find in the country. Otherwise, about 98%, 99% of the chicken that is consumed in Zambia is homegrown. Now, that's wild. That's impressive. That is How did they do it? At some point, I just told myself, "Homegrown chicken is part of Zambia's national identity, period."

[00:08:31]Period. Also, I don't know what the correlation is, but there was this roundabout that I kept using at some point. This a statue of this really big fowl at the roundabout. I've forgotten what my Yango driver, the explanation he gave to the fowl being there. If anybody knows the story, please please tell me in the comment section, cuz I've totally forgotten.

[00:08:52]Does it have any correlation with the fact that you have a lot of the chicken you're consuming in Zambia being homegrown?

[00:09:01]I want to know. So, this culture shock was a real culture shock to be. Still is. Zambians don't eat snails. Yo. I don't know if Zambians have any kind of history with snails, but I want to know.

[00:09:16]What it What is the history between Zambia and snails? Zambians cannot stand the mere sight of snails. Why? That's a real delicacy here in Ghana. I'm telling you. You can find snails in Zambia, but they don't eat them. They don't even like to see them. They don't want to be near them. And I was like, why? Because for me as a Ghanaian, we love snails. I love snails. And let me blow your mind with this, especially if you're a Zambian. Snails cost more in Ghana than chicken. I was I was at the market recently, and if you follow me online, you know this.

[00:09:56]So, I went asking for the prices of snails, and I found five big snails for almost $30. Almost 500 kwacha for five big snails. That's how much snails cost here in Ghana. Snails are expensive in Ghana, more expensive than chicken, more expensive than beef. That's how much a lot of Ghanaians love snails. So, I was shocked that Zambians cannot stand the sight of snails. They would not eat it.

[00:10:27]I've heard from other Zambians who are like they would rather starve than have snails for food. Oh my god. Instead my shock, Zambians love caterpillar, which I was not able to bring myself to taste on this particular trip, maybe on the next one. For people who don't like snails, I was shocked to find out that they love caterpillar. And apparently some Zambians even eat mice. Like mice.

[00:10:56]>> [music] >> You know, mouse, rats, mice, you know, in the family.

[00:11:02]Apparently some Zambians eat mice. So, I was like, if you can eat caterpillar and you eat mice, what is snail that you can't eat? What is an innocent snail that you can't Big shock. One of my shocks in Zambia was the size of Zambia. I had no idea, and it just made me realize that, see, you can do so much. You can be in Zambia for weeks, for months, and you never finish touring the country. Now, here's the thing. Before I was going to leave for Zambia, I had an idea what the population of Zambia was like, over 21 million. And I know that for Ghana, where I come from, the population is over 34 million, right? But what I did not think about was the size of both countries. Turns out that Zambia is over three times the size of Ghana. Let me just break it down for you. You can fit Ghana into Zambia three times and there's still going to be land change.

[00:12:14]That's how big the country is and it didn't even cross my mind. We'll be driving somewhere for hours and then I will ask and they'll say, "Oh, we're still in the same province." I'm like, "What?" Zambia has 10 provinces and make no mistake.

[00:12:29]>> [laughter] >> Just because they have 10 provinces. In Ghana, we have 16 regions. But if you look at it really well, you can fit about three or four regions in Ghana into one province. This is a country that you need time for. It's not a place that you can just go in for a few days and think that you've covered enough.

[00:12:51]There's just so much you can do and you need a lot of time to really tour the country, to really enjoy the country.

[00:13:00]And hopefully the next time that I make it there, I'm going to have enough time so that I can I can properly tour. One of the places I want to go is the northern province because I've seen that it has so many waterfalls. So, oh my god. Oh my god, there's this Zambian creator online. She's called Olivia. She is a waterfall queen. Like she goes to so many different waterfalls every time and I want to explore these waterfalls in Zambia, in the north especially. And so that's like something I'm really looking forward to. Love it.

[00:13:35]Yo, this last culture shock is a bonus.

[00:13:39]And I need the ladies to come to the front. If you're a guy, just go back.

[00:13:42]This one is not for you. Ladies, I'm going to tell you. Zambian men, they can sweet talk. Okay.

[00:13:50]I feel like the sweet talking in in Zambia needs government regulation.

[00:13:57]Because what?

[00:13:59]What is going on?

[00:14:00]>> [laughter] >> The sugar levels in conversations with Zambian men is dangerous. Like if you're not careful, you'll just fall like this.

[00:14:10]So y'all better be careful when you're going to Zambia. Just know what you're doing.

[00:14:16]>> [laughter] >> On a real, Zambians are so so nice, so hospitable, so welcoming, so friendly, so helpful. It's really easy to fall in love with Zambians. I'm going to be very honest with you. And I was totally blown away. I did not think that the country was going to be this welcoming, this open to me. And I'm going to be very honest, I'm in love with that country. I feel like Zambia is one of those countries that totally underrated, that has not been documented as much as it should, and deserves. I think that a lot more people should go to Zambia, and you should definitely put it on your list. This year, or latest next year if you have not visited already. Because as it stands, yo, I want to go back ASAP.

[00:15:12]Yeah, but yo, these are my culture shocks so far. I've got a couple more under my sleeves, but I will keep them there. Of course, um please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Look forward to more videos from Zambia and of course for future trips that I'm going to be doing. There's so many videos to come up on this channel about Zambia, so watch out for that. Please don't forget to subscribe to the channel. I would love to read your comments. See, anytime I'm reading your comments, I'm so happy. That's why I take time to respond to each and every comment. Do well also to follow me on all my socials. I'm on X, I'm on Tik Tok, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram.

[00:15:54]What else? And if you want to come to Ghana at any point, you know, I curate tours here and so it will be a pleasure to help you curate your itinerary for you and then yeah, let's talk Ghana as well. But Zambia, you have my heart fully.

[00:16:09]I love you.