Ferrys, buses, taxi's and trains and finally in Kabwe!

---

Dear All,

Firstly I would just like to express how busy I have been over the ast week or so and apologise to anyone who has tried to contact me and received no reply!

I suppose I should start with the last remaining days in Zanzibar. I don’t know if I mentioned this before but while we were staying on the north of the island we told one of our friends of our staying in stone town. He had a friend there who would let us stay in on of his houses aparently. We arrived and basically got this decked out bachelor pad complete with kitchin, living room and about a thousand bedrooms (although they were all dusty and hadn’t been lived in for about a year) but we were completely satisfied for our fiver a night!

Stone town is a really pretty little town consisting of mostly tall, rather run down buildings which create hundreds of swirling and bustling side streets with clothes lines hanging in between the houses and street shop sellers trying to sell you their ‘jambo jambo’ CD’s. Jambo by the way (meaning Hello) is something the locals will only say to toursists and never to themselves as they know it may be the only phrase we may be aware of so if you herar ‘Jambo’ walking down the street you can know for certain that someone is talking to you no doubt followed up by a push for purchase. On our last day there we had a really relaxed day walking round and seeing the town, tasting the local food from the food market. For me this wasn’t as great as it was for Alice as I had a nice plastic plate of fried veggies as instead of mishkushties I think they are called which are essentially meat kebabs. That night James took us out for a great meal. We started in a chinese restaurant for starters, a vegetaran indian for mains and then a really posh restaurant for dessert with the plan of going out to the bar afterwards. The food was great and was greatfully welcomed by Alice and I who hadn’t really eaten ‘anyfink posh’ for a while. By the time we had finished dessert and we’d all slumped into an overindulged state of tiredness we decided to head home for out early start for our journey to Zambia.

To say we got here by the skin of our teeth would be an absolute under eggageration. We had read in our trusty book that the ferry would depart from Zanzibar and arrive in Dar es Salaam by 12 and so we would have plenty of time to make our leisurely way to the train which left at 4 o’clock. This story has learnt us never to trust the guide book and do our own reasearch nect time! We arrived at the ferry dock early as to book our ticets for the 10 o’clock ferry. The guy behind the desk looked at us blankly and said, “there is no ferry before one o’clock” - ah this was a problem. It then arrived in Dar at 3 and we had no idea how far away the train was from the ferry port. So of course we risked it. As soon as the ferry came in we barged past every man, women and child to get a taxi to then hit a massive pile up of traffic. We were then told the train departed at 3:50 and not 4! Our cabbie was great as he was prepared to go to any lengths to get us on the train wherher it be taking shortcuts across roads or occasionally sneaking over bits of walkway to get infront of others. We fnally got there - hurray and with a whole 10 minutes to spare. After queuing for around 7 of those minutes and being told we couldn’t pay in dollars only shillings and running our hearts out to the beuro de change and back we took our final breathless steps onto the train where we then discovered we had no tanzanian currency to buy food!

The train was definitely an experience to be had that I would recommend to anyone. We considered for a while taking the bus which only took 24 hours over the trains 40 but we decided against it. What was great about the train is that it moved at snails pace past lots of national parks and beautiful scenery. On the first day we saw zebra and giraffe’s which was amazing. Th rest of the days we didn’t see any animals but lots of lush lands turning into desert plains into small towns and back into plains. Apparently its better to take the train the other way from Zambia to Tanzania as it goes through all the national parks during the day but most of ours were at night which was a bit dissapointing. We slept in this little cabin with three hardened blue beds on each side of the door packed on top of eachother. Mostly during the day we had the cabin to ourselves as everyone had got off but always during the night the light would be switched on and off by people getting on and off the train which was awful as we could hardly sleep on the beds anyway even without the constant distraction and loud voices. We met a 19 year old traveller from Bristol who was a life saver as he leant us some money to by food. He had been overlanding indepependantly though Africa to meet his friend for a week in Cape Town before catching a flight to Oz for a year - always meeting interesting people! Most nights we sat in this tiny little dining room, ate dinner played cards and drank beer. It took us in the end 50 hours to get to Zambia instead of 40 as at one point we broke down aparently because it couldn’t get the momentum to get up a hill - it really is a clapped out old thing. When we arrived jumped onto the nearest bus that took as to Kabwe and after another hour and a half was greated by Alice’s lovely cousin Siobhan and taken to the much craved confort of her home.

The next day we had a well deserved chill out day of movies in the morning and exploring the town in the afternoon. Kabwe is quite a small town just to the north of Zambia i.e. slap bang in the middle of Zambia, You don’t see ANY white people walking around which is really refreshing and you don’t get bothered or hassled in the streets. The town is really just a a supermarket, loads and loads of electrical shops and lots of seed wholesalers. One night Siobhan took us to ‘the best bar in Kabwe’ called the Irish bar. It was the busiest she’d ever seen it and the only people there were us and around 3 white farmers. This is how exciting it gets! I really don’t mind this quietness of it as we’ve had such a party in Zanzibar and plus we really didn’t come to Africa to go to bars all the time!

Siobhan is working as a nurse over here in a Hospice which we went and visited the next day. The hospice has a primary school attached to it and a sort of kindergarten in a separate area of Kabwe which we also visited the next couple of days. There seems to be a lot more money over here in Zambia than Tanzania as the Hospice and schools are so clean and well run. I feel like the corruption is hardly existant (in Kabwe anyway) and a lot of emphasis is put on the wellbeing of the children for example the schools have an abundance of councillers, social workers, carers. They also provide outreach services, supplying medicines in the remote villages, travelling to the childs house if he/she hasn’t come into school for a couple of days its fantastic. So the plan for Alice and I is to visit another childrens centre for homeless children and then divide our time between the outreach projects (which we haven’t been on yet but hopefully this Friday) the school, the kindergarten and the childrens centre. Although the town may not be rocking we will have plently of things to get stuck into!

This weekend we are planning to visit Lusaka and then continue travelling a bit south onto Livingstone and see the famous Victoria falls and hang around the town for a couple of days before venturing back up to Kabwe. All exciting stuff!

As ever will keep you updated on our next adventures!!!

Lots of love,


Meg xxxxxxxxxxxx

---