It ain't over till the fat lady gets on the bus

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It was the morning of my 31st birthday and we woke up on a smelly train, as it pulled into a small station in the middle of Nowhere, Zimbabwe. It was 1.30am. We gathered our bags, got off the train and walked over to the Ladies Waiting Room, found some comfy seats and tried to get back to sleep. The station manager locked the door. At least we were safe. After a few hours of 10 minute sleep intervals, the door was unlocked again at 6am. We got a local to drive us to the nearest highway, listening to the same African song playing over and over again for about half an hour. Something about a man cheating on his wife. We paid the driver with our remaining Botswana cash, chucked our bags in the dirt at the side of the road in Woop Woop and started our wait for a bus to come past. An hour later we got lucky. Well, sort of, if you call standing in the crammed walkway of a bus for the next couple of hours lucky. We do. After being dropped at yet another turnoff in the sticks and this time only waiting for five minutes, we hopped on our last bus headed to our final destination for the day, Mlibizi. Here we were going to catch a ferry across Lake Kariba, the largest artificial lake in the world, which, along with the Zambezi river, forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. We checked into the only campsite in the place, located next to the only store. After a tasty lunch of sadza (local name for maize meal) and nyama (meat), a few beers and a stroll along the lake, we were invited over for a delicious roast dinner by the owners of the campsite.
Between healthy servings of potato bake, fresh bread, salads, rice, meat and gravy, we were told stories of times not so long ago, when Zimbabwean supermarkets were empty and the people were forced to drive to neighbouring countries in order to do their grocery shopping. Days when the value of the Zimbabwean Dollar fluctuated so severely, that one person waiting in line for a loaf of bread might pay twice the price as the guy in front of him. Days when the Zimbabwean Dollar notes had to be reprinted on an almost weekly basis, resulting in a 100 Trillion Dollar note. Hard to believe, as we were enjoying one of the most delicious meals of our entire trip. These days Zimbabwe trades in US Dollars, supermarkets are fully stocked (downtown Harare has a grocery store on almost every second street corner) and it seems the people are eager to get on with their lives, rather than trying to fight their oppressive government. In any case, to us Zimbabweans would prove to be some of the friendliest and most welcoming people of our travels.
The next morning we boarded the ferry for what was supposed to be a relaxed day-long trip across Lake Kariba. The big on-board buffet and cheap gin and tonics notwithstanding, by the time we reached the town of Kariba our mood had somewhat soured, as I woke up with a crook neck and Kam not having had much sleep, due to some rough seas (on a lake mind you). A little cranky and less than enthusiastic about organising a canoe safari on the Zambezi (our reason for coming to Kariba) we settled into one of the local campgrounds, where the one-gloved manager told us stories of a nasty hippo taking chunks of his arm while he was fishing (he had the scars to prove it). Unperturbed we went ahead and found a local operator to organise our river adventure. Excitedly we told one of the locals drinking at the campsite bar about our plans. "No way would you get me into a canoe on the Zambezi river. Those hippos are killers. Not to mention the crocs." Hmmm. We had previously heard stories of hippos knocking people off their mokoros. Maybe there was more to this whole "biggest killer in Africa" thing after all. Nah! We had a plan and we were sticking to it. Besides we were going to be guided by one of the best, as our operator assured us. With the sound of the hippos from the nearby lake in our ears we went to sleep.
The time came to pay the deposit for the safari, which is when we discovered that the funds in our Visa card had dried up. Mastercards were not accepted in Kariba and so we had two days to kill while waiting for the money transfer to take effect. As the town of Kariba itself didn't hold much of interest for us, we decided to hop down to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, for a day. At least this would give us the chance to find me some sunscreen and maybe catch "The A-Team" at the cinema. Now when I say "hop down" I mean spending another eight hours on a 'chicken-bus' as a lot of people call them. But hey we were tough, having by now gotten used to crammed local modes of transport. Hell, we had just caught a lift in Kariba on the back of another pick-up truck, along with twenty other people! Anyway, these bus trips always give you a great insight into what music the locals are into. In this case, it meant listening to Shakira's "Waka waka" five times in the space of an hour. We spent our time in Harare, walking around town, visiting the local art gallery, getting friendly with security guards at Parliament House, paying a visit to the Australian embassy and voting in the current elections (just as well we did, it's a close one), going to see "From Paris With Love" (unfortunately "The A-Team" wasn't playing) and finally spending several hours trying to find some sunscreen. Despite the number of supermarkets this did not prove an easy task. Also interesting to note is the fact, that even though the country trades in US Dollars, it's only the notes, not the coins which are in circulation. When it comes to small change, just about any currency will suffice. In some cases when we were shopping we were given IOUs to the value of 70 cents or even pens, lollies and matches in place of change.
Our nights were spent in the cheapest hotel we could find located smack dab in the middle of the city on the corner of Robert Mugabe Road and Julius Nyerere Way, the latter being the first president of Tanzania and a UN-recognised 'World Hero' and the former being well known I believe. Our worst suspicions of our choice of accommodation were confirmed when we spotted a used contraceptive lying on the windowsill outside our room. Sweet dreams.
Cranky at my frustrated sunscreen search, on our last morning I made do with buying some small bottles of SPF-15 face cream. At the busy bus interchange (they all are in Africa) we boarded the bus back to Kariba. Now if you've never caught a bus in Africa, what you need to know is that it only leaves when each and every available space has been filled with a passenger and/or his luggage. While you sit waiting for this to happen, salesmen walk up and down the narrow aisle selling every possible item you can imagine: drinks, sweets, fruit, bread, clothes, toiletries, chains, locks, knives, bicycle pumps etc. Now you would think that having refused to buy a wallet from the previous ten guys, the eleventh guy would realise that I really don't need one, but of course this is not so. More frustrating is the fact that the seats are so small that your shoulders stick out on either side and when you sit in the aisle this means getting bumped by everyone passing through. After an hour of waiting for the bus to fill up it was finally time to go. This ride proved to be one of the more interesting of our trip. For starters the man sitting across the aisle from us had brought a bag far too large for the overhead compartment and was in an angry confrontation about where to stow it with the conductor. Every bus operates with both a driver and a conductor, who collects the fares from all the passengers. Loud music was coming through the speakers. Nothing unusual about that, except that it seemed to be accompanied by the sounds of birds tweeting in the background. Being a hot day, we decided it was a good time to try an orange drink, seemingly very popular with the locals, "dairy fruit juice", yep orange juice with milk. Needless to say that by the end of the trip we were both feeling a bit under the weather. This was not helped by the fact that not one but two kids had thrown up on the guy with the big luggage (he really was having a bad day). As we were both trying to pull ourselves together, the Zimbabwean version of comedy TV started playing on the screens above us (a mixture of slapstick and candid camera) and the ominous bird soundtrack turned out to be two boxes of chicks, that we had somehow missed, right above our heads. With more than mere elation we pulled into the Kariba bus station that night to find our friend, the canoe safari operator waiting for us. A smooth ride back to the campsite topped off a perfect day, even if the dead lamb in the boot didn't agree.

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Photos

Kariba ferry
Watching the cars disembark always draws a crowd in Mlibizi.

Electrified
The braids are out. What a relief!

It's all about the Dollar.
National Gallery in Harare

Comments

[me]

Good to hear all is going well. You both are telling interesting stories about your journey. Keep it up. Thanks, me