Finding God in Zambia and where did all the water go?!

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The boarder crossing at Kazungula took us from Botswana to Zambia and was easily one of the most entertaining I've ever done. We cleared Botswanan immigration easily enough and headed on down to the ferry queue, where our truck driver Tony did a fantastic job of queue jumping us pretty much all the way to the front, much to the displeasure of all the lorries sat waiting I'm sure. Apparently they've waited to cross for over 4 hours before (lorries typically can wait days as everyone else gets priority), either because one of the ferries was 'broken' or the crew were on a lunch break...which perhaps amount to much the same thing. Fortunately though we were lucky and barely had to wait 15mins before boarding the rather rickety wooden looking vehicle 'ferry' that took us across the wide Zambezi River. Plans to build a bridge here have been proposed in the past but as the borders of 4 countries, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, converge on the river the need to get agreement from all 4 governments has meant that so far there's no sign of any bridge and the ferry continues to slowly chug its way back and forth.

Once on the Zambian side I tried to recover from the pain of handing over 140USD for a visa (@30USD each day we're in the country!!!!), whilst the Aussies and Swiss on the truck only paid 50USD each - what did we ever do to Zambia?! Whilst we sat waiting for our tour leader to sort out the immigration process we had plenty of time to watch the antics unfolding outside. Initially we noticed a guy carrying a large box being chased by another through a gap in the fence, down an alley and then out of sight... a few minutes later the persuer walked back empty handed. It seemed that the guy running had stolen his parcel from one of the lorries queued up waiting to clear imigration. As we watched on we saw a stream of people slowly sauntering up along the side of the fence then quickly duck through the rather large hole in it (the hole was just about large enough to walk through without too much trouble...)!!! Oddly enough the guard who was patrolling with a rather large gun always seemed to have his back turned whenever anyone went through.....

The day we crossed the border was also our last day on the truck. It hadn't taken very long after leaving Cape Town for me to realise that big overland truck tours really aren't for me and whilst I won't be hurrying to do another I was lucky in that I got to travel with a great group of people. After a last farewell cruise along the river that evening, Helen and I hitched a lift with another truck the next morning, headed into town and started the 'freewheeling going solo' part of our trip!!! We started in style by finding an excellent vegetarian cafe, African Visions, for lunch, somewhere we actually ended up eating here a few times it was so good... the most entertaining meal we had though was one evening when we arrived back at the hostel shortly before a power cut. After 30mins of sitting in candle light we decided it was probably a good idea to go out for dinner and were v relieved when we got to the restaurant and found it still had power.... except @10mins after we ordered they too suffered a powercut and we were once again plunged into darkness. Welcome to Africa. We ended up eating our dinner by candlelight after all... ahhhhhh

Victoria Falls, which are only a short taxi ride from Livingston, were given their English name by David Livingstone after he first saw them on a visit in 1855 and named them after Queen Victoria. Locally the falls are known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders, although when we visited there wasn't too much thundering going on - I guess that's what you get for visiting waterfalls in the dry season! The falls lie on the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe and at 1.7 km wide and 108m high they form the largest sheet of falling water in the world - during the wet season it's apparently impossible to see the base of the falls and the walkways along the clifftop opposite are covered in a constant shower of spray. When the flow is at it's lowest the falls are about a tenth of their peak - when we were they I'd say they were about a fifth of their peak.

We first saw Vic falls from the air on a 15min helicopter ride that we took over them - approaching the falls we could see spray rising out above the first gorge and as we flew over it a small rainbow that had formed in its depths. Spanning the second gorge we saw the pretty Victoria Falls Bridge which marks the boarder between the two countries. The falls have slowly been receeding upstream over the last 100,000 years or more, the power of the river cutting a new path through the weaker sandstone and resulting in a series of gorges that mark the path the falls have taken. Back on land we followed a series of looping walkways around the top of the falls, watched bungee jumpers leaping off the bridge (needless to say I didn't contemplate that one), saw Vervet monkeys jumping around in the trees and with it being the dry season had views all the way down to they base. We also walked along the top of the falls across areas of land that in the wet season would be full of fast flowing water and carefully peered over the edge.

Outside we looked round the numerous souvenir stalls that crowd the entrance to the falls park, all of which are eager to sell you the same things. Most numerous were the 'ebony' souvenirs - carved elephants, salad spoons, jewellery you name it, almost everything you picked up the shop seller would ernestly tell you was 'ebony'. And if you looked carefully towards the back of the stall you'd invariably see an assistant diligently rubbing black shoe polish on to the next set of 'ebony' souvenirs....

There are lots of ways to burn through money at Victoria falls - whitewater rafting, bungee jumping, gorge swinging etc etc etc but with neither the time nor the money we quickly headed off on the bus to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. This was the begining of 3 days on buses which finally saw us arrive in Lillongwe, the capital of Malawi. We got on the bus to Lusaka at @7am, with the sound of hymns playing loudly on the stereo (Zambia I was shortly to find out is a very Christian country). When we pulled into the central bus station at Lusaka some 7 hours later the same CD was still playing on loop and I was almost at the point where I could sing along with the locals. At the hostel that night we shared the dorm with five young Christian Zambian girls who were on their way to England for the first time on a school trip - they were v excited and asked lots of questions about life in the UK, but were also rather nervous about flying for the first time. As they headed out for dinner they asked me to fill in a questionaire for a school project they'd be doing whilst away... the first question 'what is your religion and how does it influence your life'... oh dear.

Next morning @6am we were back at the bus station waiting for our bus to Chipata to depart, having had some bloke try to con us out of 10USD after showing us to the right bus and then apparently that there was a 'baggage fee' to pay. 'Lets go and ask the ticket inspector' I said and he disappeared pretty quickly. 90mins later we finally left Lusaka with a preacher trying to save our souls... as we'd sat waiting to leave the preacher had stood up and given an impromtu sermon - lots of 'Heeeeavvvvvvvvvvenly Jeeeeeeeeesus' and 'Praiseeeeee the lord' but I'll confess that most of the rest was lost on me. He was still going 20mins later when we finally left the bus station and indeed for the first 10mins of the journey - finally having gone round collecting donations (with more blessing and heavvvvvvvvenly jesusing for that donated) he sat down and the CD of hyms promptly started up again and continued playing on loop almost constantly for much of the next 8 hours.

Next up - relaxing on lake Malawi

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Comments

[anonymous]

Victoria Falls
Always wanted to go there, at least I have now seen in in 2D. Looks awesome :)