T.I.A & Entering Zambia

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T.I.A - This Is Africa

A truck motto for when things go wrong or for some of the bizarre occurances that take place day to day. A simple shake of the head and someone saying T.I.A happens pretty much every day. Todays blog will be an example of when this was said a lot.

We were up at 5am for a long drive to cross the border into Zambia. After a few hours of fairly unevenful driving we came across a police check point. These are common in Africa and we usually pass a least one or two an hour, mainly being waved right through or only having to slow down and say hi for a few seconds. This time however, that was not meant to be. The policeman demanded we pull over and asked our driver Pat to show him the insurance documents. The documents that we had on the truck showed our insurance as expiring the day before, and we didn't have copies of the new insurance on the truck. This did not please the policeman and the threat of our driver being arrested, leaving us all stranded on the side of the road loomed large. Lots of discussions later, and our driver telling the policeman that if he arrested him he would also have to call the embassy for each nationality on the trip (about 5/6 different ones) so they could come and sort us out, the policeman decided that maybe he would go with the earlier suggestion put forward by us. This was that he should take our driver to the nearest email access sohe could print off his new insurance documents. Off they went, leaving us on the side of the road in the midday heat. An hour later they arrived back, some beer changed hands and we were allowed on our way. About 2 1/2 hours behind schedule.

About thirty minutes later we arrived at the Zambian border. Parking up, we suddenly had all the locals shouting at us and we had reversed into the lampost (we hadn't). We said we hadn't and continued onto the immigration office thinking nothing further of it. A little aside here .... since the trouble began in Zimbabwe and we were advised not to travel there, many tourists, overland trucks etc have rerouted their trips through neighbouring Zambia. The Zambians decided to cash in on this a little by raising the UK Nationals visa fee from US$50 to US$150. Needless to say this had already put a small black mark against Zambias name in many of our eyes. The immigration official was, for a change, quite cheerful. However, he did decide to hold onto our passports for about an hour, just as they had done at the Tanzania border, once again - for no apparent reason. We got them back finally and battled our way through the many money exchangers to get back to the truck. Some people got ripped off on their exchange rates, some came out very well indeed. The difference between a natural at haggling and someone who hates it! We all piled onto the truck (me with a not so nice strawberry ice cream that I spent the last of my Malawian money on) and headed for the barriers. The barriers were not raised for us! It turned out the matter of truck versus lampost had not been settled in the eyes of the officials at the border. They were after payment for repairs. A lot of arguing later, including a tape measure being brought out by us to prove we couldn't possibly have hit it, and the officials decided to call the police to handle the matter. Who should turn up about 30 minutes later but the same policeman who had caused us so much hassle earlier in the day. Upon his arrival the 24 of us in the truck all let out a huge cheer and he waved at us all aimiably. Hoping he had remembered the beer offering from earlier we held listened to what was being said. A few handshakes and smiles later, all was forgot, the barriers were raised and we were on our way!

T.I.A

The drive for the rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Zambia seemed to be a lot flatter than the countries we had been through previously but other than that the scenery is fairly similar. We arrived at our campsite - 'Flat Dogs' (a nickname for Crocodiles) in South Luangwa National Park. The campsite is well known for having wildlife roam in and out of camp. Elephants and Hippos entering camp are a daily occurance and there are tree platforms in many of the trees for you to run up to, getting out of their way should you come across one. Basically, they are not to be messed with! Once again, we were asked to try and walk around with someone else and not alone and to try and use the guides at night. These were basically guys with very strong torches who will walk you anywhere in camp you want to go, looking out for hippos hiding around corners. We were due to stay there for 3 nights. I was cooking dinner that night and the many baboons taking their chance at stealing the food you were cooking made for an interesting cooking experience. The best defence?? Chase them away whilst growling and waving a spoon or spatula of some description. Not for the faint hearted with some of the big ones I can tell you. It was ridiculously hot here, definitely the hottest it had been so far in the trip.

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