Greetings
everyone and welcome back to Zambia. It’s
been almost three weeks since Stefan and I arrived here to visit his friend
Charlie and while neither of us actually sleep in the house (Stefan is in his
VW and of course I’m in my tent) we certainly have come to think of this little
piece of property as our home. Well, at
least as much of a home as a wandering traveler in Africa can have… For me it
is fairly typical to be doing this, as I’ve spent weeks at a time in many
places in Africa: Cape Town, East London, Port St Johns, and Gaborone. For Stefan, it’s the first time since leaving
Germany 6 or so months ago that he has had the same place to sleep for more
than a few days. I did basically the
same thing when I traveled Asia, sure there were a few places where I spent a
week or more, but in general I was on the move nearly all the time. Every method of travel has its pluses and
minuses and of course it is up to an individual to find what works best for
them. What I’ve found works best for me
is exactly what I am doing: free to roam where ever and whenever, but happy to
put down a few roots and spent a month or so at a time in one place. Not only does life on the road become
substantially less expensive, but you have the time (and probably more
importantly) and energy to get to know a place and its people. That is exactly what I have been doing here
in Choma, Zambia so let me share what has been going on.
50
Zambia Kwacha. This works out to
$.00958, or in simple terms less than 1 cent.
Not very useful, even here in Africa.
The largest bill currently in Zambia, K50,000, is worth about $9.60 and
I am happy to report that unlike some African countries, is fairly easy to
use as people seem better at having
small bills to give change. These issues
might seem small to the uninitiated, but when you are in a country where the
ATM gives all ‘big bills’ but shops and street venders refuse to take them
because they don’t have proper change, it quickly becomes a problem. I am also happy to report that the cashiers
in the grocery stores are the best I’ve seen in Africa so far, fast,
professional and accurate. I don’t think
I could count the number of times I had people ring things up incorrectly, be
completely unable to do the most simple math problems or act rude or
uninterested. So cheers to Zambia for
that.
I’m
not sure when it will happen, but the other day I saw a poster showing the new
Zambian Kwacha. What they are going to
do is chop off the ‘000’s so instead of a K1,000 or K5,000, it will become
simply a K1 or K5 note, and they will be adding a K100 (100,000 in the current
system) as well as coins broken up into ‘Ngwee’, or cents. I guess they are trying to avoid going so far
down the road that like Zimbabwe, one day they would end up having to print
billion and trillion notes
(though that was the result of a very different situation).
Despite
the fact that neither Stefan nor I are official volunteers, we help out where
we can (and where we want to!) and Friday was no exception. I woke early and went on a (very) short run
with a few others, then after breakfast it was time to do a little bit of
work. Our most important task was to go
to the Choma Milling Company to pick up bags of food, both for the children and
for the pigs out on the farm.
After
paying at the building at the front of the large complex and getting our receipt,
we drove the truck to the loading docks by the warehouse. As we waited for our 30x50kg bags of pig
food, and numerous other smaller orders I walked past the ‘no customers
allowed’ sign to take a look inside. No
one seemed to mind.
With
about 1,800kg of feed loaded in the back of the truck, Lesle, Charlie and I
climbed on to the pile (Stefan drove) and we set off for the farm.
I
didn’t know what to expect from this farm but right away I was impressed with
how clean and organized it is. Pigs are
the focus and they are housed in a parallel series of mud-brick buildings with
corrugated iron roofs and contained one of the fattest pigs I’ve ever
seen.
Some
of the kids started building a play house the next morning.
Stefan
is so well prepared that he even has a pair of blue coveralls for when he works
on the car! After a few tough weeks on
the car it was time to look over a few things, we checked the oil, cleaned the
air filters (which had a ton of solidified dust in them), lubricated the axel
and did a few other things. As I’ve
mentioned before, I have a 1970 VW at home but at this point am still pretty
clueless when it comes to working on it.
It’s cool to travel with Stefan because he knows a lot about cars and
VWs specifically, so I’m learning a lot in the process.
I’m
not much of a kid person, but I do play with the kids a bit most days. I helped them work on their play house for a
bit, and then read a story to them.
At
one time there must have been a lot of trains in the area, but it’s not the
case anymore. So far pretty much all
I’ve seen is the passenger train that goes between Livingstone and Lusaka. Anyways, in the evening we set off to the
market.
As we
were arriving at one of the streets that makes up the edge of the market, we
heard an car with megaphones shouting and the revving engines of
motorcycles. Right away Stefan and I
recognized the bikes and riders from Livingstone, we had seen these guys doing
tricks through the streets there as well!
Excited onlookers (myself included among them) watched as the riders
preformed somewhat dangerous tricks, on broken and tired looking bikes, through
pot-holed streets and tight crowds. I
meant to ask someone what they were actually promoting, but I was simply having
too much fun watching to remember to do it.
Walking
through the heart of the market. The
small fish you see in the front of the photo are carpenta, a small fish that is dried and eaten
whole. Personally I’m not a fan; it’s
basically just a sea-salty tough piece of skin with an unpleasant (to me)
texture.
After
cooking dinner back at the house, we all piled into the truck and headed into
town for what could be called the Choma nightlife. The first stop was the Pub & Grill but we
quickly moved on to the Draft Center, more commonly known as simply ‘DC.’ For a small town with one main road, DC is
quite a large nightclub and with that comes some interesting characters to say
the least. Within an hour or so, I’d
already been offered a free prostitute and a cameo in someone’s music
video. I passed on both, though I know
at least the music video thing was just talk… The crazies kept coming that
night and while I was talking to two local guys, another (very drunk) guy came
up to me and was trying to tell me the others were police and were trying to
rob me. He was never quite able to
explain just how they were going to do this, but to be fair I didn’t trust any
of them. I actually ran into the two
guys at the grocery store a few days later, and they told me the other guy was trying to rob me. *sigh*
Anyways, I spent the bulk of the night trying to deal with all this
madness and to make things worse, the strap on my flip flop broke, so I was
walking through the club, muddy floors and broken glass, with one bare
foot. In the end it was a bit of a
stressful and somewhat annoying evening, but I got some free beers out of it
and a funny story to tell, so whatever, haha.
Being
the weekend it was time to relax, so Sunday was spent doing just that. In the evening we cooked some chicken on the
fire while Charlie played a little guitar.
I
awoke to a light rain in the morning, so naturally I stayed in my tent a little
longer waiting for it to stop. Later on
in the day (after the sun had come out) I was inside when Stefan said to come
out and look at this big leaf bug on the tree outside the house. It was nearly five inches long and very cool
looking, but it had a broken leg so its days were probably numbered.
I was
sitting outside reading a book reading a book about the old British army when I
saw something moving on the ground. Like
any 12-year old boy, I like catching animals so I ran up and scooped up this
chameleon .
It wasn’t especially pleased with its capture (even though I was gentle)
and tried to bite me, but after a few photos I set it free and it happily
climbed away up a near by tree.
That
evening we went into town to do some grocery shopping and I have to say, just
sitting in the back of the truck people-watching is quality entertainment. There is rarely ever a specific event, but
just watching people go by on bikes, watching various trucks filling up at the
station, people carrying chickens and vegetables, and just interacting as they
do every day is interesting to watch.
Anyways, we got our things from the shop, went to Inge’s place (the director
of the orphanage) and had a candle light dinner due to another power outage.
It
had been a long time since I’d ridden my bicycle, so although town was only a
few minutes walk, I decided to ride. The
new tires from Fred at The Bike Shop in Maun feel great and while I still don’t
have much riding planned for the near future, I’m looking forward to riding
again. In town I stopped by the internet
café (about $3 for two hours, decent speed actually) then returned home.
Back
at the house, Stefan and I had two of the orphanages bikes to fix up so they
could be used again. Luckily all they
needed was some tube-attention and a few bolts tightened, so we quickly got
those sorted out.
That
night we all piled in Stefans van to meet some of the local guys and have a
braai (bbq). It is only a slight
exaggeration to say white Southern Africans live almost entirely on meat. While this may not be the best thing for
one’s health, it sure is delicious so we dug in and filled our plates to the
point of overflowing. The (private) camp
site where we happened to be is also an area that attracts a lot of bird
researchers, so there were a number of grad students including one from Vancouver,
BC.
Later
that evening, we decided to go for a little drive with a few people riding on
the roof rack of the bus. This was all
good and fun, and after returning to the camp site and sitting down around the
fire about 45 minutes later we received a rude surprise. A car sped up, an angry woman (who will
remain unnamed but has been known to be a problem in the past…) climbed out
with a hunting rifle across her chest, shouting and furiously unplugging the
lights and music. She was saying that we
had hit one of her cows (we certainly didn’t hit a cow), getting in peoples
face with the rifle and saying she was going to shoot out the tires if she saw
us again. Nice. The situation was eventually defused, but a
fun evening had been turned into a bummer pretty quickly. Stefan and the girls returned home that night
(using the back way out) and I spent the night with the rest of the guys.
In
the morning we finished cleaning up the camp site and I decided to join Andrew at his place for the day. Andrews family originally lived in Zimbabwe,
but as a result of Mugabe, the collapsing economy, the ‘farm
redistributions’ and lets be totally frank, the murder of white farmers by
mobs, they came to Zambia. They have
lived on this property for 4 years now and their farm includes cattle, tobacco,
barley and more. As soon as we came up
on the house I was impressed. Andrews
mom puts a lot of care into the property and it has been a long time since I’ve
seen a nice, green, manicured garden.
Not only that but the whole veranda area was very nice, with much of the
wood work and art done by Andrew himself.
The
obvious thing to do was have another braai, so we grabbed some meat, fired up
the grill and sat down at the bar. I
think we sat at the bar outside talking with Stewart, Andrews dad, for about
six hours that day (and later his mom and sister). We talked about everything, from fishing
(Stews trophy 12.4kg tiger fish is mounted on the wall) to farming to racial
politics in Africa to art. You can read
all the books you like, but this is the best way to get an education on the
road, I’m telling you.
That
evening Andrew took me on a little tour of some of the farm on our way back
into town. For a quick refresher, we
stopped in their small dam for a swim.
Sonny,
one of the other young farmers in the area was having a little dinner at his
place in town, and while we had eaten a lot of good food in the last 24 hours,
this meal was the best of them all.
Finally, falling into a food-induced sleep, it was time to go home.
Another
day, another run into the market. These
green contraptions are of course plows and I spoke with the people selling them
(K650,000, $125US) to find out just how they are used. What happens is that one person, often the
small boy of the family, will lead the two oxen down the row who do the
pulling, the husband controls the plow walking behind it, and the wife is
behind him planting the seeds. It’s
still a long ways from mechanized farming, but it works and it’s a long ways
beyond what I’ve seen in other parts of Africa, where everything is done by
hand.
The
feed run out to the farm is a weekly task, so once again we headed out to both
pick up and drop off supplies. We
brought the grain and returned with a slaughtered pig, bags of manure for the
house gardens and bundles of grass for Stefan and I to rebuild a fence
with.
Friday
evening was a night of entertainment for the kids. Two local performers came in with a guitar to
sing songs for the kids and due to another power cut, the brief show was held
in candle light.
Children’s
Nest being a Christian organization, many of the songs had religious themes,
but the kids were smiling and laughing the whole time enjoying every minute of
it, especially the song from the Lion King.
After
the music, we all returned to our place, then set out to the Sports Club. The Sports Club is an interesting place. It is one of those colonial relics from the
days before independence and racial integration, a place behind fences where
the wealthy whites could gather to play squash, tennis, golf and a drink. These days it’s mostly cracked concrete and
faded paint, but reminders of its ‘glory days’ hang on the walls. Personally I liked the place and we will be
returning to play some squash at a later date, but everyone else wanted to move
on to DC. We did, and while it wasn’t as
bad as the last time, it’s still not a place I really enjoy.
In
the afternoon the next day we set out to meet up with the guys. As you leave the main road and the built-up
part of Choma, you enter the edges which consist of a mix of concrete and mud
brick homes with their own small gardens, and then beyond that is where the
large farm plots begin.
We
met the guys on the road, Gavin (at the wheel), Johnner, Garth, Andrew and
Mash, following their Land Cruiser the rest of the way.
After
a quick stop to shuffle vehicles at Gavin’s parent’s farm, a property that was
a lodge 100 years ago and has a hot springs, we set out with two shotguns trying
to make use of the fading light.
I
forget who took the shots, but we walked away with two guinea fowl, to be eaten
later. We did a bit more shooting at one
of the dams, hoping for a duck or two but they never came within range.
Later
in the evening everyone reconvened at the house of Megan, an American in Choma
with World Vision. As usual, there was
excellent food including some handmade pizzas.
That night I finally met a few of the Peace Corps folks here in Zambia
and did a little networking for later on in the north, haha.
He’s
a bit embarrassed about it, but oh well; I have to tell the story. At one point in the evening, Andrew was
cutting a rose to give to a girl, and the blade slipped and went straight into
his arm. Initially we all thought it was
just a small cut, but as the blood began running down his shirt and pants and
pooling on the ground it was clear we had to get to a doctor.
Gavin,
Andrew and I climbed in the truck and headed off to Dr Jains Surgery, a small
private office that luckily was about a 3 minute drive away. Despite the blood, it took some degree of
convincing to actually get the doorman to open the gate, but once we were in
the night attendant quickly began taking care of the cut. Andrew was starting to feel very faint, Gavin
and I were helping as much as we could and let’s just say few things were up to
western medical standards. Just watching
the attendant trying to get the IV in was painful. As she was digging around looking for a vein,
se caused a flow of blood on the other arm that looked almost as bad as the cut
itself. It was too much for Gavin, and
he went outside to throw up. After about
20 minutes (keep in mind this is 1:30am at this point) Dr Jain arrived and got
to work. We moved into what I presume
would be the operating room, I helped with the IV and with removing Andrews
bloody clothes, then Dr opened the wound with clamps to
check it out. It turned out that Andrew
had severed his brachial artery, and as Dr Jain opened
the wound I watched it squirt blood nearly a foot onto his arm. At this point Gavin and I were asked to wait
in the other room and luckily Dr Jain was able to stitch up the artery right
then and there. Had the cut been any
worse, we would have been headed all the way to Lusaka to a specialist.
By
3:30am the wound was all stitched up and properly dressed, Andrew had an IV for
some pain killers and fluids, and we had moved into another room to get some
sleep while keeping an eye on the wound.
Dr Jain left and would come back around 9am, and while there was an
attendant still around, I decided to stay the night in the clinic with Andrew
to keep him company and to help with anything that might come up during the
night.
6:30am
came quickly and both Andrew and I were awake again dealing with the cut. His job was mostly to keep still, so my job
was to help him drink water, keep him comfortable and wheel the IV drip around
when he needed to go to the bathroom. As
the hours went on, Andrew managed to get one of the attendants to sing him a
song (haha…), Dr Jain came back to replace the dressing and check things out
again, a few friends came by to say hello and Gavin and Johnner came by with
some much appreciated food and I spoke with Andrews dad on the phone. At 10am Andrew was still feeling too weak to
go home but I was starting to crash myself.
There wasn’t much for me to do anyways, so I walked home and took a much
needed nap, while Andrew’s parents came to pick him up later in the
afternoon. What a night.
I
awoke on the couch in the main house, still exhausted from a long night but it
wasn’t time to rest, we were headed back to Livingstone to visit Victoria
Falls. I packed up my tent, threw it in
the VW and Stefan, Charlie, Leslie, Tina and I set off south. It was dark by the time we got to
Livingstone, so we checked into Jollyboys (again) and went to bed.
The
Jollyboys tent area in the morning sun.
As
much as the trip to Livingstone was intended as a journey to see Victoria
Falls, it was also intended as a break away from the orphanage for Tina, Leslie
and Charlie. All of us spent Monday
pretty much just lounging around the pool and the cushions in the reading area.
Naturally
I did my share of relaxing as well (and I think I deserved it after the night
in the hospital) but I also had some business to take care of, voting! I knew my time in Africa would overlap with
the US elections and when I left I had no idea how I was going to be able to
actually vote. I didn’t know this when I
left for Africa, but King County, WA has an online voting system for registered
voters who are living overseas. Because
of this I was able to cast my vote for the national, state and local elections
all the way from Livingstone, Zambia which I think is pretty dang cool.
None
of us wanted to spend all day
lounging around, so in the afternoon we piled into the VW and headed out
towards the falls. We were not going to
visit the falls themselves today, but instead we were going to see some of the
activities around the falls. First on
our list was to check out the Lookout Tree, a tall platform at a baobab tree
that has a nice view of the spray from the falls (50c if Zambian, $2 if
not).
Next
was the ‘Mukuni Cultural Center Market’, which is really just a tourist
trap. You drive down a dirt road to a
small village full of idle people, then as soon as they see a car of tourists
they jump into action pointing the way to the ‘market’ as hawkers hustle to get
to their stands. To be honest if you are
looking for tourist souvenirs you can get some serious deals, as they were more
than willing to trade small carvings for a few pens, but after the third person
tried to trade me a carving I didn’t want for the shirt of my back I got
frustrated and got the hell out of there.
Sunset
cruises are popular activities around the falls, but they cost $50+ and you
still just see the spray of the falls, nothing more. Instead of shell out that kind of money, we did
the smart budget alternative; waltz into a wildly expensive place we didn’t
really belong and enjoy their view of the falls instead. That place is The Royal Livingstone hotel,
which I’m told costs $400 a night, per person!
Sure,
drinks cost double what you’d pay at any other tourist establishment, but you
probably get as good a view or better as you would from a boat, and when you
skip that $50+ fee, you can afford a few overpriced drinks. The place was quite nice; they even had
someone playing the flute in the dining area (though to be frank he was about
as good as a middle-school band member).
As the sun goes down, the crowd grows bigger and the servers put out
some trays of nuts and other snacks. I’m
sure this happens every night, but as if on cue, a gang of monkeys rushed the
deck area grabbing at every piece of food they could find. It was pretty funny.
Earlier
that morning, Stefan and I ran into Elise and Ashley, two American girls we’d
ran into in both Maun and Kasane, Botswana weeks back. They informed us that the party being
advertised around Jollyboys would be a good one so off we went, finding a party
full of white water kayak and raft guys (who tend to be a wild bunch).
The
big selling point of the event was Evicted, a rock band from Zimbabwe. The
music was mostly covers of classic and modern rock songs (Floyd, Deep Purple,
Chilli Peppers, Blink 182, etc) with a few originals thrown in, but they put on
a high energy show, the crowd (myself included) was loving it and the bass
player was particularly good. It was
mostly just dancing and jumping around and singing, and then they finished
their set with Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit. Naturally the result of this was a nice
mosh-pit that left one person bleeding from a busted lip (in a good way). Naturally being from Seattle like Nirvana I
particularly enjoyed the last song, so I went up and had a nice little chat
with the band after the show.
Victoria
Falls, the reason most tourists come to Zambia in the first place and now it
was our turn. Doesn’t look quite like
the other photos you have seen, does it?
That’s because it’s the low season for water flow on the Zambezi River,
and instead of a massive wall of falling water, visitors are left with this
little trickle… Obviously we knew this ahead of time, but I wasn’t going to
skip it just because it would be better in four months. We paid our K100,000 (about $19) to enter the
park and went to check it out.
Even
with the very low water it’s still an impressive sight. During low-water times such as these, the
best view of the falls that are running is from the Zimbabwe side (left side of
the photo) but we didn’t bother. To do
that would have meant spending another $30 to get a multiple-entry Zambia at
the border instead of the $50 single-entry, plus another $20 or something in
Zimbabwe park fees. To be honest, it is
a bit disappointing to only get to see the falls like this, but this is when
I’m here in southern Zambia so this is how it is. I can add it to my list of ‘African Misses’
including missing the whale sharks in Mozambique, the sardine run in South
Africa and the great migration in Tanzania.
Then again while those are some big ‘misses’ my list of ‘hits’ goes on
for days, so it more than balances out.
While
there, Leslie did a bungee jump from the bridge over the river and there is
also a zip-line and canyon swing plus all the white water trips, but these too
I skipped. I’ve done all those things
before and while they are certainly enjoyable, to me none of them are worth how
much they cost.
The
day was extremely hot, so as soon as we returned to the backpackers all five of
us headed straight for the pool, then spend the rest of the day lounging around.
On
Wednesdays Jollyboys offers a short tour of town for free, so Stefan, Charlie
and I decided to take advantage of it and learn a few things. Livingstone is a pretty small place so we
didn’t have to walk far, but we were told about the towns segregated history, a
few of the key figures and a number of the government buildings as well as the
old North Western Hotel, built in 1900.
That afternoon, we said goodbye to Livingstone and headed back to Choma
Shopping
for fruit the next day on the main road.
Dinner
back at the house with everyone.
At
about midnight it began to rain, and it began to rain hard. My tent (an REI
Sub-Alpine) is a pretty good one so I wasn’t worried about getting wet but I
ended up staying awake during the hour long storm listening to the rain on my
tent, the thunder and watching the countless flashes of lightening.
Just
to prove we are doing a little bit of work around here as well, here is Stefan
and I rebuilding a fence, haha. It’s
pretty cool actually, because the whole thing is made with natural and local
materials. The poles are of course just
sticks from the area, the grass we picked up from the farm earlier and the
whole thing is tied together with strips of bark. It’s the first time I’ve built a fence with entirely
natural materials and it gives me some interesting ideas for what I can do out
on the farm back home.
After
a quick run to the market and dinner, Jay, Gavin and Andrew came over to play
some card games. Here Lisa is gloating
about the fact she just won.
In
keeping with the ‘braai all the time’ theme, Lisa, Stefan and I headed off to
Gavin’s parents place again for dinner.
Here you can see the pool built around the hot springs I mentioned
earlier.
Once
everyone was finished eating, we hooked up a spotlight (that round thing on the
roof of the truck) to the battery and set out through the farm on a sort of
night-time game drive. Animal wise it
was fairly uneventful as all we really saw were various small impala, but we
did get to watch an amazing orange moon-rise and at one point I ended up
climbing a tree.
Because
Lisa had Sunday off (and Stefan and I were also free of course) we decided to
spend the night at Andrews’s house. Both
Andrew and his parents are lovely hosts and after spending a peaceful night on
the outdoor bed we had a great breakfast.
Oh, and those metal elephants in the background are some of Andrew’s
art, nice eh?
We
took a quick tour of the family farm, checking out the wood shop, tobacco
drying rooms and the large dam, and then headed out to the quarry on the other
side of town for a swim. This quarry was
dug very recently, and the gravel that came from it was used in the road
construction that was just completed two years ago.
The
water felt great during yet another hot day, although it’s too shallow to use
the rocks for jumping. The other minor
problem is that when this stone breaks, it becomes extremely sharp and I
managed to cut the underside of two of my toes while in the water, but it’s not
too bad. The scene of four white people
swimming, and especially the fact one was a tall blond in a bikini, attracted a
crowd and within a few minutes we had five or ten spectators. As we got out of the water to dry off, Andrew
gave two of the men beers, put on some reggae music and a small dance party was
born! I’m sure this was the most
exciting thing to happen in this section of bush in years, haha.
Driving
back to Andrews’s house through the tobacco fields.
Once
we returned, it was time to eat again and there were two legs of lamb waiting in
the oven. We quickly grabbed some fresh
carrots from the garden to cook along with the rest of the meal and yet again
had a delicious feast. Bellies full, it
was time to say goodbye to Andrew and return to town.
As
you can probably see, Choma has been good to us. Staying with the girls is a lot of fun; it’s
nice to be able to help out at the orphanage a bit and meeting Andrew, Gavin,
Jay and the rest of those guys has resulted in tons of interesting and fun
activities. Hanging out with them I’ve
learned a little bit about farming and a lot about life in Africa. I’m still not sure how much longer we are
planning to stay, but so far it has been a great situation and neither Stefan
nor I are in a hurry to leave. That
said, three weeks in Zambia have flown by in a hurry and there is a lot more
than Choma to see in the country. I
imagine my next post will be from the capital of Lusaka, so stick around and
see what happens.