roadtripping.

A summer in Africa!

Just to be different, this summer we decided to escape the Canadian heat by going to Africa.

Photos here - more to come later!

I just started reading With Sword and Chain in Lusaka: A Londoner's Life in Zambia 1948-1972 by Richard Sampson. The front cover features an old photograph of an unrecognizably pristine Cairo Road. Here's a quote from the introduction:

Richard describes the living conditions at the time of his arrival [in 1948] initially by himself: "the house... was ridden with termites... we used oil lamps; there was no running water, we had an open well [that ran dry]; all the water in the house had to be boiled... our refrigerator ran on parrafin."

Well, there are no termites, and there is electricity, but water is still scarce - Gogo would have an open well if her plot was large enough, because what water there is has to be hauled in and yes, boiled.

A journey from Lusaka to Livingstone by road took twenty hours and was over a "dirt road consisting of pot holes, corrugations, sand and rocks."

Our Livingstone trip is now scheduled for Sunday and theoretically takes about four or five hours, but we'll see. Certainly the above is an accurate description of many of the roads in and around Lusaka, including throughout Chalala where we are staying.

And I must reiterate: Gogo's house is solidly middle class, as are all the houses in the neighbourhood. Some are even quite swank. Gogo owns a farm, a small shop, employs three people. And still, something as important as clean water can only be had at great effort. She is outside now fighting with the man who was supposed to haul water earlier today. The pump has gone again.

The poor people are those who come into her shop. They are the ones who spend their days digging quartz, lighting fires to crack the rocks, and breaking them by hand into gravel. They typically bring home 5 000 Kwacha at the end of the day - that's about $1.50 canadian.

Shops like Gogo's cater to those who live hand to mouth and have no way to pay for, carry, or store large amounts of anything. She will by a 50 kg bag of rice and sell it by the cupful; a bag of sugar will be separated into packets worth 200 and 500 K; kapenta (small lake fish which are salted and dried) are sold by the bagful for 1 000 K, and mealie meal, the ground maize used to make nsima, the traditional staple food in Zambia, is sold in large bags for 6 000 K or again by the cupful. Typically someone will buy a little bit of oil, a little bit of sugar, some mealie meal, some buns. Also popular are little single serving plastic pouches of liquor - vodka, whisky, brandy, or "double punch," a pineapple drink. And of course mobile top-ups - talk time for as little as 10 000K.

Comparatively speaking, Gogo is doing quite well. It's just that the Zambian translation of "doing quite well" is far different from what we are used to in Canada.

updated 27 july 2007.

A study in contrasts.

On Sunday we headed to the Lusaka Inter-City Bus Terminal to catch a coach to Livingstone. We'd sussed it out on the Friday previous, to find out which company would be most reliable and comfortable, and were given two suggestions: CR Holdings and Mazhandu Family Bus services. We never found CR Holdings, so we went with MFBS.

The bus terminal is a wild place - a mad swirl of independently-operated minibuses congests the road outside, each slightly larger than a cargo van, packed with passengers, driven by lunatics, and painted a bright sky blue decorated with advertising or a mix of slogans according to the owner's whimsy. "God is Great" is ever popular, as are Bible quotations, but some have more random nicknames ("Fancy Face") and some are just a bit disconcerting if you have any doubts as to the safety of the vehicle. We haven't felt brave enough to try the minibuses, and seeing one with "Die Trying" painted across the windshield doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Lusaka is not a tourist town - most travellers are there for business - so even as mazungu, we are largely left alone in the city. Not so at the bus terminal. Before we even passed through the gates, men were upon us asking if we needed a taxi, where were we going, did we have tickets. It was quite overwhelming, although everyone was polite and did not follow us too far when we walked away. The bus lines in Lusaka are all independently operated, and each company has a kiosk selling tickets as well as a shelter for waiting. Dozens of buses, hundreds of people. We asked about the scedules to Livingstone: MFBS runs three a day at 75 000 K per person (about $20), at 6:30, 9:30, and 13:30 (everyone uses a 24-hour clock in Zambia). Tickets are purchased the day in advance, and you have to arrive early. For the 9:30 bus, we are told that tickets are only sold the day of, because the bus leaves when it is full, and it's a popular route, so someone who bought a ticket the day before might show up to find the bus had already left. why not only sell as many tickets as there are seats, I thought, but didn't say anything. We arrived at 12:30 for our bus, which left at 13:25 when it was full. It was described as a "luxury coach," but the seats are narrower than any Canadian bus - there are five per row instead of four - as is the aisle in the middle. The windows open wide enough to climb out through (while we were seated waiting to leave, we were a captive audience for various hucksters, selling water, snacks, shirts, jeans, and belts outside our open windows), and it occurred to me that it wouldn't likely be air-conditioned - but then, the locals consider this "winter" and are wearing sweaters and scarves, so they probably wouldn't turn on the air conditioning even if they could.

Driving out of Lusaka, we passed by everything from lush gated properties to shantytowns of small concrete-block homes barely 8 by 15 feet. The countryside is dotted with such villages, which crop up wherever there is an industry to support any kind of life. Also scattered across the country are tiny traditional villages of round huts with thatched roofs. None of these have any electricity or running water. The smell of Zambia is the smell of woodsmoke, as brush is burned back from the roads, and wood is made into charcoal. Everywhere the red earth is burned black. There is the occasional oasis of irrigated green - a coffee plantation glistens with red berries - but otherwise the landscape is dry, an acacia savannah dotted with baobabs and cactus that grow like trees and termite hills that climb two metres high.

Our trip to Livingstone took almost 7 hours to travel 470 kilometres. There were numerous stops along the way, first to get gas (this is a frequent occurrence with buses and taxis - they only fill up when they have a fare), then to pick up other travellers at a few small towns (where people with baskets of apples and oranges and tomatoes and even fried chicken came to the bus windows to sell), only one police roadblock (they are not uncommon here), and occasionally stopping to let goats or cattle cross the road. There was almost no traffic - a few minibuses, a few long-haul trucks, and pick-ups full of workers, but that was it. No individuals in their own cars.

It was dark when we arrived in Livingstone. We decided to walk to the hotel, as by the map it only looked about half a kilometre away. Immediately we felt the difference of being in a tourist town. There are no beggars in Lusaka, but in Livingstone there is a whole economy built around the wealthy tourists who come to see Victoria Falls. There are also more fat white people, which we were out of the habit of seeing - it had been weeks since I had heard an American accent. And of course, Australian students, whom you will find in any tourist destination around the world.

Our hotel, the New Fairmount, is the very definition of faded glamour (actually, you could say that about much of Livingstone). A sprawling complex with a swimming pool (with too many floaty things for us to try out), courtyards with ragged thatch umbrellas to shade the tables, an outdoor bar with a dancing area in the shade of a giant acacia. The walk to our room led us past the restaurant (Nijinsky's), up a few steps, past a courtyard, down a ramp, past some plants, up another ramp, past an area where broken furniture was being mended, through a small parking lot, past a water tank, up two flights of stairs, and along an open-air gallery. We didn't know if we should have left a trail of breadcrumbs to find our way back out. The walls were stucco inside and out, a crisp white on the outside, and a slightly-too-bright yellow in our room, decorated with empty frames around areas of the same stucco painted different colours. It was relatively clean, the enamel scrubbed off the tub in spots, but there was hot and cold running water! That alone was worth the price of admission. Our "family room" was a suite of two bedrooms sharing a bathroom - a really good set up for us - and when we found our way back to Nijinsky's for dinner, we were thrilled to find they served excellent Indian food (as well as Chinese, generic American, and the local stews and nsima). No mosquito nets though, and we'd forgotten ours. We were told they sprayed daily, though.

At one o'clock in the morning, I was scratching my finger, and as I gradually woke up, I thought - wait a minute. This is not the place to get a mosquito bite. After working myself into a great state of insomniac anxiety, I went to the loo to wash my hands and discovered that there was no water. Not good.

In the morning, there was still no plumbing, although housekeeping kindly sent two men up with a huge bucket of 30 litres of steaming hot water. I was in a very grumpy mood after my mosquito bite and we had all been looking forward to frolicking in a hot shower after our weeks of bucket baths, but as Jennifer reminded me - "We're in a third-world country. They don't have an infrastructure."

At least the weather was lovely, although the view left something to be desired. Our window looked out on the laundry, hung out to dry in the sun on rows of lines atop one of the other buildings. It was a little disconcerting to throw open the curtains and see people working not two metres away. I hope they ironed everything later - any articles hung outside in Zambia need to be ironed to kill any eggs a putse fly might have laid. They aren't deadly, but they will give you boils that will erupt with maggots when lanced.

By the time we'd had our bucket baths, fed the baby, and got organised, we'd missed breakfast - Nijinsky's is only open from seven to ten, am and pm - so we headed down to Wonderbake, a cafe we'd passed when we arrived. After a bite, we continued down the street to the home of Wildside tours, which seemed a likely bet based on the guidebook. We told them we wanted to see the best view of the falls and some game, and we only had a day and a half. They recommended taking a boat to Livingstone Island - a trip which included high tea - and doing a game drive (I had wanted to walk, but the odds of seeing wildlife are better from a vehicle, only because you can cover more ground). We booked our tours, did a very small amount of shopping at the (overpriced) craft shop next door, and headed back to the hotel to freshen up and get ready for tea.

continue to page 4

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