WOODLAND WONDERLAND

IN REHANA'S WORDS

7 January 

We tried, and failed, to stick to our repeated vows to drive short distances slowly, on good roads where there is sufficient traffic to help us in our times of need.

We left Lake Shore Lodge at a very sedate pace; took three and a half hours to drive 150km to Sumbawanga, our last stop in Tanzania. More than half of that drive was on the gravel road on which we had our spill.  The rest was on a slightly better gravel road.

The road to the border looked promising as we headed out after a one-night stop at Sumbawanga. The Chinese had come and there was new tar with wide verges and neat public transport stops. But the promise faded after a few kilometres and the rest of the trek to the border was on a one-lane gravel track.  The only traffic we encountered was three cars, one motorbike and a handful of bicycles.

The gate to the Tanzanian border post was locked and the offices deserted. I can’t explain why we haven’t lost our penchant for crossing borders at weekends when officials have to be summonsed from their homes to assist us. The immigration officer arrived sharply but we had to wait a while for the customs official – a Seventh Day Adventist at church on Saturday.

As I smsed my family with the happy fact that we were entering Zambia – a massive leap homewards – I received one from my father with the news that his sister Dawn had died. That’s two aunts gone since we left home, both huge characters who leave a massive hole in the family.

Zambia’s border gates were also locked but their officials came quickly and were very efficient. Bad news, however, we had to go to Mpulungu for customs administration. It is 30km from Mbala, the first town after the border. But there’s tar from Mbala – strong grey tar flecked with iridescent black gravel – and nary a pothole.

Mpulungu is a harbour on Lake Tanganyika. We had hoped to make it our port of entry into Zambia, on the MV Liemba that has been in service since World War 1. But the crane fees to load the car on the ferry were horrendous.
None of the three banks in Mbala were online and neither was the only one in Mpulungu. For the first time since we left home we couldn't pay the carbon tax in US dollars. The Zuma lookalike official was more interested in picking me up than collecting the fee. He waved us on after I gave him a fake cellphone number and agreed that we could pay it on the way out of Zambia. 
We had added an unnecessary 160km to our journey.

Making lunch on the southernmost shore of Lake Tanganyika

We said our final, unexpected, goodbye to Lake Tanganyika and set off for the next town south, Kasama. A scant two days after we left Lake Shore Lodge with our hearts in our throats and our feet pressing gently on the accelerator we drove 370km in five hours. I hope Jules and I are better at keeping our wedding vows than we are our driving vows.

Barclays at Kasama was generous as usual – or so it seemed until we realised that the rand was still freefalling. There’s a huge Shoprite in town, right next to Pep, which drew me like a magnet. First thing I spotted on its generous shelves was cherry Halls – which I have kept in constant supply for years but last purchased in Zimbabwe, eight months ago.

The supermarkets in Sumbawanga the day before were adequately stocked; I found Appletiser for the first time since Maputo. But as usual we did most of our shopping at the market, traipsing through puddles of mud, waving away hordes of flies and inhaling through our mouths to keep out the reek of piles of dried fish.

SADCland has airconditioned supermarkets and it may not be long before I find Woolies food. A dietician we met at Lake Shore Lodge recommended that I eat plenty of cranberries and grapes while I’m on my TB meds, then she laughed with me as I fantasised and drooled. I haven’t been able to find a probiotic for months, let alone a grape I can afford. 
The nectarines at Shoprite in Kasama were the equivalent of R15 each. I left with my cherry Halls, carrots and a bunch of broccoli. 

We are racing through Zambia, feeling very bad about our haste and promising to return one day. In the north of the country there is very little tourist infrastructure outside of the parks and accommodation costs are high. Petrol is R20 a litre – the most we’ve paid since we left home and the Big Red Car is a thirsty beast. No wonder there’s very little traffic on Zambia’s excellent highways and most of the vehicles we’ve passed have Tanzanian number plates.

We left the smooth highway soon after we left Kasama (a one-night stay) heading for Kapishya Hot Spring Lodge, which an Italian couple we met at Lakeshore Lodge had raved about. The deserted gravel road slowed us down again and I enjoyed the forested view while Julia clutched the steering wheel and poked her head over it, all the better to see the next donga.

The land has been spectacular since we left Mwanza three weeks ago. We’ve been driving mostly alongside indigenous forest and Zambia’s is far more lush and extensive than Tanzania’s. Boy is it rainy season: it comes hard and heavy every day, a welcome break from the heat. And it leaves the softest, gentlest air in its wake.
At Thorn Tree Lodge at Kasama I finally had what I had last been able to order in Durban eleven months ago: A toasted cheese sandwich. Aaah, SADCland.

The lush garden at Thorn Tree Lodge in Kasama

Kapishya Lodge was expensive and pretentious (we could visit the owner’s manor house for $20 per person or have a dinner there for a mere $40 per person).
Its campsite was a gem and we had it mostly to ourselves. There was a laager of GP registration two-tone shirt campers but they left soon after we arrived.
We admired the 70-something Swiss travellers driving through Africa in a 1973 Volkswagen combo, orange and white and speckled with a few yellow daisies.

We had the most fantastic walk through Kapishya's forest

The hot spring, a teeny-tiny walk from our campsite, was addictive, especially for a bathaholic like me. The water bubbled through the sand floor of the natural pool after being driven up seven kilometres underground.
It was far too hot during the day to linger in the spring, I spent hours in the tree-fronded pool every night.
The water was a comfortable 38 degrees Celsius and had not a whiff of sulphur. It made my skin and hair silkier than it had been in yonks.

Happiness is … a spring in a forest

It rained the first night I went in, sending plumes of steam into the air. I had great company, Anna – a Yugoslavian who had lived in Zambia for 30 years. She was full of fear, her mother had battled TB for years and Anna was convinced that the hot water was no good for me.
But she knew the disease 60 years ago, when people died after coughing blood despite being fed 300 tablets a day. She was convinced that TB was the perfect ailment for artistic types; she said the night fevers are inspirational. (I’m going to check on that)

It stormed on our second night in the pool. The raindrops fell on the water like bright sparkles. We left the water and covered ourselves in long pants, thermal underwear, thick sweaters and rain jackets, preserving the heat that had penetrated our marrow. 
These springs are ideal for our arthritic parents, we thought.

Julia's foot is stuck in a tube of hot water bubbling up to the surface

Then another long haul; more than 500km to Forest Inn outside Mkushi. It has a grassy patch for campers between the indigenous trees.
It’s right on the highway and the occasional passing Tanzanian petrol tankers sound like a waves on a beach to an exhausted traveller. I slept eleven hours last night and Julia slumbered for twelve.

Lusaka’s next.

The forest on the highway

IN JULIA'S WORDS

9 January

Serene as a woodland-clad Reclining Buddha northern Zambia unfolds herself (sorry about that Buddha, Zambia wants to be a she). Blue expanses of escarpment stretch to beyond the reaches of my eyes, here and there interrupted by the curvaceous hips or shoulders of hills, or a sharp heel or elbow of a koppie.

She plays, as I gaze in a driving glimpse-way, winkingly on my heartstrings – tunes like “Stay, just a little bit longer”, and “I love you to the end of the world”. I croon back, “Woodlands to the right of me, woodlands to the left, here I am stuck in the middle of you”. 
The grey clouds organise themselves edge to edge above us in the shapes of rolling and unusual pastry, ready to blaaah down their contents in sheer sheets at any time. 

A small glimpse of gorgeous Zambia

Like a steadfast older sister, Zambia knows how to keep her secrets, and yours. She’s so much surrendered to uncultivated expanses, she's hardly bothered to learn to speak Human.
But kindly she accommodates the locals’ little homesteads, the dirty-blond thatched roofs of their round huts as plat and shaggy as the hair of a rural barefoot South African white boy’s (probably called Willem).

These good and empty roads allow mental space for that kind of Zen non-thought that shit or busy roads do not; I feel safe, the way Zambia’s taken me by the hand.

Safe driving on Zambia's smooth outstretched roads

Zambia’s the 10^th country we’ve visited on this trip, now 9 months in, so there’s a memory bank of details demanding comparison. What, no whipped donkeys or starving horses trudging the crumbles that pass for roads?! 
And where are the veritable roadrunning chickens, the hordes of cattle and goaties adding their bit to the dust and chaotic melee? What a brutal culture shock this would be for Rwandans and Tanzanians and Kenyans and Ethiopians, these be-paved and tranquil throughways that pass, unpotholed, through land unterraced, hardly cultivated at all and breathing free!

Besides what’s not, look what is! Rehana and I gawk at proper metal road signs with legible inscriptions that indicate direction and distance to places. We hark at the Yellow Pages which we’re given in Mkushi so we can investigate costs and places in Lusaka before we get there; and the bread - that industrial, mass-produced stuff, stripped of most nutrition but so handily bagged - causes us a homesick cackle.

Some roadsigns are sweet

What’s true of home, and has been everywhere since, is true here too: the utter dejection of the many, very poor, making their hand-to-mouth slow-motion non-way. It fucking breaks your heart, how person after threadbare person sits listlessly on the road’s edge, selling the SAME blerry things, mangoes or tomatoes or onions or charcoal. Except – our first here in Zambia – mushrooms the gigantic of flying saucers.
We’re one of 3 cars which will pass, in either direction, this half day – and to see the young scragsters, waving us unsuccessfully down to buy a little something, is plain torture.

That’s one of my expectations of this journey that’s been spot-on. We’re a continent of the poor peasant ruled by squint, but canny, hyenas, in thrall to their drooling multinational-corporate-cannibal friends.

How looooong, Africans, hoooooow long, will you let this be!?!

Especially since abundance is your actual heritage.