SWIMMING IN SADC LAND

IN REHANA'S WORDS

16 January

We’ve been driving through thick green forests since we left Tabora in Tanzania the week before Christmas. In soft, moist air. Enjoying well-spaced, drenching and cooling rainstorms (except for one that misbehaved). 
Puffy white clouds shield us from the harsh summer sun on most of our driving days. When the sun pours through the windscreen it burns our knees to a near crisp.

On the drive to Lusaka farms occasionally broke through the woodland. Not the hardscrabble subsistence plots we’ve been passing for months, but huge enterprises with large-scale irrigation, fences and gated entrances with the name of the farm on a board. 
Stalls on the side of the road sold butternut and potatoes by the sack; no more groups of women trying to flag their small piles of tomatoes and miniature onions. The mushrooms people sold in buckets and tubs at the side of the road were ginormous – it be very wet under those trees.

South African seed companies must be making a pretty penny in Zambia; their placards dominate the tilled fields and advertising billboards. They’re all here, from Pannaar to AgriSA to Karoo Landbou.

Bakkies with South African plates whizz along the highway, two-tone shirts are everywhere, Landbou Weekblad is on sale at Pick n Pay and there’s a secure supply of biltong and boerewors.

We met a couple in Livingstone, Maryna and Flip from Brits, who were being financed by HSBC to grow mielies in Zambia – for the South African market, nogal!

Land is cheap in Zambia. You can get a 99-year leasehold and financing from an English bank if you want a piece of virgin forest. Please don’t clear it to plant mielies. If you develop a campsite we’ll come visit often, I promise.

We drove to Lusaka without stopping, passing through towns with familiar names like Kabwe and Kitwe. Comrades in exile in the 1970s and 1980s often passed through there, stayed a while or forever. There wasn’t much to see as we whizzed through the towns, except the names of their businesses. Where else but Zambia will you get a Melodious Melody Supermarket?

All the way to Lusaka a procession of pylons poked out of the woods like metal giraffes. Electricity seems to be endemic in Zambia, unlike in Tanzania where it is endangered.

There was traffic on the way into the city, trucks and cars slowed down by interminable police roadblocks. Other travellers warned of “road taxes” but the police officers who stopped us were only polite and professional. The most they asked of us was proof of third-party insurance. Still haven’t met one corrupt person at a roadblock - and we've been through hundreds, perhaps thousands.

Been a while since we've been in a city with dual carriageways, traffic and billboards

We spent only two days in Lusaka, arriving on a Friday afternoon and leaving Sunday morning. As usual with our city sojourns, first stop was a mechanic. Fortunately, BRC’s latest niggle, an airconditioner unit that shakes and rattles, can wait till Joburg for repairs. We seldom use the aircon but we’re nervous of tackling summer in Namibia and Botswana without it.

We had a fantastic host at the Apogo Guesthouse. Oumo is a Ugandan exile and a political scientist with a doctorate who kept us up way past our bedtime. But like everyone else we spoke politics to on our trip, he maintains that our African neighbours can’t rise up against their wealth-amassing and heartless leaders because brutality will be the result.

I argued that our police are pretty brutal too, both before the end of apartheid and now. That doesn’t stop South Africans from taking to the streets, especially when demanding better service delivery from politicians. Oumo had heard about Marikana but not our other shootings. Two days later Maryna told me police had shot and killed four people in her hometown, Brits.

What really gets me is that people will take to the streets at the behest of politicians to commit the most appalling violence against their neighbours and friends, but they refuse to participate in a peaceful protest because they fear violence. 
They bury babies and children because there’s no doctors or medicines but they won’t risk teargas or batons to demand decent health care. People have to be held responsible for their own oppression sometimes; doesn’t matter how many millions of pounds or kroner NGOs spend.

There wasn’t much to do in Lusaka, we wiled away a few pleasant hours in the Botanical Gardens. The entrance fee was steep but it offered pleasant shaded gardens and no less than two swimming pools. There were braai areas and lapas and only one party setting up loud music, just as we left.

Kirstenbosch could do with one of these?

We stopped at Pick n Pay to buy ludicrously expensive groceries and bumped into Canadians we had met and liked at Lake Shore Lodge – Steve, Carolynn and their daughters Madeline and Gabrielle. They were driving through southern Africa for three months.
We went to their campsite for a long visit. Parked next to them was the Swiss couple we had met at Kapishya, with the bright orange Volkswagen combi much older than BRC.

I don’t think I have made lifelong friends among the locals we met on this journey. It’s because of the way we’re travelling. We’re not volunteering with an NGO. We’re firmly rooted in the tourism economy – most of the locals we’ve met have been lodge owners, managers, waiters, barmen, drivers, cooks or guides. Some remain in contact. Chacha in Dessie, Ethiopia sends regular, sweet emails.

Our relationships with our fellow travellers are short-lived but intense. They’re very affirming; you’re not alone in your insanity – setting off from a comfortable home to make life difficult. I’ve only met one fellow black traveller so far. In the campsite at Dar es Salaam there was a Kenyan driving from Nairobi to Cape Town. Most long-term travellers are elderly Europeans stretching pensions made meagre by their failed economies and banking systems.

The cyclists we meet make me feel especially good. Compared to their miserable existence, our journey is positively bourgeoisie personified. Steve, the cyclist we met in Malawi, again in Nairobi and planned to catch up with in Ethiopia, contracted typhus at the same time I was in hospital and flew back to the UK for treatment. 
I’ve just heard that he is back on the road, currently in Saudi Arabia. He plans to work there for a few months then he’ll cycle across the Middle East and Asia before crossing into Canada and travelling south to …?

Dave, a cyclist we met at Katima Mulilo in Namibia, told us Steve’s latest news. Can you imagine cycling through Namibia in January? We met Dave again at Ngepi camp after he had cycled across the Caprivi, sleeping at night at the side of a road in a game park where he spotted a leopard. His skin is baked and his brain is fried. 
We make at most, especially here in SADCland, 120km an hour. For a cyclist, that’s a day’s lonely toil. Can you imagine the endorphin rush before the day’s pain hits? Eckhardt, a greyhaired neighbour in a huge Mercedes camper in the Katima Mulilo campsite told us he’d love to cycle across Africa but he’s scared because he’s heard it’s addictive.

But I’m getting way ahead of my tale. I’m in Namibia already and I haven’t told you the last of my Zambia story. Our last stop was Livingstone. We camped at a rather swish place, the Zambezi Waterfront. Other than a plague of monkeys that got away with a head of broccoli (yay! Back in the land of Pick n Pay); safari vehicles that revved needlessly at dawn and helicopters and microlights that took off constantly, we were pretty comfortable.

We’re still managing to catch 11 hours most nights, and I almost always wake up drenched. I’ve googled “artists with TB” and the list is pretty impressive. I’m considering a relapse so I can do something with those kaleidoscopic dreams that come with my nightly sweats.

Like Forest Inn and Kapishya, the Zambezi Waterfront campsite met our stringent SADC standards. Plenty of soft green grass, an abundant supply of hot water in the clean showers, internet (not free, though), DSTV and two (icy cold because they are shaded by trees) swimming pools. And it didn't cost a fortune. 
Despite the coldness of water I managed to while away many hours on loungers next to the pools.  And when I got tired of that I whiled away hours on the deck next to the mighty Zambezi river – that we first met months ago in Tete, Mozambique.

Back on the mighty Zambezi again

My first selfie, taken on the deck at Zambezi Waterfront

Jules doing a Dolly Rathebe photobomb in my second selfie

Jules and I walked into the game park next door to get a photo of the sun setting on the Zambezi and spotted a fat crocodile on its surface.

Tony and Marley, a Dutch couple who crisscrossed Africa for three years on motorbikes, were camped next to us. They warned that the Victoria Falls was a wet walk. We decided to strip down to our cossies when we visited it and stash our clothes in a plastic bag. I couldn’t think of anything better than being slightly damp while we walked in the heat that had surrounded us for days.

The heat disappeared the day we went to the falls. It was grey and wet and cold in places. Julia stripped just before I did. My T-shirt was drenched in a minute and never recovered. Both of us had seen the falls from the Zimbabwean side but Zambia offered a very different proposition.

The walkway alongside took us very close to the falls, where the rainy season deluge was in full throttle. I thought it was raining but it wasn’t. The fat drops beating down on our heads had first been smashed on the rocks below the falls; then they soared high into the sky and came down seeking a soaking.

It was an enormous show of strength. The hydropower turbines must have been whirring at capacity. We only stopped our marveling when we blinked blindly in the water cascading down our foreheads into our eyes.

Then we walked down into a rain forest, edging nervously past vicious-looking baboons.
I had started to warm up nicely when we reached the bottom of the forest and stopped to admire the swirling water emerging out of the chasm.

Then the rain came down. It rained for hours and eventually I had to admit I was chilled, although not cold.

We walked across the gorgeous Livingstone bridge to visit Zimbabwe for the second time on this journey. All that was required was a small piece of paper with a date stamp on the Zambian side on which an immigration official handwrote the number 2. 
No-one was interested in the damp paper when we returned. We took our best photo of the falls at the bridge:

Our four-day stay in Livingstone was mostly about lolling in a posh resort that also catered for cheapskate campers. When we left we travelled west along the Zambezi, crossed it, entered Namibia and parked on the southern banks of the river.

We spent two nights at the … wait for it … Protea Hotel in Katima Mulilo, the biggest town on the Caprivi strip. They had a warm, crystal blue swimming pool – wet and warm is far better than not wet when it’s verging on 40 degrees in the shade. 
The ablution blocks in their campsite, on the banks of the Zambezi, were what you’d expect from an en-suite room in the hotel, gleaming white tiles in the shower with not a trace of grey mould. For the first time in what seemed like forever we had hot water and a proper stainless steel sink for our dishes. Their internet was on the blink, alas.

We went shopping when we arrived in Katima Mulilo. Pick n Pay and Shoprite (we went to both) had everything we needed, except meat, chicken or fish that looked fit for human consumption. Going to have to be vegetarian for a while longer. 
We found fantastic creamy yoghurt and we’re back on fresh milk since Lusaka – yay! No more longlife yechiness with the excellent coffee we've been drinking since Mozambique.

The town was quite scary. It was broiling and the sour smell of unwashed bodies was more pungent than usual in the queue at the supermarket tills. White sand crept onto the road from the edges and the centre line has disappeared under the fine silt in place. In the enervating heat it was easy to imagine that a nearby desert was encroaching.

We did nothing else at Katima’s Protea Hotel except walk to the pool – a huge distance of about 300m – loll next to the pool and dip in occasionally. It was hard, hard work. But we managed. Finally, we are on holiday, and we’re loving it.

Now we’re at Divundu our last stop in Namibia. We're at Ngepi campsite along the banks of the Okavango River, which has a much faster flow than the Zambezi. The crocs and the hippos are much more visible, it's much shallower than the Zambezi. 
Saw our first hippo ever on this trip on our walk at dusk yesterday. It was waking up on an island in the middle of the river. I saw its pink gums when it yawned, but it didn’t come out of the water before it got dark.

Ngepi camp is as well appointed as the other SADC places we’ve tasted. We’re now getting used to clean, hot showers (now that we’re in boiling heat), fancy toilets (haven’t seen an eastern one for a while) and campsites with green grass and swimming pools. 
Ngepi’s pool is in the river and some of its toilets are in the bush.

Kak in die bos

Loved the sign coming in

And the one when we left. We didn't see a wild dog, we were whizzing on SADC's tarred roads

The road on the three-hour drive from Katima Mulilo was lined with trees, but it does seem to be thinning, finally. We’re following the Okavango to Maun so I expect a green curtain all the way. But then we’ll have to bid farewell to the thick green belt that’s accompanied us all the way from Uganda. Africa’s lungs seem far more healthier than mine.

We could drive to Joburg in four days from here. It’s only 1 500km away. But I’ve never been to Botswana and it’s only a few minutes from here. Heaven (a lamb chop or two) can wait.

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.

WISHING ON A TAR (ROAD)

ODOMETER READING: 260 958 (We’ve driven 22 186km since April last year)

Sunset on Lake Tanganyika

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Thursday, 2 January 2014

We’ve got about 4 000km between us and Johannesburg, the part of our journey I’m labelling The Last Leg. Unless we are diverted by travellers who tell us of a fantastic place on route, there’s only 13 more stops before we get home.

We will be driving like old ladies on the last 190km or so of gravel roads we face. After we hit the tar we’re unlikely to slog more than 450km a day (Botswana requires some long treks).

Like a practising old lady, I fell asleep at 10pm on New Year’s eve. The party at Lake Shore Lodge started around 11pm, I am told. The rythmic doef doef of the pre-party music wrapped around me in the tent like like a heartbeat through a uterus wall and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I’ve been collecting New Year’s wishes like a beggar planning to ride them all the way home. But I didn’t wish us a happy trip home. A wish seems a little too desperate. I prefer a New Year’s hope that we have an adventure-free journey from now onwards. I’ve had enough adventure for now, although I’m still in the market for education and exhiliration.

Our 10 days at Lake Shore Lodge passed quickly. Time tends to speed up when you spend five days staring at a test match and finish a book every day or two. The lodge had a great library. We went for one small walk, but we did swim at least once most days.

Bobbing happily in my favourite lake

Lake Tanganyika may just be the best one we’ve visited on this trip. The water was warm and changed colours and moods a couple of times a day. Congo’s mountains are on the horizon, 50km away but they seem much closer.

Watching the sun set over Congo

Our laconic hero Chris spent an hour or so today fixing some of BRC’s bodywork problems. With the help of a few manne and their boys he secured the roofrack, straightened the bullbar and taped the smashed front headlight cover (all the lights are still working).
The car starts first time every time, and hasn’t leaked a drop of anything. 

Chris and one of many admirers

Poor Jules had a bit of an affliction at what she is calling our organic campsite under the mango tree. All the goggas loved her more than me, and the tsetse flies were addicted to her blood. She woke up most mornings with a hot yellow sting in the centre of a spreading red bulge.
One of the bites on her forehead slid slowly down her face over two days. First her eyebrow bulged, then her eyelid, it moved to the corner of her eye and made a small bag under her eye that finally fizzled away.
She also spotted a bright green snake in the mango tree above our tent on our first night. Louise and Chris poo-pooed, said it wasn't a deadly boomslang but the friendly Tanzanian tree snake.

Our hearts are much stronger since we overturned. We’ve talked about the accident a lot, realised we’re still in the market for a lot of travelling and listened to everybody else’s tales of crashes and prangs much worse than ours. Everybody here agrees that our car gave us the best protection our bodies could hope (wish?) for. 
We highly recommend having an accident within the radius of Lake Shore Lodge. Chris, Louise and all of their guests were the best rescue team we could have hoped for.

Tomorrow we’re off again, Miss Daisy and her partner Miss Daisy ambling south. Probably one more stop – at Sumbawanga – before we cross the border into Zambia. Back in SADCland. Seems like a huge leap homewards.

Hoping all your roads are tarred this year.