Better late than never…
Sorry for the delay – I’ve been run off my feet since I returned to Lusaka 2 weeks ago, and I didn’t realize the highlight of so many people’s week was reading my boring ol’ blog!!
~
How to recount my 2 and a half weeks of adventures in Southern Africa without breaking new records for blog length …? It’s a difficult task, and I’m not sure I’ll succeed, but I’ll try. Although, I have had positive feedback from many of you who assure me that Mom is not the only one making it to the end of my exhausting entries, so perhaps I need not worry so much!
Before I begin, I want to thank all those of you who have written to me over the past few weeks. Being away from home at this time of year is always difficult, but warm words from friends and family make it much, much easier. Thank you.
~
The morning after I arrived in Chokwe, I went outside to see Xavi off to work and found the guard, Jose, sick with malaria. It was quite a wake-up call as to just how ugly malaria can be, and although I despise taking my weekly, freaky-dream-inducing Lariam, I am glad it has kept me healthy thus far. I was also glad to be able to occupy myself on my first afternoon in Chokwe by visiting the hospital and using my “Portuñol” to inquire about Jose’s recovery.
Noche buena (Christmas Eve) was a random but lovely evening. We arrived home late and exhausted after spending the day at the office where Xavi was working on his dissertation. We had no dinner plan and not much in the fridge, but together with Xavi’s roommate, Carlos, and neighbour, Sergio, we gathered together some cured ham (being saved for just such a special occasion), pa amb tomaquet (Catalan staple of bread with tomato), a bottle of wine, a pineapple, and some leftover brownies I had made. It wasn’t much, but in a town where eggs are a luxury, it felt like a feast for Kings. After dinner, Sergio, Carlos and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning philosophising about life and debating the merits of development.
Christmas day was the first day since my arrival that wasn’t a blazing 35 degrees, so our highly anticipated day at the beach involved no swimsuits. But there were nice grilled prawns and a lovely walk along the ocean’s edge to make up for it. On boxing day Xavi finally finished and printed off his dissertation, but not quite in time to go to Maputo as planned, so we headed off the next morning bright and early. Maputo is a megatropolis compared to the one-horse town of Lusaka (one-road would be more accurate, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring). But it’s a charming megatropolis and I enjoyed our day there, which was spent going to 5 different branches of the Banco Internacional de Moçambique trying to cash Xavi’s paycheque (which, after 4 hours, we finally managed to do).
The following morning we headed for Swaziland, where we spent two grey and rainy but very pleasant days. The country is beautiful, although we felt like we were in Switzerland, not the south of Africa (I even wondered if it was more than a coincidence that the two names are so alike…). Not only is the landscape similar, but Swaziland is also incredibly developed-looking compared to Mozambique or Zambia. I have since checked out their development statistics and found that it isn’t actually that far up in the ranks, but it certainly appeared to be very developed, at least according to our makeshift set of development indicators, which included: the number of people on the side of the road, the percentage of those people wearing shoes, the type of things people carried on their heads (i.e. shopping bags from large grocery stores vs. buckets of water or firewood), the length of queues in banks, the condition of the roads, and the proportion of signs and advertisements that were professionally printed as opposed to hand painted. The deceiving ‘lack’ of poverty that we perceived in Swaziland has made me question just what it is that I think poverty ‘looks like’…
On our one night in the tiny Kingdom we stayed on a nature reserve in a beautiful rondavel overlooking the valley below. We dined on impala stew by the fire, and spent the next morning hiking through the reserve admiring the zebras, impalas, warthogs, hippos, and various other critters running about. The ‘wild’ animals made it feel somewhat less like Switzerland, although as we left the reserve and saw a field of grazing cows just opposite a field of zebras, the Swiss-Swazi confusion set it once again.
That night we slept in Malelane, South Africa, and the next morning we hit the centre of the town to go shopping. The plan was just to pick up some snacks at the grocery store, but being in the vicinity of such a commercial wonderland (in reality, a small strip mall) for the first time in 2 months, we both got a little sidetracked. Eventually we made it to the grocery store where our eyes bulged like two kids in a candy store as we marvelled at its immensity and the variety of products available. We manages to drag ourselves away, however, and headed on to bigger and wilder things in Kruger Park, “the wildlife gem of South Africa.” To be honest, my first crack at the whole safari thing didn’t feel as “wild” as I had expected – Kruger Park is so… organized, it felt a bit like a Disneyland Safari. But it was awesome none the less. It’s a bit of a bizarre experience, driving around an enormous park for hours, just waiting for an animal to cross your path. But although the hours of anticipation were frustrating, they were worth every minute to come accross an elephant moseying down the road in front of us, or a giraffe munching away on a tree a few feet away. In our 2 days in the park we saw elephants, giraffes, impalas, monkeys, baboons, kudus, zebras, crocodiles, hippos, a lion, a hyena, and an array of incredible birds. Not the 'Big Five', but not bad!
Having arrived at the world-famous park during the Christmas holiday with no reservation, we didn’t anticipate we would find a place to stay at any of the park's camps. But we lucked out and got the last bed left in the Lower Sabie Camp. And I mean last bed. More specifically, last single bed, which made for a bit of a restless night.
The next day we spent the morning touring the park and then headed out and drove through the gorgeous Blyde River Canyon. We ended up in Graskop for the night, which happened to be New Year’s Eve. I was looking forward to ringing in the New Year by stuffing my cheeks with a dozen grapes (the Spanish tradition) but, having hardly slept the previous night, we barely managed to make it through some terrible Chinese before returning to our hostel and crawling into bed at 10:30! Pathetic, I know. The worst part is, it didn’t bother me at all!
The next day we headed back to Maputo, stopping on the way to indulge in one last moment of ‘Western’ luxury (in the form of eggs benny and bottomless coffee) at a restaurant in a sparkling South African shopping mall.
The following day, Xavi dropped me off in front of a significantly tattered looking bus that carried me and a busload of Mozambicans 12 hours north, to Vilankulos. It was a long trip, but I found the scenery so breathtaking and all the goings-on so fascinating that the hours flew by. I especially enjoyed our many stops along the roadside, when local villagers attacked the bus en masse and money flew down from the high windows of the bus in exchange for the bags of cashews, soft drinks, and never-before-seen fruits being tossed up. I also had a very friendly nurse, Jose, next to me to chat and munch cashews with, which made the trip very pleasant.
By the time we arrived in Vilankulos it was already dark, but Jose had invited me to have dinner with him at the market and then walk me to my hostel, so I suppressed the nervousness about ‘Africa after dark’ that has been driven in to me since I arrived. As we headed for the market I made the mistake of asking where I might buy a SIM card for my phone: within seconds, a sizeable group of young boys had appeared out of thin air and were shoving SIM cards and TalkTime vouchers down my throat. The chaos ensued as I made my purchase and tried to get my phone working before they took off. Concentrating on my phone, and having Jose waiting patiently, I didn’t realise quite how sketchy the whole situation must have looked. Until three mzungu guys driving by stopped to ask me if I needed a ride, that is. I initially declined their offer, but they insisted I get in the car, and when one of them got out and looked like he might make the situation tense, I decided just to go along. When I got in they announced that a) I was crazy, and b) I had more balls than all three of them put together, the latter of which, I’ll admit, was kind of flattering.
The next day was gorgeous and I spent hours reading, wandering the beach, perusing the town, and observing the activities of the fishing community. It was a perfectly lovely day, and I was a bit disheartened to return that evening to a hostel full of rowdy South Africans who had only one thing in mind: partying.
For the following day I had booked a snorkelling trip to Bazaruto, one of the islands of the archipelago offshore. Of course, instead of the sunny skies and calm seas of the previous day, it was cold and windy and the ocean was fierce, which made for a wild ride. Once on the island, there were incredible sand dunes to climb and beautiful beaches to wander, but there was also periodic rain and wind, a recipe for a very sticky sandstorm. Fortunately, the snorkelling was amazing – the water was quite rough and at times felt like being inside a washing machine, but I have never seen such an incredible variety and quantity of fish. The ride back was even wilder than on the way over - somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying. All in all, the trip had been beautiful, but I arrived back to the hostel tired, sore, wet, cold, full of sand and, as I would later discover, burned to a crisp. I was feeling increasingly frustrated with both the crowd of South Africans at the hostel and the fact that, given that all the tourist-related businesses were owned by South Africans, very little of my money was going to Mozambicans. I had also made plans to go with Jose into the communities were he works educating people about HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, but he ended up having to go to another district for a few days. To top it off, it was raining and I was advised by some locals, as they watched fishermen pulling their dhows to a more protected area, that a storm was brewing. That was the icing on my decision-to-leave cake. Luckily, three French girls, Celine, Claire and Amelie, were heading in the same direction the following day, so we arranged to meet the next morning to catch the bus together.
My sunburn emerged that night and, combined with the previous day’s dose of sun, I was transformed into an unflattering mosaic of burned and more-burned. Needless to say, my back was not happy when it awoke the next day at 3 a.m. to 26 hours of travel with a far-too-heavy backpack. First was a 7-hour bus ride on a road full of potholes so deep that my bottom left the seat on more than one occasion. But, while my back suffered, I felt fortunate just to have my own seat - the grandmother, granddaughter and chicken in the seat next to me, and all those standing, didn’t look very comfortable. We then hitchhiked the 3-hour stretch across the border into Zimbabwe, first in the cab of a big rig with a jovial Mozambican truckdriver, where I sat on a bag of maize meal, then in the back of a white Zimbabwean family’s truck, where I sat on a bag of charcoal. Fortunately, no matter what’s in the bag you sit on, the scenery remains just as stunning.
At the border we decided we had better change a bit of money so as not to find ourselves stranded and penniless in some Zimbabwean border town. Claire, Amelie and Celine live in Zimbabwe, but unfortunately the law prohibits anyone from taking more than Zim$300,000 (CAD$4) out of the country. And, as they found out on their way to Mozambique, the border guards will not hesitate to search your bags and threaten to send you to jail if you are caught with more. To make matters more interesting, the only way to exchange money at the border is illegally. It is common practice, however, and the guard at the gate seemed less than concerned as he watched me bounce back and forth between money-changers trying to negotiate a decent rate. The second I had an enormous stack of Zim$ (the largest denomination is worth 25 cents) in my hand, however, he suddenly became interested and demanded to know what I was doing (as did the guy who had just changed my Mozambican meticais for me!). I sensed trouble, but couldn’t refrain from telling him he knew exactly what I was doing because he had been watching me for the last 20 minutes! I cut his lecture on "encouraging the black market" short, said I didn’t want any trouble and walked away. Fortunately, he didn’t follow, or I might be writing this from inside a Zimbabwean prison!
We were dropped off at the train station in Mtare with the parting words, “You girls are insane.” Granted, there was an enormous crowd of people sitting around outside, and a queue rivalling the opening night of Star Wars, but we were having an adventure and were not fazed. I have also learned to take everything a white African advises with a grain of salt, as most of them have never done any of the things they advise against.
Our plan was to get a sleeper bed on the night train to Harare but, unfortunately, the sleepers were all sold out. We managed to get seats in Standard class with the help of a station employee and then headed in to the station cafeteria for some sadza (Zim for nshima) and beef stew, which cost all of 80 cents. After finishing our meal, Claire noticed the doors of the train were open, so we boarded one of the virtually empty Standard cars and found a seat. As we settled in, a man across from began a 20-minute rant on how (not if) our bags were going to be stolen (at that moment I was very glad I had over-packed and would cause anyone who tried to steal my bag to throw their back out). Needless to say, his commentaries made us feel somewhat uncomfortable. It wasn't long, however, before we started to feel really uncomfortable...
We hadn’t realized that we were only able to board the train when we did because we happened to be in the station having dinner. As it turns out, the rest of the passengers were still waiting on the curb, and at 19:30 sharp they opened a tall metal gate and hundreds of people crashed through and started running full tilt towards the train, all carrying three times their body weight in luggage. Our car filled up in seconds, literally, and didn’t stop filling when the seats were all taken. The aisles were packed with people and, having sat in the middle of the car where there was the most room for standing passengers, we had about 6 people crammed in the aisle beside us and on the tables in front of us. At one point in the night I woke up to find a baby sleeping between my feet. In addition to the physical discomfort of having so many people stuffed into one train car, the people that had chosen to sit, stand, squat and lie around us were drinking heavily and spent the whole nine hours conversing loudly in Shona. Their conversations also involved multiple references to “mzungu”, which was always followed by hardy laughter… One guy hassled Celine for a while, but she eventually convinced him to go away and let her sleep, with no help from onlookers, who all seemed to find it quite amusing. It was an authentic experience all right, and definitely worth the $2 ticket, but to say we were overjoyed to arrive in Harare in one piece and leave the crowded, hot, dirty, smelly train, is an immeasurable understatement.
Thanks to my travelling companions, my day in Harare was wonderfully relaxing. Although the surprisingly modern city (according to Zambians, the luxury skyscrapers of Harare were built with Zambian dollars) seemed inviting, we spent the day between the girls’ gorgeous house and their friend’s gorgeous house, playing cards, drinking Gin, and listening to the rain pound down around us (all in the dark because the power was out). I enjoyed practicing my French after so many years, although after battling through Portuguese and then French, my tied tongue was happy to be heading back to anglophone waters of Lusaka the next day.
I was at the bus station early, but unfortunately didn’t pick up on the culturally implicit queuing system where you drop your bag in a line in front of an empty desk and then sit down and relax until the bus arrives. No, I stood with my backpack on for an hour before I noticed the growing line of bags and placed mine near the end. When the bus arrived, frenzied bodies replaced the line of luggage as people waited anxiously to get a ticket, of which there were apparently not going to be enough for all. Panic formed in a knot in my stomach, but I did get a seat and again felt lucky to have one as we passed countless people on the side of the highway, who showed signs of having been there with their luggage all morning waiting for a bus with room to pick them up.
The Chirundu border (aka Planet of the Baboons) was long, boring, and a bit nerve racking given Zimbabwe’s obsession with criminalizing anyone leaving the country with more than $4. It was strange to finally arrive back in Lusaka and think that I was “home”, but it felt nice to wake up on Sunday to a day of nsolo (a traditional Zambian board game) with Dumi and Simon, baking scones with Sam, playing marbles with my nieces and nephews and going out for Korean BBQ with two American volunteers working in Congolese refugee camps.
Now that I have been back for two weeks, it almost seems I never left. Luckily, I have been reminded of my vacation on a bi-minutely basis, as I continue to peel bubble-wrap skin off every inch of my body...
There’s at least another 4 pages I could write about my holiday, my last two weeks in Lusaka and life in general, but I think I’ll give you all a break and leave it here. For now:) The next instalment will be shorter and not so delayed, I promise!
Thanks for reading, and good night!
~
How to recount my 2 and a half weeks of adventures in Southern Africa without breaking new records for blog length …? It’s a difficult task, and I’m not sure I’ll succeed, but I’ll try. Although, I have had positive feedback from many of you who assure me that Mom is not the only one making it to the end of my exhausting entries, so perhaps I need not worry so much!
Before I begin, I want to thank all those of you who have written to me over the past few weeks. Being away from home at this time of year is always difficult, but warm words from friends and family make it much, much easier. Thank you.
~
The morning after I arrived in Chokwe, I went outside to see Xavi off to work and found the guard, Jose, sick with malaria. It was quite a wake-up call as to just how ugly malaria can be, and although I despise taking my weekly, freaky-dream-inducing Lariam, I am glad it has kept me healthy thus far. I was also glad to be able to occupy myself on my first afternoon in Chokwe by visiting the hospital and using my “Portuñol” to inquire about Jose’s recovery.
Noche buena (Christmas Eve) was a random but lovely evening. We arrived home late and exhausted after spending the day at the office where Xavi was working on his dissertation. We had no dinner plan and not much in the fridge, but together with Xavi’s roommate, Carlos, and neighbour, Sergio, we gathered together some cured ham (being saved for just such a special occasion), pa amb tomaquet (Catalan staple of bread with tomato), a bottle of wine, a pineapple, and some leftover brownies I had made. It wasn’t much, but in a town where eggs are a luxury, it felt like a feast for Kings. After dinner, Sergio, Carlos and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning philosophising about life and debating the merits of development.
Christmas day was the first day since my arrival that wasn’t a blazing 35 degrees, so our highly anticipated day at the beach involved no swimsuits. But there were nice grilled prawns and a lovely walk along the ocean’s edge to make up for it. On boxing day Xavi finally finished and printed off his dissertation, but not quite in time to go to Maputo as planned, so we headed off the next morning bright and early. Maputo is a megatropolis compared to the one-horse town of Lusaka (one-road would be more accurate, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring). But it’s a charming megatropolis and I enjoyed our day there, which was spent going to 5 different branches of the Banco Internacional de Moçambique trying to cash Xavi’s paycheque (which, after 4 hours, we finally managed to do).
The following morning we headed for Swaziland, where we spent two grey and rainy but very pleasant days. The country is beautiful, although we felt like we were in Switzerland, not the south of Africa (I even wondered if it was more than a coincidence that the two names are so alike…). Not only is the landscape similar, but Swaziland is also incredibly developed-looking compared to Mozambique or Zambia. I have since checked out their development statistics and found that it isn’t actually that far up in the ranks, but it certainly appeared to be very developed, at least according to our makeshift set of development indicators, which included: the number of people on the side of the road, the percentage of those people wearing shoes, the type of things people carried on their heads (i.e. shopping bags from large grocery stores vs. buckets of water or firewood), the length of queues in banks, the condition of the roads, and the proportion of signs and advertisements that were professionally printed as opposed to hand painted. The deceiving ‘lack’ of poverty that we perceived in Swaziland has made me question just what it is that I think poverty ‘looks like’…
On our one night in the tiny Kingdom we stayed on a nature reserve in a beautiful rondavel overlooking the valley below. We dined on impala stew by the fire, and spent the next morning hiking through the reserve admiring the zebras, impalas, warthogs, hippos, and various other critters running about. The ‘wild’ animals made it feel somewhat less like Switzerland, although as we left the reserve and saw a field of grazing cows just opposite a field of zebras, the Swiss-Swazi confusion set it once again.
That night we slept in Malelane, South Africa, and the next morning we hit the centre of the town to go shopping. The plan was just to pick up some snacks at the grocery store, but being in the vicinity of such a commercial wonderland (in reality, a small strip mall) for the first time in 2 months, we both got a little sidetracked. Eventually we made it to the grocery store where our eyes bulged like two kids in a candy store as we marvelled at its immensity and the variety of products available. We manages to drag ourselves away, however, and headed on to bigger and wilder things in Kruger Park, “the wildlife gem of South Africa.” To be honest, my first crack at the whole safari thing didn’t feel as “wild” as I had expected – Kruger Park is so… organized, it felt a bit like a Disneyland Safari. But it was awesome none the less. It’s a bit of a bizarre experience, driving around an enormous park for hours, just waiting for an animal to cross your path. But although the hours of anticipation were frustrating, they were worth every minute to come accross an elephant moseying down the road in front of us, or a giraffe munching away on a tree a few feet away. In our 2 days in the park we saw elephants, giraffes, impalas, monkeys, baboons, kudus, zebras, crocodiles, hippos, a lion, a hyena, and an array of incredible birds. Not the 'Big Five', but not bad!
Having arrived at the world-famous park during the Christmas holiday with no reservation, we didn’t anticipate we would find a place to stay at any of the park's camps. But we lucked out and got the last bed left in the Lower Sabie Camp. And I mean last bed. More specifically, last single bed, which made for a bit of a restless night.
The next day we spent the morning touring the park and then headed out and drove through the gorgeous Blyde River Canyon. We ended up in Graskop for the night, which happened to be New Year’s Eve. I was looking forward to ringing in the New Year by stuffing my cheeks with a dozen grapes (the Spanish tradition) but, having hardly slept the previous night, we barely managed to make it through some terrible Chinese before returning to our hostel and crawling into bed at 10:30! Pathetic, I know. The worst part is, it didn’t bother me at all!
The next day we headed back to Maputo, stopping on the way to indulge in one last moment of ‘Western’ luxury (in the form of eggs benny and bottomless coffee) at a restaurant in a sparkling South African shopping mall.
The following day, Xavi dropped me off in front of a significantly tattered looking bus that carried me and a busload of Mozambicans 12 hours north, to Vilankulos. It was a long trip, but I found the scenery so breathtaking and all the goings-on so fascinating that the hours flew by. I especially enjoyed our many stops along the roadside, when local villagers attacked the bus en masse and money flew down from the high windows of the bus in exchange for the bags of cashews, soft drinks, and never-before-seen fruits being tossed up. I also had a very friendly nurse, Jose, next to me to chat and munch cashews with, which made the trip very pleasant.
By the time we arrived in Vilankulos it was already dark, but Jose had invited me to have dinner with him at the market and then walk me to my hostel, so I suppressed the nervousness about ‘Africa after dark’ that has been driven in to me since I arrived. As we headed for the market I made the mistake of asking where I might buy a SIM card for my phone: within seconds, a sizeable group of young boys had appeared out of thin air and were shoving SIM cards and TalkTime vouchers down my throat. The chaos ensued as I made my purchase and tried to get my phone working before they took off. Concentrating on my phone, and having Jose waiting patiently, I didn’t realise quite how sketchy the whole situation must have looked. Until three mzungu guys driving by stopped to ask me if I needed a ride, that is. I initially declined their offer, but they insisted I get in the car, and when one of them got out and looked like he might make the situation tense, I decided just to go along. When I got in they announced that a) I was crazy, and b) I had more balls than all three of them put together, the latter of which, I’ll admit, was kind of flattering.
The next day was gorgeous and I spent hours reading, wandering the beach, perusing the town, and observing the activities of the fishing community. It was a perfectly lovely day, and I was a bit disheartened to return that evening to a hostel full of rowdy South Africans who had only one thing in mind: partying.
For the following day I had booked a snorkelling trip to Bazaruto, one of the islands of the archipelago offshore. Of course, instead of the sunny skies and calm seas of the previous day, it was cold and windy and the ocean was fierce, which made for a wild ride. Once on the island, there were incredible sand dunes to climb and beautiful beaches to wander, but there was also periodic rain and wind, a recipe for a very sticky sandstorm. Fortunately, the snorkelling was amazing – the water was quite rough and at times felt like being inside a washing machine, but I have never seen such an incredible variety and quantity of fish. The ride back was even wilder than on the way over - somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying. All in all, the trip had been beautiful, but I arrived back to the hostel tired, sore, wet, cold, full of sand and, as I would later discover, burned to a crisp. I was feeling increasingly frustrated with both the crowd of South Africans at the hostel and the fact that, given that all the tourist-related businesses were owned by South Africans, very little of my money was going to Mozambicans. I had also made plans to go with Jose into the communities were he works educating people about HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, but he ended up having to go to another district for a few days. To top it off, it was raining and I was advised by some locals, as they watched fishermen pulling their dhows to a more protected area, that a storm was brewing. That was the icing on my decision-to-leave cake. Luckily, three French girls, Celine, Claire and Amelie, were heading in the same direction the following day, so we arranged to meet the next morning to catch the bus together.
My sunburn emerged that night and, combined with the previous day’s dose of sun, I was transformed into an unflattering mosaic of burned and more-burned. Needless to say, my back was not happy when it awoke the next day at 3 a.m. to 26 hours of travel with a far-too-heavy backpack. First was a 7-hour bus ride on a road full of potholes so deep that my bottom left the seat on more than one occasion. But, while my back suffered, I felt fortunate just to have my own seat - the grandmother, granddaughter and chicken in the seat next to me, and all those standing, didn’t look very comfortable. We then hitchhiked the 3-hour stretch across the border into Zimbabwe, first in the cab of a big rig with a jovial Mozambican truckdriver, where I sat on a bag of maize meal, then in the back of a white Zimbabwean family’s truck, where I sat on a bag of charcoal. Fortunately, no matter what’s in the bag you sit on, the scenery remains just as stunning.
At the border we decided we had better change a bit of money so as not to find ourselves stranded and penniless in some Zimbabwean border town. Claire, Amelie and Celine live in Zimbabwe, but unfortunately the law prohibits anyone from taking more than Zim$300,000 (CAD$4) out of the country. And, as they found out on their way to Mozambique, the border guards will not hesitate to search your bags and threaten to send you to jail if you are caught with more. To make matters more interesting, the only way to exchange money at the border is illegally. It is common practice, however, and the guard at the gate seemed less than concerned as he watched me bounce back and forth between money-changers trying to negotiate a decent rate. The second I had an enormous stack of Zim$ (the largest denomination is worth 25 cents) in my hand, however, he suddenly became interested and demanded to know what I was doing (as did the guy who had just changed my Mozambican meticais for me!). I sensed trouble, but couldn’t refrain from telling him he knew exactly what I was doing because he had been watching me for the last 20 minutes! I cut his lecture on "encouraging the black market" short, said I didn’t want any trouble and walked away. Fortunately, he didn’t follow, or I might be writing this from inside a Zimbabwean prison!
We were dropped off at the train station in Mtare with the parting words, “You girls are insane.” Granted, there was an enormous crowd of people sitting around outside, and a queue rivalling the opening night of Star Wars, but we were having an adventure and were not fazed. I have also learned to take everything a white African advises with a grain of salt, as most of them have never done any of the things they advise against.
Our plan was to get a sleeper bed on the night train to Harare but, unfortunately, the sleepers were all sold out. We managed to get seats in Standard class with the help of a station employee and then headed in to the station cafeteria for some sadza (Zim for nshima) and beef stew, which cost all of 80 cents. After finishing our meal, Claire noticed the doors of the train were open, so we boarded one of the virtually empty Standard cars and found a seat. As we settled in, a man across from began a 20-minute rant on how (not if) our bags were going to be stolen (at that moment I was very glad I had over-packed and would cause anyone who tried to steal my bag to throw their back out). Needless to say, his commentaries made us feel somewhat uncomfortable. It wasn't long, however, before we started to feel really uncomfortable...
We hadn’t realized that we were only able to board the train when we did because we happened to be in the station having dinner. As it turns out, the rest of the passengers were still waiting on the curb, and at 19:30 sharp they opened a tall metal gate and hundreds of people crashed through and started running full tilt towards the train, all carrying three times their body weight in luggage. Our car filled up in seconds, literally, and didn’t stop filling when the seats were all taken. The aisles were packed with people and, having sat in the middle of the car where there was the most room for standing passengers, we had about 6 people crammed in the aisle beside us and on the tables in front of us. At one point in the night I woke up to find a baby sleeping between my feet. In addition to the physical discomfort of having so many people stuffed into one train car, the people that had chosen to sit, stand, squat and lie around us were drinking heavily and spent the whole nine hours conversing loudly in Shona. Their conversations also involved multiple references to “mzungu”, which was always followed by hardy laughter… One guy hassled Celine for a while, but she eventually convinced him to go away and let her sleep, with no help from onlookers, who all seemed to find it quite amusing. It was an authentic experience all right, and definitely worth the $2 ticket, but to say we were overjoyed to arrive in Harare in one piece and leave the crowded, hot, dirty, smelly train, is an immeasurable understatement.
Thanks to my travelling companions, my day in Harare was wonderfully relaxing. Although the surprisingly modern city (according to Zambians, the luxury skyscrapers of Harare were built with Zambian dollars) seemed inviting, we spent the day between the girls’ gorgeous house and their friend’s gorgeous house, playing cards, drinking Gin, and listening to the rain pound down around us (all in the dark because the power was out). I enjoyed practicing my French after so many years, although after battling through Portuguese and then French, my tied tongue was happy to be heading back to anglophone waters of Lusaka the next day.
I was at the bus station early, but unfortunately didn’t pick up on the culturally implicit queuing system where you drop your bag in a line in front of an empty desk and then sit down and relax until the bus arrives. No, I stood with my backpack on for an hour before I noticed the growing line of bags and placed mine near the end. When the bus arrived, frenzied bodies replaced the line of luggage as people waited anxiously to get a ticket, of which there were apparently not going to be enough for all. Panic formed in a knot in my stomach, but I did get a seat and again felt lucky to have one as we passed countless people on the side of the highway, who showed signs of having been there with their luggage all morning waiting for a bus with room to pick them up.
The Chirundu border (aka Planet of the Baboons) was long, boring, and a bit nerve racking given Zimbabwe’s obsession with criminalizing anyone leaving the country with more than $4. It was strange to finally arrive back in Lusaka and think that I was “home”, but it felt nice to wake up on Sunday to a day of nsolo (a traditional Zambian board game) with Dumi and Simon, baking scones with Sam, playing marbles with my nieces and nephews and going out for Korean BBQ with two American volunteers working in Congolese refugee camps.
Now that I have been back for two weeks, it almost seems I never left. Luckily, I have been reminded of my vacation on a bi-minutely basis, as I continue to peel bubble-wrap skin off every inch of my body...
There’s at least another 4 pages I could write about my holiday, my last two weeks in Lusaka and life in general, but I think I’ll give you all a break and leave it here. For now:) The next instalment will be shorter and not so delayed, I promise!
Thanks for reading, and good night!
posted by ash at 8:05 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home