Zen and the Art of Pajero Maintenance

Last Saturday morning I left for Kawambwa, a town in Northern Zambia, 1200km from Lusaka. Eighteen hours, 150km in the wrong direction, 1 dead pig and 4 breakdowns later, I finally arrived.

The first mishap was erroneously passing a key turnoff by a mere 150km. To make matters more interesting, by the time we realized we had been going the wrong way for over an hour, we were also running out of gas. Fortunately for us, there were a friendly group of truckers in the town of Chilonga who were able to point us back in the right direction, sell us some diesel to get us there, and share their nshima with us!

We arrived in the town of Mansa as the sun was setting, and our battery decided that the onset of darkness would be the perfect time to stop working. We pushed the car into a petrol station, where a man offered to remove the battery from his car and put it in ours to get us going. It worked, and we headed off on the three hour journey to Kawambwa in the dark. Paul, who works for Right to Play and who I studied with in the UK, was on the first night shift, which ended shortly after he managed to collide with a suicidal pig. I was asleep and only felt the thump. I was too tired to get out, so I watched from the back as Paul and Fred, who works for Right to Play in Kawambwa, inspected the vehicle and a large crowd of Zambians who had gathered inspected them. The pig was the only party to suffer any injuries, fortunately.

I was on the next shift, which was when the headlights started to dim. Or at least I thought they did, but Paul and Fred seemed to disagree. I kept driving and wondering if I was crazy until, at a turn, I went to use the indicator only to find it wasn’t working, a moment which Paul later defined as “the moment when I knew we were really in trouble.” I soon gave up trying to drive in the dark with virtually no headlights, and passed the wheel to Fred. He got about 20 minutes down the road before the battery died again.

I’ll admit, I was a bit freaked. Breaking down on the side of a highway in Zambia in the middle of the night wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Fortunately, my male counterparts were much more calm. Fred promptly announced he was going to smoke a cigarette and think, and Paul had the reflective warning triangle out on the road in a flash. Meanwhile, I sat and let my mind race through our options, which were frighteningly few.

Before Fred could even finish his cigarette, headlights came shining over the bend. On a road where a car passes approximately once and hour, this was a miracle. We flagged them down to help us, but ‘help’ doesn’t even begin to describe what rolled along in that Ministry of Education truck with one headlight. Two men hopped out, inspected the engine and after using a piece of wire to repair the battery contacts, gave us a jump to get us going. Then they insisted on driving with us the rest of the way to make sure we made it safely. They must have known… We got about 10 minutes down the road before the battery konked out for a third time. This time they got serious, brought out their tools, and spent half an hour tightening various belts and doing god knows what else. I watched tensely, along with the group of Zambian men that appeared out of the bush to see what was going on, and tried to let the sounds drumming and singing in the distance soothe my nerves. This time our two friends, Paul and all the onlookers pushed the car down the road for Fred to get the engine running. I felt a bit left out, having been left standing in the road to watch, but in the end I actually quite enjoyed the site of seeing our car being pushed down a dark highway in Zambia by a bunch of friendly strangers.

Their miraculous mechanics worked like magic and we made it all the way to the Kawambwa junction with no trouble. So, after thanking them profusely we confidently headed off on the last 30km stretch of our journey. Half way there, however, the battery died yet again. Fortunately, one of our Ministry of Education friends had hopped onto a truck that was headed for Kawambwa and they were already behind us when we climbed out with even more dejected looks on our exhausted faces. We had managed to break down on a hill, so they decided it was just easier to tow us the rest of the way. So, when we finally reached Fred’s house at 11:30pm, it was being towed behind a large truck full of Zambian men drinking chibuku.

It didn’t actually feel like such a long trip, but Paul rightly pointed out that the fact that we played the celebrity name game for three straight hours before turning to ‘count the Kingdom Halls’ was a good indication of how long a journey it had been.

It was well worth it though. Not only because it was an opportunity to see the true colours of Zambians shine like never before, but because the three days we spent in Kawambwa were absolutely fabulous. On Sunday we splashed around in some of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen, on Monday morning we toured the Congolese refugee camp where Fred works and played with all sorts of young Congolese children screaming ‘maaaaazuuuuunguuuuu!’ like I’ve never heard it screamed before, on Monday afternoon we swam at another beautiful waterfall, on Tuesday morning we were back at the camp visiting schools, the hospital, and the fish ponds and crop fields, and on Tuesday afternoon we went to Kashi Kishi, on the edge of Lake Mweru, and played cricket on the beach. We finished off our stay with a night of karaoke and dancing.

Paul and I left on Wednesday morning, thanks to a mechanic named Smart who had managed to get us operational again. We took two days to get back to Lusaka. It was nice to cover the whole distance in the daylight and see all the incredible landscapes, that changed constantly. We passed fields of never ending termite mounds, forests of trees whose leaves are now all bright red, orange, yellow and green, beaches of the whitest sand I’ve ever seen, floodplains with men in canoes navigating through tall green grass…. We camped overnight at a small lake called Waka Waka, about 40km from the highway. Despite being in the middle of nowhere and being the only people at the camp, the camp attendants made sure that when we came back from our walk there was a gorgeous campfire and a bucket of deliciously warm water in the washing hut awaiting us. It was a beautifully peaceful night, complete with roasted marshmallows and stargazing.

We awoke and got on the road, because we wanted to stop at another waterfall on the way and get back to Lusaka fairly early. We made it to the Kundalila Falls after a couple of hours of driving through stunning scenery. After an hour or so at the falls taking in the incredible views and having breakfast, we headed back to the car. I climbed into the passenger seat and started munching on a biscuit as I waited for Paul to start the car. Except that Paul couldn’t start the car. The battery, which had worked perfectly the previous day and all morning, had died again. So there we sat, alone, 15km from the highway, at the bottom of a hill, in a car that wouldn’t start. I laughed, but was conscious that very shortly the situation was going to cease to be amusing. We tried to push the car uphill far enough that we could roll it down to get the engine going, but despite our goliath strength, we couldn’t manage. I decided to head up the road and see if I could find any big strong men to help us. Unfortunately, there were none, so I returned with the next best thing – a gaggle of small children, who followed me back to the car as though I were the Pied Piper. I hopped in to steer, and through the windshield watched as a shirtless Paul surrounded by about a dozen children, one of whom had fit himself right in between Paul’s long white arms, pushed us uphill. I was so nervous about the car starting when they began to push back down that I failed to notice that it had actually worked! We quickly thanked our new friends and sped off towards civilization as quickly as possible.

When we reached the next sizeable town and had to stop for gas, we were well aware that we may not get the car started again. We weren’t aware however, that it would take us 2 hours to manage to do so. I shouldn’t complain, though – it took a while, but our roadside mechanic, Shek, loaded our batteries on the back of a bicycle and came back an hour later with tools and charged batteries in hand and managed to fix our loose belt permanently enough that the battery hasn’t died since.

I learned a lot on my trip to Kawambwa. I learned how to start a car when your battery dies. I learned that good company on a road trip is priceless. I learned that karaoke can be fun. I learned that there are more Jehovah’s Witnesses per capita in Zambia than anywhere else in the world. I learned how to play Backgammon. I learned that I am terrible at cricket. I learned that Zambia has as many incredible landscapes as it does warm hearts and friendly smiles. I learned that an empty dirt road is enough to bring about that evasive feeling of really seeing the world. And I learned that the best adventures in life happen when you least expect them.

A town called Nyimba

About five minutes from my place, just a few lefts, a few rights and one roundabout away, lies Zambia’s Great East Road. If you hang a right and drive east for about 4 hours, you will come to a non-descript stretch of highway which doubles as a town called Nyimba. This is where I spent three days last week, facilitating a fundraising workshop for a group of rural farmers. This is also where I fell in love with Zambia all over again.

Nyimba is a quintessential rural Zambian town: a stretch of highway that you would miss if you blinked, lined with a few buildings on each side, most of which are painted in the red and yellow of Celtel, the leading mobile network. At one end there is a small maze of a market, where people gather to shop, or just hang out among the overflowing baskets of kapenta and caterpillars, the old vodka bottles full of fuel, the neatly stacked piles of tomatoes, bananas or fritters and the strings of colourful chitenges hanging in front of many of the sagging stalls. Halfway down the stretch of town is a row of grass enclosures serving as‘barber shops’, followed by a wall-less Prison Farm where prisoners can be seen out playing football on Wednesday afternoons. Beyond that is an open area where farmers bring their cotton for sale and where it sits in a fluffy white pile waiting to be shoved into burlap sacks until cotton balls burst through their seams. Across the road where the buses stop are a few large trees providing shade to the women who sell bananas to those passing through. Further down there is a ‘Public Pub’ playing music that can be heard from one end of the town to the other from 6am til midnight. And attached to the pub is Nyimba’s one sleeping place, a ‘hotel’ where I stayed for three nights and where our workshop was held; it was about the most run-down place I have ever seen, but it served it’s purpose.

Scattered amongst these landmarks are Nyimba’s people: its women, steadily balancing buckets of water or baskets of food on their heads, cushioned only by a plethora of mesmerizing hairstyles; its babies, snuggled tightly in bright chitenges and blankets on the backs of their mothers; its boys, kicking up piles of dust playing soccer, hollering ‘maaazuuuunguuu!’ in sweet, high pitched voices at the white stranger passing by, rolling old bicycle tires down the road as they make their way home, or riding bikes so big their feet never pass within a mile of the ground; its girls, who – like their mothers – are often seen carrying buckets of water atop their unwavering heads or toting younger siblings on their own young backs, and whose voices may be heard amongst the drumming of an initiation ceremony taking place in the distance; and its men, some of whom spend the day sitting by the side of the highway watching the world of Nyimba pass by, some of whom get inconceivably drunk on Shake Shake, some of whom go to sell things at the market, some of whom do other work, and none of whom carry baskets on their heads or babies on their backs.

There is little electricity and no running water in Nyimba, which made the prospect of a three-day stay seem a bit bleak at first, but I quickly adjusted to using the cockroach-infested outhouse and having a steaming bucket of charcoal-heated water delivered to my door atop the head of one of the friendly female staff when I wanted to bathe. And what Nyimba lacked in basic facilities, it made up for in it’s many other endearing qualities: it’s golden light, it’s peaceful nature, it’s friendly smiles and laughs, and the window it offers into rural Zambian life.

The workshop itself was quite successful. The group of farmers made up for their academic shortcomings with their cheerful dispositions (including the poligamist who wanted me to become his third wife so that I could take him back to Canada), and they did extremely well in the workshop, despite being led by a mzungu who talks too fast, even for her own mother. Outside of workshop hours we also had all of our meals together: nzhima, rape and chicken for lunch and dinner three days in a row, and a hard boiled egg, stale bread, rice or chips, and insipid, milky tea for breakfast three days in a row. In the evenings we returned to the room we were having the workshop in to sit in front of one of the town’s only TVs, watching one of Zambia’s only channels: ZNBC. The public channel shows news and South African soap operas scattered with smattering of outrageously tacky advertisements and various public announcements: “ZESCO electricity meters being installed in the following areas…”, “Water stoppage this Saturday in the following areas…”, “TV license inspection in the coming weeks in the following areas…” On my last night in town I tore myself away from the exciting programming to meet with Albert, the man who had organized the workshop, at the small, mouse-inhabited office of the Nyimba District Farmers Association. Later we climbed on his motorbike and we wove our way through small, dirt paths in the fields north of the ‘tarmac’ (highway) until we reached his house, where he introduced me to his family, who promptly ushered me into the living room to watch ZNBC!

By the time Saturday morning rolled around I was sad to leave Nyimba, the little roadside town that had captured my heart. I soaked in as much as I could as I sat waiting for the bus to Lusaka. Fortunately, I had a lot of time with which to do my soaking, as catching a bus en route to Lusaka is a waiting game like no other. A few times I got my hopes up when I asked “When is the bus coming?” and was told “Don’t worry madam, it is coming very soon”, but by the third round of “it is coming” I finally realized that was actually Zambian for “I don’t want to say ‘I don’t know’.” So I sat, and waited, and soaked it all in. I also got to shake hands with one of the presidential candidates who rolled through town at 7:30am in a convoy of 4x4s with megaphones blaring his campaign messages for the upcoming tripartite elections on Sept 28th. By the time the bus finally came along, it was more disappointment than relief.

The journey back was along the same road I traveled when returning from Malawi in February. The landscape, however, was barely recognizable. Zambia’s subequatorial winter had brought out its palette of browns and transformed the land into a mosaic of barren branches, dry grass and parched leaves. The only splashes of colour were the rare trees that managed to defy the laws of nature to sprout new leaves or blossom after five months without a drop of rain.

I reached Lusaka in a state of euphoria at having managed to arrive in one piece after a 4-hour journey traveling at speeds that made the bus feel very much like an airplane. Except when we had to slam on the breaks and swerve to miss the odd cow, that wasn’t so airplane like. I wasn’t in perfect condition, however: I had managed to make myself slightly deaf in my attempt to drown out the symphony of gospel music, the bus driver’s sing along, and the horrendous Nigerian movie that were all playing simultaneously at top volume throughout the whole trip. So, ears ringing, I made my way home, sad to have left Nyimba behind, but undeniably excited at the prospect of such modern conveniences as a toilet and sink!