ZAMBEEF!

Zambian noticings:

1. Piercing blue sky and air so dry the entire country seems likely to burst into flames at any moment.

2. Lots of Zambians know lots of English. Although it’s one of the national languages, I was still surprised to hear very young children speaking it (I hadn’t expected it to be a first language) and to hear Zambians speaking to each other in English rather than a local language. This assisted my eavesdropping, my preferred method of information gathering.

3. A disproportionate number of individuals with disfiguring growths.

4. ELEPHANTS! ON! THE! ROAD!

5. Horrible roads (elephants aside). I felt this with my stomach more than I saw this with my eyes. Poor Carissa. She’s probably seen more of my vomit in a month than my mother saw in my whole life. In fairness, the potholes are not entirely to blame because I also got sick on a canoe, much to my amazement.

5. Zambeef! This is the national beef company. Zambia is full of cows. You could drive dozens of miles without seeing a soul, unlike Malawi, Jersey and other densely populated places dear to my heart. But you can’t even go to the bathroom without crossing paths with a cow. Zambeef also works as an expletive (Zambeef! I stubbed my toe!), and a catchall phrase (“I can’t find my Zambeef-amajig”). Note: Zambians and normal people do not do this, just me.

The preplanned highlight of my trip was a few days at Victoria Falls, of Seven Natural Wonders of the World fame. It is so massive and stunning it is difficult and seems pointless to describe. But imagine a really, really long row of really, really tall staircases. But instead of stairs, water. It was really loud too, but didn’t quite drown out the sound of unauthorized tour guides getting shot at (but not shot) by park rangers.

Victoria Falls is populated by lots of baboon families. Have you ever seen a baboon up close? They are like small, ugly humans. Mama baboons cradle their babies as they nurse them, and while sweet in a creepy sort of way, it made me a tad nervous to be so close to mothers and their young. But what I really should have worried about was taking that orange Carissa offered me. Before I could finish peeling it, I had the baboon town hall meeting at my feet and they all came looking for oranges. Using my NYC brain (if someone is trying to mug you, throw your wallet away from you and run the other way), I chucked my orange at the biggest baboon’s hairy, old man head and speed walked the opposite direction (passing a sign that said, “Don’t feed the animals.”)

Victoria Falls straddles the Zambian/Zimbabwean border. There is a bridge along the falls connecting the two countries that people bungee jump off of: $130 per plummet. Despite all of the unfamiliar languages and countries and cultures I have come in contact with over the past several weeks, the one thing I have ultimately had the most difficulty understanding is the appeal of flinging yourself upside off a bridge between two countries which at the present time are not particularly noted for high quality construction nor stellar medical services. Watching person after person fall made my stomach drop and my heart pound in my throat, but I couldn’t stop looking- it was like rubbernecking at a car wreck. Bungee jumping is actually just one of many “attractions” at the falls. You can microlight and helicopter over them, raft and kayak and river board in them, and several other activities. But just watching them was more than thrilling for me, and when two rainbows appeared in the spray as if on cue, I couldn’t have been happier.

When my eyes got their fill of falling water (and humans), I headed to Bovu Island via pickup truck and dugout canoe. This tiny island in the Zambezi River is unpopulated except for the cook and night guard. There were no other guests while we were there and the owner was away so Carissa and I had the entire island etched with mazelike paths, library with termite eaten books, nightly batch of salt and vinegar popcorn, and David, the guide, all to ourselves. David told us to be mindful of the crocodiles and hippos on the shore. When I asked if there are any snakes on the island, David said, “only pythons, puff adders and spitting cobras.” Then he quickly assured me that these highly poisonous species are in hibernation. At night I could hear the hippos grazing a few feet from the tent, and in the early mornings I watched monkeys sneak into the kitchen, squat between the half-melted candles stuck in wine bottles and slurp strands of spaghetti from last night’s dinner.

Bovu Island was my last stop in my travels for heading back to the capital of Zambia and then to my new home. I drugged myself in preparation for the long, bumpy bus ride to Lusaka which was made memorable by running over someone’s hand and the endless stream of low budget Christian music videos. In Lusaka, I met a Peace Corps volunteer on vacation from his assignment in Malawi. While explaining to him my presence on the continent, he said, “Lesoo-what?!” I tried pronouncing the name of my soon-to-be country of residence the way it is spelled: “Le-SO-THOW,” but he still stared blankly. I am used to people from home not knowing where or what Lesotho is, but when people residing a few countries away not having a clue makes me a little uneasy. . .

Here I come, oh country of mystery and funky spelling.

So We Kept Going

My insides were rebelling in Malawi, and I wasn’t in the best state to keep moving. But I was also feeling cranky and lethargic and nothing makes me giddier than careening toward the nearest border in a crumbling excuse for public transportation. SO, we kept going.

Although my visa was free when I was in Zambia last year, this time, I had to pay an insane amount for a three-year visa, the only option now for American citizens. Then it was on to Chipata, on the Zambian side of the border with Malawi to catch a bus to the capital. We bought our tickets from Zoom (HA!) Bus, whose slogan is “You Snooze You Loose,” and then spent the next many hours sitting on what we came to refer to as the stairs of defeat.

Since I was in Ghana in 2005, I have marveled at the comparative lack of the time I’ve spent waiting on the side of the road in other sub-Saharan African countries. My luck ended in Zambia, although rather than the side of the road, I was confined to the small, dusty bus depot, trying to figure out why every other bus was entering, filling up and leaving the station except the inaccurately titled Zoom bus.

The bus depot was like its own tiny, weird, fantastic city. In truth, it wasn’t a bad place to be stuck waiting. The setting was ideal for people watching and an entertaining introduction into local Zambian life. Alongside ticket booths were multiple liquor stores (and subsequently drunk passengers, and quite probably, drivers). The longer I waited, the more I understood the market for alcohol in a bus station. There was also a jail cell to lock up the rowdy drinkers, essentially a lone train car reinforced with iron bars. A man with blue coveralls was mopping the outside of the jail, but didn’t bother cleaning the inside.

I didn’t patronize the liquor stores but I was a loyal customer at the fee paying toilet and shopped at the open air stall equivalent of a bodega. I bought a package of cookies, and the woman behind the counter shone the plastic wrapper with a rag. Another stall was a cell phone kiosk whose only entrance was a miniature door, Through the Looking Glass style. I was beyond shocked when the tiny door opened and a tiny man emerged- an actual Little Person. I don’t know if the door was made small to fit the user, or if he got the job because he could fit through the door, or this was just a serendipitous set of circumstances. In any case, I was thankful I had a companion to witness this small, incredible moment with me and to confirm that I wasn’t having a malarial or (malaria prophylaxis) hallucination.

Zoom somehow crashed or broke down or the driver quit or gave up or drove the wrong way, because at some point (more accurately, at a point six hours later than when I arrived), all of the passengers were instructed to pile onto another company’s bus. Waiting for the bus to come was a blink of an eye compared to the ride to Lusaka, the capital. The roads are crappier than the distances between cities are long, and Zambia is a huge country. We played word games to pass the time and to distract ourselves from full bladders. I was so desperate that Carissa offered me her water bottle as a temporary makeshift toilet. I very seriously was considering using it (hallelujah for skirts) when the bus pulled off the road. A single naked bulb in the lone village shop and the stars were the only light in the pitch black night. A Zambian woman from our bus directed us to a patch of dirt that was to be our toilet and side by side we exhaled sighs of relief and peed on our feet.

We arrived in Lusaka so late, we didn’t bother trying to find the hotel we had booked, and slept on the bus until 5 am. When I stepped off the bus, I saw that the Lusaka station had no hint of the weird charm of Chipata and seemed more like Port Authority in New York City. I loved it. Beneath a sign that said, “No Call Boys, No Standing, No Loitering, No Sleeping, No Illegal,” people dozed on quilts and leaned against garbage cans, and I’m sure there were call boys and any number of illegal activities going on in the near vicinity. Even though no buses were coming or going at this hour, the place was bustling and full of noise. People bought and sold wigs and hair extensions, crocheted hats, plastic dolls and roasted maize. Everywhere I tried to walk, there was pushing and spitting and an impressive feistiness for 5 am.

After about ten minutes of fresh air, I found my next bus, and while we waited for it to fill up, the early passengers (lucky us) got a visit from the bus station preacher. I’m pretty sure the buses are this guy’s church, the passengers, his congregants. Because I was sitting at the front, and the aisles were crowded to walk up and down, I got the brunt of the preaching. Within a few minutes, my ears were ringing and I was flecked with the preacher’s holy spit. He ended by praying we wouldn’t crash, and who wouldn’t say amen to that?