Running Races

Friday, 21st February

I went for another run this morning and stopped to admire the colourful houses dotting the luscious hillside once more. I thought how all the houses here are made of brick and tin, whereas in Zim it's all mud and thatch... a difference that might seem small but is another reflection of the economies, and of how even neighbouring countries in a continent we in the West tend to homogenize as one place can differ greatly. On this run I was joined by some local lads who told me I was walking. One of them started jogging alongside me, but couldn't go any faster despite his cajoles (though he was wearing flip flops, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt).

After beginning work on building an outdoor shower with stones and cement for the lodge, we went into the village again with the boys in the afternoon. Running races inevitably abounded and I found myself a human jungle gym as small children wanted to be spun round and jumped on my shoulders without warning for a ride. I was impressed with their faith in my strength! They showed me an abandoned lodge just down the road. The owners had clearly run out of money so now locals had moved it to squat there. It was even complete with a disused swimming pool and working aircon units - no wonder people had moved in to take advantage solid walls and roofs.

Two of the kids promised to show me something exotic so, intrigued, I followed them to one of the houses. Pulling back a sheet of corrugated iron serving as sun protection, two guinea pigs were sitting in a dried out drain. I guess they were exotic beasts for the Zambians! Despite the heat, they seemed fairly healthy and happy to be picked up and stroked. It was slightly disorientating seeing a common European domestic pet in the land of the Big Five.

On our way home, Sammy pointed out a lemon tree and asked if I wanted to try one. A small boy of maybe 5 years old climbed up the tree and shimmied upside down along an impossibly thin branch with the agility of an Olympic acrobat and passed down a fruit. We had a segment each and, despite looking extremely unripe, it was absolutely delicious; not bitter at all, just a pure, fresh-off-the-tree taste that can't be beaten.

An Island Intruder

Tuesday, 18th February

Although the wildlife here in Zambia is noticeably less rich than over the border in Zim, a troop of vervet monkeys did swing by at breakfast, scampering over the tins roofs and stealing mangos. They were a welcome sight, their cheeky faces peering down at me as I munched on my morning bread.

I was tasked with creating a hiking path today around an island of the lake, cutting back the overgrown grasses with a slasher - a sort of large machete. No mean feat if you know how thick and tall African grasses can be! It felt like I was deep in a jungle; hot, almost tangibly humid air and dense vegetation that meant you couldn't look more than a few feet in front of you. With the sound of birds and insects drowning out any human sounds from the lodge, I felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe! About halfway through, something very large and reptilian dashed across the path in front of me in a green scaly blur. Having heard stories of local children being taken from the shores of the lake by crocs, I was a little uneasy but resolved that it was probably just a large monitor lizard spooked by a clumsy human intruder...I hope!

Not quite the monitor lizard, but a baby gecko we found and the common blue tailed skink.

into the jungle...

First Run on African Soil

Sunday, 16th February

First thing this morning after I woke up, I decided to go for a short run along the dirt roads into the village (probably about 10 minutes in one direction before I decided that 7:30 was definitely leaving it too late for the heat so headed back). Advised by Tom the previous day, I jogged along the pebbly tracks carrying a couple of stones in case either stray dogs or baboons decided they wanted a piece of mzungu for their breakfast - a bit of a change from the UK where at most you might get the odd marauding sheep.

Despite it being hard work with the blazing sun and the steep ups and downs of the hillside, when I got to my halfway point I felt serene. (Though I probably looked like I had run a marathon, drenched in sweat and bright red, instead of reaching some sort of inner peace.) As I looked out at my view, gentle African music rose up from the valley below as the morning routine of the tiny tin-roofed households was already well underway; African mornings start a lot earlier, usually around 4 or 5 for most working people. The outskirts of Siavonga looked timeless: women busied themselves making chima (the Zambian word for mealie meal) over wood fires whilst children had started their morning hike to school. Nobody seemed in a rush though, everyone just seemed to be soaking it all in.

The family I was staying with were Mormon and kindly invited me to their home church service later that morning. It was very interesting to see the different hymns and the blessing of the water and the bread and offered me a chance to reflect on my journey so far, where I had come and what the next few weeks held.

After lunch I walked to the village shop with Elijah and Lewis, passing what I assume was the only village toilet and its open sewer. On the way back we were surrounded by local children who the boys were friendly with. Among some of the games we played, I introduced them to bulldog, unwittingly signing myself up to sprinting races every time I walked down the road in future. They were all fascinated by my glasses, each wanting to try them on and recoiling with giggles as the world fuzzed up in front of them. From then on I was known as the blind mzungu.

I was struck by the age range of the children; tiny 2 and 3 year old toddlers were chasing after us laughing and just mucking in with the rest of the kids up to teenagers. However from the age of about 5 years old there were no girls. I was told later that this was because they were expected to stay at home and help with chores, whilst the boys were able to go out and play to their hearts' content until they were old enough to find jobs. The poverty was also very apparent: since the town had no tap, all the residents had to walk down to the lake (minding the crocodiles) to collect the water, which was far from pristine. The kids of course were all wearing scrappy, dusty clothes and hardly any had shoes; a lucky few had some broken flip flops. I was told that the local bar is regularly frequented by husbands and sons who blow all their day's earnings on drink, leaving their wife and children with no supper. I felt selfishly privileged as we walked back home to have a hot shower and dinner.

Kariba to Siavonga

Wednesday, 12th February

The previous night as I sat at the bar-shack eating some stew and sadza (mealy meal), a huge storm blew in which cut out all electricity and phone signal. I was very glad I had packed a torch as the other two guys didn't seem to have one! The lack of light also meant I had a second rather close encounter with a hippo which sent me scurrying behind the bar to take cover, only to discover the two workers had disappeared off somewhere. Whether or not they had any actual wildlife knowledge, I didn't quite feel ready to tackle a hippo on my own, so sat it out behind the bar until they returned.

With thunder and lightening raging overhead and a strong wind blowing in off the lake, I asked if I was safe in my tent since I was surrounded by trees. There was some debate as to whether the tent was actually waterproof or not, but both of them agreed that the trees were the best bet to "hide from the lightening". Right. With nowhere else to go other than a shack that seemed a little too open to the local fauna, I experienced my first African thunderstorm alone in a tent. I could hear elephants trumpeting and zebra whinnying as they ran through the camp, clearly spooked by the storm, but fairly quickly it passed and we just had a downpour of rain. I quickly fell asleep, knocked out by the fresh African air.

In the early morning when I woke up there was still no electricity or phone signal, so with no way to call anyone in town to give me a lift I concluded there was only one way to get to the Zambian border to where the family I was staying with were: walk it. Despite being fully aware that elephants, buffalo, hyenas and lions regularly frequented the road (and the fact that a small white mzungu girl carrying a large rucksack stuck out like a sore thumb), the walk was incredible. The warm, humid air carried a cool breeze as I walked along the mountainside road with a breathtaking view over the lake. I stopped a couple of times to watch a mongeese family and baboon troop cross the road in front of me, both complete with several babies.

After about 8km, a man called Zayn picked me up, probably wondering what on Earth I was doing. As luck would have it (and I'm sure someone was looking after me up there) he was heading to the border too to pick up a couple of people who had been staying with friends of the family I was to be staying with. He was extraordinarily friendly, as all Zimbabweans are, and called his friend, Peter, to arrange a lift for me back to Siavonga, the town on the Zambian side of the border. Peter helped me through the Zambian bureaucracy (notably more faffy than the Zim side) and gave me a quick intro to the family I would be staying with. I also got my first view of Kariba Dam, which you have to drive over to cross the border. It was incredible, and knowing my grandparents had stood there about 60 years ago on their first holiday together made it even more special.

When I arrived at Eagles Rest (the lodge which the family lived in and managed) I was given a warm welcome by the three boys, Sammy (15), Elijah (10) and Lewis (5), and was immediately initiated into their competitive board games. Tom, the father, took me for a quick trip into Siavonga to show me the town. There is no exact way of describing it, but everything seems more alive in Zambia than in Zimbabwe. It is still an extremely poor nation, but the Zambian kwacha is more stable than the Zimbabwean bond so the people have slightly more hope economically. The colours and smells were so vivid; suddenly the stories of this continent that my grandma had told me as I grew up came alive all at once.

After lunch, Elijah and Lewis took me exploring around the neighbourhood. Despite me being a bit apprehensive at first at the prospect of bare feet in the long grass (I couldn't possibly be allowed to put on shoes as that would be very wimpy) it reminded me exactly of mine and Sammy's childhood summers in the West Indies. After an afternoon of running around and swimming, I tumbled into bed, grateful I had arrived at my home for the next few weeks.

my walk to the border

Harare to Kariba

Tuesday, 11th February

Unlike a cold, rainy UK morning, getting up at 6am is never a problem in a tropical country - especially when there is a bowl of fresh mango awaiting you! Anywhere, Andrew’s driver (after landing in Harare the previous day I stayed the night in the capital with one of Mum's old school friends) - what a name for a driver - took me to Mbare (it’s worth noting that the response when I told any Zimbabwean this was where I was going was a chuckle and “good luck”). It's a huge, sprawling area of tarpauline-covered markets with a 'bus station' or rather a large area of mud and open drains with buses of all shapes, sizes and levels of disrepair arranged in no particular order - in other words, absolute carnage.

Mbare (not my photo!)

          I had been warned that the buses here didn’t leave until they were ready to go - that is as full as physically possible with human beings and whatever items they needed to transport (on this journey oddities included a mattress and an uncollapsible ladder, but disappointingly no live chickens as my African-born family had promised me). I got on the bus at 7am and it pulled off around 8.30, so relatively quickly for African standards. The bus journey was pretty much as I expected: a Bajan yellow bus on steroids. Except this one had African church music blaring at ear-splitting volume instead of reggae and to be honest looked like it had been shipped straight from a New Dehli scrapyard. (Mum, there was a reason you didn’t get a photo of my journey on WhatsApp - sorry.)

            I was sat on that bus, buried under my rucksacks and everybody else’s and crammed up against a window, for 9 hours without a working phone, yet I never felt bored. (9 hours seemed a lot for a 350km journey. At first we started off at a good pace, then 2 hours in the bus driver pulled out one of the biggest joints of marijuana I have seen and the pace dropped dramatically. He also wandered off for 2 hours in a town called Karoi for a nap under a tree.) A couple of local farmers I sat next to were extremely friendly and gave me some insight into the local economic situation. They were very proud to be asked how many goats they owned, a tip I had picked up from reading Peter Allison’s biography (well worth a read). A mother had a toddler sat on her lap who seemed entranced by my white mzungu hands; all I had to do to entertain her for 2 hours straight was wiggle my fingers! It was a very humbling thought though that the mother sat next to me looked around my age, and was probably younger still by 4 or 5 years.

One rather worrying moment was when one man stood up in the aisle mid journey and started screaming and yelling in a state of hysteria; my European bred terrorist-aware instinct alarmed me, but I guessed he was just saying prayers of some sort as suddenly the whole bus started praying and chanting. I just sat there hoping that this wasn’t a foresight as to which way our bus journey was headed.

 Every time we stopped, street sellers would jump onto the bus or try and hand us everything from bananas to solar chargers through the windows. They weren’t pushy though, despite that this was their only means of making a few bond every day. Inevitably, I was struck by the obvious poverty of rural Zimbabwe, a country with no stable currency, electricity, phone signal or fuel supply. Almost everyone I saw just sat by the road, selling goods or not, and that was their whole life. In the mornings, they would wake up, sit by the dusty road, then in the evening they would go back to their mud and thatch shack just a few feet from the roadside and sleep, only to start the whole cycle again. Coming straight from the UK, it stood out to me how skinny the average person was and how young the population was (I rarely saw anyone over the age of about 30, a sobering indicator of life expectancy). One of the biggest shocks came towards the end of the journey when an elderly man was carried onto the bus by two other men. He could barely move and there was a large, grapefruit-sized tumour protruding from the back of his head. He was not getting on the bus like everyone else to see relatives or for business. He, someone’s father and grandfather, was getting to the nearest thing resembling a hospital coming from his countryside shack in the blind hope that they hadn’t left it too late and somehow would afford some treatment. It was one of the most hopeless things I’ve seen.

Aside from the dismal case in front of me, the last hour of the bus journey was beautiful through the green mountainous bush. When I arrived in Kariba around 4pm it was hot and sunny - a surprising contrast with the much cooler Harare.

I took a taxi to Warthogs Bushcamp, on the advice that it was possible to walk but better not to due to the herd of mating elephants who had a reputation of sometimes getting a bit “cheeky”. I was the only customer in the whole camp apart from two local workers, a barman and a cook. It was beautifully remote: a few simple tents, an outdoor shower and a shack for the bar in the middle of the bush, about 80 metres from Lake Kariba. The view of the lake was stunning and I took myself for a walk along a path having been assured by the barman it was safe and seeing it frequented by a handful of fishermen. When I stopped and listened to the sounds around me I knew exactly where I was: Zimbabwe. I was back. There were birds resting on reeds so colourful they made my jaw actually drop.

I was so entranced by this lakeside world that it was quite a shock to be awoken from my reverie by the sound of a hippo just the other side of the grassy bank I was standing by, approximately around 5 feet away. Heart racing, I speed walked back to camp to be greeted by the cook who asked, shocked, “You didn’t walk along the path did you?! This is the time the elephants come back to drink!” Nothing like a bit of local knowledge.