Trip to Chirundu

Saturday, 22nd February

This morning I lay in until 8am - the latest I ever have in Africa! We set off for Chirundu, a border town that straddles the Zambezi River which is 'just down the road' by African standards, or a 90 minute drive by British. I loved just driving through the bush and kept my eyes peeled when Tom said that they spotted a lioness on the mountainside not too long ago. He said that the road we were driving along used to be a tunnel densely covered by trees, but alas no longer with today's deforestation. The Zambian government started giving farmers incentives to plant maize plants which leach the soil of all nutrients, rendering it unusable for farming after a couple of years. The alternative is casava, which contains many more nutrients for humans and doesn't leach the soil, however it has a slightly longer growing time so maize is planted throughout instead.

We passed many forsaken villages in the middle of nowhere which made me pause for thought. They didn't have any shops, water taps or schools, only occasional churches. Children ran around in rags, goats wandered across the road and adults simply sat on the red earth and watched the cars go by. The poverty out here in the rural countryside was more acute and reminded me more of Zimbabwe. "They sit by the road because there is more to watch than in their village," explained Tom. One such village was called Lesito, a village made recently after the thousands of people who were displaced after the building of Kariba Dam whose construction started in 1955 but not finished until 1977, mostly due to political problems. I hadn't thought of the human devastation and upheaval it had caused when I crossed it, awe-struck, a few days ago.

Tom also talked to me about the plastic problem in Africa (you could tell he used to be a tour guide as his knowledge of Southern Africa was extensive to say the least). When he pointed it out, I did noticed the plastic bags, bottles and various odds and ends of bright, garish colours that littered the ruts either side of the road. A friend of his who managed a lodge in Lesotho initiated a scheme of stuffing 2 litre plastic drinks bottles with plastic bags, all collected from the surrounding bush, and then built houses out of them with mud. Due to the 'bricks' being so densely packed with plastic, they are very effective insulators and so make excellent houses. (Worth a google!)

When we got to Chirundu, it was much bigger and more developed than I thought it would be and had a mall not dissimilar to the one in Speightstown, Barbados. There were still lots of people sitting by the sides of the roads, but as well as various typical markets there were copious bars and restaurants, mostly for the truckers coming into and out of the country. The rates of HIV are very high here, owing to the throughflow of travellers and the opportunistic prostitution industry that comes with it. I ran into a couple of Zimbabwean safari rangers shopping in the supermarket (it's much cheaper to shop over the border in Zambia due to the high rates of inflation in Zimbabwe - 300% I read yesterday). They were so friendly and offered me some ranger experience in Zimbabwe - just shows what can happen if you start a conversation with a stranger!

aerial view of Chirundu 

(again not my image!)