Leaving Livingstone…

“Cha, Cha, Cha. Backpackers”…

S 15º 24’ 71” – E 28º 17’ 55”

Allan and I had a quiet breakfast together, as we both knew that after today, we may not see each other again… He was waiting for his camera to arrive from Windhoek, and I had a rendezvous with my friends, the Kemp’s, in Lilongwe on Thursday evening and would be leaving for the Lake on Friday morning… My plans to get to Dar es Salaam before seeing them on my way back south, had been scuppered by the rain we had to contend with, and the delays that this caused… I would no longer be taking the northern route out of Zambia, but would instead be heading east along the main highway that links Lusaka to Lilongwe in Malawi…

We sat reminiscing about the last ten days we had ridden together, and the time we had spent in each others company, laughing again about all the mischief we had got up to, and the places we had seen, the roads we had ridden, the elephants we had dodged… At 9.00am, after a round of hugs and well wishing, I fired up the “Big Fella” and rolled out of Livingstone, Allan’s cry of “Keep it real, Dude!” ringing in my ears… I watched him in my mirrors, standing in the road outside Jolly Boys, both hands raised above his head, until I turned into the main street and headed out of sight, down the T1, bound for Lusaka…

The road outside Jollyboys could do with some repair work…

I had been warned that the first section of road was bad, and yet I was unprepared for what I encountered just outside town…. It took me over an hour to travel the 70kms to Zimba… I was amazed at the condition of the road, where potholes often ran across the entire width of it, and were almost knee-deep in places!! I had to keep focused all the time, twisting the bike every which way in an effort to avoid the largest obstacles… It had rained during the night, and mud coated the road, thrown up by the trucks travelling south to Zimbabwe and South Africa, and north to Lusaka and Malawi….

I crossed the Kaloma River, which empties into the Zambezi in the Batoka Gorge midway between the Victoria Falls and Lake Kariba. The town of Kalomo itself was just a huddle of huts, even though it boasted a landing strip, and after getting through this first part of the ride and having been punished by a few potholes I was unable to avoid, the road improved, and I was able to travel at about 100km/h… I stopped in Choma to refuel, change some money, and have some water from my flask… The rain was staying away for a change, but it was extremely humid, as I sought out some shade in a dingy little shop close to the filling station…

I reached Pemba an hour later, having narrowly avoided another collision with a pig, which rushed out of a hut alongside the road, and swerved to avoid me at the very last moment, my knee brushing it as I passed…. I slowed the bike to let my heartbeat get back to normal, but the near miss had messed with my rhythm, and I began making small errors of judgement into corners, and hitting potholes which I tried my best to avoid… I decided to stop near a large stand of Kiaat trees, got off the bike, lit a cigarette, munched on a few biscuits and sat staring off into the distance…

The road from Livingstone to Zimba, 70km of torture for the bike and I…

I thought about the fact that I was on my own again, no back-up, miles from anywhere, no Allan in my rear view mirrors….. A pang of loneliness swept over me, and I wondered (not for the first time), if I would reach Dar es Salaam in one piece… I was shaken from my reverie by a small boy, who appeared from nowhere, offering for sale two fish dangling on the end of a dirty piece of string… I politely declined his offering, gave him a biscuit, mounted up and got on with the business at hand…getting to Lusaka…

I rumbled through Chisekesi, Monze and on past Tambero to Magoye, passing an overturned truck on the way, the driver sitting forlornly near the cab, scratching in the dirt with a stick… I stopped to take a photo and asked him if he was OK… He looked up at me and said, “I am fine Boss, but my truck is fucked!”…

Indeed, it was!! He had apparently swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle that was intent on dodging a pothole and had misjudged the distance between himself and the truck… The driver had no option but to take evasive action and had in the process lost control of the truck… This was to be the first of many such accidents I was to come across over the next few weeks… I left him with a small group of bystanders, all clicking their tongues at the driver’s misfortune…

There are no “Welcome to…” signs in Zambia, just these smallish boards advising you where you are…

On the outskirts of Mazabuka, I was stopped and asked to provide proof of my Third Party Insurance, which we had bought at Kazungula. The police officers were very interested in the bike and gave me the usual “20 Questions”… With time to kill, I spent longer than I usually would have, chatting to them and asking how life in Zambia was treating them… They answered that although they were proud to be Zambians, they were seriously underpaid, and the cost of living far outstripped their earnings… I could understand that, having just paid R15.18 per litre for the petrol I had filled up with in Choma!! I appreciated the fact that transporting the fuel from Tanzania carried a cost, but twice as much as we paid in South Africa was a bit harsh!!

The “highway” ran through the centre of Mazabuka, and was temporarily blocked by a large crowd of people, all walking solemnly in lines, behind a few guys dressed in suits. There was no talking, no smiles or laughter…. At first I assumed it was a funeral procession, but the absence of a coffin and the usual wailing of women discounted this theory… The villagers barely glanced in my direction as I passed, going off onto the verge of the road to avoid them… They turned off towards a large open area next to the road, and then began sitting down on the sand… I watched for a while and wondered what they were doing. An elderly man began addressing them in a deep voice, which carried to where I was sitting in the shade of a huge Eucalyptus tree. Every few minutes, the crowd would clap their hands together softly, and he would bob his head in their general direction… I left them to their meeting and rolled slowly out of town…

Mazabuka lies on the very southern tip of the Kafue Flats, a large marshland which extends north and straddles the Kafue River. It was hot and very humid, and before long, I felt the first trickle of sweat run down the middle of my back… This had me picking up speed, jacket unzipped to let the air flow over and cool my chest and back, before exiting through the open vents in the back of the jacket…

I stopped under the Eucalyptus trees in the background, to watch a public meeting held in the fields on the left….

The T1 dips southeast after Mazabuka, and just as it touches the Lusitu River, turns northeast again to join the T2 where it crosses the Kafue River. I stopped on the bridge, watching the wide, swift flowing water, carrying trees and other debris east into the Kafue Gorge, after which it joins the Zambezi, a few kilometres north of the town of Chirundu.

Calamity on the road to Lusaka…

At the entrance to the town of Kafue, a large sign said “Welcome to the Sweetest Town in Zambia”. Sugar Cane plantations surround Kafue, and a large sugar mill is set back from the main road on the far side of town, justifying its apparent claim to fame…

Road sign outside Mazabuka indicating the distance to the day’s final destination….

I was riding due north now, through areas that were planted with maize and a variety of other vegetables. I began to encounter more traffic the closer I got to Lusaka. Trucks were loading large bags of charcoal at depots scattered along the road. I slowed the bike to a more sedate 100km/h to contend with the increased activity along this stretch of highway…

I cruised through Chilanga, and then climbed up into the Mulani Hills, a few kilometres short of the capital… I pulled over to re-set the GPS for Chachacha Backpackers, and then drove carefully through the traffic, into the first city I had been in since Windhoek, two weeks ago… The traffic was hectic, and the huge roundabouts proved a mission to negotiate, as each driver seemed to believe they had the right of way… I got through the first circle and onto Cairo Road without incident, and then a few kilometres further on, had to go completely round the next circle, as I had been blocked by a taxi, which prevented me turning out of the circle and onto Great East Road. I stopped to refuel, and considered having a meal at the Wimpy next door to the filling station. It was 3.00pm, and I decided to wait a few hours and then come back later to have dinner there…

The sign indicating “Chachacha Backpackers” loomed up ahead and I turned off the main road and idled down a quiet back street to its entrance. The name, I was later told, refers to the pre-independence unrest which was known as the “chachacha” period, a time when Zambians were negotiating their independence from Britain…

The entrance to my digs in Lusaka, a converted old house in a quiet suburb of the capital…

I was shown to a room just behind the reception desk, which suited me perfectly, as I did not have to lug my gear very far. The bathroom however was down a dark passageway on the far side of the house… On my way to it, I bumped into a pair of Pakistani tourists whom I had first seen at the Victoria Falls… They were also on their way north, but were planning to stay in Lusaka for a week or two… They had hitch-hiked all the way from Cape Town, through Zimbabwe and into Zambia. The trip through Zimbabwe had been an ordeal neither of them wanted a repeat of… They had been harassed at every roadblock, and had taken to hiding their money in their shoes and their underwear…

I had a swim in the small pool in the front garden of the Lodge, and then decided not to go out for supper and instead ate a packet of ginger biscuits and an energy bar for supper, washed down with a Mosi… The weather had turned nasty, and dark clouds rolled over Lusaka, rumbling as they came… I was not keen to take the bike into town and get caught in the rain again, so opted for an early night, as I planned to leave at dawn’s crack the following morning… The internet connection was not working and without much else to do, I retired to my room to read…

Thunder and lightning played over Lusaka for the next hour or two, with heavy showers of rain drenching the city… Shortly after 8.00pm, power in the city was cut off… The receptionist said that it had something to do with the power shortages in South Africa, although I could not confirm this… I was told the same thing in Malawi a few days later, when power was lost there… Apparently the connections to these countries from South Africa were being severed from time to time to compensate for the loss of power back home…

I fished around in my bags and found a candle that I had saved from Swakopmund… I had a little light that I could read by, but within a few minutes the strain of trying to read by candlelight began to tell on my eyes, and I put the book away… I lay listening to people bumping into the furniture in the reception area, as they negotiated their way to and from the lapa outside, where the bar was located…

Just then, one of the Australian girls barged into my room, a tiny candle held aloft in her hand… She got a huge fright at the sight of me sitting bolt upright under my mosquito net… She had taken a wrong turning in the dark and believed she was entering her own room… She began giggling uncontrollably and eventually backed out of my room, falling over a chair in the reception as she did so… Her laughter rang throughout the house for a long time after that… I can’t be certain, but I think she may have had one too many Mosi’s under her belt…!!

I fell asleep listening to the patter of rain on the corrugated iron roof, hoping that it would blow over during the night and leave me with a dry ride to Lilongwe the next day…

The pool at Cha Cha Cha… The group of Australian girls hogged the veranda…

© 2008 TBMH