Whew what a fantastic week! I think the pictures can mostly speak for themselves.
Deciding that Zambian jail might be better than ending up dead from an allergic reaction, I decided to put the benadryll in my bra for the border crossing. Tomorrow, I’ll either be at Vic Falls or in Zambian jail, I thought. Luckily, the informal border crossing between Namibia and Zambia was no big deal. YES! My first drug smuggling was a major success!
Arrived in Livingstone at 9:45, and at 10, I jumped on a bus to Victoria Falls and immediately met two lovely American women working for an international nonprofit called Population Services International and a German and Austrian med student, both volunteering in Zambia for the summer. Vic Falls was pretty but really dry. It’s the dry season here and so the water flow is not nearly as spectacular as other times of year. I watched them bungee (yup, still would not enjoy it one bit) and then we hiked down to the waterfront to see the canyon in the late afternoon sun. It was hot and the Euros jumped in the water to cool off…we soon followed, dress and all. So fun. Past baboon and zebras fro a sundowner at the Royal Livingstone – martinis and the red African sun setting on the Zambezi. Fantastic day.
Because my meeting wasn’t until late in the afternoon the next day, I decided to do a half day whitewater rafting trip with Max and Marcus, the Austrian and German medical students. On our raft, we met more friends to add to the crew: James, another medical student from the UK, and Ben, an Australian working in a mine in Zambia. We hopped on the river past the falls, and quickly realized that most of the ten rapids on that stretch of the river were Class 5. Is this a beginner course? Because we all were. Off we went. Three big rapids – horray!
Rapid 4 was a different story. Our guide warned us that rafts often flip on this one –and sure enough, we turned right over. I found myself under the raft. This is okay, I thought – and I remembered that they told us to find the water pocket under the raft and make our way out. I found the air, but then couldn’t get out from underneath. Great. The raft started flapping and my air pocket disappeared. Between my desperate gasps and the waves splashing, water started to enter my lungs. The current suddenly pulled me under deep and - luckily for me -
popped me back up immediately. It felt like a long time but it was probably about ten seconds or less. Because the water in my lungs, my first breath was more like a half gasp. Wheez, cough cough. Wheeze, cough cough. Marcus and I looked at each other with big eyes – WHAT THE F#%K WAS THAT! But no time to recover. On to rapid number 5….and the next 5 class 5 rapids. The mighty Zambezi definitely brought me the closest to death I have ever been.
But I wasn’t the only one – most of the people on my raft had a similar experience, though I don’t know if anyone had the same trouble breathing after the experience like I did. Soon we were able to enjoy ourselves a bit and laugh at ourselves. Like James, who lost his pants while he was flailing around in the white water. He said that he felt his pants come off, and (read in a Brittish accent) decided that if he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be without his trousers. He grabbed them and before he came out of the water, he handed them to our guide. Good one!
We flipped again on rapid 7, but this time, it was no big deal. We all held on to the side – experts. All in all, flipping was a very sobering experience, but I was able to enjoy it again by the end.
The meeting went really well – I met a nonprofit from…Denver, CO! which is very experienced in rural supply chain and marketing, but their work is with water products for rural farmers, not energy. Very interesting. How do you create markets in rural areas where no markets exist?
Naturally, that night, we had to celebrate making it out of the river alive with a night out and dancing.
Another strange experience in Zambia was meeting two different people that were in Livingstone related to two different deaths from car crashes. Apparently the roads are particularly treacherous there, between drunk drivers and truckers who drive all night without sleep. One was there for a funeral, the other, for a court date.
When I finally made it back to Katima Mulilo, I jumped into dinner with Erica and the WWF people. One Afrikaans man, from Zimbabwe, but working in Namibia, started telling me about his experience with Apartheid. It only ended 15-20 years ago, and racism and bigotry are still quite rampant here. “First they told us apartheid was right, now they tell us apartheid is wrong,” he said. “Twenty years ago, it would have been illegal for him (he pointed at the black African man sitting with us at the table) to sit here with us. Twenty years ago, it would have been illegal for her (he pointed at a woman sitting at our table) to be married to her husband, a black African man. It’s an interesting time – things are changing so quickly.”
Sunday, we attended a cultural festival in Chinchimane. Chief Mamili of the Mafwe tribe showed up in his full leopard print – apparently that doesn’t happen every day!
There was a bit too much groveling and too little dancing for my tastes, but it was a feast of colors, textures, movement, and beautiful African harmonies. I’ll leave this one to the pictures.
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