Africa Journal/August 16-17,1998
August 16,
1998
Up in the dark
at 5 a.m., we’re getting good at setting up and taking down
camp in the dark, but it’s starting to feel grueling. Our
itinerary seems too ambitious for the size of the group. No time
to relax or process the experience. As the sun rose, we set off
on a nature walk to see some caves with paintings. The paintings
are up to 12,000 years old, and quite wonderful. The caves were
a difficult climb up a rocky trail. Coming down was easier. We
now walked quite a distance to the Muriel Mines town where we
will attend church. Along the way, we walked through a large grassland
where a Black Breasted Snake Eagle hovered, stooped and caught
a snake right in front of us. A few of us got behind the rest
of the group while watching the eagle. When we got to a fork in
the road, we just followed the Teva sandal tracks—a sure
sign of which way our group went. We met a man on a bicycle and
he said he had seen more people like us further down the trail.
I looked around to see what “people like us” looked
like. We were weighted down with gear: backpacks, cameras and
video gear, and binoculars, and quite a few goofy hats. There
was enough similarity that we looked like our own tribe.
Muriel Mine is a gold mine owned by Germans.
They have created the town as a company town for mine workers.
All the buildings including houses, schools and churches were
rectangular not round. There are a lot of gardens here. It felt
like a pretty nice place to live. We had asked our local guides
about visiting a village and attending a church service. They
said that we were the first group to ever ask. They thought we
would be most welcome. As we walked into town, people were very
friendly to us. We soon gathered a following that included most
of the children in town. The Catholic Church was the only one
with a service this morning. The town had four churches, all the
same size, and all in the same part of town. We walked in and
there was wonderful singing and drumming by the chorus. We weren’t
sure if there was going to be a mass or not. The chorus gathered
in the back of the church and formed a procession carrying in
a portrait of the Virgin Mary. We later found out from the Choral
Director that the priest only comes twice a month, but because
it was the Feast of the Assumption, they had decided to hold their
own service. It was a lovely service. We took up a collection
for the church, and later found out it would have been three weeks
salary for a mine worker. The Choral Director was thankful and
he said they would pray for the safety of our group as we continued
our travels. That felt good. We walked to the center of town with
our new found young friends in tow. Wayne and Lido met us with
the trucks. Ascending the ladders to our high seats felt like
we were entering a spaceship to leave what had turned out to be
a very nice planet.
We drove to Chinoyi Caves, which were very
ancient. The water was very deep and a beautiful blue. There were
a lot of flowering trees in this area. As we looked closer, we
saw that they were full of sunbirds, at least six species. Sunbirds
are brightly colored nectar feeders. They fill the same niche
as hummingbirds do in North America. We also saw our first Hoopoe
here... Onward through burning Zimbabwe, there were so many fires
we were driving right through them now. This afternoon was the
hottest of the trip. Without air conditioning, we kept the truck
windows open. As we got closer to Zambia, it was hot, dry and
smoky. Large areas of the landscape were on fire. It began to
burn our noses and eyes.
The land grows more wild as we approach
Zambia. Formerly Northern Rhodesia, Zambia, was not occupied as
heavily by the British as Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). In the
1980’s after the British left, much of the ecosystem was
still intact. It was said to be a paradise with large populations
of rhinos, elephant and all the other native species. The new
government had little control over the crazed poaching of the
eighties and many of these populations were devastated. There
is hope with the growth of ecotourism that money will become available
to transplant animals since the habitat is still there. Zambia
is very sparsely populated. There are still large areas with the
wildlife intact. It felt good to cross the Zimbabwe/Zambia border
and to leave the depressing border area. There were very long
lines of people going in both directions. It all seemed very unorganized.
Once again we were allowed to cut in front of the lines. The roads
in Zambia were atrocious, the potholes so bad I thought the truck
would tip over. Lido’s truck hit a cow. There was livestock
wandering all over the road. It was getting dark again and we
still had a long way to go.
We camped at Gwabi Lodge on the Kafue River,
an outpost in the wilderness.
August 17,
1998
We were supposed
to canoe the river today, but the winds were too strong, so we
took motorboats. As soon as we got on the river, we saw pods of
hippos, elephants swimming to islands and Cape Buffalo. After
yesterday’s fires, it felt great to be on the water. In a
boat you can get surprisingly close to the wildlife. Hippos and
crocodiles are the most dangerous animals to humans. We took great
care not to end up in the water.
We stopped at a river village to visit and
see the school. Like Muriel, the kids were very friendly. I had
a family—3 sisters and their baby brother take my hands to
lead me through. The oldest girl was 11 and she had to carry her
baby brother on her back all day long. It looked hard, but she
seemed used to it. This village was much poorer than the mining
village. The little girls wanted my rings and sunglasses. It would
have been great to have some rings to give them. People in the
village looked happy. They were busy gardening and cleaning, adding
to the thatch on their round huts. The homes here were mostly
all made of thatch and grasses requiring constant maintenance.
A solid Venda house would be luxurious in this setting.
The school was devastating. The cinderblock
building was nice enough, but inside was very little furniture
and what was there was broken. The teacher, who really seemed
to love his work had not been paid in two months. The blackboard
was painted on the wall and all marked up. It would be impossible
to read anything written on it. Andy said he felt so privileged
to teach at College of DuPage. He asked the teacher if there was
anything we could give him. He said he had a camera but no film.
He would really like two rolls of film to take pictures of his
students. We also collected a donation for the school. Our guide
suggested splitting it up between four villages because the other
three were poorer, and not on the river (so they had less contact
with people from outside).