January 30, 2006
Holiday Trip: Second Installment
December 23: Francistown, Botswana to Johannesburg, South Africa
Hot shower, more sardine sandwiches, and new money (the Pula) and we were back on the road hitching to Johannesburg. We started off in Francistown thinking that we might be able to cross the boarder at Martin’s Drift, but we flagged a lorry going all the way through Gabarone to Johannesburg. The guy who stopped for us wasn’t supposed to; the company he works for doesn’t allow hitchers, but he had seen us on the road in the back of Justice’s truck the day before and thought that we looked pitiful enough! He was on his return trip from Lusaka with an empty fuel truck. Because Zambia has been having a fuel crisis for about 5 months now, the Lusaka International Airport has been getting their fuel from South Africa. The driver’s name was Kennedy and he was the proud papa of a newborn baby boy. He’d be away from home for Christmas, but didn’t seem to be too down about it and wanted to talk the whole way! It ended-up being about a 13-hour trip because he could only go 80kms an hour. At the border of Botswana and South Africa we had to drop about 2kms from the post, walk through, and find him again on the other side.
The day was long and tiring, but we talked with Kennedy about Apartheid, what life was like in Soweto (one of the world’s most famous ghettos in Jo’burg), and how the country is moving on into the relatively new political make-up. Since he couldn’t take us into town on that big rig or to his workplace, he dropped us outside of town at a Shell station. We phoned the hostel where we had booked a night and waited. It was dark and all the stories we had heard about Jo’burg had scared us enough to be very on guard. Finally, after many a call trying to give directions, we were picked up and taken to a suburb where Brown Sugar Backpackers is located. That night we drank Castle Milk Stout and inhaled the local flavor that isa very metropolitan city in South Africa. We booked a trip to the bus station for the next day, hoping to get to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.
Posted by ringo at 10:54 AM | Comments (1)
January 14, 2006
Holiday Trip: First Installment
December 21: Choma, Zambia to Livingstone, Zambia
The start of the trip was uneventful and familiar. It was the usual hitchhike from Choma to Livingstone, down the Great North Road about 2 hours. Mathew, Sarah, and I had all our wares for the next two weeks strapped to our backs and walked 2.5 kilometers out of town before we got a ride. A truck hauling Cobalt from the Copperbelt region of Zambia picked us up. Inside were two very nice Zambians named Zimba and Sidney. They had a mascot monkey named Zeus; see pictures on last entry. They dropped us in Livingstone just blocks from Fawlty Towers http://www.adventure-africa.com/ , Peace Corps’ usual hostel in the tourism capital. That night we pitched our tents and attempted to get our laundry done, as Mat and I had brought all dirty clothes with us. We got a little nervous realizing that we were actually starting off the next day for a hiking trip that others had called crazy. Note: the reason that we had decided to hitchhike instead of take the bus or fly was that we really didn’t have the money to do either. Also, there is something wonderful that Africa possesses, something that is lost in the United States now. It is still safe to hike here, and we felt as if we were reclaiming some sort of beatnik hippie characteristic denied us by the time and place of our births.
December 22: Livingstone, Zambia to Francistown, Botswana
We woke up at our old reliable hostel, took down the tents (oh, it should be mentioned here that for the three of us there were two tents, both the size for one person), packed our stuff, and started off for the border. Kazungula is a one-hour drive from Livingstone and is a small village situated on the Zambezi River. We left the hostel, thinking that we would have to walk very far out of town in order to get our first hitch ride. We were wrong, because about 4 blocks down the road, a pick-up truck stopped and when I talked to the man through his window, I said, “We’re trying to get to the border.”
He replied, “Well, try no further, let’s go!” His name was Martin. He has lived in Zambia for more than 50 years and while Mathew and Sarah piled in the back of the topper, I sat up front and chatted away (one of the rules of hitching is that most drivers wouldn’t mind a little company, that being a main reason they stop for you). Martin was on his way to Kazungula to meet a lorry (18-wheeler in British/African English) that was carrying something or other for his business. He explained that he had worked and lived in the Copperbelt and Southern Provinces for most of his life, and his current business had something to do with distribution. He explained some of the political developments and changes that he had seen within Zambia and the rest of Southern Africa in the last 50 years. We talked of the problems in Zimbabwe and how Zambia is now flooded with the able white farmers from that nation. Zimbabwe used to be Southern Rhodesia while Zambia was its northern counterpart. Zambia is flourishing (as much as a developing nation besieged with HIV/AIDS can), while Zimbabwe has fallen from one of the most developed and prosperous African nations to one where a good number of her people are starving. Zim (as it is affectionately known to most people in Southern Africa) gained its independence in 1980, and by the 1990’s had effectively evicted most of the white farmer population, and along with them, the base of people in Zimbabwe who had the knowledge to cultivate, farm, and feed the nation*1. Zambia offered most of these fleeing farmers huge tracts of land, and while the amount of food aid that comes into Zambia outnumbers domestically grown maize, things are on the move in a positive way. Martin and I talked then of South Africa, a country that has had apartheid finished for a little over ten years. While he didn’t come out and say it, he did say that we should look at that country and watch for a fall on the order of Zim.
We left Martin at the border, walked through Zambian exit immigration, and bought tickets for the ferry to take us across the river to Botswana. Think ferry as in barge as in carrying 3 lorries, a couple personal vehicles, and some people. The views on this boat are enough to make you cris-cross the river a couple more times. We saw hippos bobbing up and down in the water and were greeted by plenty of Lilac Breasted Rollers, the national bird of Botswana. The ride across was only about 5 minutes. We disembarked and marched to the Botswana entry immigration, got stamped, and were on our way. . . the first unfamiliar part of the trip.
We stood outside the border fence for about 20 minutes, trying to flag down any lorry or passenger vehicle that stopped. Mini-buses run back and forth from Kasane (the first little town inside of Botswana) to the border*2. No matter where you are in Southern Africa, the conductors of minibuses will always hound you to take a ride. Of course being three muzungus with big backpacks doesn’t help. We talked to a few of the drivers and they said we should be at the turn off, not where we were for hiking purposes. After and hour of waiting, an executive decision was made to get to that lay by and get the heck out of Kasane. Just then, an army vehicle that was more like a safari truck, as it had bench seating for about 12 in the back, pulled up and we got a free ride to the lay by.
It was then that we learned that hitching in Botswana is not the same as hitching in Zambia. Zambia has pretty good public transport (buses, midsize buses, and minibuses), so that hitching is the way you get around if you want to go for free. In Botswana there are only 2 million people, bad roads, and thousands of miles of nothingness between towns. Hitching IS public transport. We spent 3 hours in the BLISTERING (literally as my face was to prove the next day) sun, trying to figure out how we were going to get to Francistown or Gabarone when the 30 other people around us were trying to do the same. While we could get the trucks and cars to stop for us (a perk of being white), others would mob the vehicle and outbid us for the ride, leaving us to sweat buckets by the side of the road. Finally, we found a guy with a pick-up that seemed keen on taking us regardless of the amount. Mathew jumped in the front, playing the chat role, and Sarah and I piled in the back with a family of 5. The driver was named Justice and he worked in the diamond mines. Perhaps a standard in Botswana (the richest of all African nations), he was definitely an anomaly for the rest of the continent. He was doing quite well financially and owned a house in Nata, a stop we would make along the way to Francistown. Sarah and I tried to talk with the family in the back, but they spoke no English. Sarah held one of the sleeping babies and we zoomed out of Kasane into the bush.
We said goodbye to our Batswana friends and motored off into BFE. About 2 hours into the ride the truck skidded to a stop and Justice warned us through the back window to keep quiet. There was a lone bull elephant just feet from the truck, mock charging us, but keeping his distance. As we went on through the African wilderness, we saw plenty more elephants, a giraffe, and a diker. All seemed great until the truck sputtered to halt and died.
Justice got out and we all looked at the engine. He pulled on some overalls and started to work with his toolbox. Just as all seemed hopeless and that we were stuck about 200 kilometers from Kasane and still 100 away from Nata, a station wagon with two Afrikaners stopped. The father was probably in his 60’s, and had worked in the gold mines of South Africa all of his life. His son was a farmer and they had just been in Zambia looking at farms. It seemed that Martin’s prediction was not far off. They helped Justice get the truck running again and we were on the way to Nata. It soon grew dark and cold. Sarah and I hunkered down in our sleeping bags and took a nap. We rolled into Nata, Justice checked on his property, we paid for some of his fuel, and went on to Francistown.
Justice seemed to know of a place where we could camp in Francistown, and as he hadn’t steered us wrong so far, we checked into the Marang Hotel and Casino www.suninternational.co.za/adv-casino/advmarang.aspx .
*1- a good book to read on this topic is Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
*2- a good book about Kasane is Botswana Time by Will Randall
Posted by ringo at 7:19 AM | Comments (2)
January 9, 2006
Some Pictures
Ba Given and myself in August on the Zambezi River Cruise!
The Thanksgiving feast that I helped to cook with my Peace Corps family here in Southern Province.
My friends Sarah and Mat with the mascot of one of our generous ride-givers on the xmas trip.
Me and the STALLION I rode over the mountains of Lesotho... his name was Daylight (don't ask).
Posted by ringo at 10:11 AM | Comments (3)
January 5, 2006
Choma Sweet Homa
News flash: it is tiring and difficult to get from Zambia to Lesotho and back by hitch hiking. I just rolled back into Choma today. I had a great Christmas and New Years with my friends Mathew and Sarah. Full itinerary to come, but first I need to sleep for about 4 days straight. Missing you all and wishing you the best for the new year!
Posted by ringo at 4:51 PM | Comments (0)