Africa 1987 VI

June-July 1987

We entered Zimbabwe at Kazangula and we waited to catch a ride to Victoria Falls. There wasn't much traffic, however we made an arrangement with a tourist bus driver ($10 Zimbabwe) and we arrived at the falls by mid-day. We stayed at the campground for a couple of relaxing days. We made another back and forth trip across the Zambia border,  leaving Zimbabwe on our British passports and we returned on our Canadian passports.  This set us up for our return trip through Tanzania. The Zimbabwe immigration officer insisted on seeing the Zambia exit stamp so we pulled out both passports, but he did grant us visas to enter the  country.  We met Chuck Bussing and his wife at the Victoria Falls Hotel. He was participating in a Botswana wildlife strategy study and he enlightened us on some of issues. With the eradication of the tsetse fly, man and cattle put increasing pressure on wildlife habitat.

We travelled by the luxury of 2nd class train to Bulawayo. The campground was lovely with manicured lawns and a variety of trees. We found nights to be surprisingly cool (4-5 degrees C). It took some investigation to find the Zimbabwe black market, but we eventually did business with "Reg" at Istanbul Fashions. Mustafa E. (Reg) was one of 11 Turks living in Zimbabwe at the time. 

We took a Tombs Motorways bus from Bulawayo to Harare and found it comfortable by developing world standards. The bus wasted remarkably little time at each of the stops along the way. Catering on the bus was provided by ample vendors along the way who offered a wide range of products including boiled eggs, peanuts, potato chips, sweets, pastries, oranges, soft drinks, milk, cooked yams,apples, bananas, watches, clothes, ice cream and the daily newspapers.  Alex Q (a former colleague/boss of my father) collected us in his Peugeot station wagon and brought us to their home in Ruwa. We stayed at the Q's for a few days and enjoyed their friendship and hospitality.  It was the first time in a month to sleep in a bed and we found the whole experience to be luxurious. We went to a birthday party at Mandarin Chinese restaurant with a group of Filipinos (Wilna was Filipino) and we enjoyed the cultural diversity of the evening. Zimbabwe was 8 years into independence and under the stewardship of Robert Mugabe, the long economic decline was underway. At that time, the Zimbabwe Dollar was worth .70 USD. When we visited Zimbabwe fifteen years later, a USD would buy hundreds of thousands of Zim Dollars.

We caught a 9:30am bus bound for Kariba and we disembarked at the junction village of Makuti mid-afternoon. We were not particularly optimistic about reaching Mana Pools that day, but we managed a lift in a (canoe) safari Landrover and arrived at the campground at 5:30pm. We brought with us a week's supply of food.  The drive in to the park was quite interesting with giant baobab trees standing in the middle of the road and several sightings of nearby elephants, rosy cheeked lovebirds fluttered about and at one point, we stopped for a flock of rested guinea fowl  crossing the road. The driver had considerable bush experience and had led many hunting expeditions in nearby game reserves. He gave us tips on hunting elephants; " If the elephant is charging you, then you must make the difficult shot to the brain. The side shot is easier, with a shot to the heart." He told us that buffalo are like cows but if they are injured, then look out!  He also warned us about elephants that take a fancy for citrus fruits. One elephant that was called Mazoe, after the Zimbabwe orange drink, tore ablution block walls down in search of oranges that campers were advised to leave in the buildings. Mazoe was later destroyed by park officials.

The Mana Pools campground is beautifully situated on the banks of the Zambezi River and the Zambian hills on the opposite shore provide a nice backdrop. Mana Pools National Park is one of the few major game parks where walking without a guide was permitted, anywhere your courage will take you. Camping cost $3 CDN per night.

During the days, we took walks along the river banks and inland to the Mana Pools. There were impressive concentrations of impala, waterbuck, baboons, eland, buffalo, warthogs, zebra, nyala and occasional bushbuck and kudu. Elephants were common but not abundant. One morning, we were returning from a waterhole to the river and we almost ran into a lioness. We watched her casually turn her head and look in our direction. She wasn't interested in us, and she walked away and we walked in the opposite direction and found a place to sit along the river.  The peace was interrupted by several the arrival of elephants who engaged in eating water lilies and a drink of water before crossing the river. On another occasion, we spotted a group of warthogs and we headed towards them. They fled but left a single trembling hog behind in a burrow. When we backed off, it darted off and we were not sure who was more frightened, it or us. While on foot, it wasn't possible to approach wildlife very closely, so photographic opportunities were limited. At the Long Pool, we came across staggering numbers of crocodiles and hippos. As we approached, they would disappear under the water with the hippos often making a commotion in the process. 

 The campground was not without wildlife. During the day, daring vervet monkeys would often make off with camper's food. But during the night, the place came alive. Honey badgers with their distinctive gait made an appearance and when the campers went to sleep, the hyenas turned over garbage cans in search of food. Elephants wandered the riverbank by night and sometimes savoured the tree leaves inside the campground. One night, we sat around the campfire, and three lionesses strolled into the campground. We grabbed our flashlights and drove them away from the camp.  One morning, a group of guys set off early but were chased back 50metres from the camp by a lioness. 

A fellow camper offered us the use of his canoe and we and Kye, a German tourist, paddled the canoe on the Zambezi for four hours. The bird life was prolific and lazy crocodiles disappeared into the water before we could reach them.  We were mostly concerned with hippos who can defend their territory by flipping unwary canoeists, so we gave them a wide berth. Fortunately, hippos are quite vocal and that encouraged us to keep close to the shoreline to avoid them. On one occasion, hippos  were congregating in a narrow channel, so we pulled the boat onto shore and dragged it across a marshy area to avoid confrontation. The hippos would always emit their characteristic laugh, once we had passed by. It was a real African experience quite unlike canoeing in Canada.

One afternoon, Richard and his friend Annette arrived in a pick-up truck with "Leprosy Mission" painted on the side. They had come from Lusaka on a Zambian holiday week-end. We figured that they were religious types and we saw that he walked around with "the book". It turned out the the book was a bible, for birdwatchers; a field guide to the birds of Southern Africa. We drank wine with them that night and we postponed our departure for a couple of days in favour of a direct lift with them to Lusaka.

We jumped into the back seat of Richard's crew cab and pushed off at 9:30am, stopping at a stockade that housed in-transit rhinos.  Park staff were capturing rhinos that were under heavy poaching pressure. They were being relocated to safer parks.  The remainder of the ride to Lusaka was uneventful including a routine border crossing. Richard dropped us off at the Salvation Army Command Headquarters where camping was possible. We met Eric, a fellow Canadian, who had a difficult encounter with police the previous day (treated as a suspected spy). We all headed over to the Red Rooster for T-bone steaks and later shivered in the surprisingly cold Lusaka night. 

The following day, we made our way to the Tazara (Tanzania-Zambia Railway) office and learned that space was available on the Friday train, two days hence. We then tramped about town in search of the elusive Zambian black market, and finally found an Asian clothing shop where we exchanged dollars at a rate of 12 Kwacha, or 50% higher than the official rate.  When we returned to the Tazara booking office, the clerk asked us if we were students. So, we returned back to our campsite to retrieve our counterfeit Chinese student cards that did the trick and we purchased first class tickets to Dar es Salaam for CDN $ 14. We also changed $20 at a bank so that we had some official bank receipts when leaving the country.  Later in the day, we bumped into Richard and we all went to the British Counsel that evening to watch The Great Train Robbery.

We boarded a UBZ bus shortly before 11:00am on Thursday, bound for Kapiri Mposhi, the Tazara rail head. We sat in the back, in seats 42 and 43, on what turned out to be quite a bumpy ride, even by African standards. When we stretched our legs at Kabwe, a pickpocket reached unsuccessfully for my wallet in my left shirt pocket when we re-entered the bus.  Soon after, another passenger passed my a worthless receipt that the pickpocket had taken from one of my pockets. 

On our southbound journey, we had stayed at the Kapiri Motel, however it was full-up, and we settled on the more expensive Unity Motel for the night. In the process, we met up with Jack, a Portugese-Mozambican, now settled in Zambia. We had three beers each at a bar and I learned that Jack's grand-father was a slave trader. We collected Sheila from the hotel and went over to the ramshackle Cassie's Restaurant for dinner of burgers,sausages washed down with Coca-Cola. We met some of Jack's family there including his son Arthur from his first wife and Valery, a 23 year old Zambian who was Jack's third wife. Jack was a polygamist and wished to have a fourth wife, like his grandfather. Two cases of beer were dragged into the restaurant and we were introduced to Jack Sr., an old-time farmer. The beer began to disappear and the stories flowed. The one story that stuck with us was of two friends who had borrowed a vehicle and didn't return it. A week went by and finally Jack Sr. went looking for them. He found them up a tree with three hungry, patient lions below. Jack shot all three lions and whisked his mates to the hospital. He swore that it was a true story. Jack and Valery walked us home and we passed a few people, huddled under blankets, sell oranges and peanuts to passing buses passengers.

The next day we had breakfast of steak, cold sausages, buttered bread and Coca-Cola at Cassie's.  Jack Sr. was hungover (we were all a little slow) and he confessed that he had been sick that morning. He said that he didn't normally drink beer, but mostly drank moonshine.  He insisted that I try some moonshine; it was pretty well the worst tasting hooch that I had tasted anywhere. We exchanged addresses, thanked our hosts for the hundredth time and set out for the Tazara station, a kilometre out of town. Jack Sr. caught up with us at the station and presented us with a souvenir to remember them by. It was a large glass ashtray made from Zambian Coke and beer bottles, bearing the inscription of Kapiri House of Glass. What a bunch of crazy, delightful characters.  We later posted the ashtray to Canada but it arrived completely shattered. The ashtray didn't last but the memories have.

The 1852km train journey from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar es Salaam went smoothly. We shared our first class compartment with two Tanzanian guys who went to sleep before us and the lights were out at 8:30pm. We were a little concerned about the on-board border crossing into Tanzania. We had taped our British Passports to the back of our seats, as they contained evidence of our South African visit. Our Canadian passports had a two month time gap, and the immigration officer thumbed through every page of our passports, and then routinely issued us one month Tanzania visas. We celebrated our successful return to Tanzania with an on-board dinner of chicken & chips, similar to our earlier lunch of chips & chicken. We passed through Selous National Park while we had breakfast in the dining car. As we enjoyed cold fried eggs, sausages, baked beans, bread and milk tea, we watched an upset elephant running away from the train with three giraffe following behind. The temperature rose, windows remained open and acacia trees gave way to tropical forest and then palm trees as we approached the coast. The train journey took 47 hours.

We arrived at Dar es Salaam at 10:30am under cloudy skies. We passed quickly through the monolithic Chinese built railway station  through throngs of people to a sea of white taxi cabs. We negotiated a fare of 300 Shilings for the ride into town and generously allowed the driver to take on another passenger. The driver connected two wires to start the car and we were dropped off at the YWCA Hotel. The last room was ours but the small, clean bright room was a rarity in Dar, so we were quite pleased. It was a Sunday with banks and shops closed, so whatever Shillings we had from our earlier visit to Tanzania would have to last the day. After we paid for the room, 300 Schilling ($3 CDN), we had 250 Shillings for lunch and dinner.  Where else in the world could we have four cooked yams, five oranges,  two chicken and rice dinners and  three Cokes for under $2.50? We wandered around town, by the fish market, watched dhows entering the harbour, but the city was full of garbage and the old colonial style buildings were in a bad state. 

On Monday morning, we completed our business; we exchanged dollars at a rate of 150 to the USD at Perry's Hair Dressers and made an official exchange transaction at the bank at a rate of 64 to the Dollar. Train tickets to Moshi were unavailable and luxury coaches were sold out, so we made a booking on a regular bus to Arusha for Wednesday.  We filled in Tuesday with a trip out to Mwenge to visit the immense carvings market. Local bus experiences in Tanzania were among the world's worst, comparable to China and Trivandurum (India). Our loading strategy was to get into about the middle of the passenger inflow to be pushed into the buses and somehow managing pickpockets. 

The journey from Dar es Salaam was another endurance test.  We piddled the day away in Dar and then headed for the grotty bus area. We were informed that the bus for which I had purchased tickets had been cancelled. We then paid a premium price of 1,000 Shillings for seats 4 & 5 on a very run-down bus. It was a 16 hour bus journey with three of us sitting in a seat designed for two. The African guy next to me tried to sleep all over me through the journey.  Half way through the trip, we stopped at Mombo where dozens of long-distance buses stopped each night. It gave the run-down place a carnival atmosphere. There were wheels of fortune, young men selling oranges from crude wheelbarrows for 4 Shillings (4 cents) a piece, and kebabs for sale at 10 Shillings each. We happily left Tanzania and its abysmal roads, decrepit buses, struggling population in a shared taxi. We arrived in Nairobi 24 hours after leaving Dar, completely exhausted.