guest entry

A guest entry from a lovely guest - my dad! enjoy


If you haven’t gone to visit Hannah in Zambia yet, you should go. It is amazing.

I went at the end of April. Tess, who was wandering around Europe, met me at Heathrow and we flew down to Lusaka together. We got there as the sun was rising. It took a while to get through immigration, and we were surprised that the visa fee had gone up to $135 each. Hannah met us at the airport with a cabbie waiting who whisked us in to Les and Lynn’s house. Les and Lynn used to direct a Peace Corps program and now work for NGOs. They’ve made their lovely home a haven for Peace Corps volunteers and, it seems, any other weary traveler of goodwill who is looking for a hot shower and a beer.

We went shopping at the Dutch Reformed market where Hannah knows just about everybody.

The next morning, we caught the dawn bus to Livingstone. We stayed at a great hostel called Fawlty Towers - where we got our own room for three, with a bathroom down the hall, a pool in the courtyard, a decent restaurant, and bunch of friendly cats to play with. It is two miles or so from Victoria Falls.

The Falls are better than you can imagine – they are like no other geologic formation I’ve ever seen. The river flows across a flat plain above them, then just drops over a mile-wide ridge that looks like it is the edge of the earth, into a narrow ravine below. Because there is so much water (it was the end of the rainy season), because the ravine is so deep, and because it is so narrow, the water crashes into the rocks below and makes so much mist that you can barely see the falls. (The name for the falls in the local language – Mosi Ao Tunya – translates as “The Smoke That Thunders”) All you see is mist. And you hear an incredible roar. On the paths that go along the ridges opposite the falls, the mist is so thick that it is like a torrential downpour. The rent raincoats, umbrellas, and even rubber clogs. If you don’t rent them (we didn’t) you will get very, very wet.

The next day, we met our safari guide, a guy named Bob Batchelor. I’d found his company – Imfuduko African Safaris – on the web, and worked with him by phone and email to design a trip. We spent a few days canoeing on the Lower Zambezi (and saw many hippos, crocodiles, impala, and great birds. We saw one large, lonely elephant, munching reeds by the river bank. Then we drove to another game park – Kafue – in Western Zambia. There, on a night game drive, we saw more elephants, zebras, a leopard, a civet, a few porcupine, kudu, puku, impala, and a fat lazy puff adder, slithering across the road. We let him slither. Bob dropped us off in Lusaka after a week in the bush –and we were happy to see Les and Lynn’s again.

From there, we went up to Mpika to visit Hannah’s village. We were welcomed like royalty. Everyone from the proprietors of the internet café to the vegetable sellers in the market know and love “Ba Anna” (as Hannah is known there.) We basked in the reflected glory. The village ladies put on a wild and wonderful dance show, skit, and formal welcome ceremony for us. For the children in the village, our visit was major entertainment. They watched our every move, imitated our funny speech, wanted to touch our strange pale, hairy skin, and found us amusing in every way. We liked them, too.

We met all the other Peace Corps volunteers. We ate nshima and chibwabwa, made over Hannah’s charcoal brazier fire. We drank beer and played pool at a great bar run by a German guy who has settled in Mpika. We hiked to the dam. We went to visit the waterfalls in Kasama. We visited a local orphanage and the local school. Everywhere we went, the people we met were warm and welcoming.

Zambia is one of southern Africa’s success stories – especially compared to its neighbor Zimbabwe. That doesn’t mean all is well. Poverty is rampant. AIDS orphans are everywhere. The education system is massively underfunded. All the contradictions and frustrations of developing countries are everywhere apparent. But so are the virtues. It is a challenging place to visit – hard to get to, hard to get around, and full of things that challenge preconceptions about Africa, about development, about culture. Hannah is a great tour guide, and will only be there for another 11 months. So you should plan your trip now. You won’t find a better tour guide. Have fun.