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From one falls to another

Thursday, June 28th, 2001 | Southern Africa 2001 | -17°28', 24°17'

We made an early start the next day, all four of us hoping to be in Livingstone 250 miles away by the evening. We walked the long walk back to the road, arriving not long after nine. As we knew it would be, the road was absolutely quiet, so we sat down with our bags and taught Susan and Remco to play a card game with a profane name. After nearly an hour, we heard a vehicle in the distance and leapt up. We were in luck - it stopped for us, and asked where we going. We were in enormous luck - it was going all the way to Livingstone. Delighted, we negotiated a reasonable price and jumped in the back. It was a truck, in untypically good condition, and the only snag was that the back was rather small, and already contained fifteen pumpkins and three sacks of maize. With a very tight squeeze we fitted four people and four backpacks in with them, and we were off.

Three of us could lean against the back of the cab, but I was the unlucky one who had to sit on the back of the truck. The road was bumpy and extremely dusty, and I had to grip fiercely to the truck to avoid being thrown out the back. Letting go would have been madness, but holding on meant that I couldn’t brush off the dust which was gathering thickly on my arms and face. Pretty soon I was grey and featureless and the sun was heating up the dust which was slowly cooking my arms. But every now and then a particularly large bump would knock some of the dust off as it sent shockwaves up my spine.

After three hours we reached the river once again, and crossed on the Sesheke pontoon. Here one of the passengers in the cab got out, and so Susan got in. The back was a spacious delight for the next few hours, and the road was smooth sand. I began to doze as the endlessly similar landscape rolled on by. Then, suddenly, my reverie was shattered as I woke to find myself and the contents of the back of the truck about two feet above the truck. As we crashed back down, we realised that we must have hit an unexpected bump. I decided it would be prudent to hold on again.

The rest of the journey went smoothly, very smoothly for the last hour or so as we got onto very good tarmac. We arrived in Livingstone at 7pm, and finding that our preferred choices of accommodation were full, stayed at the Red Cross hostel. Livingstone is extremely, extremely touristy, and we thought we might be able to get something other than nshima and fish for dinner. Happily we could, and we ate very well indeed at a Chinese restaurant. During the meal, we each slipped out to the toilets to freshen up, for we all looked quite ridiculously filthy, covered in dust and grime. Me and John especially appreciated the food: we’d left Mongu with four loaves of bread, but along the way one of them had got soaked in petrol and the other was eaten by an elephant, so we’d not exactly eaten lavishly since then. And my caffeine cravings were at last eased by glorious, fabulous, real coffee. Being back on the beaten path was not entirely disappointing.

 

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