Catch Up

I am, admittedly, an awful blogger. I mean, to be fair, I am doing fabulously swell by my own standards. In comparison to past me, present me is doing an excellent job on keeping friends and family updated. I know that you all agree. 

 But still, as of now, you have been deprived. I have not yet shared the wonder of Zanzibar, which happened over two months ago. Worse, I fell behind and I have yet another adventure filled trip to the Okavango Delta in Botswana which I have selfishly kept to myself. And now, at last, I find myself back in the field where I began my African journey, at the same hotel in Kafue with the same team. Where to start?     

I have decided that in order to catch up, I just need to take you on a whirlwind tour of some adventure travel. I mean, to be honest, it can’t be that exciting to read. “And then I did this, and then I did, and then I did this…” Shut up already. So, get ready, here it comes….compactly. I am creating an episode of field experiences concurrently, so fear not; I won’t fall behind in the course of catching up.

ZANZIBAR = HEAVEN

And by heaven, I mean the kind of heaven where you are greeted by a 1,000 virgins. It is, after all, a predominantly Muslim country. (Can we take a second and admit that they have it right when their heaven consists of earthly pleasures sans guilt rather than divine righteousness?)

But, seriously. For any of you that have backpacked before, or actively read about traveling, you know what I am about to describe. There is that never-ending search for the untouched paradise.  You are never really aware of when it starts, but suddenly, an attraction full of tourists becomes less attractive. Never mind that they are just like you looking for the same things. This is YOUR vista and YOUR trip, and your carefully planned picture of the bustling market just doesn’t look as adventurous when in between the colorful burkas there is a glimpse of some blond with a pixie cut wearing a spaghetti string tank top reading “OHIO STATE – Go Buckeyes.” Or whatever. No offense to any of the above mentioned characteristics of course. I love pixie cuts.  The search for the undiscovered is the main premise of the movie ‘The Beach,’ which I am sure all of you Leo fans, have seen. 

Bottom line, you always dream of the place that has strong culture, welcoming people, and few foreigners. Good food is also a plus. Welcome to Zanzibar. Now, Zanzibar was recommended to me by many people, making it a place that it is not ‘off the map,’ so to speak. But on an island surrounded by beaches, they always choose the same beaches. So if you do what we did, and choose the LAST entry in Lonely Planet, you will find yourself on a deserted beach with soft white sand and turquoise waters watching the locals, covered in head scarfs, walking through their seaweed farms at sunrise.

Traditional boats on our deserted beach. They use poles to maneuver.

Zanzibar is my heaven. When I die, I will go there. Stonetown was absolutely amazing. We stayed at St. Monica’s hostel in a room that was white-washed sand stone. It was an old convent, very quiet and old. Beneath the staircase to our room there were slave chambers as it sat on the old slave market. Zanzibar had long been a main port for the slave trade.  Who knows if they were original, but there were chains. 

The city itself bustled with vitality. There were busy markets and fish auctions. The first night we just went for a stroll and found ourselves sitting at a picnic table in the middle of what I can only describe as a fast food market. Each of the many picnic tables was lit only by a candle. Women were crouching and cooking seafood dishes over open stoves. Mark and I sat and ate rice and beans with warm milk (that were awful for the record), and took stock of our surroundings. We were across from each other. To Mark’s right was a devout Muslim in a galibia and rounded cap, eating some unidentifiable sea creature. To his left was a regular African Joe. To my left were too Masaii women in full tribal dress, down to the beaded cuffs on their ankles, with staffs. Holy Shit. If you ever thought America was the only melting pot, think again. What I would do for a picture of that table. I remember looking at Mark and wondering whether my eyes were as wide as his, in awe at the moment.

We spent the next day wandering around Stonetown. We ended the day with a sundown coffee in a hidden, discrete square with a bunch of men playing dominos. They didn’t stare, didn’t beg, and didn’t make comments and laugh. Nothing. They just served as coffee and went about their business. They also tried and failed to teach me how to play African Mancala. I only ended up learning from a mute on the beach.

We then went to the beach, and a beach it was. Perfect. White. Empty. We were the only guests at our lodge. Period. We had our own bungalow looking out. The moon was up, tide was in, stars out. Perfect. Oh, right, and then Mark proposed. 

We went scuba diving the next day, Mark’s first (and yes, that is the details I am sharing on my blog).  He did swimmingly (heee heee). Besides the fact that he ran out of air chasing after sea turtles. After the second dive, I jumped out of the boat to swim, and in the water, saw a pod of dolphins swimming by just a little ways away. Only in Zanzibar, I swear….

  And really, so much of Zanzibar can only be described in pictures and video. With that, I give you YouTube.

 
  Zanzibar - Stonetown

   
MY HOME IS IN THE DELTA
 

 The Okavango Delta. What can I say? The prominent characteristic of this journey is that is happened with four ladies, and when traveling with ladies, anything can happen. Never underestimate the power of people wanting to help ladies out. We either remind them of their daughters or their sisters….or something else. Four mzungu girls are often surrounded with a kind of magic. 

Venturing into Botswana with the ladies

 I embarked on this journey the first week of May. My roommate Casey and her two friends from New York were my companions. We bused and hitched down to Maun to an infamous bar/camp called The Bridge. Of course, part of our ‘bus’ was a guy who offered to take us for about a third of the real price down three hours to the halfway point in his car. Oh, The Bridge. Lonely Planet describes The Bridge like this:

              

Hanging at The Bridge, defending Obama

‘The Bridge,’ as it’s known, has a great bar-at-the-end-of-the-world kind of vibe. Bush pilots and backpackers chat each other up, dogs play with kids and regular cast of drunks keeps the bar propped up.

I am not always a fan of Lonely Planet, but I don’t think I could ever have thought up a more accurate description. The first night, I was immediately transported back to Burlington on the notes of The Grateful Dead, The Band, Zeppelin, and Hendrix. I can tell you, my oh-so-hip NYC companions learned some things about me. The place was great. It was the kind of place that people get stuck, and we certainly found some stuck ones. I swear, one them went on tour with The Dead. We stayed in tents on the delta waters, and drank REAL French press coffee.

 We then embarked on a two night three day trip into the delta, traveling by speed boat and mokoro. We camped in tents in Moremi National Park, went swimming in waters deemed ‘safe from crocs and hippos,’ and went on some relaxing game walks. All in all, we had a pretty relaxing three days. We of course had no idea that we had actually just survived the Danger Tour of the Okavango Delta.

Swimming in 'safe' waters

Game walk number 1 (not the one with the lions lurking)

Mokoro boats, a generally good way to get around the Delta

I mean, I think we began to have suspicions on the game walk. My time in Chobe was spent confined to a vehicle. In Moremi, we got out of the boat and followed an unarmed barefoot Botswanian into the bush. His only words were ‘Be silent. Walk single file, and whatever you do, don’t run unless I tell you to.’ Comforting. We walked through grass up to our heads and didn’t see anything. We did, however, cross leopard prints, lion prints, and elephant prints. I commented to the guide that we couldn’t see anything because the grass was so high. His response was ‘They are there. They can see you.’ Again, comforting. You know that scene of lions stalking through the grass that we all have ingrained in us? I was there; I just couldn’t see the lions. We only found the true absurdity of this when my roommate Casey went on another safari in South Luangwa, and was told by her guide that was absolutely crazy to go unarmed with 7 people and no one to bring up the rear. I sure as hell avoided the back. 

The ladies with out trusted guide, C-Company. Yes, that's his name.

 While her guide was concerned about the game walk, he was absolutely horrified by something else. We went swimming, in a place our guide deemed ‘safe.’  However the Okavango is the biggest delta on the African continent, and teeming with hippos and crocs.  Apparently, there is NO safe place to swim. Even through where we went was open and shallow; it was surrounded by reeds, which are where the crocs live. Hippos wouldn’t bother us, but crocs can swim faster than a human can run (especially in water) and are just plain vicious. He told Casey a story about his friend who had been to the Okavango that gave me chills. She had been told it was safe to swim and didn’t believe him. She said that he could go in first to show her. So he did. And got attacked and killed by a croc immediately. I am telling you, danger tour.

Tori and Katy failing at getting us a lift

 After a night drinking combined starlight boating with the stuck backpackers and bush pilots at The Bridge, we headed back to Lusaka. Or tried, at least. We got half way there before being stranded at a town in the middle of nowhere, Botswana. Hours of hitching got us nowhere, and there were no hotel rooms available in the tiny town. We prepared to hunker down outside the 24 hour filling station (as at this point all the attendants knew us), when I essentially pleaded with some guy driving a truck for the Ministry of Transport. After a phone call to his boss that told him that he couldn’t take us, he told us to hop into the back anyway. If stopped, we were ‘lost in the bush and stranded on the side of the road.’ Yes, lost in the miles and miles of bush with the elephants, and survived looking good. Very plausible, but whatever. We spent the last portion of our journey on an epic ride in the back of the truck, passing herds of elephants on the road as we went. Oh, Africa, how fitting.

Almost home, and happy to be heading there at all

  

 

 

 

                                                                     

The Killing of a Village Chicken

It may say something of my fascination with food that I have given this one activity its own blog. Perhaps it is to alleviate the constant rambling of my life narrative. Or perhaps I feel like I need to respect the life of the chicken that continued to chase me, headless, across my yard. I don’t fully understand why the village chicken deserves its own blog post, but it just feels right.  

In addition, this is should be a somewhat amusing post as I am simply going to get you up to where YouTube can take over. My wonderful roommate Hannah dug through the 30 minutes of raw footage to combine some highlights into a ten minute video.  For some, ten minutes of killing and gutting a chicken may be fascinating. For many of my Vermont peeps (no pun intended), this may be like watching someone make chocolate chip cookies...rather uninspiring. However I encourage you to watch it for the sheer number of ridiculous moments and memorable quotes. They are not highlighted, so you kind of have to listen.

The idea to kill a village chicken had brewing in the back of our heads for a while. They can be seen on the side of the road under domes made of bent branches and held together with twine, or can be found riding around in wooden wheelbarrows in square cages made of the same. However, the idea could easily have fluttered away, forgotten between lion hunts and the temptation of beach paradise. Turns out that sometimes it is just these fleeting ideas that are the most memorable.

  However, the second Sunday of Big Man’s visit had turned out to be rather dull.  We had hoped to change our Monday tickets to Zanzibar to Sunday to gain one extra day of beach paradise. Unfortunately, after a visit to two different offices, we discovered that Zambezi airlines are still learning how to do good business, and we were stuck.  After feeling a little bored and disappointed with a day filled with purely shopping, we hopped into a cab to take us back home.  It was Sunday at about 5 pm. In a country where Christianity is written into the constitution, it seemed that our chances at purchasing a chicken were low, and we had pretty much abandoned the idea. Our night was looking like a movie and bed.

Not to be.  After chatting with the taxi driver, a cultural requirement in Zambia, I happened to ask him if he knew where we could get a village chicken. There was nowhere, he said, that we could get a village chicken in downtown Lusaka at this time. We would have to go the Garden compound. And, of course, he was just the man to take us.  

The non-definition of a compound

In Zambia, ‘compounds’ refer to high density residential areas.  What many may consider as a ‘slum’ would fit under the definition of a compound, but also a neighborhood of dense, middle-class houses may be referred to as a compound. All of my research with orphans and the impoverished take place in ‘compounds,’ but I also have many close friends that live in compounds who are not ‘in poverty.’ I am using these words loosely in order to try and convey the broad definition and connotation of a ‘compound.’  There is no universal definition of a typical ‘compound,’ but when you work with the impoverished, you will probably end up in one.

Some of the more impoverished compounds consist of houses with cement walls and steel sheets as roofs. Many don’t have doors. Residences are not necessarily on a road, and sometimes they are linked together by paths. Roads, when they do exist, were often once paved (under the former president Kaunda) and have fallen into disrepair. I have learned a bit about bad roads since I have been here, mostly from the terrible road that I live on. It is much better not a pave a road in the first place than to pave it and then neglect it for years. Most of the roads here look, at first glance, as if they are only made of sand or gravel. However in reality there are chunks of pavement under the sand, so the rises between the cavernous potholes have the hard jagged edges of concrete. Also, in a normal sand/gravel road, the depth of potholes are somewhat mitigated by the general runoff of the entire surface layer of the road, thus lowering the level of the road in general. Here, sections of old pavement are held solidly at one level, with the water having to go in between. The concrete doesn’t ‘runoff,’ so to say. Therefore you have many deep, deep potholes with jagged pieces of hard concrete in between. You cannot go more than five to ten miles per hour in a 4WD.  Low hanging cars, needless to say, do not last long. 

These kinds of compounds are places that you wouldn’t see while just visiting Lusaka. You would have to be invited into someone’s home or work in them to see to them. Or, you would have to be with a great cab driver taking you to buy a village chicken. It would be uncomfortable, if not risky, to just walk in by yourself.  When people think about poverty in Africa, they often picture circumstances similar to these compounds. Needless to say, we had been trying to figure out how to get Mark in to see these places as they are similar to the places that I work when I am in the field. They are not places you would just enter. My roommate Casey described it well to Mark. You wouldn’t just walk into a compound to look around, just as you wouldn’t go walk into the Bronx in New York City just to look at it.

So, when our cab driver Sam offered, we jumped. We sped home to drop off our purchased items. My roommate Hannah, who is my cooking guru and future chef of the Zanzibari restaurant I will someday invest in, was innocently standing in the kitchen as I dashed in and dropped my things. I yelled from my room to get ready. We were going to the compound to buy a village chicken. As expected, she was perhaps the only person of my six person house who was as excited as I was.  And then we hopped into the cab were off to Garden compound.

The buying and killing of a village chicken

                Despite my long definition of a compound, our trip was uneventful, except that Mark got to see a compound. I had never been to the Garden Compound, so it was my first time as well. The Garden compound is about a seven minute drive from my house. My house, for those of you who don’t know, is a mini palace. My program initially placed me in a modest house, but my landlord/roommate Virginia moved us here about two weeks after I arrived. The main house that I live in is enormous. There are six bedrooms, an enormous kitchen, and three bathrooms. It has a dining room, living room, garage, and a veranda that has a tiled floor and is enclosed with white metal grating with intricate designs. The veranda leads out to the back yard, which contains an in-ground pool and a huge avocado tree. Behind that, there are three other buildings which are rented out as residences and to a business.  The entire thing is enclosed by a wall, which is the way houses are in Lusaka. We have a flat screen TV, DVD player, etc. I am not living in a thatch hut in rural Africa.  Although it is one of the nicer houses on the street, it is surrounded by other residences that are similar.

                Seven minutes from this, it is a different world. The contrast was startling. We were still talking to the Sam the driver about how much a chicken would cost as we turned off the main, paved road and headed Garden compound. I had passed this side road hundreds of times without as much as a thought. Suddenly, the walls that shield residences from view were gone, as were household doors. While the main roads of Lusaka are dominated by cars, the road into the compound was dominated by people. You could see hanging laundry everywhere. It was different than the more rural compounds that I work in in the field. It was busier, and slightly more built up. Not five minutes in, we turned into what I can only describe as Zambian compound strip mall.  Sure enough there was a woman in the parking lot selling chickens out of the typical wooden cage. Though it was five o’clock on a Sunday, there was music blaring, full blast, out of a little bar. People had clearly been drinking all day. The driver explained that those who are unemployed often drink all day, every day, if they can afford it, and the bars are open early in the morning. Despite the typical strict observance of the holy day which closes almost everything else, the regulation of alcohol on Sundays is clearly an American gaffe. Our driver hopped out of the car, explaining that as mzungus we would be charged triple the price, and went to go discuss the chicken with the woman.  With lots of looks and gesturing towards our car, and after attempting to give my best ‘I may be a mzungu but I know how things work here Auntie’ look,  a fine looking live chicken was finally sold to us for the price of 20 pin, or approximately 4 dollars.

The Village Chicken

The Village Chicken....Alive

                As you may have noticed, we specifically bought, killed, and ate a village chicken. In Zambia, there are two kinds of chicken. ‘Chicken’ refers to the chicken you buy at the grocery store, prepacked. You can’t get village chicken in the grocery store. ‘Village chicken’ refers to the chickens are that bred and raised by Zambians in the villages or compounds. Village chicken is preferred by many, and it is quite different for many reasons.

                Many people probably already know about this little explanation I am going to give, especially the VT readers, but for those that don’t, here it is.  American’s have created a new chicken. The chicken that we eat, the Broiler chicken, is a far cry from the chicken as God/evolution made. We like white meat, and in particular the tender white meat from the breast. So, using intense artificial selection, we bred chickens into a different body type. The breasts of Broiler chickens are largely exaggerated, and the legs are vastly shorter. The actual proportions of the body are different. And, obviously, intense hormone injections make their bodies plumper. The muscle is more tender, body fat concentration higher. There are actual some physical problems that chickens have because of these unnatural proportions. This is essentially all that you can get in American supermarkets.

                However, Monsanto and Price Chopper haven’t reached the chickens raised in the villages of Zambia. These are chickens that have not been bred for white meat. They have not been hormone injected to be fat and juicy. They are, indeed, a 100% natural chicken. They are tougher, darker, and smaller, and as you will see, they look slightly different.

                And with that, I simply hand you over to YouTube. Again, lots of good quotes moments. My favorites? “It’s like….chicken skin…” There were also some that out were cut, most likely out of the impropriety of the low cut of my pajamas. So you miss, for example, such nuggets as when I disagree with Mark over whether the chicken was actually dead as he is holding its head in its hands, or when I pet the chicken and tell it that it’s alright as its headless and convulsing on the yard. Those aside, there’s plenty more nuggets…chicken nuggets….sorry, couldn’t resist. Enjoy!

Killing the Village Chicken - YouTube

 REMEMBER: IF YOU CAN'T KILL IT, DON'T GRILL IT!

He's psyched

Post murder

That cat joined too...Beth, we put that knife to good use. 

 

 

 

 

Cooks at work.....

Village chicken and...cupcakes? Oh, and this was after we decided it was a good idea to try and start a fire in the driveway to burn the remains, failed, left remnants of fire/chicken remains, and then tried to 'smoke' the chicken...also failed.....

               

Big Man arrives, and you can't escape Disney -The Videos

YouTube is an amazing thing.....
 

Chobe National Park on YouTube

Mark's Plunge on YouTube

Links are also posted to my Facebook wall.

Big Man arrives, and you can't escape Disney

There is a good reason for the gap in my posts. My past two months have been spent in room 14 of the ZCARHD office preparing for the second round of data collection and cleaning up the last bits and pieces of data from Round 1.  Not much to write home about, literally. My office is like any other office, except with unreliable internet. No gripping insights there. Everyone in world wants to go Office Space on the printer, and everyone in the world has office politics. We may all worship different Gods, but at least we can all agree as one human race on the main components of the office.

However, my time in Lusaka has enveloped me in the expat scene here, which has, in turn, been wildly fun, fulfilling, confusing, and frustrating.  There is something addicting about hanging out with a motley crew of Danes, Dutch, Nigerians, Canadians, African Bushmen, and Zambians.  It will require its own post, so I will leave it for later.

           Needless to say, after two months of office days and Lusaka nights, I was very excited for my leave and very excited to see Mark. He arrived on Saturday April 2nd after a smooth flight, (sans luggage), and we spent a couple of days tootling around Lusaka. He was called Big Man by about every Zambian he saw, and our tour around Kamwala market ended with Big Man and I trying Shake Shake (previously described vile concoction of fermented mealie meal) with a group of  charming and perhaps drunken Zambian men. It is amazing how fast a crowd gathers to watch mzungus try Shake Shake. If he was missing home at all, this was abated when we continued on to a bar  with a live band covering Michael Jackson songs. Good old MJ, yet another globally unifying factor.

                Then we hit the road to embark for a bush adventure. Thus begins part 1.    

               

Simba, Rafiki, Zazu, and more…

               

Monday morning saw us heading down to Livingston, in Zambia, to depart on our journey into the bush and to see the falls.  We saved the falls for after the safari, but we did embark to the Royal Livingston Hotel for a drink at sundown. If anyone ever wants to understand British Colonialism, visit the Royal Livingston. You drive through the typically African town of Livingston to get to a gated, royal palace.  We entered the gate, and behold, there were zebras just hanging out on the lawn. We immediately started talking in hushed whispers, thinking we were blessed with a chance encounter with this beautiful wild creature. We whipped out our cameras and asked our taxi slow down. He indulged us for about five minutes before calmly explaining that they were pet zebras kept by the hotel. Right. Stupid mzungus.

Spray from Victoria Falls from the deck of the Royal Livingston

 We then descended through a yard of scampering baboons to enjoy drinks on a deck that is literally in the Zambezi River.  It is positioned right before the edge of the falls. You could see the spray coming up over the edge. It was absolutely beautiful, and decadent, and Caucasian. We enjoyed a completely overpriced drink, which was actually listed in US dollars instead of Kwacha, before deciding that we had had enough. We booked it back to Livingston and walked through the bustling streets and markets at night. It was an invigorating experience I have been previously unable to enjoy due to the lack of a tall, fit, and let’s all admit it, rather handsomely fearsome looking male bodyguard.  We ate dried caterpillars, drank liquor out of a fun pop bag, and called it a night.

               

The next day we departed for Botswana, and entered the realm of the Lion King. When I say that, I mean it literally. Throughout the safari, when discussing animals that were graced with a lead role in the movie, our Botswana guide referred to them by that name. “There’s a zazu. There’s a rafiki.” (This drove our companion from Kenya insane, as he kept insisting that in Swahili Rafiki means friend, not monkey.) When describing the mass charges by buffalo, he would say “Like in that scene, in The Lion King.” Excuse the slight distortion of images. Resizing saves me hours, but not the best quality.

My favorite view of Chobe

We stayed on safari for two days and two nights. The park was Chobe National Park, which is known for its massive herds of elephants.  It is a large park, and we only saw the very tip. The park itself consisted of the Chobe River, which was overflowed during rainy season, and the dry lands. There were thus two different landscapes to observe wildlife. The river was amazing. There were just strips of green grassland among sparkling blue waters, and elephants and hippos were just roaming next to each other. The grasslands, however, had the most wildlife. We explored that particular part as the animals were forced to the river for water.

Our camp was six simple tents surrounding a fire. They were arranged in a semi-circle, with lanterns behind them. This was to orient them as a herd, to warn animals. The food was cooked by the safari team and was delicious. We were not permitted to walk too far outside the camp at night, and if we needed to use the drop toilet in the night, we were to call one of the guides for an escort. The camp was also equipped with a shower consisting water warmed in the sun and hung from a container with holes in it from a tree. Perhaps the most refreshing shower I have ever taken (can't post the pictures from that). We often had baboons, elephants, and impala simply stroll by in the mornings. 

The bush camp. Our is the one closest to the camera.

 Chobe has about 55,000 elephants within its border.  I have never experienced elephants in such a way before. They were just everywhere. We saw them swimming, eating, washing, dusting themselves (which they do after swimming to dry off), playing with babies, and we even saw an elephant baby that was only two or three days old. We had one get angry at us, and truly understood how scary and dangerous they actually are. They also have incredibly human characteristics (or, should I say, we have incredibly elephant-like characteristics.)  I don’t think I will ever be able to see an elephant in captivity again without my heart shedding a tear. They just belong in a place like Chobe. 

Mama Ele, Pap Ele, and Baby Ele

Dusting after a swim

Two day old elephant nursing

Peekaboo

  We were also lucky enough to see leopard, which is an extremely rare sighting. I actually couldn’t really see it with my bare eye. I needed the camera lens, and mentally thanked the salesmen in BestBuy who sold me on that digital zoom. It had apparently climbed the tree because it was scared of the nearby lions. Who could blame it? I also gained a new respect for giraffes. They are so incredibly graceful, and when they run it looks as if they are running in slow motion. That said, they can actually outrun many of the predators of the bush. They quickly rivaled the elephant as my favorite animal.

Lucky us!

Just another elephant

After day one, the group fell prey to the well-known symptoms of ‘been there, done that.’ We had so many elephant encounters that we soon got impatient when we had to wait for the elephants to cross the road in front of us. We saw so many impala and buffalo that we stopped even noticing them.  By the end of day two, you could tell how fresh another ‘rival’ safari truck was by observing which animals they were looking at. If they were observing impala, crocodiles, buffalo, elephants, or baboons, they were total amateurs. Freshmeat.  We, the more experienced and wiser safari team, were on to more important things: tracking lions.

The Lion King (or Queen)

Chobe is different than other national parks in Africa for a couple of different reasons.  First, there are no walking safaris allowed. In many parks you can trek with an armed guide through the bush to observe the animals. Secondly, there are no night drives allowed, which is when the lions are most active. And last but certainly not least, you cannot off road in Chobe.  This is the most significant difference. In most parks, you can slam your 4WD off the beaten path and go rumbling through the bush in search of wildlife. In Chobe, you must stay on a network of sand roads and view the visible areas. 

 At first, these all seem like negative differences.  I can just hear the thousands of diehard travelers whining ‘but then you can’t truly experience the African bush.’  I, as well, was worried that we wouldn’t have as good of an experience for lack of these opportunities. However, once there, I realized that these rules are part of what make Chobe so special.  Tourism is an important financial support for national parks, and as such, they strive to make visitors happy. Sometimes, you wonder who the park is actually for, the animals, or those that come seeking to see these exotic creatures in their natural habitat.  In Chobe, however, the park is for the animals.  You don’t get to off road into their habitat. You don’t get to track them by foot and put your scent everywhere, and you don’t get to disturb them at night when some of the most fearsome predators are hunting. In appearance, it looks as if the mark of humans is all over the park. The vast network of trails and the frequent encounters with other safaris reminds you constantly that you are neither the first nor the only visitor. However, you are stuck in a car on the road, and there are miles and miles of wilderness that you cannot touch. Thus, the wilderness of Chobe is preserved for the animals, and it is clear that the purpose of the park is for the wildlife. Perhaps we missed the experience of off-roading to find lions sleeping, but if everyone did that, would it really wilderness?  Would it really be a ‘sanctuary’ if there is no reprieve from the rumbling of safari trucks?

Lion cub tracks in the road

I bring this up because it is entirely relevant to the tracking of lions. Lions are brilliant at hiding themselves. They almost perfectly match the grass on the savannah.  Most of the places they can go in Chobe, you can’t see them. So lions are not a guaranteed sighting, and the tracking of lions is made much more difficult when you can’t rumble into the bush after them. Instead, you watch the sand road for tracks that may have crossed, and try to head to the other side of the flatland to see if they cross before you. Or, you listen to the baboons screaming and know that means that they have seen a lion, and you rush as fast as possible. Or, when an impala runs in front of you at full speed, you look to see what it is running from.

               

Camouflage

 Tracking lions is invigorating. Lions stick to the road, so you can follow their tracks. You judge how fresh the tracks are, how big the lion is. And when you find a lion or two, as we did, it’s absolutely petrifying. We rolled around the corner to find a female standing on an outcrop above us. Being in an open truck doesn’t make you feel to secure when you are 15 feet away from a lion staring down at you. To add to this affect, they often keep their mouths open to cool themselves off, thus exposing their enormous teeth. However, by far the most chilling lion encounter was watching lions on the hunt.

 We ran into two more females later that day, and they were hunting together. The walked, side by side, in perfect sync, through the long bushes. Then they saw us.  They stopped, both of them at exactly the same time, to turn and look at us. So, here we are, staring straight into the eyes of two female lions on the hunt. There was a couple seconds of silence, and then, in perfect sync, without looking at each other at all, they turned their heads forward and kept walking. They even started with the same paw. It is impossible to recreate the absolute synchrony and focus of that one moment. I felt deep pity for every one of the thousands of impala we had just passed. On the way home, the buffalo herd nearby had just started running. We heard them roaring to announce their kill to the male from our camp about two hours later. 

The hunters

Dignity embodied

                 

The Plunge and the Plume

After saying our goodbyes to the African bush and our leaving our poor guide in the hands of some dubious Americans (we all know the type), we departed back to our hostel and made our way to the famous Victoria Falls, the Smoke that Thunders, the Mosi-au-Tunya, the jewel of Zambia, the UN world heritage site, and most importantly, the namesake for my favorite Zambian beer, the infamous Mosi. 

I am made quite sure that the falls themselves are a spectacular sight. Unfortunately, we did not get to actually see the falls due to the booming sheet of spray that literally made them invisible, save for lucky breaks in the mist.  It was absolutely awe-inspiring, invigorating, and wet.  You could feel the absolute power that produced that spray, and stand at the edge of it.

Feeling the power

 The real invigoration of the day, however, came from other sources. The Victoria Falls Bridge at the Zim/Zam border hosts the second highest bungee sight in the world. You plunge 111 meters down towards the Zambezi. The bridge is literally known to exist in Zim/Zam, as it is in the no man’s land between the two borders.  No, I absolutely did not jump off that bridge in no man’s land in Africa. My tall handsome body guard did. That man is one crazy %#5) $*)@#.  I think the pictures say enough, and yes we have it on video. I will add that I was too chicken to even stand on the bridge and look down at him as he fell. I had to watch from a distance.

The jump. In the video, I am saying 'holy shit, holy shit, holy shit....'

The rise after survival

WINNING!

Thus ended our adventures….kind of.  Except that the next day all the buses to Lusaka were full.  Going on trusted advice, we decided to hitch it. Great decision.  Hitching has its own culture in Africa. Some people pick you up for free, and some people charge you, and everyone does it. There are literally pick-up points with 20 Zambians with cargo waiting for a ride.  We were forced  to keep going further and further out of town to escape the crowds of people waiting for a ride, but we finally got picked up in a minivan packed with people. Mzungu effect: we got the front seat, which was massively more spacious. We also got to sit next to the driver, who happened to be the owner of one of the larger fleets of coach buses in Zambia. It was actually his bus that had been sold out that morning.  Only Africa do you get blocked by the bus, but picked up by the owner of the fleet! We were lucky, as we soon realized that it was the end of school and the roads were jam packed with people trying to make it to Lusaka. The issue with hitching, however, is that the police regulate it at checkpoints and fine the drivers. Luckily for us, one of our passengers happened to actually be a cop, so we learned the magic words to get through the checkpoints no problem. As we often say in these situations, TIA. This Is Africa.

And, we arrived home safely. Thus ends part one of our adventures. Here are some random pictures. LOVE TO ALL!

I LOVE GIRAFFES!

On a game drive

On a game cruise on Chobe River

Sunset at Royal Livingston

Sometimes it's the small creatures that are the most amazing.

Nc-wala

  Hello friends and family! Blog entry three.  I think that means I am officially a blogger. I am already imagining my growing cadre of fans.

I had meant to elaborate on my experience in the field in this entry, but amazing events have made me push it back a bit. Last weekend I undertook an epic journey to the Nc–wala festival in Chipata, a town about  7 hours north of Lusaka. I say epic because the entire thing involved little sleep, no showers, and a terrifying bus ride. However, it was one of the most rewarding spontaneous trips in my life.

My roommate Casey getting wild

I was accompanied on this journey by my equally crazy and adventurous roommate Casey and my work mate and friend from Boston, Alla. We each packed a small back pack Friday and departed for a party at our friend’s house, which somehow ended up looking more like a masquerade than a chilled out dinner party. Our bus departed at 4:00 am, so at that point it is really not worth going to bed.  We proceeded to board a seven hour bus to Chipata 3:00 am.  Seeing as we had wet hair from a dip in the pool, were covered in glittery things, and were perhaps a bit too giggly, I would rate that particular moment as a Triple Muzungu Effect moment. 

This was my first bus ride in Africa, I learned a couple rules governing the operation of these vehicles.  If it is dark, that obviously means that you have to drive in the middle of the road. Since you are in a top-heavy bus,  that clearly indicates that you should actually speed up when going around turns.  And, last but not least, if is pouring rain at 4:30 in the morning and you can’t see the road ahead of you, that means accelerate.  God and I re-united in the early hours of that bus ride. I also learned the reason the seats under the vents were empty were because the rest of the bus knew that in the pouring rain, vents leak. A lot.  Thus you have Alla and I (Casey having done the wise thing of putting herself out of her misery by going to sleep) with a rain coat and chitenge over our heads, hiding from the rain on the bus, and praying for our lives. Damn muzungus.  Despite all of our preparations to sleep on the bus (namely, alcohol) there was no sleeping for the first three hours.

I woke up to be dropped in the middle of a field with thousands of people and tents. We drag our poor selves to find a bathroom, and are led to a port-o- potty. Now, I have dealt with port-o-potties before.  In fact, the difference between an African festival port-o-potty and a port-o-potty found at a Phish show is merely the color. Alas, shit is shit. However, this being Africa, the birthplace of the majority of microscopic beasties, we decided to take our chances in the bush.  We confidently wandered into a weird, overgrown cemetery. Of course, it turned out to served the same purpose as the port-o-potties.  It’s amazing how acclimated I have become to the smell of poop.  Family germophobes, I can almost see you cringing.

Anyways, after changing, deodorizing, and waking up a bit in this weird overgrown cemetery/potty in the bush, we walk into the festival.  We are clearly in the drinking section, which inspires me to say a little word about a thing called Shake Shake. Shake Shake is the local, cheap alcohol. It comes in a milk carton. It is made by essentially putting mealie meal and water in a hollowed out gourd and letting it sit for a couple of days.  Apparently mealie meal is considered a staple for more than just its nutritional value. It somehow ferments and turns alcoholic.  It unfortunately also starts to smell like puke. Strongly. And it is thick and white.  I am literally nauseous just thinking about it. So when you see someone totally drunk with white stuff spilled down their front, you really don't know what it is. Everyone was drinking Shake Shake.

I don't think these would make it past customs.

Now a little more context about Nc-wala (pronounced Nich- wala.) Nc-wala is a harvest festival of the Ngoni people in the Eastern Province of Zambia. I essentially went because they sacrifice a cow by stabbing it and the paramount chief drinks its blood.  How could I miss it? And to think I was once a vegetarian…The Ngoni do these tribal dances and dress in traditional tribal dress.  They wear headdresses and skirts made of pelts.  The pelts they use were often of cheetah, zebra, and other animals that were clearly illegal and poached. You can see some in the pictures.  So the attendees at the festival were all wearing these pelt head dresses in celebration of Nc-wala.

Being three Muzungu girls, we were stopped about 2 minutes after entering the festival by a couple of young Zambian men, and being the nice ladies that we are, we started talking with them.  Before you know it the cameras are out and we are taking pictures with absolutely everyone and wearing their headdresses.  We make friends in particular with these two guys that seem at least half sober and not as obnoxiously hitting on us.

Just at this moment it starts to pour.  Of course none of us actually brought our rain jackets to the middle of the African countryside during the rainy season, so we dash for cover. The problem was that so did everyone else. After nearly getting knocked down in the shoving that occurred to get under a roof, our new friends guided us to the police tent and spoke with the police.  Muzungu Effect: We are allowed to stand under the police tent while everyone else gets wet. Did I feel a little bad?  Yes. Was Casey wearing a white silk shirt that really would have looked rather thin when wet? Yes. So we stayed in the police tent with the “prisoners” from the festival and some guy bleeding from the head that walked in. This seemed completely normal.

The rain let up and we try to go over the actual ceremony, which takes place within a walled yard. We go to the first doorway and are denied entrance by members of the Zambian military.  We go to the second entrance, and our new guides get in through the guards to find one of his friends working in the press. He gets us in! Yes! At this point, the cameras are out. We work the camera thing and are soon ushered up front to take pictures.  Alla has a big digital camera, and before you know it she had gone right up to the press only area and was ten feet away from President Rupiah Banda taking pictures! She made friends with a press agent, and suddenly we were ushered front and center. Muzungu Effect. We were treated like press, and we didn’t dissuade anybody. We must have been in front of thousands of people, taking premium pictures. 

Awesome. 

Ngoni in traditional dress

 But it just gets better. On both sides of the stage are hundreds of Ngoni in full tribal dress. They see us taking pictures, and they want theirs’ taken. The ability to see their pictures on the screen is just too much fun.  Soon we are taking pictures among the crowd of people actually taking part in the ceremony.  We were there for about 45 minutes snapping pictures and joking across the language barrier. It was by far the most amazing experience I have had in Zambia to date. You can see from the pictures that the women are topless. Only older women are allowed to expose their breasts. If a woman can still produce milk, it is inappropriate to show them. It is only after one is done having children that this becomes acceptable. 

 

Digital camera = lots of friends

                              

After we get tired of pictures, we get back to our press spots in time to catch the final dance. Again, as close as we can be. I was self-conscious because we are being watched by so many people. I have amazing video footage, but I do not have the patience to upload them.

After all of this, the bull had yet to be killed. We were front and center but couldn’t see much as we had to sit down so that others could see. I saw the first spear go in, but didn’t get to see anyone drink blood. At that point though, it was inconsequential. We had such an amazing time, I would have been happy to leave right then. We left the ceremony and ate some nshima, and then our new friend took us out of the festival and into the actually village that hosted the festival. On the way, we ran into one of the women we had taken pictures of.  Her family camp was making a huge pot of nshima over the fire. There is a very a particular way to stir it with the cooking stick, as you can see from the video, and they let us try it! I may have burnt their nshima. 

I never was good at cooking.

We continued on and had a nice rest in a field, as at this point we were exhausted. We were on our way back when our friend ran into two of the chiefs, who gave us a ride back to town (Muzungu Effect). Essentially, we arrived dirty and hung over on a bus, and got a ride back with not one, but two chiefs. Not bad for one day, in my opinion.

Now, after I have recounted the most amazing day I’ve had here thus far, allow me to of expound some of the darker aspects of Nc-wala and some cultural practices that I learned about during my visit.  Every Ngoni village has a chief.  As many of you know, tribal lines in Africa supercede national lines. Thus, when I say Ngoni, I am referring to Ngoni tribes in Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, etc. So, ruling all of those chiefs is a paramount chief. He is the one that drinks the cow’s blood, and he is believed to have connections to the spirits. He is treated like a king of sorts, with body guards, multiple houses etc. He has been chief for around 40 years.

Every year at Nc-wala, the chief is allowed to pick one virgin girl from the village. This girl is required to ‘entertain’ the chief that night. Although there is no legal repercussions for refusal, the elder women in the village will ensure that this young girl complies. There is no marriage or any kind of compensation, just this one night. After this night, the girl is ruined. Her prospects for marriage are dashed. You may think that this is because she is no longer a virgin. Not the case. The reason is heart breaking and an example of the struggles that Africa faces. The paramount chief is HIV positive. He has been sick for years, and everyone knows it. However, tradition is tradition, and so the practice continues.  No one will marry the girl for fear of getting sick. I think this is such a telling example of how hard it is to combat the virus in Africa in the face of so many conducive cultural practices.

There are also some other interesting cultural practices that surprised me. I had assumed that girls being virgins at marriage was important here, as it often is in cultures where women are repressed. Not so. In fact, there is a practice I was told about that ensures that women are NOT virgins. Apparently, there is a man in the village called a “hyena” that is responsible or determining when a girl is ready for marriage. He does this by sleeping with her when she is around 12-13 years old. He will then make the decision.  Can anybody think of a better way to spread an STD?  Frankly, I was horrified.  These practices are only in the very rural areas, and also seem to be fading out, but still shocking.

Our trip ended rather uneventfully. We stayed in a self-contained room that we couldn’t leave without the assistance of the attendant because of the guard dog outside (exactly who was he guarding, anyways?) We then got to wait until about 12:30 for 10:00 bus to depart, but that’s the way it goes. All in all, it was an absolutely amazing weekend!

Thus concludes entry 3. Love to all!

She's saying "its a weapon, not a magic wand."

These boys were posing for us.

Believe it or not, they asked us to take a picture with them

Amazing