So its Saturday morning the sun has not even thought about hauling itself up into the sky.
Twenty to four to be exact when for some reason, unknown to me, I woke up.
Seeing as the alarm was due to go off in twenty minutes anyway I thought I might just as well get up, have a nice relaxing shower and leave a few minutes earlier. As I have sort of come to expect, don’t expect anything.
You guessed it, no water. I wandered over to the new water tower stood clad only in my usual night attire and was pleasantly surprised to find that the tank had just drained over night and all that was needed was to turn on the pump and refill the tank. Sorted.
I eventually got on the road by five o’clock and had a nice slow drive down to the Valley. The slow drive was not entirely out of choice, the turbo on the car packed up last week so the car now has the performance characteristics of an asthmatic slug. But the journey was pleasant enough and the scenery fantastic as the orange sun reflecting bright reds and then yellows off the underside of the storm clouds that dared to linger around the peaks, then they in turn disappeared as the sun rose up behind the mountains that demarcate the boundaries of the Zambezi valley.
I was sitting beside the river having a full English breakfast by seven o’clock and the sun was now hot as it played down upon us. I had arranged to meet some friends there, Koob and Jeanette, they had travelled down the night before. The breakfast was good as usual at Zambezi Breezers where I stay when working down there. Once finished I made my way down to Chrundu to make a few calles there and to pick up a friend and colleague Charles. Charles was as ever immaculately dressed.
We were going out to some rural areas along the river to try and find a suitable piece of land, The piece I had identified before was a bit too close to human habitation for my liking and add to that the fact that the owners were asking about three times the going rate for the place.
We got to a place called Lilongwe were we left the tar road and headed into the bush, asking for directions we picked up a chap who said that he knew the area well and that he could direct us to exactly where we wanted to go. We travelled through small thatched villages with their red sun baked clay walls and smoke stained roofs, scabby chickens running around looking thin and emaciated. (I suppose they daren’t put on weight) Dusty children in ragged clothes, but with great big smiles snotty noses and waving arms.
I never could understand why the Africans never built chimneys in their houses. If you have ever been to visit or been to a meeting in one of these houses you will know that 5 minutes in one of these houses is the equivalent of seven years smoking twenty Capstan Full Strength. I mean it can’t be that difficult to have a hole in the roof with some sort of raised cover to stop the rain coming in, but no they would rather choke and go around with red eyes and smelling like a bonfire. Anyway the villages looked good.
We got deeper and deeper in the bush and eventually it began to thin again as we reached the place we had been looking for. I must admit I was rather disappointed, There were hardly any trees left, the cultivation that had taken place was half hearted and weed strewn. It was definitely not what I was looking for.
We decided to strike right along the river towards Siavonga to see if there were any more suitable places down there.
It was not long before we were back in the thick of the bush and far from civilisation, only the birds for company and whatever wild life lay hidden away in the brush. The ground was a richly punctuated mosaic of Hippo and elephant spoor with a neat overlay decoration of bird and insect prints.
The ground was getting softer and we had to pick our way through, at one place in particular we had no choice but to drive through a particularly wet bit, I felt confident as I had four wheel drive so that should not be a problem. I had checked the depth and bed before entering so launched in. We made it about three quarters of the way across before we had ceased all forward motion, and were instead heading more in a vertical direction. This did not bode well. The vehicle eventually came to a complete rest with the minimum of wheel spin and absolutely no wheel spin from the front wheels as for some reason unbeknown to me the drive to them had disappeared into the either somewhere over the past thousand or so km, thus rendering the vehicle a very heavy two wheel drive car. About as much use where we were as a chopsticks in a jelly eating competition.
Talking of jelly, when we exited the car that’s what we found ourselves up to our shins in, but this was thick and black and smelly.
I looked at Charles and saw how immaculately dressed he was and thought, Oh dear. But it did not seem to faze him, he just whipped off this socks and shoes rolled up his trousers and got stuck in
First off we tried the usual rocking back and forth with plenty of manpower pushing and pulling but realised fast that she was stuck fast and we would need to make another plan.
The area was mainly scrub bush about ten to twelve feet tall, quite dense and interspersed with grassy tufts, the occasional Mopani tree growing taller every hundred yards of so.
We cut small branches from the scrub bush and pushed it as far as we could under the tyres and tried again. Still nothing.
Normally in Africa, as I have mentioned before when you stop, no matter where you are, people just seem to grow out of the ground. But not today. We were miles from anywhere, phone signal? Not a chance, and to cap it all the bush was so dense that if we did set off to find help we would never find the car again for days. And if and when we eventually did we would probably find it had either been used as a climbing frame or a toilet by the local Hippo population. And from all the tracks about there were thousands of them.
So we had no option but to stick with it and get it out. The next plan was jacking the vehicle and get something with a little more traction than jelly, right under the wheels. Now jacking a car with a bottle jack in mud was never going to be easy, it entailed getting down in the mud, digging a hole in the mud pushing a strong piece of wood down into the hole to place the jack on and trying to raise the car. There was no chance of getting under the axles so we had to jack on the chassis. Which as you can imagine raised the body but not the wheels. It was hot and filthy work, but after an hour we managed to get some branches under the wheels by jacking up and down, getting a better purchase each time. We laid a track of branches to the edge of the hollow and finally we were out. We were all by this time covered from head to toe in thick black mud.
It took another hour to get back to the tar road. We dropped of our guide where we had met him, gave him the equivalent of four days pay and got back to civilisation just before dark. In time for a shower and clean up before dinner and a well deserved beer.
We had not achieved our aim for that day but we had another African experience. The sights the sounds the wildlife the challenge, that all add up to change what may seem a fairly arduous task into an adventure. You just don’t seem to get that elsewhere in the world.
Denzil Bark
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