http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099358&l=38228&id=2606069
Friday, May 9, 2008
Victoria Falls Post
I've forgotten what number I'm on, so I think I'll start naming the posts.
I'm in Livingstone, which is Zambia's town on Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe's town is named Victoria Falls too. I'm also happy to say that this is the fastest and cheapest internet I've found yet in Africa. I'm currently loading my pictures, and they're loading fast.
I thought I'd be on an overnight bus from Lusaka, but I misjudged, and of course I never thought to ask, how long the bus ride would be. Instead of getting in early morning I came in Livingstone at 2:30am. So I didn't really sleep much a few nights ago, but I found a great hostel to stay at called Fawlty Towers. You can't go wrong with that name. The hostel has a pool, hot water(a luxury in Africa), free pancakes!, a very nice and friendly staff. It's still nowhere near Mayoka village, but I don't think anything ever will be.
The main thing I wanted to do, besides see the falls, was bunjee jump, so I looked into that first thing in the morning. What I discovered is that it's ridiculously overpriced, 110 US, and that advertising it as 111 meters is a bit misleading. The max height from canyon top to bottom of the zambezi in the area is 111 meters. The free fall on the bunjee is just over 70 meters, which is still something. Anyways, there's another activity you can do called a gorge swing. Just down the gorge from falls you can do this swing which is a bunjee jump, but than attached to an apparatus which than swings you across the gorge. The free fall is 65 meters, and the swing is pretty cool too. So I went for this instead of the bunjee, because for 100 dollars you get picked up, all the beers you can drink, lunch, and you can do the gorge swing as much as you want. A much, much better deal than the famous bunjee jump, which really milks the tourists for their money.
For most of the day I was the only person at the site, and I had a great doing the swing a good six times. It wears you out because you have to than walk out of the canyon below, which has a pretty steep climb out. There are also some ziplines across the canyon and some rapelling you can do, so I spent the whole day just jumping, swinging, or falling down canyon faces. It was an enormous amount of fun to say the least. The staff there were very friendly, and one guy, who was a rafting guide for a dozen or so years, had worked in California, and had been to Oregon a few times. It's nice to know that a Zambian has made it to Oregon, or just in general that an African has been a tourist in the US. You feel constant tourist guilt while in thirld world countries, so this made me feel less bad for a few minutes. I also asked him if anybody had ever rafted the Zambezi from the source to where it empties into the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. He said he was pretty sure nobody had, had never thought of doing it, but was going to get working on setting this up as a trip. I hope one day its possible to do this trip, which would be just amazing.
This morning I got up early and saw the falls. The peak water flow is from March to May, right now, and you can tell. The mist from the falls is viewable from Livingtone, some 8k away, and there's so much water right now that the mist prevents you from getting a full view of the falls. The mist is called Mosi o Tunya, which in the local language means Steam of Thunder. So, despite that the water is at its highest, this is not the best time to view the falls, which apparently is around August. Still, they're impressive falls, and very much worth going to if you're anywhere near them. Y'all can see the pictures in the album I'm posting. A lot of people think Victoria Falls is the biggest, widest, something biggest in the world. Well, it's not number one in any category regarding waterfalls. At 106 meters its twice as high as Niagra Falls, but nowhere near the tallest falls in the world. That goes to Angel Falls in Venezuela, which I've been to, and is 1000 meters high. I actually heard there's another falls in the area even higher, but it dries up in the dry season, so it doesn't get any credit. The falls with the highest amount of volume is Iguazu falls on the Argentina/Brazil border at 55 million litres per minute of water. Victoria Falls is around 6 million. I have heard a rumor that there's a falls on the Congo River, in Congo, that has even more water, but I need to do more research on that. And while it's very wide, over a kilometer, Victoria Falls is not the widest either. I found out today there's a waterfall in Laos over 10 kilometers wide. Ariel, Leora, I hope you both go there and take a picture for me. So Victoria Falls is very pretty, I'm sure more impressive when you can it all clearly too without all the mist, but it's not number for anything.
There are a few trails throughout the area, and one hike down into the gorge on the other side of the falls. Down in this gorge there was a local guy who, for a fee of course, will tell you about the geology, plants, nature, etc. of the area. The money goes towards paying for his education, supposedly, and I decided to give him a few bucks to find out some info on the area. While he does know quite a bit, I was more than a bit wary after my first question. On the way down into the gorge I saw a family of big rodent looking animals. I took a picture, and I showed him the picture and asked him what the name of the animal was. He paused for a second and than told me they were Koalas. I said I had seen them five minutes ago on this hike and there was no way they were Koalas. He laughed, and said he thought I was Australian (???), and thought I was showing him a picture of Koalas from Australia. I forget the name of the animal, which he than recognized, but it doesn't matter. I'm renaming them Zambian Koalas. I've posted the picture of them in the new album so y'all can see a family of Zambian Koalas too.
After seeing the falls from up close I went over the bridge spanning the gorge, just south of the falls, that links Zambia and Zimbabwe. The best view of the falls is from there, and I wanted to step over into Zimbabwe for a minute. Again, there is too much mist to get a clear view of the falls, but its cool to be so high over the Zambezi river, and I got to step into Zimbabwe for a minute. On the way out someone approached me about changing currency. I dismissed him, but than realized that I really wanted to see Zimbabwe currency with their insane inflation that's over 150,00% this year. He was holding a stack of 10,000,000 Zimbabwe Schilling notes. I asked him how much I could get for 2,000 Zambian Kwacha, which is about 50 US cents. After a little negotiating I got 100,000,000 Zimbabwe Schillings for 50 US cents. He said he had altogether 5 billion schillings in his stack of money. The quantities are just so unbelievably absurd, and its just sad that Mugabe is putting the country into a complete economic freefall. Livingstone at night is full of Zimbabwean women prostituting themselves just to be able to get some currency that doesn't lose its entire value overnight. Very, very sad what's happening to that country.
Well, that's all for this post. I'm going to go get some free pancakes and just relax for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I get on 24+ hours worth of bus rides going to the far north of the country to Mpulungu, which is Zambia's port city on Lake Tanganyika. I'm really excited to get there, which is the only thing that will help me get through the hellish day of buses, although my ipod helps too. Buses in Africa are infinitly worse than South America. I think one hour on a bus in Africa is equal to four hours on a South American bus. Mozambique has been the worse so far, so at least I'm not doing this ride there.
Oh, before I forget...I wanted to make a comment about Nsima, and this is primarily for Benjie and Tovi, who I know especially dislike the stuff. Nsima is a mash of either maize or cassava, and its the main food in pretty much all of sub saharan Africa. It's called something slightly different everywhere you go, but its the same food everywhere. It's really disgusting. It has no flavor, which makes it all the more surprising on how bad it is. I avoid it as much as possible, but in Zambia there's very little rice, so you have to bite the bullet and eat nsima more than you would like. On my first night in Zambia I had been travelling all the way from Nkhata Bay in Malawi and I was really hungry. Sure enough the only option in the town we were in was nsima. Normally when you're starving, and I remember being quite hungry, anything will taste good. Well nsima puts that theory to waste, as it was still pretty awful food. I've been meaning to write that in one of the blog posts and kept forgetting. Alright, this the real end of this post.
ate mais, Ben
picture link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099358&l=38228&id=2606069
I'm in Livingstone, which is Zambia's town on Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe's town is named Victoria Falls too. I'm also happy to say that this is the fastest and cheapest internet I've found yet in Africa. I'm currently loading my pictures, and they're loading fast.
I thought I'd be on an overnight bus from Lusaka, but I misjudged, and of course I never thought to ask, how long the bus ride would be. Instead of getting in early morning I came in Livingstone at 2:30am. So I didn't really sleep much a few nights ago, but I found a great hostel to stay at called Fawlty Towers. You can't go wrong with that name. The hostel has a pool, hot water(a luxury in Africa), free pancakes!, a very nice and friendly staff. It's still nowhere near Mayoka village, but I don't think anything ever will be.
The main thing I wanted to do, besides see the falls, was bunjee jump, so I looked into that first thing in the morning. What I discovered is that it's ridiculously overpriced, 110 US, and that advertising it as 111 meters is a bit misleading. The max height from canyon top to bottom of the zambezi in the area is 111 meters. The free fall on the bunjee is just over 70 meters, which is still something. Anyways, there's another activity you can do called a gorge swing. Just down the gorge from falls you can do this swing which is a bunjee jump, but than attached to an apparatus which than swings you across the gorge. The free fall is 65 meters, and the swing is pretty cool too. So I went for this instead of the bunjee, because for 100 dollars you get picked up, all the beers you can drink, lunch, and you can do the gorge swing as much as you want. A much, much better deal than the famous bunjee jump, which really milks the tourists for their money.
For most of the day I was the only person at the site, and I had a great doing the swing a good six times. It wears you out because you have to than walk out of the canyon below, which has a pretty steep climb out. There are also some ziplines across the canyon and some rapelling you can do, so I spent the whole day just jumping, swinging, or falling down canyon faces. It was an enormous amount of fun to say the least. The staff there were very friendly, and one guy, who was a rafting guide for a dozen or so years, had worked in California, and had been to Oregon a few times. It's nice to know that a Zambian has made it to Oregon, or just in general that an African has been a tourist in the US. You feel constant tourist guilt while in thirld world countries, so this made me feel less bad for a few minutes. I also asked him if anybody had ever rafted the Zambezi from the source to where it empties into the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. He said he was pretty sure nobody had, had never thought of doing it, but was going to get working on setting this up as a trip. I hope one day its possible to do this trip, which would be just amazing.
This morning I got up early and saw the falls. The peak water flow is from March to May, right now, and you can tell. The mist from the falls is viewable from Livingtone, some 8k away, and there's so much water right now that the mist prevents you from getting a full view of the falls. The mist is called Mosi o Tunya, which in the local language means Steam of Thunder. So, despite that the water is at its highest, this is not the best time to view the falls, which apparently is around August. Still, they're impressive falls, and very much worth going to if you're anywhere near them. Y'all can see the pictures in the album I'm posting. A lot of people think Victoria Falls is the biggest, widest, something biggest in the world. Well, it's not number one in any category regarding waterfalls. At 106 meters its twice as high as Niagra Falls, but nowhere near the tallest falls in the world. That goes to Angel Falls in Venezuela, which I've been to, and is 1000 meters high. I actually heard there's another falls in the area even higher, but it dries up in the dry season, so it doesn't get any credit. The falls with the highest amount of volume is Iguazu falls on the Argentina/Brazil border at 55 million litres per minute of water. Victoria Falls is around 6 million. I have heard a rumor that there's a falls on the Congo River, in Congo, that has even more water, but I need to do more research on that. And while it's very wide, over a kilometer, Victoria Falls is not the widest either. I found out today there's a waterfall in Laos over 10 kilometers wide. Ariel, Leora, I hope you both go there and take a picture for me. So Victoria Falls is very pretty, I'm sure more impressive when you can it all clearly too without all the mist, but it's not number for anything.
There are a few trails throughout the area, and one hike down into the gorge on the other side of the falls. Down in this gorge there was a local guy who, for a fee of course, will tell you about the geology, plants, nature, etc. of the area. The money goes towards paying for his education, supposedly, and I decided to give him a few bucks to find out some info on the area. While he does know quite a bit, I was more than a bit wary after my first question. On the way down into the gorge I saw a family of big rodent looking animals. I took a picture, and I showed him the picture and asked him what the name of the animal was. He paused for a second and than told me they were Koalas. I said I had seen them five minutes ago on this hike and there was no way they were Koalas. He laughed, and said he thought I was Australian (???), and thought I was showing him a picture of Koalas from Australia. I forget the name of the animal, which he than recognized, but it doesn't matter. I'm renaming them Zambian Koalas. I've posted the picture of them in the new album so y'all can see a family of Zambian Koalas too.
After seeing the falls from up close I went over the bridge spanning the gorge, just south of the falls, that links Zambia and Zimbabwe. The best view of the falls is from there, and I wanted to step over into Zimbabwe for a minute. Again, there is too much mist to get a clear view of the falls, but its cool to be so high over the Zambezi river, and I got to step into Zimbabwe for a minute. On the way out someone approached me about changing currency. I dismissed him, but than realized that I really wanted to see Zimbabwe currency with their insane inflation that's over 150,00% this year. He was holding a stack of 10,000,000 Zimbabwe Schilling notes. I asked him how much I could get for 2,000 Zambian Kwacha, which is about 50 US cents. After a little negotiating I got 100,000,000 Zimbabwe Schillings for 50 US cents. He said he had altogether 5 billion schillings in his stack of money. The quantities are just so unbelievably absurd, and its just sad that Mugabe is putting the country into a complete economic freefall. Livingstone at night is full of Zimbabwean women prostituting themselves just to be able to get some currency that doesn't lose its entire value overnight. Very, very sad what's happening to that country.
Well, that's all for this post. I'm going to go get some free pancakes and just relax for the rest of the day. Tomorrow I get on 24+ hours worth of bus rides going to the far north of the country to Mpulungu, which is Zambia's port city on Lake Tanganyika. I'm really excited to get there, which is the only thing that will help me get through the hellish day of buses, although my ipod helps too. Buses in Africa are infinitly worse than South America. I think one hour on a bus in Africa is equal to four hours on a South American bus. Mozambique has been the worse so far, so at least I'm not doing this ride there.
Oh, before I forget...I wanted to make a comment about Nsima, and this is primarily for Benjie and Tovi, who I know especially dislike the stuff. Nsima is a mash of either maize or cassava, and its the main food in pretty much all of sub saharan Africa. It's called something slightly different everywhere you go, but its the same food everywhere. It's really disgusting. It has no flavor, which makes it all the more surprising on how bad it is. I avoid it as much as possible, but in Zambia there's very little rice, so you have to bite the bullet and eat nsima more than you would like. On my first night in Zambia I had been travelling all the way from Nkhata Bay in Malawi and I was really hungry. Sure enough the only option in the town we were in was nsima. Normally when you're starving, and I remember being quite hungry, anything will taste good. Well nsima puts that theory to waste, as it was still pretty awful food. I've been meaning to write that in one of the blog posts and kept forgetting. Alright, this the real end of this post.
ate mais, Ben
picture link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099358&l=38228&id=2606069
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
picture links
so in the end i was able to upload a few pictures. here are the links, or view them on my facebook profile
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099173&l=83401&id=2606069
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099170&l=cd045&id=2606069
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099173&l=83401&id=2606069
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2099170&l=cd045&id=2606069
Post 8
Hi, after reading my post from yesterday I realized that quite a few parts might seem unclear and there were a few things I wanted to add. So here's part two of this post.
First off, regarding the chief in Congo and land in Zambia and local populations rights in general. The Lunda chief that Stuart and I met with is not some person wielding a spear and dressed in whatever traditional clothing might have been. He's an older guy, dressed in pants and a buttoned down shirt. He had a cane and his house was quite unassuming. In Zambia all the land, outside of the big cities, pretty much belongs to a chief of the local tribe. In order to buy land in Zambia you have to first deal with the local chief and come to some kind of understanding, usually monetary, and than deal with the Zambian authorities. That's just the way it works, and I believe it is similar in Malawi, Mozambique, and I imagine most of the countries I'll visit.
When Stuart went to visit him it was mostly to discuss what kind of monetary arrangement was to be put in place regarding the splitting of game hunting revenue at Nkwaji and to have some input into which local people would be employed. If you don't go through the chief than you're going to have problems, although the people who the chief chooses know they don't have to work too hard because they have his backing. It's not the most conducive policy to getting things done fast, but it's kind of the only way to go about doing things.
The other thing I wanted to clarify a little more was the location of the farm and Nkwaji site. There is a tri border area with Zambia, Congo, and Angola and both of the sites are within a few kilometers of the triple border. You can easily drive into Angola or Congo without realizing it, and there are kind of token border agents at one post only, so it's basically accepted that people will go back and forth as they choose. For the most part the people who pass the border are the Lunda, who historically have lived in the region and the borders put in place by colonial powers had no logic to it. It divided up their people, and they don't really view the border as defining their nationality. They're Lunda first, and whatever country was imposed upon them second.
I also forgot to write about how nice the Lunda people I met were. Most did not speak any English, but there were several that spoke quite well. Everyone was quite friendly, although it's a little unnerving that they viewed me, because of my association with Stuart, as a boss. They greeted me like bwana, or master/boss/chief, which meant a half kneel and they bowed their heads to me upon the initial greeting. I felt half like a slave master, reminding me of a little like the family I first lived with in Salvador, Brazil, where there were three servants living in the house. Anyways, very nice people, although Malawi still takes the cake. From everything I've heard Malawians are the nicest people that I'll meet on this trip.
I also read quite a bit over the last week. I did a few book exchanges while at the hostel in Lusaka and also bought a book. I read Bill Bryson's A History of Nearly Everything which I strongly recommend. He basically gives a history of all of science, and does it in his very witty writing style. He's just an amazing author and can make any subject a fascinating read. I bought a book called Gun, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He's a UCLA professor of Geography and this book is about how it came to be that some peoples conquered others. He tries to make this discussion scientific and quantitative and show through facts how it came to be that the Incas were conquered by europeans and not the other way around amongst other examples. He shows how available crops, animals, population density, and disease explain it all. It's interesting, but it takes 600 some pages for him to explain it all. He could have condensed it a bit more in my opinion, but still an interesting book. I also read a Toni Morrison book, Paradise, which I think I liked. I'm not sure I get it, and if anyone's read it, please let me know. It was also really nice to just read, something I haven't done anywhere near enough of in recent months.
Finally, a little more about Zambia. One telling sign for me is a billboard in Lusaka for a bank. It says "If you think you have to use bribery to do business in Zambia, think again" That a bank uses this idea shows how pervasive bribery is here. From what I understand from talking with Stuart, the family that owns Hillwood farm, and a few other folks its just understood that without bribes nothing gets done. This is why I don't see Zambia becoming the Chile of Africa. Not that Chile is without corruption, but the country prides itself on its relatively low levels of corruption. Its police force may be the least corrupt in the world. Too much of the copper money in Zambia will just dissapear and prevent the country from realizing its potential. Zambia also has huge agricultural potential with vast areas of land suitable for all sorts of crops, but its potential is far from being realized. There is no capital to start this up, and not enough trained workers as well. Many of the white farmers from Zimbabwe have moved to Zambia to start farms, so this is changing a little, but not enough. Zambia should be able to feed the continent, yet in all but a few years of its history since indepedence in the 60's its had to recieve food aid. Another ridiculous issue regarding this is that it sells a lot of its maize to the Congo. The price for maize in the Congo is five times that of Zambia, so instead of feeding its own people, the country sells huge amount of its food to their neighbor. Who knows where this money goes, but I sincerely doubt as much goes back into govt. projects as it should. The country can also get away with this, because the UN, World Food Programme, and other groups pump food aid into the country. They can't tell Zambia to stop selling its food and feed its own people, because they Zambia won't and if they stop giving food aid it only means people will starve, not that Zambia will start feeding itself. A similar story happens in quite a few different countries in the area, and one of the reasons I'm becoming really disallusioned with all of these foreign aid groups. I'm not blaming the food aid groups, because its really the government corruption that creates the situation, but their existence makes it a lot eaiser for the government to put more money in their pockets knowing there will always be the aid groups to pick up the slack.
Well, I'm going to go to Victoria Falls in a few hours, and tomorrow I'll be at the falls. When I'm done at the falls I'm going to take a few crazy bus rides all the way to the northern tip of the country to Mpulungu. From there I take a boat on Lake Tanganyika to a chimpanzee park in Tanzania with the largest population of chimps in the world. Its' a really remote park, and I'm excited to hike around there for a few days. The boat only leaves on Friday, so I'm going to spend almost a week in the Mpulungu area exploring the Zambian side of the lake. There are some other huge waterfalls and nice hiking. I'm told there's good internet connections there so I'll try to load pictures when I get to Mpulungu, if not when I get out of the Tanzania park to its lake port city of Kigoma in a few weeks.
Tchau, B
First off, regarding the chief in Congo and land in Zambia and local populations rights in general. The Lunda chief that Stuart and I met with is not some person wielding a spear and dressed in whatever traditional clothing might have been. He's an older guy, dressed in pants and a buttoned down shirt. He had a cane and his house was quite unassuming. In Zambia all the land, outside of the big cities, pretty much belongs to a chief of the local tribe. In order to buy land in Zambia you have to first deal with the local chief and come to some kind of understanding, usually monetary, and than deal with the Zambian authorities. That's just the way it works, and I believe it is similar in Malawi, Mozambique, and I imagine most of the countries I'll visit.
When Stuart went to visit him it was mostly to discuss what kind of monetary arrangement was to be put in place regarding the splitting of game hunting revenue at Nkwaji and to have some input into which local people would be employed. If you don't go through the chief than you're going to have problems, although the people who the chief chooses know they don't have to work too hard because they have his backing. It's not the most conducive policy to getting things done fast, but it's kind of the only way to go about doing things.
The other thing I wanted to clarify a little more was the location of the farm and Nkwaji site. There is a tri border area with Zambia, Congo, and Angola and both of the sites are within a few kilometers of the triple border. You can easily drive into Angola or Congo without realizing it, and there are kind of token border agents at one post only, so it's basically accepted that people will go back and forth as they choose. For the most part the people who pass the border are the Lunda, who historically have lived in the region and the borders put in place by colonial powers had no logic to it. It divided up their people, and they don't really view the border as defining their nationality. They're Lunda first, and whatever country was imposed upon them second.
I also forgot to write about how nice the Lunda people I met were. Most did not speak any English, but there were several that spoke quite well. Everyone was quite friendly, although it's a little unnerving that they viewed me, because of my association with Stuart, as a boss. They greeted me like bwana, or master/boss/chief, which meant a half kneel and they bowed their heads to me upon the initial greeting. I felt half like a slave master, reminding me of a little like the family I first lived with in Salvador, Brazil, where there were three servants living in the house. Anyways, very nice people, although Malawi still takes the cake. From everything I've heard Malawians are the nicest people that I'll meet on this trip.
I also read quite a bit over the last week. I did a few book exchanges while at the hostel in Lusaka and also bought a book. I read Bill Bryson's A History of Nearly Everything which I strongly recommend. He basically gives a history of all of science, and does it in his very witty writing style. He's just an amazing author and can make any subject a fascinating read. I bought a book called Gun, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He's a UCLA professor of Geography and this book is about how it came to be that some peoples conquered others. He tries to make this discussion scientific and quantitative and show through facts how it came to be that the Incas were conquered by europeans and not the other way around amongst other examples. He shows how available crops, animals, population density, and disease explain it all. It's interesting, but it takes 600 some pages for him to explain it all. He could have condensed it a bit more in my opinion, but still an interesting book. I also read a Toni Morrison book, Paradise, which I think I liked. I'm not sure I get it, and if anyone's read it, please let me know. It was also really nice to just read, something I haven't done anywhere near enough of in recent months.
Finally, a little more about Zambia. One telling sign for me is a billboard in Lusaka for a bank. It says "If you think you have to use bribery to do business in Zambia, think again" That a bank uses this idea shows how pervasive bribery is here. From what I understand from talking with Stuart, the family that owns Hillwood farm, and a few other folks its just understood that without bribes nothing gets done. This is why I don't see Zambia becoming the Chile of Africa. Not that Chile is without corruption, but the country prides itself on its relatively low levels of corruption. Its police force may be the least corrupt in the world. Too much of the copper money in Zambia will just dissapear and prevent the country from realizing its potential. Zambia also has huge agricultural potential with vast areas of land suitable for all sorts of crops, but its potential is far from being realized. There is no capital to start this up, and not enough trained workers as well. Many of the white farmers from Zimbabwe have moved to Zambia to start farms, so this is changing a little, but not enough. Zambia should be able to feed the continent, yet in all but a few years of its history since indepedence in the 60's its had to recieve food aid. Another ridiculous issue regarding this is that it sells a lot of its maize to the Congo. The price for maize in the Congo is five times that of Zambia, so instead of feeding its own people, the country sells huge amount of its food to their neighbor. Who knows where this money goes, but I sincerely doubt as much goes back into govt. projects as it should. The country can also get away with this, because the UN, World Food Programme, and other groups pump food aid into the country. They can't tell Zambia to stop selling its food and feed its own people, because they Zambia won't and if they stop giving food aid it only means people will starve, not that Zambia will start feeding itself. A similar story happens in quite a few different countries in the area, and one of the reasons I'm becoming really disallusioned with all of these foreign aid groups. I'm not blaming the food aid groups, because its really the government corruption that creates the situation, but their existence makes it a lot eaiser for the government to put more money in their pockets knowing there will always be the aid groups to pick up the slack.
Well, I'm going to go to Victoria Falls in a few hours, and tomorrow I'll be at the falls. When I'm done at the falls I'm going to take a few crazy bus rides all the way to the northern tip of the country to Mpulungu. From there I take a boat on Lake Tanganyika to a chimpanzee park in Tanzania with the largest population of chimps in the world. Its' a really remote park, and I'm excited to hike around there for a few days. The boat only leaves on Friday, so I'm going to spend almost a week in the Mpulungu area exploring the Zambian side of the lake. There are some other huge waterfalls and nice hiking. I'm told there's good internet connections there so I'll try to load pictures when I get to Mpulungu, if not when I get out of the Tanzania park to its lake port city of Kigoma in a few weeks.
Tchau, B
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Post 7
I'm dedicating this post to the Sharabbq on May 30th, which I have RSVP'd for.
Anyways, I'm back in Lusaka after a week in the Northwest of Zambia. After an extra day in Lusaka because of car problems the three of us finally made it out on the road. We drove north to the region of Zambia called the copperbelt the first day. Zambia is very rich in minerals, especially copper, and most of the countries revenues come from copper. This region is where the majority of the industry in the country is, its oil refineries, better hospitals, pretty much everything. The two main cities, which we passed through, of Kitwe and Ndola look pretty nice. They have wide streets, modernish looking buildings, and you don't feel like you're in a poor country. Just outside of Kitwe was the city of Chingola, which has copper mines literally on the edge of the city, which alarmed me environmentally. In Chile I visited what is the world's largest open pit copper mine, and the city next door was evacuated because of environmental issues. So I can't imagine it's too healthy to grow up in Chingola.
There are other copper mines being opened up all over this region and exploration is being done further north and west, where we were headed. Zambia reminds me of Chile in a few regards. They're both very large, sparsely populated countries, with tons of copper. Chile is the economic success story of south america, and while there are too many issues in Zambia, in my opinion, to see it reach Chilean economic levels, who knows. If the price of copper keeps rising, and there's sound economic planning, than Zambia could be pretty well off. On top of copper, there are diamonds, and quite a few other minerals in the area. In one city, just stopping to be some oranges, we were approached by some folks trying to illegally sell us some mineral i'd never heard of. Apparently, illegal mining is a big thing in the area. The area is huge, forested, and there's not too much law and order, so its almost an anything goes atmosphere.
At the end of our first day we pulled into a Chimpanzee reserve called Chimfunji, or something like that. There's a white Zambian family that decades ago was given some hurt chimpanzees that the police got while stopping smugglers from the Congo. The police gave the family the chimpanzees and ever since they've been rehabilitating sick chimpanzees from whomever will give them to them. Most are ones taken from smugglers from the Congo. The family is actually quite mean, don't like tourists, but need them to help pay for the chimp farm. Fortunately they hired a Zimbabwean family to run the campsite, lodge section and they were quite nice and very helpful. We came in late at night, and they got a fire going for us right away, and heated up water for showers.
The sunrise the next morning was absolutely incredible. The campsite is right on the river which divides Zambia and the Congo in the area. I'll post pictures tomorrow, so you can see how amazing the sunrise was. That night we saw this city glow in the distance, which turns out to be the major Congo city of Lumbambashi. It's a huge copper city, and the mines in that area make Zambia's look like scraps in comparison. The instability has prevented the Congo from really taking advantage of their mineral wealth, but that country is loaded with natural resources.
The next morning we saw the chimps in the reserve, and their pet hippo. They have a hippo that has been there since she was born, and is basically tame, which for a hippo is a heck of a thing. They're quite mean animals, apparently. The Zambian family was again fairly dismissive of us in the morning, so we left and kept on our way.
Our first destination on this trip was supposed to be a place called Hillwood farm. We didn't know much about it, just that it was supposed to be really impressive, and that the region was nice. We were hoping to get there that night, but the roads were in such bad condition we couldn't make much progress, and spent the night on the side of the road in the Zambian bush. The next day we finally made it to the farm, and what a farm it is. It's massive first of all, there's a game hunting ecoreserve in the middle of it, and it's as modern a farm as I've ever seen. All of this is great, but they were closed for tourists for a few more weeks. Fortuantely for us we met up with Stuart, another white Zimbabwean, who was working for the farm. He was just leaving to go to a different reserve, operated by the same farm, about 70 kilometers away. He said it was super remote, really pretty, had a river right by the site, and we could stay as long as we wanted for free. So, off we were following Stuart to the site called Nkwaji.
Nkwaji means Fish Eagle, in the Lunda language, the language of the local people, who are called, no surprise, the Lunda. The area is also being slated to be a hunting reserve, and Stuart is building fences and other facilities for the area. The site really is about as remote as it gets, and its just stunning. Semi-tropical forests, big grasslands, and just really stunning. The next day I went hiking in the area on the footpaths and 4x4 trails that go through the area. Went through quite a few villages, and just had a great time in the area. Stuart set up a canoe trip for the three of us for the next day with his workers. Stuart also took us to all these cool spots in the area, and was just thrilled to have company. He's been there for a few months, pretty much on his own, and was so hospitable to us the whole time we were there.
So the next day he took us to the nearby river and three of his workers came with some dugout canoes. It was kind of like Heart of Darkness light. We paddled through rainforest, mangroves, and some really nice scenery. We paddled a lot though, and mostly not straight. Dugout canoes are not easy things to maneuver, and a lot of the time was spent avoiding going into mangroves, and other places we could get stuck in. Going upstream was also not so easy, but was a nice workout. After paddling for about 3.5 hours upstream, we got to finally enjoy a nice cruise back to the starting point. For all of that time paddling, we only got about 20 minutes to float back downstream. We were stunned by how short of a distance we made paddled, but it makes sense with all the time spent just trying to direct the canoe in the right direction. It was a great time though.
Oh, back to mining for a second. Throughout my time up in this area I saw lots of light aircraft carrying drones behind them. Apparently the drones are surveying the area for copper and other minerals. Again, there is a lot of copper, and lot of people trying to take advantage of the wealth.
There's not much to do a Nkwaji at night, and Stuart has gone a little stir crazy in his time there. His main source of entertainment is shooting bottles filled with gasoline into fires. He's got this huge shotgun with him, and we spent our nights shooting stuff. Bottles with water we'd throw, like clay pigeons, and shoot in midair. At night we'd shoot these gas filled bottles, which made a huge blast, but at the same time the blast for the shotgun was enough to immediate extinguish the fire and the small fire we set up behind the bottle. It was a lot of fun, and I'm not a bad shot. I hit almost every water bottle in midair that was thrown for me.
So, after a few days at Nkwaji Tom and Omer wanted to continue further south in western Zambia, and I didn't want to go. I was having a great time being in Nkwaji, and I couldn't bear the thought of being in a jeep for a few more days. So, after talking to Stuart, I decided to stay at Nkwaji for another day and than go back to Hillwood Farm for the weekend. From there I'd head back to Lusaka, where I am now, and than go to Victoria Falls on my own. So Tom and Omer went off, and I hope they're having a great time, and stayed at Nkwaji.
My last day at Nkwaji I went hiking again, and found these cool fruits that are the root of a plant. The hard shell holds a really sweet fruit, which nobody could tell me the name of, but guarenteed me were safe to eat. That day I also took a half day trip with Stuart to visit the local chief. The local chiefs have to kind of approve everything, otherwise your bound to have certain problems. The thing about this chief is that he lives in the Congo. So, off we went through roads not monitored by immigration officers to the chiefs village in the Congo. Because the chief likes the reserve, and everyone knows that Stuart works for the reserve we were actually as safe as one could be in the area. We went the chiefs village, had lunch with him, and headed back for another night of shooting things. So it was amazingly cool to have gone to the Congo, but it was just an hour drive from where we were, and was kind of anti climactic. Still, I can now say I've been to the Congo.
The next morning I left Nkwaji and headed back to Hillwood farm with Stuart. Like I said before, the farm is enormous, and there are quite a few large houses on it. Stuart, and a peacecorp volunteer have one to themselves. There are quite a few extra rooms, so I got myself a room in a villa for this past weekend. The farm also raises cattle and sheep, and Stuart gets a certain amount of meat for free. So this past weekend I had steak and lampchops, and really good ones too. The house we stayed in has an orchard around it with guavas, oranges, and avocadoes, so i picked those fresh from the trees each day too. It was a really nice weekend to stay the least.
During the day Stuart took me around the game reserve. All the wildlife in the area has long sinced been poached or killed for food. So the reserve is specially fenced off and antelopes, buffalo, zebra, and all sorts of stuff has been reintroduced. This area once had lion, rhino, and elephant too, but the farm has not reintroduced that because they don't have enough room. Rhino might come back though. Basically super rich people spend an enormous amount of money to come shoot them, and that's how the farm supports itself these days. A zebra costs 50k US to kill! Rhinos, if they add them, would be in the 200k US range!!! So some people have got a lot of extra money lying around. I was initially against this whole hunting thing, but it actually does quite a bit of good. The local communities always get a cut, going back to the keeping the chief happy thing, and this way at least the animals are back in the area, even if its just in a reserve. Hunting concessions in general also keep poaching down, because you can hunt legally, and the local people have an interest in keeping tourists coming to the area. So they dont' engage in poaching anywhere near as much as in areas where sanctioned hunting in prohibited.
Anyways, a little about the farm. The farm was started over a hundred years ago by missionaries from Britain that came originally to Angola. They came across the country and crossed the Angolan border and set up a hospital where the farm is today. The hospital is still there, and is apparently the best in the region. People come from Angola and Congo for treatment there, and its still run and funded by missionaries, from Canada mostly. There's also a prestigious boarding school on the farm. The school, called Sakeji, is ridiculous. Huge swimming pools, and air strip, modern buildings, science labs, its quite weird to see it in this far out location. Another really interesting feature of the farm is the footpath going across the game reserve. The footpath is hundreds of years old, and was used by slave traders to take slaves from the Congo to the Angolan coast. The farm still lets local people use it as they pass through the area from village to village.
Stuart took me into the reserve to the animals, and I saw almost everything they have, except the two really cool things, the zebra and sitatunga. Sitatungas are some weird antelope animal that submerges itself in water most of the day. I missed both because I was off looking at plants. There are tree ferns and iris all over the place, and i was looking at these when Stuart says he say the zebra and sitatunga. I was thrilled to see the tree ferns and iris though, and I don't care for a second i missed out on the animals. I think I'll be able to see at least zebras later while in Uganda. The forests in this area full out tropical, and really cool to see and hike through.
Well, after an amazing, relaxing, and well fed weekend at Hillwood farm I hitchhiked my way out of the farm back to Lusaka. Its been two long, not comfortable days, but its over. So now, I'm going to go to Victorial falls before I head north to Tanzania. I'm going to get an overnight bus or train tomorrow and spend a day or two before heading back to Lusaka and going back north. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow, and I'll post the links in another blog post. I'll probably remember a few more things I forgot to put on this post. All is going well, and I'm excited for Victoria Falls and a big bunjee jump.
Hope everyone is doing well, and Happy 60th to Israel!
Anyways, I'm back in Lusaka after a week in the Northwest of Zambia. After an extra day in Lusaka because of car problems the three of us finally made it out on the road. We drove north to the region of Zambia called the copperbelt the first day. Zambia is very rich in minerals, especially copper, and most of the countries revenues come from copper. This region is where the majority of the industry in the country is, its oil refineries, better hospitals, pretty much everything. The two main cities, which we passed through, of Kitwe and Ndola look pretty nice. They have wide streets, modernish looking buildings, and you don't feel like you're in a poor country. Just outside of Kitwe was the city of Chingola, which has copper mines literally on the edge of the city, which alarmed me environmentally. In Chile I visited what is the world's largest open pit copper mine, and the city next door was evacuated because of environmental issues. So I can't imagine it's too healthy to grow up in Chingola.
There are other copper mines being opened up all over this region and exploration is being done further north and west, where we were headed. Zambia reminds me of Chile in a few regards. They're both very large, sparsely populated countries, with tons of copper. Chile is the economic success story of south america, and while there are too many issues in Zambia, in my opinion, to see it reach Chilean economic levels, who knows. If the price of copper keeps rising, and there's sound economic planning, than Zambia could be pretty well off. On top of copper, there are diamonds, and quite a few other minerals in the area. In one city, just stopping to be some oranges, we were approached by some folks trying to illegally sell us some mineral i'd never heard of. Apparently, illegal mining is a big thing in the area. The area is huge, forested, and there's not too much law and order, so its almost an anything goes atmosphere.
At the end of our first day we pulled into a Chimpanzee reserve called Chimfunji, or something like that. There's a white Zambian family that decades ago was given some hurt chimpanzees that the police got while stopping smugglers from the Congo. The police gave the family the chimpanzees and ever since they've been rehabilitating sick chimpanzees from whomever will give them to them. Most are ones taken from smugglers from the Congo. The family is actually quite mean, don't like tourists, but need them to help pay for the chimp farm. Fortunately they hired a Zimbabwean family to run the campsite, lodge section and they were quite nice and very helpful. We came in late at night, and they got a fire going for us right away, and heated up water for showers.
The sunrise the next morning was absolutely incredible. The campsite is right on the river which divides Zambia and the Congo in the area. I'll post pictures tomorrow, so you can see how amazing the sunrise was. That night we saw this city glow in the distance, which turns out to be the major Congo city of Lumbambashi. It's a huge copper city, and the mines in that area make Zambia's look like scraps in comparison. The instability has prevented the Congo from really taking advantage of their mineral wealth, but that country is loaded with natural resources.
The next morning we saw the chimps in the reserve, and their pet hippo. They have a hippo that has been there since she was born, and is basically tame, which for a hippo is a heck of a thing. They're quite mean animals, apparently. The Zambian family was again fairly dismissive of us in the morning, so we left and kept on our way.
Our first destination on this trip was supposed to be a place called Hillwood farm. We didn't know much about it, just that it was supposed to be really impressive, and that the region was nice. We were hoping to get there that night, but the roads were in such bad condition we couldn't make much progress, and spent the night on the side of the road in the Zambian bush. The next day we finally made it to the farm, and what a farm it is. It's massive first of all, there's a game hunting ecoreserve in the middle of it, and it's as modern a farm as I've ever seen. All of this is great, but they were closed for tourists for a few more weeks. Fortuantely for us we met up with Stuart, another white Zimbabwean, who was working for the farm. He was just leaving to go to a different reserve, operated by the same farm, about 70 kilometers away. He said it was super remote, really pretty, had a river right by the site, and we could stay as long as we wanted for free. So, off we were following Stuart to the site called Nkwaji.
Nkwaji means Fish Eagle, in the Lunda language, the language of the local people, who are called, no surprise, the Lunda. The area is also being slated to be a hunting reserve, and Stuart is building fences and other facilities for the area. The site really is about as remote as it gets, and its just stunning. Semi-tropical forests, big grasslands, and just really stunning. The next day I went hiking in the area on the footpaths and 4x4 trails that go through the area. Went through quite a few villages, and just had a great time in the area. Stuart set up a canoe trip for the three of us for the next day with his workers. Stuart also took us to all these cool spots in the area, and was just thrilled to have company. He's been there for a few months, pretty much on his own, and was so hospitable to us the whole time we were there.
So the next day he took us to the nearby river and three of his workers came with some dugout canoes. It was kind of like Heart of Darkness light. We paddled through rainforest, mangroves, and some really nice scenery. We paddled a lot though, and mostly not straight. Dugout canoes are not easy things to maneuver, and a lot of the time was spent avoiding going into mangroves, and other places we could get stuck in. Going upstream was also not so easy, but was a nice workout. After paddling for about 3.5 hours upstream, we got to finally enjoy a nice cruise back to the starting point. For all of that time paddling, we only got about 20 minutes to float back downstream. We were stunned by how short of a distance we made paddled, but it makes sense with all the time spent just trying to direct the canoe in the right direction. It was a great time though.
Oh, back to mining for a second. Throughout my time up in this area I saw lots of light aircraft carrying drones behind them. Apparently the drones are surveying the area for copper and other minerals. Again, there is a lot of copper, and lot of people trying to take advantage of the wealth.
There's not much to do a Nkwaji at night, and Stuart has gone a little stir crazy in his time there. His main source of entertainment is shooting bottles filled with gasoline into fires. He's got this huge shotgun with him, and we spent our nights shooting stuff. Bottles with water we'd throw, like clay pigeons, and shoot in midair. At night we'd shoot these gas filled bottles, which made a huge blast, but at the same time the blast for the shotgun was enough to immediate extinguish the fire and the small fire we set up behind the bottle. It was a lot of fun, and I'm not a bad shot. I hit almost every water bottle in midair that was thrown for me.
So, after a few days at Nkwaji Tom and Omer wanted to continue further south in western Zambia, and I didn't want to go. I was having a great time being in Nkwaji, and I couldn't bear the thought of being in a jeep for a few more days. So, after talking to Stuart, I decided to stay at Nkwaji for another day and than go back to Hillwood Farm for the weekend. From there I'd head back to Lusaka, where I am now, and than go to Victoria Falls on my own. So Tom and Omer went off, and I hope they're having a great time, and stayed at Nkwaji.
My last day at Nkwaji I went hiking again, and found these cool fruits that are the root of a plant. The hard shell holds a really sweet fruit, which nobody could tell me the name of, but guarenteed me were safe to eat. That day I also took a half day trip with Stuart to visit the local chief. The local chiefs have to kind of approve everything, otherwise your bound to have certain problems. The thing about this chief is that he lives in the Congo. So, off we went through roads not monitored by immigration officers to the chiefs village in the Congo. Because the chief likes the reserve, and everyone knows that Stuart works for the reserve we were actually as safe as one could be in the area. We went the chiefs village, had lunch with him, and headed back for another night of shooting things. So it was amazingly cool to have gone to the Congo, but it was just an hour drive from where we were, and was kind of anti climactic. Still, I can now say I've been to the Congo.
The next morning I left Nkwaji and headed back to Hillwood farm with Stuart. Like I said before, the farm is enormous, and there are quite a few large houses on it. Stuart, and a peacecorp volunteer have one to themselves. There are quite a few extra rooms, so I got myself a room in a villa for this past weekend. The farm also raises cattle and sheep, and Stuart gets a certain amount of meat for free. So this past weekend I had steak and lampchops, and really good ones too. The house we stayed in has an orchard around it with guavas, oranges, and avocadoes, so i picked those fresh from the trees each day too. It was a really nice weekend to stay the least.
During the day Stuart took me around the game reserve. All the wildlife in the area has long sinced been poached or killed for food. So the reserve is specially fenced off and antelopes, buffalo, zebra, and all sorts of stuff has been reintroduced. This area once had lion, rhino, and elephant too, but the farm has not reintroduced that because they don't have enough room. Rhino might come back though. Basically super rich people spend an enormous amount of money to come shoot them, and that's how the farm supports itself these days. A zebra costs 50k US to kill! Rhinos, if they add them, would be in the 200k US range!!! So some people have got a lot of extra money lying around. I was initially against this whole hunting thing, but it actually does quite a bit of good. The local communities always get a cut, going back to the keeping the chief happy thing, and this way at least the animals are back in the area, even if its just in a reserve. Hunting concessions in general also keep poaching down, because you can hunt legally, and the local people have an interest in keeping tourists coming to the area. So they dont' engage in poaching anywhere near as much as in areas where sanctioned hunting in prohibited.
Anyways, a little about the farm. The farm was started over a hundred years ago by missionaries from Britain that came originally to Angola. They came across the country and crossed the Angolan border and set up a hospital where the farm is today. The hospital is still there, and is apparently the best in the region. People come from Angola and Congo for treatment there, and its still run and funded by missionaries, from Canada mostly. There's also a prestigious boarding school on the farm. The school, called Sakeji, is ridiculous. Huge swimming pools, and air strip, modern buildings, science labs, its quite weird to see it in this far out location. Another really interesting feature of the farm is the footpath going across the game reserve. The footpath is hundreds of years old, and was used by slave traders to take slaves from the Congo to the Angolan coast. The farm still lets local people use it as they pass through the area from village to village.
Stuart took me into the reserve to the animals, and I saw almost everything they have, except the two really cool things, the zebra and sitatunga. Sitatungas are some weird antelope animal that submerges itself in water most of the day. I missed both because I was off looking at plants. There are tree ferns and iris all over the place, and i was looking at these when Stuart says he say the zebra and sitatunga. I was thrilled to see the tree ferns and iris though, and I don't care for a second i missed out on the animals. I think I'll be able to see at least zebras later while in Uganda. The forests in this area full out tropical, and really cool to see and hike through.
Well, after an amazing, relaxing, and well fed weekend at Hillwood farm I hitchhiked my way out of the farm back to Lusaka. Its been two long, not comfortable days, but its over. So now, I'm going to go to Victorial falls before I head north to Tanzania. I'm going to get an overnight bus or train tomorrow and spend a day or two before heading back to Lusaka and going back north. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow, and I'll post the links in another blog post. I'll probably remember a few more things I forgot to put on this post. All is going well, and I'm excited for Victoria Falls and a big bunjee jump.
Hope everyone is doing well, and Happy 60th to Israel!
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