A bit of Botswana

Can't believe it is September already and I'm still trying to publish something I wrote in June.  A little because I lack motivation and a lot because of the power outages the whole country has been suffering (the subject of a whole other post, probably more).  Finally, here you are.  

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Zambia has two bank holidays in May.  The first one, always the 1st of May, Labour Day celebrates the achievements of workers. The second is 25th May, African Freedom Day, the anniversary of the foundation of the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union. Our little family, friends Leah and Fiona and Fiona’s housemate-for-the-summer Katy, made use of the second long weekend to trot down to Livingstone and safari in Chobe National Park, Botswana.

Actually I am more interested in anthropology than big animals, and there was plenty, even on safari, for me to observe.  Coming up to the border we saw the two-mile line of lorries parked at the side of the road waiting to cross the river into Botswana.  They wait for two weeks or maybe more to pass from one country to the other to take all manner of goods. It is the same at most borders across Africa for commercial goods and certainly explains the exceptionally high cost of imported goods within Zambia (which is pretty much everything since there is little industry).  How different it is in the European Union, borders being mere inconveniences to goods being transported around the continent.

Lorries waiting to cross the border at Kasangula, Zambia

Our taxi making its way past the waiting lorries to the border post

Botswana touches Zambia at one narrow point of the Zambezi with Namibia and Zim lying to the west and east. 

Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Zim border point

The border crossing is quite a heavily trafficked exit and entry point for goods vehicles. To any efficiency driven, right minded person the most sensible option would be a bridge but instead there is a ferry crossing.  I'm not sure what I was expecting at the border but for sure it wasn't this one vehicle ferry that we were met with.  I asked our taxi driver Obey (we've got to know him very well over 3 visits now) why there was no bridge and he muttered darkly about Mugabe not wanting a connection to Zambia so close to Zim.

Zambia Botswana border crossing Kasangula Ferry, one lorry at a time

Foot passengers take a small outboard motorboat crossing in no time at all.  There’s no particular reception point for foot passengers on either side, just a couple of muddy steps.  Luggage that you arrive with is thrown from the boat to the waiting guides.

The difference between Botswana and Zambia is immediately obvious as you start to drive from the ferry point towards Chobe National Park.  The roads feel better quality (better surface, if I remember from my transport lectures, the layers are thicker and the tarmac is better quality), they have road markings down the middle and the edge, cats eyes and road signs just like in the UK, weirdly enough.  I wonder if the AA make signs for Botswana too…do they still make them?  And there’s visibly less clutter in terms of signs, no advertising hoardings, just useful signs.

We had lunch at the safari cafe and discovered we couldn't pay for the trip in Kwacha, it had to be Pula or USD, neither of which we had.  The situation was resolved by a lengthy discussion with the young lady taking payments. We persuaded her to try the credit card machine.  She was convinced it didn't work but found that if she switched it on, it did.  How about that!

The first part of the safari was a cruise west along the Namibia-Botswana border.  There were the usual fish eagles, crocs, hippos, zebras and joy of joys elephants in huge numbers.  They are quite something when they wade through the water all holding the tail in front and using their trunks to snorkel once they start swimming.

Elephants know no borders, crossing the Zambezi from
Botswana to the Namibian Caprivi Strip

The Matriarch leading the crossing

Buffalo resting with his egret friend

Zebra and waterbuck

We went on a safari drive, to see even more animals, giraffes, warthogs, zebra, impala, a family of very contented lions having feasted on a dead elephant and over 50 different sorts of birds including lilac-breasted rollers.  The dead elephant we were told had died of old age.  Coming from the windward side we couldn’t smell a thing, it wasn’t until we got to the leeward side that we really knew this beast had been dead for a couple of weeks – goodness me, the hum! Like an exceedingly over-ripe Camembert cheese. Another interesting point was that the whole of the head had been burned away as soon as it was found to make sure poachers did not get the ivory from its tusks. So the lions were gorging themselves on roast elephant.  On the drive back to camp we spotted a black mamba, my first snake in the wild.  I couldn't believe how long and fast it was.  It came alongside the vehicle for a short while with its head held about a metre from the ground, then it disappeared into a tree.  Very glad the vehicle was high up and we could have driven off fast if the need arose.

Roast elephant feast

Bloodied faces and big bellies

Giraffe posing for the shot

Then back to camp, and really it was the most luxury camp I’ve been on (I suppose Duke of Edinburgh and cadet camping were never about to be luxury, my reference point is low).  The beds were comfortable, the fire hot and bright, the food second-to-none and the ablutions fun (shower in the sun – who wouldn’t want that!), and long drop loos.

Camp with ablutions basin

Callum making good use of the hot water

The shower!

Chairs around the campfire - I forgot to get the campfire in the pic

We got talking to some super interesting people on the breaks from safari at camp.  One girl is doing a PhD in food security to try and understand why some many poor African women are fat but in the same family the children and the man will be thin.  It is a question I have wanted to understand and it seems no-one does, yet.  All they know at the moment is it’s something to do with the way women store fat.

On our return from Chobe we stayed in Livingstone again (as we did in March and have done since in July) at the Tabonina Inn.  The baboons were the same (give them a wide berth, yukky creatures digging through their own and other animals’ poo, pretty aggressive too), but the falls were even fuller than in March just at the end of the rainy season. All the rivers from western Zambia and quite a lot from central and eastern Zambia including the Kafue and the Luangwa feed into the Zambezi so it takes a while for the rain from the catchment to flow into the Zambezi.  The spray was quite spectacular, even from close to the railway bridge into Zimbabwe some 500m away we were getting wet.

Victoria Falls in full flow

[If the different mixture of different text fonts and styles disturb you as much as they do me, then know that I have spent at least an hour trying to correct it with no success.  Mindful of Freakonomics advice "know when to quit", I have just let it go.  Almost right will have to be enough!]