Gift for the Holidays--Africa Inspiration

 

Are you or someone you know planning a trip to Africa? My series of three books set in Africa could be just the inspiration you need. 

 

Safari Jema, A Journey of Love and Adventure from Casablanca to Cape Town

My Life with Ndoto, Exploring Africa in a Forty Year Old Land Rover

The Dancing Bridge of Kamunjoma

 

All are available at Amazon in print and kindle version, or order from your favorite bookstore.  

Safari Jema is also available on Audible.

And the 2022 Indie Book Award Finalist in Travel Goes to...The Dancing Bridge of Kamunjoma!

 

What started out as a project report for the non-profit we worked with in Zambia, ended up as a short story published on Amazon. Now I’m honored to receive the 2022 Indie Book Award for The Dancing Bridge of Kamunjoma. Finalist in Travel.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to live with and work alongside the Nsenga men, women and children in the small village of Kamunjoma helping to build a bridge that dances. But I think it might be the last time I try to live without running water or electricity.

My new book is out!

 

     My third book, two short stories about traveling aboard the historic MV Liembe on Lake Tanganyika, and helping a small village build a footbridge in Zambia, is now available in print and eBook. It's currently the Kindle #1 new release in Southern African Travel!

 

     I know I've mentioned this before, but the greatest compliment you can give an author is a good review. If you read and enjoy these two uncommon stories set in Africa, I hope you consider reviewing Dancing Bridge on Amazon or on the website where you purchased the book.

 

 What's next?

   

    Our latest adventure is aboard a Nordic Tug named Green Eyes. On this tiny 26' boat, a crew of three (me, my husband, and the ship's cat, Pika) is circumnavigating America's Great Loop, a circumnavigation of the eastern U.S., and part of Canada.  The 6000 mile route includes the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the Hudson River, the Canadian Canals, the Great Lakes, the inland rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico to Florida. Wind, weather, tides, and currents dictate how long the trip will take, but for us, it will probably be two years. So far, we've completed around 1400 miles.

 

     In the meantime, I hope you enjoy being back in Africa with us on The Dancing Bridge of Kamunjoma.

 

 

The Great Loop Map by AGLCA

Be well,

Teresa

The Money Shot - Charged by Hippo on the Zambezi River

Excerpt from Safari Jema, A Journey of Love and Adventure from Casablanca to Cape Town. The entire adventure is available on Amazon.

 Flying a micro light over the Zambezi River may have gotten our hearts pumping, but now we were going to do something on the Zambezi that was reputed to be heart stopping – a four-day canoe camping safari. During the day we would paddle amongst hippo and crocodile and at night we would camp on the riverbank with Cape buffalo and elephant.  Scott was very keen on canoeing the Zambezi, and he was extra pleased because he had booked it at a discount.

I was nervous.  I am more afraid of hippos than most any other African animal, and I wasn’t too excited about sleeping with Cape buffalo either.  Because they are so territorial, hippo and Cape buffalo cause the most deaths to humans in Africa. 

Scott tried to convince me that terror could be fun. “Come on Tris!  You love wildlife. It can’t get more wild than this.”

When we arrived in Kariba, Zimbabwe, we were told that others who had booked the trip cancelled at the last minute so it would just be Scott, me, and our guide, “Eddie.” Eddie looked decidedly more frightened than I did.  He also appeared to be about twelve years old.

I looked at Scott and said with my eyes, “There is no way in hell I am getting on the Zambezi with deadly hippos, crocs, and buffalo with a kid named Eddie.” I don’t know why his name bothered me so much but even “Edward” wouldn’t have made him look any older or any more confident.

Scott turned to the booking agent and asked, “Do you have any other tours leaving tomorrow?”

Yes, they did have a canoe safari starting tomorrow, but it was a luxury tour staying each night at tented safari camps along the way and would cost considerably more than our camping safari.

“Would Eddie be leading the tour?” my husband asked quietly.

“Oh no,” said the agent with understanding.  “That tour is led by Maxwell, a very experienced guide.”

We walked away to discuss bending the budget and going on the luxury safari.  I reaffirmed my position aloud, “Scott, there is no way I’m going to put my life in the hands of a kid named Eddie who doesn’t look as though he’s ever even held a paddle before. You go if you like and I’ll be here bird-watching until you get back.”

“Hmmm,” Scott said, his sense of frugality tugging at him trying to convince him that he wanted to go with Eddie, without me.  “Well, I think I’ll see if they will give us a discount on that other trip.”

And that’s what happened.  There was only one couple booked on the luxury trip so the agent decided it would be a better solution for everyone if we made it a foursome, five including the guide Maxwell.

Early the next morning, we met Maxwell along with the Australian couple we would be canoeing with over the next four days.  Maxwell gave us a spiel about what we could expect to hear, see, smell, and taste on the Zambian side of the Zambezi River.  Then he gave a “safety talk.”  

“Leave most of your gear here.  You need very little on the river so a small duffle bag with a few changes of clothes will do.  Do not bring any food, especially citrus fruit.  Elephants are crazy about oranges.”  He paused for emphasis before continuing.  “Never stand up in your canoe.  If you see a hippo, don’t panic.  Paddle single file behind my canoe.  When we stop for lunch or a pee break do not wander far from the canoe – there are elephants and Cape buffalo that come to the river each day to drink.  If a hippo or elephant charges you, don’t worry.  I have a weapon in my canoe that will stop them.”

“Maxwell, have you ever had to fire your weapon?” I asked.

“Only once,” he answered with a frown.  “I had a guest one trip who insisted on bringing a very large hard-sided suitcase with him.  He was traveling alone and kept to himself.  Each time we stopped for lunch or a break he disappeared into the bush with the suitcase.  One day as I prepared lunch, the man came running out of the bush hysterical and without his suitcase.  Behind him I could see a big bull elephant hot on his heels.  I ran to the canoe for my gun and took aim on the elephant.”  Maxwell paused.  “I have never killed an animal, and I did not want to kill this elephant.  But the elephant was coming after the man with steady determination. I made a quick decision to fire my gun into the air hoping to startle the elephant.  It worked.  He stopped charging. He stomped the ground and tossed his head before running away.”

“How frightening!  Why was the elephant chasing the man?” I asked.

“Elephants love oranges.  It turned out that the man’s suitcase had been filled with nothing but oranges.  He would take the suitcase with him into the bush, find an elephant and toss oranges to it until we were ready to leave.  That day he tossed oranges until his suitcase was empty.  Only, the elephant wanted more.  I was furious with this man who almost made me shoot an elephant!”

Before we left I discarded my citrus-scented shampoo.

The lodges we stayed at each night were simple yet beautiful.  Genteel Zambian hosts at each tented safari camp excelled at the art of conversation and made us feel comfortable and catered to.  At the end of each day they greeted us on shore with welcoming smiles and our favorite sundowner.  We had more cocktails at the bar as we watched the sun go down before dining together at a meticulously set table.  We listened to exciting stories about adventurers in Africa as we settled into comfortable chairs around a campfire before retiring to our luxury tents.  All night long we heard the rumble of elephants nearby.  Little did I know, I would soon be telling an exciting Zambezi story of my own around the campfire.

The Zambezi is the fourth longest river in Africa. Through six countries it 

provides food, transportation, and recreation to locals and visitors. Bushy trees and dense brush overhang the Zambezi’s banks like an unkempt mustache. You can hear the animals crashing through the vegetation to get to the river long before you can see them. The main river is wide and there are many narrow channels to paddle in and out of while looking for wildlife. But you never have to search for long. Opportunities to get close to wildlife are a guarantee. It isn’t uncommon to see herds of more than one hundred elephants along the riverbank. Cape buffalo, baboons, crocodiles and many bird species are also in abundance. But the most prevalent animal in the Zambezi by far is the hippo. Canoeing the Zambezi is not for the faint of heart.  Each day we had to weave our canoes among pods of territorial hippos. Maxwell took the lead. When we came upon a group of hippos blocking our path he would stand up in his canoe and hold his oar high over his head “to look big and dominant,” he said. Though Maxwell was little more than five feet tall, to our amazement this usually worked and the hippos would scurry out of the water.  Usually.  One day however, as we canoed through a very narrow side channel, Maxwell spotted a lone hippo some distance ahead asleep in the water.  He turned and whispered softly, “I think if we paddle quietly he will not wake up.  Just follow me and try not to make any noise.”

We went single file, Maxwell in the lead, the couple from Australia following and Scott and me bringing up the rear.  As I watched Maxwell slide past the hippo, the hippo continued to sleep.  As I watched the Aussies glide past, the hippo didn’t move.  As Scott and I neared the hippo it suddenly woke up with a start and sprang up in the shallow water with a look that said, “What the hell! Where did you come from?” We panicked and began flailing our paddles with such desperation that our canoe t-boned the bank directly opposite the hippo. Not more than ten feet from us, the hippo went into territorial mode. First it took a big dump, splattering its poo over the water and bank with a frantic and repetitive wag of his tail. Then it took a bead on us.  We began to paddle as fast as we could.  I saw Maxwell ahead stand up in his canoe and raise his oar high over his head.  The Aussie couple was watching us with eyes wide and mouths agape.  I noticed a look of horror on the face of the Aussie man and a look of excitement on the face of the Aussie woman.  I watched things unfold in slow motion as the woman, not taking her eyes off us for a second, reached for her fancy long lens camera and began to take shot after shot of us and what was going on behind us.

Suddenly Maxwell and the Aussie couple began paddling quickly down the river. Without saying a word, Scott and I continued to paddle as fast as we could. We were too terrified to speak. Soon we were even with the Aussies and in another minute we had passed Maxwell.  I thanked God that Scott had been on an outrigger team when we lived in Hawaii. He really knows how to dig an oar into the water. We didn’t stop paddling until we could see the lodge ahead of us.  Completely spent, I put the paddle down and let Scott guide us in to shore.

The lodge host must have sensed by my expression and limp arms that something memorable had happened on the river because as soon as our canoe hit the bank, she was by my side wrapping my hand around a double gin and tonic. 

“That was bloody terrifying!” said the Aussie man as he strode to the bar.  His wife, who it turned out was a professional film (not digital) photographer, remained on the bank snapping photos, one after another.  She shot photos of the lodge, of the reeds, of the sunset, of my hand clasping the gin and tonic until she slowly advanced the camera one last time with a sick look on her face.

“That hippo,” she said to us.  “It was right behind you.  It had its mouth wide open as it chased you down the river.  I thought it would take Teresa and half your canoe in its mouth.”  She sighed.  “I thought I had a money shot.” 

With trepidation she opened the back of her camera to confirm her fears.  The film was intact, its little tail barely out of it canister.  The entire day, it had never wound on.  She didn’t get a single photo.

I was utterly gobsmacked. “I know you are disappointed, but we could have been killed!” 

Oddly, for the rest of the trip she barely spoke to us.  Somehow it was our fault that she had missed her award-winning photo.

Too Many Rules!

 

Malawi is an itinerary buster. We ate up an entire month camping at various spots along her “calendar lake” so named because Lake Malawi is 365 miles long and 52 miles wide. Every mile is scenic. Across the lake lies Mozambique. The Livingstone Mountains rise sharply up from the shore and remind us of the Napili Coast in Hawaii.

The sand in Malawi is soft and white and the water is clear. The roads are the best we’ve seen – few potholes, scant vehicles, and no spring-busting speed bumps. Even the road up the escarpment to Livingstonia, dubbed by our guide book as “the most exciting road in Africa” for its 20 precariously carved switchbacks, was better maintained than most roads in Uganda or Kenya.

The police are friendly and the children all wave. A woman holds the highest office, President. Billboards proudly proclaim vast areas “Open Defecation Free” and others demand the end to child trafficking. It seems like a country that is doing the right things.

We started thinking there was no good reason to leave Malawi so we extended our visas.

Then the rains that had driven us out of Tanzania caught up to us. Eventually Zambia, South Luangwa in particular, lured us away from Malawi’s pristine beaches and good, cheap gin. But not before our chance meeting with some very cool overlanders, Kirsty and Gareth. I adore them.

Kirsty and Gareth are a year into an expedition from Australia to London in a 1989 Toyota Landcruiser. Not as old as our Landy but charming nonetheless and in much better shape. Kirsty and I discovered we shared the same birthday, happening the very next day. We hugged. We cried. We were home sick. If you are planning an Africa overland trip, their blog is the best of the bunch. Here's Kirsty's post about Malawi and when we met. http://aussieoverlanders.com.au/zambia-malawi/

I had almost forgotten how much I love Zambia. Her charms start at the small border when we ask where we go to pay the road tax and are told, “See the man under the mango tree.” After crossing the border we arrive 15 minutes later in the town of Chipata where there is a Shoprite and a Spar market. So it's Gordon’s Gin and beef stroganoff for dinner. A few hours later we arrive at South Luangwa without a single broken car part, bruise, or speck of dust. The once infamously organ rearranging Chipata-Mfuwe road has been completely paved. The rainy season has just ended. Everything is green and lush. Fluffy clouds make for dramatic photos. It’s not too hot. I am at the Gates of Heaven.

And then we are at Flatdogs, a place we keep coming back to again and again since we first camped on a platform high up in a tree in 2005. Flatdogs has since gone upscale and there is no more camping so we splash out on an en-suite riverside safari tent for 4 nights. Elephants cruise through camp and sometimes stop for a long drink from the pool. Hippos pull up like Colorado River rafts at the shoreline and bellow and wait for dusk – their cue to rise up out of the river and feast on the new shoots of grass that have appeared overnight.

We listen to their rhythmic chomp chomp chomp throughout the night. In the morning I sit on the bank of the Luangwa River, one of my favorite spots on earth, and watch as sunrise turns the colors of the opposite bank from glowing orange to the color of weak hot chocolate. I am in Heaven.

I want my family here. I want them to experience a game drive where they might see the Big Five, or lions sleeping the afternoon away on their backs and elephants browsing unhurriedly because after the rains there is plenty to eat and drink.

I want them to see a leopard in the classic pose, draped over a tree limb with full belly and be lucky enough to see one of the few remaining rhino in the wild. I want them to experience the cold hard stare of a Cape Buffalo.

Then I want them to go on a walk in the bush so they can come to know the Little Five – the ant lion, leopard tortoise, elephant shrew, rhinoceros beetle, and buffalo weaver bird. I want them to learn about all the bushes and trees and bark that provide traditional healing.

If they are really lucky, they’ll see a painted dog or spot a chameleon clinging to a leaf.

Hippos will come to us when we sit around the campfire at night. Chomp chomp chomp, closer and closer until the night watchman shines his torch in their eyes encouraging them to dine further down the bank.

There is still time for my family to come and enjoy Africa with me because the family renting our home have extended their lease. I’m very grateful for that. Now we have time to do more of the things we love. There’s time to visit the orphanage in Zimbabwe that is supported by the efforts of a woman in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now I have time to visit the 93 children who live there and I can send her photos of the new home that will be built with the $34000 she raised during her recent Run For Zimbabwe Orphans. I feel so privileged to be able to do that.

Scott will continue in his endeavor to fly here in Africa. It hasn’t been as easy as we thought for him to find a plane to fly. It’s not how it used to be. We were told that during and just after colonial times, "Every European male seemed to know how to fly and there was access to planes and airfields all over Africa." Such is not the case these days. Now with the extra time, we will be able to return to Dar es Salaam to help a friend finish building her plane in exchange for the chance to fly. I have never seen Scott as happy as he is when he is flying.

These are some of our big picture dreams. The day-to-day in Africa is not so easy. Some days I witness so much struggle that I end up covering my eyes and crying. Young girls carry too-heavy loads of wood or water on their heads. Men push impossibly huge piles of charcoal on bicycles. They aren’t riding the bikes. They are pushing them with all their might while sweat pours off their bodies. Dogs get hit by speeding vehicles and are left to rot on the road. Oxen and donkeys are beaten. “Too much suffering!” I cry regularly.

“You say that almost every day,” says Scott shaking his head. He adds, "In fact, there is a list of 5 or 6 phrases that you say every day."

“You repeat yourself everyday too ya know!” I tell him. Thus we have a weird phrase bingo going.

 According to Scott my list of daily phrases include: 
-"What's that smell?"

-"Don’t park under that tree. Snakes might slither onto the car."

-"Don’t park here. There might be snakes hiding in the tall grass." 

-"If I’m not back in twenty minutes come looking for me. I might be snake-bit."

-"Are there snakes here?" (asked of camp staff.)

-"Look out for that snake (child, goat, chicken, pothole, speed bump, ditch….) in the road!"

Meanwhile I can rely on Scott saying almost every day:

-"Is there a power point available?" (asked of camp staff – Gotta keep that gin cold!)

-"The solar panels are really keeping the fridge nice and cold!"

-"Is the red key on?" (When switched on the red key charges the extra car battery that keeps the fridge cold. This spare battery lives under my seat.)

-"When we get to camp I’m going to charge up the rechargeable batteries for the headlamps (camera, computers, spotlight…)"

And last but not least,

-"Too many rules!" Bemoaned head in hands after I’ve uttered any one of my six bingo phrases.

In a year Scott and I have learned a lot about each other. I’ve learned that he is beyond exceptional at keeping batteries charged and gin cold and that he is untidy.

He has learned that I have too many rules about snakes and parking.

Scott and Tris

South Luangwa, Zambia

                                                  Too many rules, but I love you anyway.

                                                    On the banks of the Luangwa River

                                      Imprint of sleeping elephant seen on a guided bush walk

                                            Sleepy lionesses too tired to move off the road

                                                           Zen lioness. Ohhhhhmmmmm

The Rainy Season Red Lagoon Roads of Zambia

The day started out badly with the discovery of a broken spring leaf. Then Scott sneezed and farted at the same time – never a good idea when your drinking water comes from Lake Tanganyika.

We had a long drive ahead of us from Ndole Bay to Kasama on one of the worst roads in Zambia. After two hours of organ rearranging dips and drops at an average speed of 19 kilometers an hour we hadn’t gotten very far. Suddenly we began hearing a swarming mass of cicadas all around us. Only it wasn’t cicadas, it was our vehicle. In the past when the Landy makes “funny” sounds like whirring or grinding or ticking we look at each other and say, “Let’s give it a moment and see if it stops.” Usually the sound disappears without us ever knowing what caused it. But this time the hissing was accompanied by extreme heat coming from below the gear stick – so extreme that when we stopped the Landy at the top of a rise I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the back. We were between sparsely populated villages and nothing was on the road but lagoon size potholes so we began to explore the source of the noise and heat. I started looking through the three Land Rover manuals we have on board while Scott looked under the car. The closest thing to the cicada noise I could find in the manual was “loud whirring”. “It might be the gear box,” I said, “maybe we’re low on fluid.”

“Oh no.” Scott said from beneath the car. “We lost the plug, the bolt that holds the fluid in. It must have been ejected on that really bad pothole back there.”

“Which pothole? The first one, or one of the 193 after?”

We searched through our collection of jiggled off nuts, bolts and screws in the toolbox trying to find a close match. No luck. So we began looking for a bolt we could steal from somewhere else on the vehicle. The ones connecting the bumper were too small. The high lift jack bolt was almost the right size but when Scott tried it, it wouldn’t catch the threads. A while later, two men came along. Once we explained/pantomimed the problem, they wanted to help. At first they just got under the car with Scott and watched what he did. Then they joined me topside in looking for a bolt to poach from somewhere else on the car. They didn’t speak English but hearing Scott ask me for various tools and watching him they quickly saw the advantages of our equipment and they began requesting “vice grip”, “spanner”, and “wrench” as if they were medics on the TV series M.A.S.H. demanding sutures or a scalpel STAT!

Dennis unscrewed the bolt holding the bumper. “See? Too small,” Scott repeated showing them the size we needed. 

Meanwhile three more men toting hoes and machetes came along the road. When Dennis saw them he quickly covered the tools and toolbox with our small tarp and communicated with “no no” hands and a low voice that it wouldn’t be a good idea for these men to see our valuables. But the men stopped and soon Dennis’ desire to find a bolt that would match won out over his concern so the tools came out and the bolt from the high lift jack came off again. I remarked to one of the recent arrivals that I liked his unbelievably shiny lilac colored shoes with a silver orb and cross buckle. Immediately they looked at my shoes, an old pair of Keens. I could tell they were discussing the merits of owning such a pair of shoes. Often Africans we meet ask us to give them our shoes. They all stared at my feet and I knew they would have asked for them if they knew the words. I could tell that one of them said, “Eee! But her feet are too big anyway!” because they all laughed and went back to watching Scott or unscrewing bolts on the car. Scott found a likely replacement in at the bottom of his toolbox but it was too thick and far too long so he got out the saw and began cutting through the metal by hand. Only a man would think of this. He put one foot on top of the bumper, placed the too long bolt under his left foot and sawed. Sweat dripped from his face and his blue t-shirt, covered with red earth from lying under the car became damp. Dennis took over sawing and after ten more minutes we had a shorter length of threads. “Everybody, pray!” I said. But it was too big so out came the saw again to slice a channel at the top. “Maybe I can squeeze it in,” Scott hoped. 

But it was still too big. In the end, he used the bolt off the high lift jack, which was too small, but he fashioned a sleeve from a piece of spare gas hose that gave the bolt enough bite to hold. Meanwhile I had been looking through the manuals for the location of where to add gearbox fluid (miraculously, we had an almost full, never used, jug of gearbox fluid with us). “OK, ‘the filter plug is located at the rear of the transfer box’,” I said reading from the manual, item 37-2.

I dug out the little funnel we use to fill our water bottles and Dennis and the four other men made one end of the gas hose fit into the funnel neck by slicing away the plastic sheath using Scott’s Leatherman knife. There was discussion about the odd looking tool, the knife and it’s sharpness. They poured the really stinky fluid in to the funnel while Scott, under the car again, held the low end of the gas hose to the fill plug opening. 

It took ages for two liters to find it’s way to the gearbox and when the funnel was empty for the last time, Dennis even put his lips on the hose and blew the last dregs of oil down the tube. “Uh, that stuff is toxic,” I said while bent over and fake puking. “It’ll make you sick.” Dennis wiped his lips and another of the men brought me the dust filled top end of a small water bottle, cap in place and asked for a little oil. “Bicycle,” he said. He used his shirt to wipe out the dust but you couldn’t tell afterwards because his shirt, like the shirts of all the men, had long ago took on the rusty red color of the roads of Zambia’s rainy season. Two and a half hours had passed.

“Zicomo! Thank you!" we said. A little money and a box of Eet Sum More biscuits was appreciated, but they squealed with enthusiasm when I said I would take their photo in front of the Landy. 

Off we went, stopping every 5 then 10 then 40 kilometers to make sure the McGiver-ed bolt was holding. “I’ve been waiting for the third bad thing to happen today and now it has,” said Scott.
“Three? I can only think of two, the broken spring and now the gearbox. What’s the third thing?”I asked.

“When I sneeze-farted,” he said.

“Oh, you’re right. That’s the turd thing.”

The road only became worse. Our final destination kept changing, as the day grew longer.

We hoped to make it to the town of Mporokosa, a large, dusty, out in the middle of nowhere town, before dark, and we did. We stopped at the only accommodation listed in our GPS, The Holiday Rest House. It was Friday night and eight men sat on the porch of the hotel drinking beer. The place had a weird vibe but beggars can’t be choosy so Scott went inside to inquire if we could camp there. Meanwhile, I watched the men on the porch and the few women lingering around the men. I began to sense that the Holiday Rest House wasn’t what it seemed. Yep, we had pulled in to the “No-tell Motel.” We had camped on the grounds of a brothel in Addis Ababa Ethiopia once and I wasn’t excited about a repeat. As Scott walked back over to the car, a heavily intoxicated man, with the most blood shot eyes I’ve ever seen, met him at my window and, with all the concentration he could muster said, “I would advise you not to stay here tonight.”

“Oh. Really? Why?”  
“I am a teacher by profession and I have to advise you that it would be better if you do not stay here tonight. It's not...safe” he said coming up with the best word he could think of to convince us to leave and making him our second Good Samaritan of the day. We drove away knowing that now we would have to bush camp. 

At 5:30 we began looking for a good bush camp – secluded, off the road, not close to a village. But we discovered that while there was plenty of seclusion – the bush was like a jungle – the earth was so sticky from the rains that we were sure to get bogged once we pulled off the road. Driving after dark in Africa is never the best idea but we hadn’t seen any wildlife and the route was not heavily populated by people so we were unlikely to hit anything, and in 10 hours we had seen only 5 other vehicle so risk of a head on was minimal, so we kept driving. The road continued to be a backbreaking chain of rusty red lagoon sized potholes inexplicably interspersed with short sections of brand new tarmac. Every time we found ourselves on tarmac our sails filled with wind again and we’d say, “If it’s like this, we might as well drive all the way to Kasama!” Then we would suddenly be on a road so deeply potholed that we felt like a ship being tossed side to side by stormy seas.

  At 10PM, after 15 hours on the road, the thing we have most worried about the entire trip happened. The road suddenly became a ravine that was narrowing to a chasm. The driver side wheels dropped into the abyss and N’doto heaved heavily to the right. “Nooooo! Hang on, we’re going over!” Scott said struggling with the steering wheel and willing N’doto to take flight. I held tight to the window frame and braced my feet against the floor. Just as we could feel the momentum of no return, THUD!, the front right wheel sank deeply into a hole and we came to an abrupt, 30-degree angle, stop. We sat in silence. Scott was trapped, his door up against the ravine wall.  It was decide that I would climb out to see the damage. The tire was stuck in deep. There was no way we were driving forward. “Maybe we can back up.” But the car wouldn’t start. Then, a miracle. After only ten minutes we could see headlights coming towards us. I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was “Will they help us, or hurt us.” Soon a van stopped above us. Four well-dressed Good Samaritan Zambians came over. “We’re stuck,” I said. Scott called, “Hello!” from inside the car and crawled out the passenger side door. One of the men suggested we push the car backwards. I got behind the steering wheel but the the car wouldn’t budge. We were bogged in tight and the angle wasn’t helping any either. “How about a jack?” another man asked. One bolt shy from our earlier repair, it was easy to detach the high lift jack from the rear of the car. Three women appeared from the van and began collecting stones to place under the front wheel. The jack was released and after 10 minutes the car finally started. I put it in reverse and drove backwards along the narrow valley trying to keep the wheels from sliding back down while the driver of the van directed, “Now turn your wheels like this,” he said using his hands. “Now go straight back!” When it felt like N’doto was going over again I whimpered and Mulunga pointed at Scott and said, “Now I think he should drive.” Once Scott was behind the wheel it was decided that climbing the bank and going forward might be better than reversing. I held my breath as Scott revved the engine and the Landy labored up the bank. While Scott drove onto flat road I thanked Mulunga for stopping. “I’m a nurse”, he said, “I had to stop. Your vehicle was at such an angle I thought someone might be hurt.” (We’re completely fine, only had to change our undies.)

Two hours later, around midnight, after 16 hours on the road, exhaust pipe growling, cracked spring leaf shuddering, gearbox kaput, we bush camped just outside the one traffic light size town of Kasama. “Without days like this, it wouldn’t be a true Africa overland adventure,” said Scott with a smile as we climbed into our rooftop tent.

As uncomfortable and sometimes scary the day had been we felt strangely satisfied with the way things had worked out. We had kept our cool, problem solved nicely (I just kept asking myself, What would Martha O’Kane do?), and met a lot of nice people who didn’t ask us for anything. A lot more good than bad had come from the experience. It still is a Safari Jema. And the next morning serendipity – always a theme in our travels – struck big. The one auto shop in town is owned and run by Michael a Zambian who drove, built, owned, and maintained several old Landys just like ours over the years. “I can rebuild a gearbox blindfolded!” he said. He’s a great guy and the parts and labor are more than reasonable so we took a room at the Kasama Lodge (where all the other guests are Zambian Government officials) and we’re getting a laundry list of repairs and delayed maintenance done on the car over the next few days before heading into Tanzania and Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. South Sudan, the newest country in the world, is on the list of “want to go” but we’ll decide that after we get information on the condition of the one road in the entire country. It wouldn’t be hard to get lost but we’re not excited about subjecting the Landy to any more part breaking roads than we have to.

Onward!

Scott and Tris

Kasama, Zambia