nine days in zambia
I've been in Malawi for over two months now. As I have previously mentioned, I've been settling right into the lazy way of life, and as a result, it's been hard to get things organised. Supervisors, case discussions, my planned two week mini-elective at the psychiatric hospital in Zomba, even holidays. Well last week, we finally got round to organising our first week of holiday, and we set off in on a 9 day package tour to Zambia with Kiboko Safaris.
Day 1 was all travelling and largely uneventful, a ropey border crossing aside. We had been warned beforehand that we would need yellow fever vaccination certificates to cross the border into Zambia. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned lack of organisation, we only booked the safari one week beforehand, and as me and Jenny did not already have yellow fever vaccinations, we were not left with enough time to organise this questionably justified public health precaution. Kiboko rely on disorganised travellers such as ourselves for custom though, and happily referred us to a dodgy health centre that would provide us with backdated certificates, right next to our flat. We had noticed at the time of purchase that the certificates were backdated to the 5th of July, before our actual arrival in Malawi, but we were quite confident that they would not be cross checking the certificates with the entry dates on our passport. Misplaced confidence. Jenny was before me in the queue, and as I saw her pleading with the immigration officer my heart sunk. I tried my luck anyway, spinning an exasperated story about how I'd been vaccinated in Scotland in January, forgotten my certificate, then again in Lilongwe in August, only to have them stamp the incorrect date and land me in this unfortunate but blameless situation. No luck. He confiscated my passport, and told me and my friend to meet him in a backroom.
I've never bribed anyone before. I have no idea how to go about it. I guessed he hadn't moved us into a backroom so he could break it to us gently that we wouldn't be getting into Zambia today, but when he started doing so I couldn't figure out when to blurt out DO YOU TAKE BRIBES?? Luckily Jenny had more brains and balls than me, and innocently asked if there was anything we could do to sort this out. He played cautious. 'Like what?'. So I played even more cautious. 'I don't know, maybe you have vaccines here we could pay for?'. He gave up. He didn't have vaccines here, but as this was clearly a mistake, and not our fault, we could just pay a small fee to sort it all out. $20 each. I pretended to mishear that as $20 in total, which he seemed fine with. We paid him $10 there and put another $10 in the passports when we went back to the window to apply again. As we got back in our Land Rover and drove onto Zambian soil, it transpired that the yellow fever certificate is not an official requirement for entry at all, but merely a trick used by some of the border posts to drastically increase their bribe yield. So much for the PAY TAXES NOT BRIBES anti corruption posters plastered all over the buildings..
Just as the sun was going down, we reached South Luangwa, where we were to spend two mornings and two nights on safari. Our tents were more like marquees, and my bed was superior to my Lilongwe bed in both size and comfort. The camp was sited on a bank of the Luangwa river, which periodically echoed hippopotamus snorts through the chorus of frogs and cicadas. Overhead, the milkyway divided the sparkling night sky evenly in two. We went for a pre dinner drink at the bar but as our torches tracked out the path ahead of us they found a big elephant in the road, which a guard had to chase off with sticks. I was going on safari the next day. I was already immersed in nature. I was excited.
The next morning we ate breakfast while the sun rose, then climbed into the open top land rovers for our first safari. Minutes after entering the national park, we were competing with a pack of other jeeps for the best view of a pride of lions, who were in turn competing for the best chunk of a buffalo corpse. The kill was hidden by a half dozen hungry heads for the most part, but we were treated to a flash of flesh whenever the hungriest wrestled portions away for themselves, revealing blood stained necks. We returned to the same spot three hours later. The lions were all slumped on a nearby road, sleeping and digesting. The buffalo skeleton lay in the same ditch, stripped clean of flesh. Vultures were perched on the highest branches of the nearby trees, evil cartoon silhouettes against the sun, either digesting the lions' leftovers or lamenting the lack of them.
This was my first time on safari, and I had allowed myself very low expectations of the number of animals I would see. These expectations were easily surpassed. We were spoiled. There was barely five minutes drive between grassy fields of impalas and monkeys- grazing, mating, fighting; families of elephants plodding through skeleton forests they had earlier destroyed by stripping their bark; lines of zebras, their stripes mingling as they drank from a small lake side by side; crocodiles camouflaged in green swampy waters; giraffes peering over bushes with mouths full of leaves, prancing away as our guide drove too close; warthogs scuttling their piglets into cover; flocks of hundreds of brightly coloured bee eaters and lovebirds; eagles hovering on metre wide wingspans... Considering the amount of time I've spent these last few weeks happily entertained on my porch watching ants carry a dying moth back to their nest, and under a tree watching a thousand flies harvest the tiny flowers of a pomegranite tree, it was a bit of an overdose on nature.
Multi-cellular animals are thought to have evolved on earth several hundred million years ago. Before then, the seas were filled with bacteria which fed on algae near the surface. Some of the more complex bacteria then began to work together, forming a matrix, through which water flowed, allowing algae and smaller bacteria to be filtered, eaten, at a faster rate. The basic functions of the cells in these matrices were to eat and to divide. By allocating each cell in a matrix to only one of these functions, the cells could become more specialised, more efficient, and therefore the matrices whose cells randomly mutated this ability to specialise, fared better and became the norm. Further specialisation took place, and soon these matrices had cells dedicated to structure, dedicated to transporting nutrients and oxygen, dedicated to defending the matrix against invading bacteria, dedicated to communication, dedicated to movement, dedicated to sensing the environment, dedicated to making decisions based on those senses. Different matrices in different environments specialised to fill different niches in the ecosystem, and as these increasingly complex and varied matrices forced increasingly complex evolutionary pressures on each other, the cells, and therefore the matrices, specialised and varied in even wilder ways. Those cells dedicated to sensing, calculating, doing, that directed and coordinated the whole matrices interactions with it's environment, did not think of the matrices they belonged to as collections of interdependant cells (for it would have been uselessly complicated to), but as a wholeness, as a 'self'; and of other matrices as 'others'. Seas and land masses became the playgrounds for the interactions between these now complicated out-of-control matrices and their social, sexual, and predator prey relationships. And nowhere moreso than the continent we call Africa.
A group of cells organised into a light, feathery, airborne matrix soars the skies, swoops down to feast on the amassed proteins and carbohydrates of a small whiskered and tailed matrix of cells as it scuttles into a hole in the ground that it's behaviour dictating cells understands to provide safety from such scary flying matrices. A particularly large matrix of cells plods heavily along a field, a boneless limb of muscle above its food entrance tearing strands of carbohydrate from the ground under the control of a collection of behaviour dictating cells that are notoriously good at storing representations of past events to influence future behaviour. A matrix that sports cells disproportionately good at contracting together to allow movement of it's skeleton's limbs and jaws given its overall light weight, sprints after a springing source of protein and sinks in its razor sharp teeth.
In the middle of this unfathomable drama, there is a one particular brand of cell matrix, that over time has been attributing less importance to those cells responsible for its strength, its appearance, and more importance to those cells responsible for dictating behaviour. These matrices develop the ability to exert very fine, calculated control over the coordination of their muscles, the ability to make increasingly complicated calculations on their perceived environments, and the ability to communicate these calculations to other similar matrices. The combination of these three abilities allows groups of these types of matrices of cells an unprecedented advantage, as it allows them to manipulate their environments as they please. In Africa, where this particular matrix of cells evolved, there remains a lingering intuition in their beliefs and behaviours that to modify these environments beyond recognition, is to put eternal faith in their own manipulations rather than in the forces of nature that allowed such a matrix (the least fathomable yet) to arise in the first place. But as these matrices spread further and further away from their natural environment, they are forced to make more and more manipulations. These manipulations bring great short term benefit, HUGE short term benefit, and before long, those groups of matrices that strayed farthest from their natural environment are faring better. In the short term at least. In the long term things are maybe not so bright. But they have developed means of transport and communication that bring the whole planet into competition, and that original continent of mind boggingly complex matrices of cells, that instead put its faith in the forces that came before it, is forced to make the same manipulations. Play the same game, or live a life of slavery. The matrices gradually move from the vast plains of variety from which they arose into the concrete electric plastic petrol powered worlds that have provided other continents with so much short term benefit. The plains of variety, once so vital, shrink into sentimentally protected parks, and the so immediately prosperous but so shortsighted matrices' only interaction with them, is to count the lesser matrices dwindling numbers, and to allow members of their own brand of matrices a chance to drive around and view their original, dying, birthplace, overthinking it on a cynical, cellular level.
Call me crazy, call me boring, but these are the thoughts that dominated my mind as we drove around the park taking pictures and getting genuine frights from lions that came incredibly close and turned quick snarling glances, all too capable of launching themselves on board and tearing us to pieces were someone to provoke them. The highlight of the two days was on the second evening, when we watched a pride of lions, including an impressively maned male, hide in the grass near a few giraffes. A family of elephants trundled by, and to protect the calves the mother charged the pride, ears trunk and tusks all a-swinging. The pride retreated, but stayed nearby, and we watched for half an hour as the giraffes, now alerted to their presence, stared suspiciously from their awkward height, refusing to turn their backs. At night we drove around with a second guide in the passenger seat swinging a car battery powered spotlight from side to side, scanning for leopards, jennets, owls, hippos and even a tiny inch long mouse.
From South Luangwa, we had a two day journey to Victoria Falls on a bus. In theory it was pretty miserable. The seats only came halfway up my back, and while the mornings were reasonably cool, the afternoon was hot like hell. We opened the windows, letting the window billow dust in our faces in a desperate attempt to cool down, but it wasn't enough. The heat sapped my energy, I fell asleep and repeatedly woke up soaked in sweat, covered in dust, with my unrested, wildly swinging neck feeling strained and sore. But I had good company to speak to, good books to read, yahtzee to play, and nice recent memories to hold in my head.
And it's lucky I found the journey so tolerable, because if I hadn't, I would have very much regretted the extra six days and $400 we had spent visiting Victoria Falls. I had heard dry season isn't the falls' most flattering time, but when a Dutch girl (three of whom's fingers I later slammed a car door shut on) commented 'more like Victoria Walls!', she summed it up pretty well. The Zambian side, amounted to two fairly tiny rivers crashing off a hundred metre wide cliff edge, and while these waterfalls were no doubt fairly impressive when considered on their own, they really were dwarfed by the sheer breadth of what they recently were and soon will be. To make matters worse, at the very far edge of the visible cliff, before it disappeared round a corner to the Zimbabwean side, there was a huge cannon of water gushing out and down, and behind it an impressive spray, hinting at a much more worthwhile sight only a few hundred metres and a $50 visa round the corner.
I don't mean to sound like I didn't enjoy it. I mean I enjoyed the miserable bus rides after all so a place of beauty, albeit compensated beauty, was not out of reach of my stubborn resolve to never not enjoy myself. I listened to the thunder of the water, imagined just how thunderous it would be after a good rainy season, took some nice pictures, hopped over the two rivers upstream from where they trickled off the cliff, dived off a 111 metre bridge with my heart in my throat, its beat in my ears, two towels tightly wrapped round my shins attached to a 100 metre cord, hoping to yell bungee with style but seeing the river rush exponentially faster towards me being unable to do anything but scream exponentially louder and higher, feeling my face bulge with blood as I neared the water, seeing floaters appear in my upside down vision as I stopped for an infinitesimal moment before being rocketed back up towards the bridge, spinning round marvelling at mountains and flight, seizing the opportunity of a slackening bungee cord to lift up my head and drain it of blood in a fancy half corkscrew, then deliriously bouncing up and down in a mixture of euphoria and fear for my cerebral arteries.
I'd been promised an adrenaline buzz afterwards, but all I got was a lingering headache and a wave of relief that I hadn't had a stroke. I'm glad I did it once, but as nice as it was to fall down and fly up the middle of a picturesque valley, Zambia on one side, Zimbabwe on the other, it just wasn't worth the feeling that my head was going to explode with each bounce.
South Luangwa was an expensive two days but worth every single kwacha. Victoria Falls was pretty, and the bungee jump pretty fun, but together they just didn't justify the time and money spent on them. Our tour group was the saving grace. Really it was just great to not be at the hospital and to be hanging round such good, nice people, whether we were on a dusty sweaty neckbreaking bus or wondering where all the water was at one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
Day 1 was all travelling and largely uneventful, a ropey border crossing aside. We had been warned beforehand that we would need yellow fever vaccination certificates to cross the border into Zambia. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned lack of organisation, we only booked the safari one week beforehand, and as me and Jenny did not already have yellow fever vaccinations, we were not left with enough time to organise this questionably justified public health precaution. Kiboko rely on disorganised travellers such as ourselves for custom though, and happily referred us to a dodgy health centre that would provide us with backdated certificates, right next to our flat. We had noticed at the time of purchase that the certificates were backdated to the 5th of July, before our actual arrival in Malawi, but we were quite confident that they would not be cross checking the certificates with the entry dates on our passport. Misplaced confidence. Jenny was before me in the queue, and as I saw her pleading with the immigration officer my heart sunk. I tried my luck anyway, spinning an exasperated story about how I'd been vaccinated in Scotland in January, forgotten my certificate, then again in Lilongwe in August, only to have them stamp the incorrect date and land me in this unfortunate but blameless situation. No luck. He confiscated my passport, and told me and my friend to meet him in a backroom.
I've never bribed anyone before. I have no idea how to go about it. I guessed he hadn't moved us into a backroom so he could break it to us gently that we wouldn't be getting into Zambia today, but when he started doing so I couldn't figure out when to blurt out DO YOU TAKE BRIBES?? Luckily Jenny had more brains and balls than me, and innocently asked if there was anything we could do to sort this out. He played cautious. 'Like what?'. So I played even more cautious. 'I don't know, maybe you have vaccines here we could pay for?'. He gave up. He didn't have vaccines here, but as this was clearly a mistake, and not our fault, we could just pay a small fee to sort it all out. $20 each. I pretended to mishear that as $20 in total, which he seemed fine with. We paid him $10 there and put another $10 in the passports when we went back to the window to apply again. As we got back in our Land Rover and drove onto Zambian soil, it transpired that the yellow fever certificate is not an official requirement for entry at all, but merely a trick used by some of the border posts to drastically increase their bribe yield. So much for the PAY TAXES NOT BRIBES anti corruption posters plastered all over the buildings..
Just as the sun was going down, we reached South Luangwa, where we were to spend two mornings and two nights on safari. Our tents were more like marquees, and my bed was superior to my Lilongwe bed in both size and comfort. The camp was sited on a bank of the Luangwa river, which periodically echoed hippopotamus snorts through the chorus of frogs and cicadas. Overhead, the milkyway divided the sparkling night sky evenly in two. We went for a pre dinner drink at the bar but as our torches tracked out the path ahead of us they found a big elephant in the road, which a guard had to chase off with sticks. I was going on safari the next day. I was already immersed in nature. I was excited.
The next morning we ate breakfast while the sun rose, then climbed into the open top land rovers for our first safari. Minutes after entering the national park, we were competing with a pack of other jeeps for the best view of a pride of lions, who were in turn competing for the best chunk of a buffalo corpse. The kill was hidden by a half dozen hungry heads for the most part, but we were treated to a flash of flesh whenever the hungriest wrestled portions away for themselves, revealing blood stained necks. We returned to the same spot three hours later. The lions were all slumped on a nearby road, sleeping and digesting. The buffalo skeleton lay in the same ditch, stripped clean of flesh. Vultures were perched on the highest branches of the nearby trees, evil cartoon silhouettes against the sun, either digesting the lions' leftovers or lamenting the lack of them.
This was my first time on safari, and I had allowed myself very low expectations of the number of animals I would see. These expectations were easily surpassed. We were spoiled. There was barely five minutes drive between grassy fields of impalas and monkeys- grazing, mating, fighting; families of elephants plodding through skeleton forests they had earlier destroyed by stripping their bark; lines of zebras, their stripes mingling as they drank from a small lake side by side; crocodiles camouflaged in green swampy waters; giraffes peering over bushes with mouths full of leaves, prancing away as our guide drove too close; warthogs scuttling their piglets into cover; flocks of hundreds of brightly coloured bee eaters and lovebirds; eagles hovering on metre wide wingspans... Considering the amount of time I've spent these last few weeks happily entertained on my porch watching ants carry a dying moth back to their nest, and under a tree watching a thousand flies harvest the tiny flowers of a pomegranite tree, it was a bit of an overdose on nature.
Multi-cellular animals are thought to have evolved on earth several hundred million years ago. Before then, the seas were filled with bacteria which fed on algae near the surface. Some of the more complex bacteria then began to work together, forming a matrix, through which water flowed, allowing algae and smaller bacteria to be filtered, eaten, at a faster rate. The basic functions of the cells in these matrices were to eat and to divide. By allocating each cell in a matrix to only one of these functions, the cells could become more specialised, more efficient, and therefore the matrices whose cells randomly mutated this ability to specialise, fared better and became the norm. Further specialisation took place, and soon these matrices had cells dedicated to structure, dedicated to transporting nutrients and oxygen, dedicated to defending the matrix against invading bacteria, dedicated to communication, dedicated to movement, dedicated to sensing the environment, dedicated to making decisions based on those senses. Different matrices in different environments specialised to fill different niches in the ecosystem, and as these increasingly complex and varied matrices forced increasingly complex evolutionary pressures on each other, the cells, and therefore the matrices, specialised and varied in even wilder ways. Those cells dedicated to sensing, calculating, doing, that directed and coordinated the whole matrices interactions with it's environment, did not think of the matrices they belonged to as collections of interdependant cells (for it would have been uselessly complicated to), but as a wholeness, as a 'self'; and of other matrices as 'others'. Seas and land masses became the playgrounds for the interactions between these now complicated out-of-control matrices and their social, sexual, and predator prey relationships. And nowhere moreso than the continent we call Africa.
A group of cells organised into a light, feathery, airborne matrix soars the skies, swoops down to feast on the amassed proteins and carbohydrates of a small whiskered and tailed matrix of cells as it scuttles into a hole in the ground that it's behaviour dictating cells understands to provide safety from such scary flying matrices. A particularly large matrix of cells plods heavily along a field, a boneless limb of muscle above its food entrance tearing strands of carbohydrate from the ground under the control of a collection of behaviour dictating cells that are notoriously good at storing representations of past events to influence future behaviour. A matrix that sports cells disproportionately good at contracting together to allow movement of it's skeleton's limbs and jaws given its overall light weight, sprints after a springing source of protein and sinks in its razor sharp teeth.
In the middle of this unfathomable drama, there is a one particular brand of cell matrix, that over time has been attributing less importance to those cells responsible for its strength, its appearance, and more importance to those cells responsible for dictating behaviour. These matrices develop the ability to exert very fine, calculated control over the coordination of their muscles, the ability to make increasingly complicated calculations on their perceived environments, and the ability to communicate these calculations to other similar matrices. The combination of these three abilities allows groups of these types of matrices of cells an unprecedented advantage, as it allows them to manipulate their environments as they please. In Africa, where this particular matrix of cells evolved, there remains a lingering intuition in their beliefs and behaviours that to modify these environments beyond recognition, is to put eternal faith in their own manipulations rather than in the forces of nature that allowed such a matrix (the least fathomable yet) to arise in the first place. But as these matrices spread further and further away from their natural environment, they are forced to make more and more manipulations. These manipulations bring great short term benefit, HUGE short term benefit, and before long, those groups of matrices that strayed farthest from their natural environment are faring better. In the short term at least. In the long term things are maybe not so bright. But they have developed means of transport and communication that bring the whole planet into competition, and that original continent of mind boggingly complex matrices of cells, that instead put its faith in the forces that came before it, is forced to make the same manipulations. Play the same game, or live a life of slavery. The matrices gradually move from the vast plains of variety from which they arose into the concrete electric plastic petrol powered worlds that have provided other continents with so much short term benefit. The plains of variety, once so vital, shrink into sentimentally protected parks, and the so immediately prosperous but so shortsighted matrices' only interaction with them, is to count the lesser matrices dwindling numbers, and to allow members of their own brand of matrices a chance to drive around and view their original, dying, birthplace, overthinking it on a cynical, cellular level.
Call me crazy, call me boring, but these are the thoughts that dominated my mind as we drove around the park taking pictures and getting genuine frights from lions that came incredibly close and turned quick snarling glances, all too capable of launching themselves on board and tearing us to pieces were someone to provoke them. The highlight of the two days was on the second evening, when we watched a pride of lions, including an impressively maned male, hide in the grass near a few giraffes. A family of elephants trundled by, and to protect the calves the mother charged the pride, ears trunk and tusks all a-swinging. The pride retreated, but stayed nearby, and we watched for half an hour as the giraffes, now alerted to their presence, stared suspiciously from their awkward height, refusing to turn their backs. At night we drove around with a second guide in the passenger seat swinging a car battery powered spotlight from side to side, scanning for leopards, jennets, owls, hippos and even a tiny inch long mouse.
From South Luangwa, we had a two day journey to Victoria Falls on a bus. In theory it was pretty miserable. The seats only came halfway up my back, and while the mornings were reasonably cool, the afternoon was hot like hell. We opened the windows, letting the window billow dust in our faces in a desperate attempt to cool down, but it wasn't enough. The heat sapped my energy, I fell asleep and repeatedly woke up soaked in sweat, covered in dust, with my unrested, wildly swinging neck feeling strained and sore. But I had good company to speak to, good books to read, yahtzee to play, and nice recent memories to hold in my head.
And it's lucky I found the journey so tolerable, because if I hadn't, I would have very much regretted the extra six days and $400 we had spent visiting Victoria Falls. I had heard dry season isn't the falls' most flattering time, but when a Dutch girl (three of whom's fingers I later slammed a car door shut on) commented 'more like Victoria Walls!', she summed it up pretty well. The Zambian side, amounted to two fairly tiny rivers crashing off a hundred metre wide cliff edge, and while these waterfalls were no doubt fairly impressive when considered on their own, they really were dwarfed by the sheer breadth of what they recently were and soon will be. To make matters worse, at the very far edge of the visible cliff, before it disappeared round a corner to the Zimbabwean side, there was a huge cannon of water gushing out and down, and behind it an impressive spray, hinting at a much more worthwhile sight only a few hundred metres and a $50 visa round the corner.
I don't mean to sound like I didn't enjoy it. I mean I enjoyed the miserable bus rides after all so a place of beauty, albeit compensated beauty, was not out of reach of my stubborn resolve to never not enjoy myself. I listened to the thunder of the water, imagined just how thunderous it would be after a good rainy season, took some nice pictures, hopped over the two rivers upstream from where they trickled off the cliff, dived off a 111 metre bridge with my heart in my throat, its beat in my ears, two towels tightly wrapped round my shins attached to a 100 metre cord, hoping to yell bungee with style but seeing the river rush exponentially faster towards me being unable to do anything but scream exponentially louder and higher, feeling my face bulge with blood as I neared the water, seeing floaters appear in my upside down vision as I stopped for an infinitesimal moment before being rocketed back up towards the bridge, spinning round marvelling at mountains and flight, seizing the opportunity of a slackening bungee cord to lift up my head and drain it of blood in a fancy half corkscrew, then deliriously bouncing up and down in a mixture of euphoria and fear for my cerebral arteries.
I'd been promised an adrenaline buzz afterwards, but all I got was a lingering headache and a wave of relief that I hadn't had a stroke. I'm glad I did it once, but as nice as it was to fall down and fly up the middle of a picturesque valley, Zambia on one side, Zimbabwe on the other, it just wasn't worth the feeling that my head was going to explode with each bounce.
South Luangwa was an expensive two days but worth every single kwacha. Victoria Falls was pretty, and the bungee jump pretty fun, but together they just didn't justify the time and money spent on them. Our tour group was the saving grace. Really it was just great to not be at the hospital and to be hanging round such good, nice people, whether we were on a dusty sweaty neckbreaking bus or wondering where all the water was at one of the seven natural wonders of the world.