flying fox

After our adventure, Kase and I clearly hadn't had enough. We felt the need to jump off of a cliff, superman-style on a zip-line type device.

There was a black out at night because Zambia doesn't have enough electricity to always support the entire country. Plus, now because of the World Cup, Zambia has been sending electricity to South Africa. So half of the country will alternate once a week or so to not have any electricity and then they switch. We ended up at a hot, ghetto Chinese restaurant run out of a house. With a group of about 15, we took over the entire restaurant. It was lit by candlelight, and while the food was (expectantly) pretty awful, it was really cool. Returned to the hostel for a late-night dip.

End to the spring break of a lifetime.

story designed to scare my parents

Here were go again. Another border-crossing adventure (this one’s a doozy):

On our way back to Zambia from Zimbabwe, we were supposed to get picked up for free by the Jollyboys hostel. But would have to wait 40 minutes at the border. So the five of us (Kase, Talya, Emma, Anna, and I) hopped in a cab instead. The driver first seemed uncomfortable taking five but agreed to drive us on the condition that Talya ducks when we pass the police checking point.

After driving for 3 minutes, he pulls over to the side of the road. He didn’t want to get fined for having extra people, so he thinks the most logical solution is for two of us to get out of the car. Driver's plan: drop of two now, pass the police, drop the rest of us on the other side, come back to pick up those two, cross the police again, and then pick everyone up so we can go on our way. We yell at him about how this was not agreed upon originally, but Emma and Kase nevertheless get out of the car at a viewing point of Victoria Falls.

Now it’s me, Talya and Anna driving past the checking point. Evidently, the police couldn’t care less and aren’t even paying attention to us. Our driver starts chuckling to himself, while I mutter a string of audible objections, including “this is absolutely ridiculous,” “this is actually not funny,” and “there’s no way you can expect us to pay full price for this shit." He keeps driving and driving further away from our stranded friends, with the justification that there isn’t a safe. By safe, he meant far enough away that the police wouldn’t catch onto his scheme. Talk about irony.

Finally he pulls over to the side of the road. This is when Talya aptly realizes we can’t leave this guy alone with all of our bags in the trunk. I volunteered to stay. So Talya and Anna are on the side of the road, while I return with the driver to pick up the friends we had left behind.

The driver and I return back towards the border, the entire time stressed because now I’m alone in a taxi with all of our bags and have no way of contacting my friends (our SA cell phones don’t work there). We stop at the point we left Emma and Kase, only to find three Zambian men in their place. They speak Tonga to the driver, while I yell at him to tell me what’s going on. Apparently, the police picked them up. The men don’t know where they went.

Before I know it, the taxi driver is off on the side of the road once more, talking to a man in a yellow pick-up truck in Tonga, and begins to shuttle our backs into the back of his "friends" truck. He tells me to get in, that he’s going to look for my friends with the police. I’m confused, angry, and now a little scared. But it doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice. So I get in this car, now driving back to the second spot, not knowing where any of my friends are, with a stranger in a yellow pickup truck, and all of our valuables in the back.

I strike up some conversation with Gabrielle, the yellow-pickup-truck-driver. Gabrielle was an innocent bystander who had never met that cabbie before, but wasn't too surprised about the ordeal. I joke about how this is extremely dangerous and how for all I know he’s a serial killer…Okay, so it’s not really funny. We drive back past the police check point and keep driving to the spot we left Anna and Talya. Then we pass it with no one in sight again. So now I’m really freaking out. Alone and have no idea where any of my friends are.

We’re driving along and in the distance I see too figures walking towards us: Emma and Kase! They had been picked up by a taxi cab full of police(?!) who said it wasn’t safe where they were and were dropped off at the next look-out point. After I’d transferred to the yellow pick up truck, they saw the first taxi driver pass them alone and were convinced that he had all of our stuff and was escaping back to Zim. They soon realized that we wouldn’t have been able to find them at another point, so they started walking back to the first, which is when Gabrielle and I found them.

Anyway, we flag them over, they hop in the back of the truck with all of our bags. We keep driving, I’m still freaking out in my head because I still don’t know where Talya and Anna are. We turn around and the Jollyboys van is behind us with Anna and Talya inside! They’d hailed the free ride we were all supposed to have taken, and could have taken if we'd just waited. Anna's face is pretty representative of all of our reactions. We spent the rest of the drive back rehashing how crazy it all was. Two baboons also happened to casually run by during this time.

So all was well. But it could have gone a million times wrong. Safe and sound at the Jollyboys pool. Mosi was needed and well deserved.

in honor of falls girl

We ventured to Vic Falls today and trekked through the rain forest. Before long, Emma was beside us, looking down and saying, “No, no, no, no, nooooo, no, no.” As soon as we thought these no’s would stop, another string of “NOOOOO, no, no, no, no” would chime in. Ems sliced her foot open. So we wobbled back to a hotel/casino to get some first aid attention for the poor girl. After leaving the pharmacy that happened to be in the casino, there was a torrential downpour. Taking my parent’s usual thinking that there is ALWAYS one day per vacation that gets completely screwed over, I wasn’t too stressed. But we all were a little skeptical about actually making it to the Falls.

Thank you, weatherman. Because the rain soon cleared, Emma was a trouper, and we continued on our way. We finally made it to the Falls to see the most beautiful Lucky Star rainbows suspended in the mist, and cliffs with the most powerful surges of water. For Anna, it was absolutely love at first sight. As soon as we turned around, “Falls Girl” was off exploring, getting lost in her passion and new-found obsession. We walked around for a bit and returned to the entrance, only to realize we just saw a tiny portion of the Falls. So while Emma passed out on a bench and watched our stuff, and while Anna was off on her own, Talya and I walked the rest of the way to see the main Falls. Some great people-watching ensued. Including a younger couple who hired a man to carry their umbrella and take pictures of them making mirror faces. We were convinced that they were Croatian (no offense to all of those Croatians out there)--until we heard their American accents. Shame.

We ate at this touristy Disney world of African culture. It’s usually how I’ve been trained not to travel (my family is relatively cruise-phobic, and I’m pretty phobic of looking and feeling too much like a tourist), but it was a really fun and definitely worthwhile. We were able to pick out warthog, impala knuckle, buffalo, crocodile, etc. for them to cook for us and it was all delicious. We wore some Zambian fabric (not nicer than the ones we bought ourselves at the market, however), people painted dot-designs on our faces, you can have your fortune read, Emma got her hair braided, and we were sung to by our amazing acapella African waiters as a thank you.

When we got back to Shoestrings, we met our friend, Kase! Kase decided to leave his group of traveling friends to go off on his own in Zimbabwe. He was randomly chilling at the hostel’s bar when we walked in. To bolster the random excitement of the night, I saw my first major fight! I definitely never need to see anything like it again. It entailed two big men throwing punches drunkenly over a girl. Chairs were thrown, women were shoved, and one too many plumbers cracks were shown (one is immediately too many, in my opinion).

spring break: welcome to zimbabwe

We soon left Botswana to venture into Zimbabwe. Predictably, there was border-crossing drama. We didn’t have enough money to get past the border ($50 each). So we were given a choice by our driver. We could either spend another hour driving back into town and an hour back to the border to take money out. Or, we could use the black market to change rand into US dollars. We chose the black market. I thought the black market was a shady market with illegal goods all laid out for trade on tables and in tents. Little did I know it is nothing more than under-the-counter trades with random people very much in the open. With a complicated exchange rate, a fee for this black market exchange, and our feeble attempts to simultaneously understand three currencies (rand, US dollars, and kwatcha), we somehow still didn’t have enough money to get across. So we hired a cab—as negotiated by the all-mighty-Emma—to front us the cash and drive us across. We drove forever to the hostel while random elephants popped up right next to us on the side of the rode. We stopped at a police checkpoint when our cab driver got out of the car to slip the policewoman a 5. He told us that it happens all the time. Then we stop again a little while later and begin to back up quickly while I’m passed out in the back. Apparently, we just missed another cheetah, which walked across the road while we were all sleeping! Oh, Africa. Anyway, we finally get there to go to an ATM to find that none of them are working and they are apparently the only ones in town. Eventually, we figure it out that we have to use “universal” account (whatever that means) and we are able to pay this poor man after all.

The cab dropped us off at the Shoestrings Backpackers, which is more like a bar that happens to have some rooms in the back. Feeling like we had drained our funds after safari and exhausted after a long day of travel, we spent the rest of our afternoon having ghetto high tea at the Victoria Falls hotel and hanging out by the pool pretending to be guests. After a nice African dinner, all of us walked back in the dark to the hostel—which we only did upon the encouragement of many Zimbabweans. It was so surprising and cool because, as four girls, it’s something we would never feel comfortable doing in South Africa.

One of the things I found really intriguing and confusing about Victoria Falls was the acceptance and embrace of colonialism. Here it was, these white men come into Africa, claim to discover Victoria Falls, despite obviously being taken there by natives who have lived there their entire lives. And this man is applauded--to this day--by the tourist industry in Zim. This fancy hotel had framed pictures of white men in colonial gear, on top of having black men wearing old-fashioned colonial garb. When I asked this Zim man at a bar later that night, he said it was catering towards the older generation and will likely end when the generation fades out. I'm not so sure. He also had a more nuanced take than my previous all-negative one. He explained that because Livingstone brought over whites who now help their economy, there is an acceptance of the good (of colonialism), as well as an acknowledgment of the bad.

I don't know how much you know about Zimbabwe, but they are politically and economically a MESS. All of this land was distributed amongst the black (unskilled and uneducated) people by president Mugabe and taken away from commercial (mostly white) farmers. So now there is nothing for their economy to really stand on. In addition to corruption, rigging of votes, and violence, there is an insanely high unemployment rate, and hyperinflation (the highest in Africa - as in, a meal costs about 46,000 kwatcha, which is equivalent to about 10 US dollars). Just nuts. And yet, people from Zimbabwe seem to define themselves as being uniquely Zimbabwean because of their immense about of hope and optimism. Emma questioned whether this was an unhealthy form of denial, or a helpful tool of survival. I leaned towards the ladder.

border crossing to botswana

On the way to the border the streets are lined with commercial trucks taking metals across. The wait takes up to seven days because, obviously, there is only one boat to take one truck at a time across the river.

When we were waiting for our own little boat to pick us up, I struck conversation with one of the border control guards. We were talking and I asked him about the gun on his back and if he’d ever had to use it. He informed me that he had killed five men last night that had tried to take his gun from him and then buried them in the bush (as in the African bush, not a single shrub). Immediately my jaw dropped and I thought he was joking. I (true to character) continued with a battery of questions and was told that he had killed about 25 men in his life (he has lost exact count). 15 since being a guard, 10 before. After he asked me what I enjoy doing with my free time and I returned the question, he told me, "Besides killing people? Going to church....and singing." Then asked me if I wanted to be canoed across the border by him--and him alone--in a wooden canoe that had some dead fish chilling in it. I still wasn’t sure (and still am unsure) if he was being serious about the nonchalant murders. So I half-jokingly told him, pointing to the gun, “With that thing on your back, I think I’m going to have to pass. Maybe next time." Better safe than sorry…He made me promise that I'd come see him when I returned and wanted me to leave him something to ensure it, which I refused. He told me he'd practice a song so when I returned it would be perfect and he'd sing it to me. Unfortunately, I came back to Zambia through Zimbabwe, not Botswana and will never see him again.

We then got on a relatively small motorboat onto the turbulent water. This petrified Emma and Anna, but after the earlier possibility of crossing with a murderer in a mokoro canoe, a motorboat with life jackets seemed luxuriously safe. And Talya, as usual, was chill as ever.

natural zambian viagra

 We were taken around for a food/cultural tour of Zambia today by this awesome guide, Kennedy. We walked around the local market with thousands of Kwatcha (Zambian money that’s 4,500 to the US$1) picking out and paying for ingredients. This included handfuls on handfuls of these tiny dried sardine-like fish. We were literally the only tourists.

Bought meters of BEAUTIFUL printed fabrics and were shown how to correctly tie them around your waste like true Zambian women. We then picked out a chicken, carried it around the market by its wings for a bit, tossed it in the back of the car and headed back to town to watch it’s head get cut off. Its bodiless eyes really did keep blinking and its headless body actually kept flapping around. I knew that was coming, but watching it in person for the first time is really bizarre. We then helped cook a feast of totally traditional Zambian foods. Kennedy told us a bit about Zambian politics (read: corruption), and, for those interested, that ground nuts (peanuts) are thought to make men “more reproductive.” Ate a lot of pap (like grits), which is what you use to scoop up the other food. Definitely no utensils were allowed. Chicken was too tough for me, but the roasted ground nuts made everything taste delish.

It was our last night with Julie, who left to meet her parents at Kruger, so we ended the night by splurging at a beautiful hotel on drinks and a fancy dinner. We watched the sunset sipping on cocktails, ate amazing duo of crocodile, and had long and wonderful bonding conversations.

spring break: welcome to zambia

Stayed behind in Cape Town a couple extra days to be with the matriarch of the Blumenerios. Woke up very, very early (as in passed out for an hour on a couch, before getting up at 3:30am), cabbed it with Will and Ellen to the airport. Happily got switched from a later flight to sit next to Will in the exit aisle, where I was given unnecessary but very welcome extra leg space. In the emergency instructions guide no one was wearing shoes! Got really excited and inspired. But quickly found out the one minor drawback of emergency-exit seats when I was scolded soon by a flight attendant who didn’t share my enthusiasm for barefooted cartoon figures. Still, having Will’s shoulder next to me to drool on made it worth it. Left Will and Ellen in Joburg and continued to Zambia by my lonesome.

I was nervous that I wouldn’t find my friends, but as soon as I made it to the Jollyboys hostel I knew I’d be fine. Sat by the pool. Chilled in the one of the many “chill areas” which are covered with African floor pillows. After a couple of hours alone, in walks Emma, Talya, Julie, and Anna! We soon departed for the helicopter flight over Vic Falls. Not enough room for me, but I elected to do “microlighting” instead. In not much more than a motorized tricycle with wings, the pilot and I flew over Victoria Falls with nothing in between me and the air. They tried charging me $20 for a dvd of the same picture 100 times. So the one on the left isn't a picture of me, but it might as well be...except that it's a man...But the picture below was taken by Emma at the same time from their helicopter ride. This is exactly what I couldn't tear my eyes away from. Lucky us, the ride was during "click"! When we were flying the pilot pointed at a herd of elephants crossing the road and three cars stuck without anywhere else to go. He seemed pretty used to these kinds of occurrences.