Victory Lap

The next day we were all suffering from truck lag. This is a terrible manifestation of sleep deprivation which causes one to wake up at an ungodly hour as a result of having done it repeatedly even though there is nothing to do. We had great breakfasts and then vegged for a couple of hours. The internet connection at the hotel actually worked, and there was a lot of catching up. Eventually we went to the center of civilization in Harare, the Sam Levy Shopping Center, and bought all of the things we had missed over the prior two weeks. I learned something about crime control there. The security guards in the parking lots had been complaining that they couldn't see the bad guys over the cars.The obvious solution, build guard towers around the lot. Can you imagine this at Short Hills Mall. Anyway apparently it works.We were told definitively that the thieves are all gone.




That evening was the cocktail party and fund raiser. We all were dressed to the nines in clean t-shirts and went to the event in our new limousine, Peter's truck. What a scene. A few of the new fire engines ringed the garden, and a huge screen had been set up to show photographs of the trip. We even had the fortune to poise with Jarrett and the chief holding a banner for the Nephritis Foundation
 

There were a lot of people there including the mayor, the ex-mayor, the fire chief and a group of the local firemen and women, a number of cabinet ministers and the assorted hoi poloi.

After some warm introductions, Henry related his experiences on 9/11. I have to admit that while I do get emotional about that day his story is absolutely remarkable, and totally mesmerized the crowd. It was an education and revelation for everyone, and I suspect will be retold for a long time to come. Thank you for Henry for all you did and for sharing it with us.



The next day we  relaxed for a while but in the afternoon we went to visit Roxy and Craig at their remarkable rescue sanctuary. It is a place called Wild is Life, (http://www.wildislife.com/) and is just extraordinary. Please have a look at their web site to understand the work that they are doing. We were met as usual by a couple of cheetah and then wandered through to the main lawns. The herd has certainly grown. Pickles, the warthog came out to greet us. Who knew that warthogs like to have their bellies scratched, and will gladly kiss you for doing it?

The giraffe herd has grown to five and there are lots of kudu, a grumpy ostrich who intimidated the sable, and the pride of lions is still breathtaking. When they grunt at you they mean it. There is even a pangolin there and this is in itself extraordinary because of their scarcity. It is a Cape scaly anteater and is endangered because its scales which are made of the same substance as rhino horn, are coveted for the same bullshit reason. Apparently the Chinese are behind the trade in the scales, much as they back the poaching of rhino for their horns for its aphrodisiac power. The result is that this is now a very endangered species, and even seeing one is a treat.

Clearly though the highlight of the day was Moyo. This little fellow is just a few months old and is absolutely the cutest elephant I have ever seen. He is friendly and behaves like a puppy, except he weighs over 300 lbs. He gave me the most unique birthday kiss ever, planting the tip of a very wet trunk firmly over my nose and mouth, and sniffing me carefully. After lots of oohing and aahing, his handler led him away for dinner and then bedtime.

We also settled in to a lot of wonderful food, a lot of alcohol, and other intoxicants. Jarrett even made sure that the baby giraffe was well fed.










A little later in the evening, Craig took Jackie and me to see Moyo sleeping. Its quite an arrangement. Moyo has a large mattress which is on the floor in the center of the room. (He outgrew the old one and his handler wrote a note asking for a replacement because he was being shoved out of the bed by the little fella). He has a blankie and sleeps with his handler. On the bunk-bed to the right sleeps Pickles ( on the lower bunk) and in the corner is the dog who is really Moyo's best friend. If it sounds like a fairy story it probably is. Apparently the BBC is making a mini-series about the group.

Eventually the whole evening was winding down and out came my birthday cake. Great cake, made even better by the two "exotic dancers" who accompanied it. Charming young ladies who danced very well and weren't scared of mosquitoes biting them on bare skin. What a finale. Needless to say we stayed for an extra while ( some longer than others) and then made our way back to our accommodations. ( No, there are no pictures of the ladies!) 

We got up in the morning feeling a little melancholy. Time to go back to the real world. Most of us had different travel plans and so to put a final bow on the trip, we went to the Harare central fire station to see how our trusty steeds of the past two weeks were being treated. It was really well. The guys had out in the main yard and were examining the various pieces of equipment and getting the trucks ready for use on center stage. Lots of care, enthusiasm, pride, curiosity and a huge amount of gratitude.

                     
So thank you to all who made this great trip possible. Peter, it was an amazing journey in many respects. We made new friends, had wonderful experiences, ( some good, some not so), learned a lot, maybe taught each other a little, and did some good for a country that needs all the help it can get                          

So near and yet so far

We got up very early and dragged our lazy butts through the empty hallways of the hotel. The kitchen had prepared road food for us and so after loading the trucks we were ready to make the big push through to the border. The best part of starting that early is that no one feels like talking, and so everything was done with a minimum of effort, no communication and high efficiency. Even the zebra who hand out at the hotel were asleep except for one who we found wandering the hallways looking for a late night snack, and he was in his pajamas.



 

We made really good time and got to the border at about noon. Once again getting out was not a problem. Besides Henry backing up into a wall (there went another tail light) it was uneventful. 

The odd part was that the immigration officials made us fill out a police report because they were concerned that if we filed a claim for the “accident” and it had not been reported appropriately, they would be held liable. I think that they are becoming too Americanized with all of this fear of claims and lawsuits. In the end though, the Zambians I think were quite happy to see us go, and so with a minimum of formality, they passed us on to the Zimbabweans. I think that one of the weirdest things we saw was how used to humans the baboons have become. Here one is eating dead insects off the front bumper of a car at the border.

Waiting on top of the dam wall

 As we drove down the hill and over the dam wall it was an impressive sight. As we got to the far side we were told that we could not go any further. The Chinese are repairing the wall, expanding generating capacity and generally upgrading the hydro facility. Turns out they are also blasting big tunnels and we got there 30 minutes before the blast, so we wandered around waiting. The blast was huge and Allan got such a fright that he ran off the dam wall. I am not sure where he thought he would take refuge from and major calamity of he was standing on top of it. Anyway a few minutes later they allowed us to pass through the blast site and on to the customs and immigration area.

The papers had allegedly been sent ahead of us to the clearing agents so that the Zim customs folks wouldn’t hold us up. After all why would they want to stop a convoy of vehicles that can only be used for public service, and that were a donation so no one in the country was sending funds out to pay for them, and that have no duties assessed on them? We obviously if you cannot answer this question you are dumber than Zim Customs. First we had to have a discussion with a UN worker about Ebola and describe its symptoms. Then we had to have a purple ink splotch put on our thumbs after which we were allowed to go into passport control. Now the passport and customs office is in a tent which gets more than a little steamy inside in the 105 degree sunlight. The reason for this luxury is that the Chinese contractors working on the dam demolished the old structure before building the new one. So it is an atmosphere where everyone is jovial and compassionate and helpful. Right! We all made it through this part and were met by both the mayor of Harare and the mayor of Kariba.

 

It soon became obvious that they weren’t accepting the truck papers. Something was wrong and it appeared that we were not going to be able to solve it even with the politicians on our side. Eventually at 6 pm Peter yelled at them, told them that they could keep the fire engines and sort it out with the city of Harare. We were going home. We unpacked all of our stuff, climbed into four taxis and the mayor’s car and drove down the hill to the local marina, formerly the Rhodesian Riviera, where Peter has his boat and had also purloined a second one for us to sleep on. Mayor Ben also joined us for the night of eating, drinking making merry and for a few, sleeping on the deck. ( the smart ones among us took staterooms).

We got up early the next morning and four of us hopped in a speed boat to take a tour of the island where we had tied up in an effort to find the buffaloes that had wandered down to the bank during the night. We were zipping right along when all of a sudden there was a huge bump and thump and we ground to a very sudden stop. In the middle of the lake we had hit a rocky outcrop and run aground. Normally this is not a huge problem, you jump in the water, push the boat free and start up again. But in this water there are a lot of problems. Most of them are 4-10 feet in length are very mean looking and have huge teeth. Undeterred Andrew jumped in and I figured that just getting my weight of the boat would help, so I followed after looking very carefully for any sign of Mr. Croc in the area. We pushed free and made it back to the mothership, and had a great breakfast in the early morning light. The entire time we had been eating and joyriding, Peter had been on the phone and by 1030 rumor had it that 7 of the trucks had been cleared. So we called a fleet of taxis and headed back to the border. ( And no, Uber does not work there). We hung around for another couple of hours and finally were given the green light to head out.

The road up from there to Harare is horrendous, just as bad as the Zambian tracks, with lots of steep hills and tight turns exacerbated by 30 ton trucks hurtling round the bends towards you. If one of them were to hit anything it would be a disaster but somehow we managed to steer clear. Suddenly Peter pulled over and the other four trucks following him followed suit. He climbed down and came muttering and cursing along the side of the road that Johnny was breaking pieces off his truck. What and where and how was not divulged. About 15 minutes later the other trucks showed up. Turns out the water tender that Johnny was driving had started breaking from the roads. It has a big pump ( oops, had a big pump) on the back behind the water tanks, and all of the bouncing on the potholes of the last week had taken a toll. The entire pump and its connecting pipes had broken loose from the water tanks, beaten down the side panel of the truck bed and apparently became a 300 lb. bowling ball bouncing down the road at 50 mph. right in front of Sel. The guys picked it up, loaded it into another truck and caught up with us. It really wasn’t  Johnny’s fault but sometimes the habit of blaming him dies hard. 

We arrived in Harare at about 7 that night and pulled into Peter’s driveway with lights and sirens on. Lots of fun. Then it was an amazing dinner arranged by Cleo Raft and Taki and a few others and off to our hotels for a good night’s sleep. For the first time in 2 weeks we almost all had our own rooms but Henry and Jarrett still like spooning so they shared.

Our Bed and breakfast was outstanding, beautiful rooms with working TV, and a great breakfast. We spent the day hanging out and ironing our uniforms for the big handing over ceremony and cocktail party that evening.

And on the seventh day they rested

The Zambezi  Sun is in the town of Livingstone, Zambia, which was named after the famous explorer. It’s a decent sized community and its growth has really been driven by its proximity to the Victoria Falls. It was pushed into tourism apparently by the greediness of the officials on the other side of the bridge who wanted a lot of favors from the developers of the hotel. It became so egregious that they built in Zambia at a lesser site but with no political interference.

After that welcome buffet the previous night, we got up and walked around Victoria Falls The view of them is quite different from the Zambian side, but still very impressive even in the dry season. At about noon we took a van over to the Zimbabwe side and after running a couple of errands  in town, some folks went to look at the Falls from this side and some went to the Victoria Falls Hotel, one of the great old ladies of the Victorian era.  There was a unanimous decision not to do the bungee jump.

The only word for the hotel is spectacular. It has scale, perspective, and most of all it reeks of a bygone era when that region of Africa was very much part of an empire devoted to England's economic growth. There are some interesting posters inside from about 1933 that show by country the principal trade commodities of the time and a caption that says that the total trade with the colonies of the British Empire was about L33 million annually. Not even a hundred years ago and yet so small.

We went outside, had a light lunch because we were anticipating a large dinner. The other big event of the day was that Diane flew in and joined us there from her trip around Southern Namibia. After some serious discussion we decided that rather than exert ourselves by walking,  we should relax, have high tea and smoke cigars on the patio. I could have been wearing a pith helmet. Allan concluded that the Bulawayo Room was a good place to take an afternoon nap. 

Our arrangement was that the van was to collect us and we would leave for another hotel at 5 p.m. sharp. At that hour everyone was there except Johnny,  so we left with the thought that he is old enough to look after himself and he would find his own way. Sure enough as we were driving through town we spotted him meandering around the shops, and he told us that he wasn’t too late and could have found a taxi back to Zambia. Anyway we went off to have sunset drinks at the Limpopo Hotel and watch the animals at the waterhole, followed by a dinner with drums and exotic African foods at the Boma. We had the drinks but in determining the schedule for the next day, decided to head back to the hotel early instead. We had made that awful decision to leave at 5 a.m. which meant a 4:15 wake up call.

Livingstone I Presume

We knew that this was going to be a long haul exacerbated by the fact that we had to cross the border between Namibia and Zambia. Border crossings are always something to be looked forward to in Africa, because there is nowhere else in the world where one can observe first hand or even participate in such gross incompetence. 

We had a great breakfast at Lianshulu and struck out at about 8 am. It was sort of smooth but Sel, who was driving one of the trucks, saw an apparition, got a fright, lurched to the left, pulling the steering wheel and smashing that big, expensive electronic mirror on the steel gate. Lianshulu is close to a town called Katima Mulilo, which is famous because it was the HQ of the South African Defense Force during the war with the Angolans and Cubans. It no longer has that claim to fame and apparently both the base and the graveyard are overrun with plants and weeds.We pulled in to customs quite early because we knew that we had a long way to go afterwards and the Namibians once again came through for us. No undue delays or bureaucracy, just move 'em in, move 'em out. And the best thing about leaving Namibia was that we could legally drive with more than one person in a truck. The Zambian customs folks were reasonably quick but there was a slight problem.

We had stopped on the side of the road between Namibia and Zambia waiting for a couple of the guys to come out of the office. I was in the passenger seat of our truck, Allen was in the driver's seat, and we were killing time when all of a sudden we heard a huge grinding banging noise a felt the truck lurch forward as though it had been hit by something large. Guess what? It had been hit by something large, a big red something large, another fire truck. And guess who was driving it? SEL. He had pulled out from behind us and forgot that the truck extended to the left. Remember this is Africa and the vehicles are right hand drive. Anyway he succeeded in ripping open two of the three lockers on the vehicle and dragging them for a few yards down the road, with equipment inside threatening to come spilling out. After doing our best to pick up pieces and bend and slide things back into place, we caught up with the other guys who were now stopped at the Zambian customs post. Once we had had a chance to assess the damage we decided that we couldn't tie the pieces together with bailing wire and gum, and I took the truck back out of the border post, into Namibia, and to a body shop that the clearing agent knew in town. I have to hand it to the guys who worked there. With the most primitive of tools, including a drill whose bit had not been replaced in two years and had no edge, and a hand pumped riveter, they managed to reattach the fender and close the lockers securely enough to hit potholes without losing anything. Then we went back across the border, this time just driving and waving to the guards who knew all about our dilemma, and rejoined the rest of the crew. 

Now the customs fun started. The border going into Zambia closes at 6. We had never worried about this because we had arrived at mid-morning thinking we had plenty of time. Peter and the clearing agent were working furiously to get the paperwork right so that we could speed across the country and get to Zimbabwe.

Paperwork takes on a different meaning in Africa. It is not a means to an end but an end in and of itself. It allows people power and capriciousness, an apparent knowledge of laws and rules, and an ability to quote Nancy Reagan and just say no.  So we waited and sweated (it was about 100 degrees in the shade. Now you also need to understand that the border post is a freight interdiction center but if you are on foot and want to but something from the stalls outside of the border, no problem. Just walk past the gate which blocks the road but nothing else, go past the guards with the AK 47’s and the folks in uniform waiting to inspect your papers and buy a drink or a piece of chicken if you are brave enough to eat it.

Now with all of this eating and drinking, there is an obvious need for bathroom facilities. At the lodges they have been fine. However on the road it’s a little different and one comes across some strange things. Probably the most alarming was at this border post, where the notice to the right was posted. Makes one wonder about washing ones hands, let alone using the facilities.

So we waited, and we took the time to read the notices. The one thing that is impressive is the fact that at every border post the authorities are screening for Ebola, albeit lightly, and are trying to educate the  people who pass through of its symptoms and dangers. This is clearly a disease that is  frightening the crap out of all of Africa. In Walvis we had temperatures taken at the airport before we claimed baggage. At each of the road borders we were asked about travel history and at the Zim border we had to discuss the disease and then get a purple thumb to prove to the passport control folks that we had been appropriately educated.  As an aside they are also not neglecting aids, and in each passport office there are boxes of free condoms for men and women. 

Anyway, at about 5:30 it appeared that we had the right papers and we had to line up the trucks so that the lady, and her AK 47 friends at the gate could inspect our papers. Once again the clearing agents had screwed them up, but fortunately she worked with us and the last truck came through with about a minute to spare.

By this time it was getting close to sunset and we still had a three hour drive ahead of us. It wasn't that it was so far, but that the road was heavily potholed, so that if you drove into one you could fall all the way through to China. So while it was light it was sort of okay, but it became a nightmare after about an hour. We made it thought and at about 9:30 we pulled into the Zambesi Sun hotel in Livingstone. What a relief, still no flat tires due to potholes. We parked in the lot and while the porters took the baggage to the rooms, we ran for the buffet dinner which was about to be shut down. What a good meal, even if it was cold.