Friday, 4 July 1986: Accessing the Gorges below Victoria Falls & Quaffing Mosi Lagers

August 12, 10:00AM, Halfway House, South Africa.

On Friday morning, I bought some colorful cloth material from shops in Livingstone.  I had promised to find African-patterned fabric for my friend, Mary Ann, in return for running up her phone bill before I left Denver. 

Then, I spent about an hour in the Livingstone Museum.  It wasn’t all that impressive, but I did learn a few things about Dr. David Livingstone (I presume) and his exploration of central and southern Africa in the last century.  

1955 stamps from my collection commemorating the 100^th anniversary of Dr. David Livingstone’s “discovery” of Victoria Falls.  Of course, local Africans had discovered the falls long ago.

 

I also learned about the struggle for Zambian independence.  Back in the early 1950s, British whites in this part of Africa got together and formed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which was comprised of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Nyasaland Protectorate (now Malawi).  From the newspaper clippings I read in the museum and other things I’d learned previously about the federation, it appears to have been an attempt by whites in these three British territories to create a self-governing British dominion which would exclude blacks from power sharing much as had been done in South Africa.  In one clipping, the fat white prime minister of the federation in his white suit was saying that giving the vote to local blacks was out of the question.  Black leaders like Kenneth Kaunda in Northern Rhodesia worked illegally to break up the federation and bring about independence from Great Britain.  By 1963, they succeeded.  Malawi and Zambia became independent with majority black governments the following year.  When Ian Smith’s white government in Southern Rhodesia told Britain it also wanted independence, the British renigged on an earlier agreement saying Southern Rhodesia couldn’t be granted independence until the black majority was given franchise.  So in 1965, Smith’s government declared independence anyway, and the United Nations imposed sanctions on them.  It wasn’t until 1980 that the blacks finally won out in Zimbabwe.  I think there are some lessons here for white South Africans would they take the time to read the writing on the wall.

Before leaving the museum, I studied a relief model of the area around the falls.  I noticed a series of deep gorges below the present falls which were formed by successively earlier, similar falls.  I saw a road about a mile south of the Inter-Continental which led to a bend in the river where two gorges joined.  Probably a nice viewpoint of the gorges, I reasoned.  Why not go exploring out there after the Livingstone Rotary lunch I would be attending at the Inter-Continental? 

Winter Lemba picked me up at Piero’s home and we drove out to the Inter-Continental.  I thanked him for arranging my accommodations with Piero which I really appreciated.  Winter is a big African fellow probably in his 40s.  He’s the general manager for Livingstone Motor Assembly, Zambia’s modest equivalent of Detroit.  They assemble Fiats and a couple other brands.  Unfortunately, they are currently only operating at 30% of their capacity.  It’s the old problem of a shortage of foreign exchange necessary to buy components that I’d heard much about in both Zambia and Zimbabwe.  Thus, there is a waiting list in Zambia for new cars.   Winter said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently forced the Zambian government to allow more cars to be imported into Zambia.

Winter said that the majority of Rotarians at the Livingstone Club are Indians.  That’s because the majority of Livingstone businesses are owned by Indians.  After independence, the Indians bought out the Jewish-owned businesses when their owners moved to Southern Rhodesia (which was renamed Rhodesia).

Winter was interested in my writing project.  He used to be a journalist and spent some time covering the Angolan civil war.  Winter said he could have been killed there but really enjoyed the experience.  Now that he is married with kids, he will stick with his safer occupation.  I doubt that he’ll get shot if he fails to meet production quotas.

At the Rotary lunch, I won the raffle for a free lunch the next week.  Since I wouldn’t be there, I could have taken 12 kwacha (US$1.70) instead, but I had more than enough kwacha to get rid of before I left the country the following day.  So I told the president that Winter’s lunch next week was on me.  Isn’t it just my luck that I would win something I can’t use?  What made it even funnier was that they had had me draw the numbers out of the hat and I drew my own.

After lunch, Winter offered to drop me off somewhere.  I told him that I wanted to explore the gorges below the current falls.  He only knew about a power plant in the direction I was heading and cautioned me against taking photos near there as there would be soldiers all around it.  His warning made me a bit nervous, but I’d seen the road on the model in the museum, and it clearly led to the other side of the power plant.  Turned out Winter was wrong on both counts – surprising that he knew so little about this scenic area below the falls after having lived in Livingstone for five years.  And the power plant was no problem.  I walked past it on a dirt road and the one or two guards I saw seemed to barely notice me.  In a way, it wasn’t surprising that Winter knew so little about the gorges as the route wasn’t clearly marked.  Just past the power plant, however, there was a fork in the road.  A sign pointed to residences (I assumed for the power plant staff) to the right and to the gorges to the left.  I took the left fork and followed it around a bend to the right.  In another ¼ mile, the road turned back to the left, but a little used track headed off into the bush in the direction of the river.  I followed it for about ½ mile until it turned into a trail which led me down a steep hillside into the gorge.  I climbed across some huge basalt boulders and found a nice one to sit on right next to the river.  From there I watched the Zambezi River race by and took a few shots.  I doubted that very many people knew about the trail or ever went down there.  It was a lovely spot, and I contemplated how taking photos in places like this would be a great way to make a living.  Too bad there are no job openings!

Route of my hikes to the gorges below the falls in red.  Each gorge between two bends in the river represents an earlier location of the falls which are migrating north every few hundred thousand years.

 

It had only taken me 45 minutes to get from the hotel to the bottom of the gorge, but the trip out was tricky.  I lost the trail several times although the general direction I needed to follow was obvious.  It was also steep.  As I panted and sweated like a piggy, I fantasized about how much beer and food I’d be able to consume that night to make up for this good exercise.  I eventually arrived back at the top of the plateau and took photos of a dry side canyon and the bush landscape.  It was late afternoon by now, and the warm light and shadows were terrific. 

I returned to the main dirt road and decided to continue down it to see if it would lead to any more vistas.  I ran into two Indian guys with cameras who told me to hurry before the sun went down because there was a great viewpoint ahead.  I found it about ½ mile down the road at the next bend.  Standing on a ledge several hundred feet above the Zambezi, I had a stupendous view.  The sun wasn’t quite down, so I turned tail and ran back toward the falls hoping to get a sunset shot there.  I was too late, but I did get some great shots of the river above the falls in the warm twilight. 

 

These nine smiling Zambians were visiting Victoria Falls and asked me to take their picture.  One of them gave me his address and I later sent him nine prints.  

I walked a short distance out on to Knife Edge in the dusk and passed a couple holding hands.  As I stood in the dim light watching the grey “thundering smoke” across the gorge, I wondered if it was better to share this experience with a lover.  Would having a woman around interfere with my photography and my writing?  Would I concentrate on her instead of meeting the other interesting people I had been encountering in Africa?  I decided it was a toss-up.  It depended on the woman, I suppose.  I didn’t really feel lonely or deprived seeing Victoria Falls by myself.  In some ways, maybe celibacy was less of a hassle.  It was certainly less of a hassle than desperately looking for a lover.  Besides, I knew there were always women available to fulfill my carnal desires in exchange for monetary compensation if I wanted to go that route.    

It was beer time, so I went into the loo at the Inter-Continental to get my bladder drained and ready for some Mosi Lager.  While there, I got to talking with George, a 49-year-old Scotsman.  He thought at first I was Dutch.  I bought the first round; George got the second.  He was a miner (I can’t remember for which mineral) and had worked in African mines since 1953.  The list of countries where he had toiled read like a UN directory:  Sierra Leone, Togo, Dahomey (now called Benin), Ghana, Zaire, and most recently, the copper belt of Zambia.  George seemed to feel quite at home in Africa – in fact, he had a black African wife.  He echoed previous comments I’d heard:  Zambians were the friendliest people on the continent.  George had now taken a job at the copper mine in Selebi-Phikwe, Botswana.  I assured him he’d like the country.  He’ll probably go bananas at the availability of consumer goods there.  George started getting shit-faced after several Mosis (I didn’t try to keep up with him) and became increasingly obnoxious.  I was glad when he headed off to dinner.  Just before I also went for dinner, an African honey with a big butt asked if she could have a kwacha as she was one short for her drink payment.  Since the kwacha is worth less than 14 American cents and I had plenty of them, I saw no harm in parting with one.  As I got up to go into the dining room, she told me she’d be there later.  Naa - she would probably cost me more kwacha than I was willing to spend that night.  

Speaking of prices, I noticed that rooms at the Inter-Continental were a rip-off:  US$62 to $81 and a non-citizen had to pay in foreign currency.  The price was about half that for a Zambian paying in kwacha.  The next morning, I noticed at the Northwestern Hotel in Livingstone that doubles were 60 to 75 kwacha (US$8-10), and you could pay in local currency if you had changed money at a Zambian bank.

When I got back to Piero’s house that night, he had left for the weekend to stay with friends up in the copper belt.  He’s returning to Italy this month and plans to work for Fiat in Turin until retirement.  I have his address there and would certainly want to pay this delightful character a visit should I get to Italy someday.

I hadn’t changed any money since leaving Lusaka and was planning to spend my last kwacha on a cab to the Zimbabwe border post the next morning.  There was certainly no reason to take any of this worthless wallpaper out of the country.  I actually did save a couple of bills as souvenirs because they are pretty with President Kaunda’s pleasant face on the front.  Two or three of them will buy you a Mosi Lager.