Happy Birthday Nicky – Hope you have a great day.
We started the day off with a full English breakfast in a big open plan, chandelier clad room. We did very little communicating with each other, as we were so busy listening to the Black ‘business tycoon’ at the table behind us. He was either shouting into his cell phone at some poor manager for not having done their job or holding court over the employees sitting at his table. Then he summonsed the waiter with a “come here boy”, the three of us could no longer control ourselves, we whipped around to find him drinking sherry with his English breakfast. Colonialism is still thriving in Africa, well in Zambia at least.
Besides the 4 bikers (also from Jhb) doing the mid-life crisis thing; riding their BMW’s to Vic Falls and back for the long weekend, we were the only whities in the hotel. Most of the residents were either on conference or on holiday from Lusaka for the long weekend. Very seldom were we left alone, there were always people coming up to us to chat, we feel so welcome here.
The weather was stunning this morning and we headed into town to buy some odds and ends. I drew 1 000 000 kwacha from the autobank (no teachers’ salaries haven’t increased), this amounted to R1 500 S.A. Rand. At the shopping centre there was an Education Expo, advertising different professions and tertiary educational institutions. Then we heard a commotion, it turned out to be the army brass band, followed by a long line of students, marching down the road. They marched into the car park and before speeches were made by some official, the band played N’kosi Sikele Afrika – the whole car park, including us stood to attention. Like in Namibia, I am so impressed by the emphasis on education and quality of school buildings in urban and rural Zambia.
Our next stop was obviously Victoria Falls. I prefer the local and original name for the falls Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means ‘smoke that sounds like thunder’, so much more apt than being named after some old Queen who never set eyes these magnificent falls. Gray and I visited the falls for our 20th wedding anniversary, having spent a wonderful weekend at the Matetsi Game Lodge on the Zimbabwean side of the falls. I think the Zambian side is even more impressive but we are now visiting them in the rainy season. It’s hard to describe just how amazing the falls are; the sheer volume of water cascading over the falls into the gorge below, sending up plumes of water making visibility minimal but making rainbows and us sopping wet. We then walked through the amazing rain forests and watched people bungee-jumping off the old steel bridge linking Zambia and Zimbabwe. Robs is nagging us to allow her to bungee- jump, we managed to avoid her doing something so idiotic (for now) by exploring the area around Livingstone this afternoon.
We went to a Squires Loft, at the Zambezi Sun, for dinner (remember the old steak house chain), this is only one of two left, the other being at Sun City.
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