Western Road Trip 2

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  Shangombo, Western, Zambia
Monday, July 25, 2005

Just past 6 in the morning we're stuck in the sand a hundred metres from leaving the guesthouse. The truck is cold to the touch as we push it out, and back on the highway the sun rises red and warming over the horizon. At a stretch of road under construction we're grounded in the same place we'd hit the day before, and after digging out we're stuck again just a few hundred metres away.

This time a passing 4x4 truck offers a tow and brings us out as if pulling a loose tooth. We reach the ferry as the operator is rising from bed and wait awhile before making the crossing, but only a little ways from the riverbank we're stuck again, this time on a bank of earth left behind by the road-grading machine passing back and forth over the highway.

We're digging out when a massive dump-truck roars by, the driver hefting a tow chain down from the cab

Barotse Portrait, Mongu

. But the situation is beginning to seem laughable. A few hundred metres on we're stuck again, just behind a queue of other stranded vehicles. At the head of the line is a heavy truck deeply embedded in the sand.

The truck's been here since 11pm the night before, and the crew have a cooking fire going. A Rastafarian reads a two day old newspaper by the fire as his coworkers try once again to get the truck moving. One man with a thick iron bar smashed dense topsoil and throws it under the wheels for traction.

But these minimal efforts won't get such a big and heavy truck out of the deep sand, and the Rasta wanders off to find help. When the cavalry arrives it's the same truck that pulled us out near the ferry, but we have to wait as the driver first rescues the three vehicles stuck ahead of us, one of them a tractor.

Moving again and within sight of a road construction camp we're passing over another place where we got stuck the day before and get jammed again. As Bwalya and the others try and dig the truck out--the two women on board gathering reedy grass for traction--I wander off to the camp looking for help.

The head of the camp is a middle-aged Ethiopian who, somehow in this middle of nowhere, has a pack of Dunhill cigarettes in his pocket

Barotse Roadside, Mongu

. He offers a tow from one of his dump-trucks, and I return triumphant to our vehicle with the tow-rope over my shoulder, which promptly snaps on the first attempt to pull the truck out. It's our fourth tow, and when we finally reach Mongu it's taken us over 5 hours to cover 65 kilometres.

From Mongu we head south, the Zambezi River keeping erratic company along the highway to Senanga, a town that the Lonely Planet guide says "has a real 'end of the line' feel". If only Senanga was the end of our line. We have another pontoon-boat ferry ride and almost 200 kilometres to go to reach the billboard in Shangombo.

After an interminable distance we find the turnoff to the town, ominously marked by a sign post directing us to the 140 kilometres to come before reaching our destination. Unlike the fascinating and wide-open plain of Barotse the road to Shangombo is surrounded by thick, dreary bush. The only respite from the wretched landscape is the sporadic settlements of modest and surprisingly well-tended huts built in the ancient method of waddle and daub.

On the way and well after dark we hit a rabbit dashing across the road, caught and seemingly mesmerized by the headlights

Tiger Fish, Kalangola

. In the three provincial road trips I've been on, covering almost 9000 kilometres, we've only squashed one dog, a chameleon, a snake or two, some birds and countless insects; only the snakes and rabbit on purpose.

Drivers in Africa will go out of their way to run down snakes, but hitting a rabbit is an occasional treat, and a little like fishing with dynamite. While Bwalya idles the truck Brian and I search for the carcass, and finding it we bag the rabbit and take it with us for our dinner.

At the guesthouse in Shangombo the electricity is down and there's no food, but we find someone to cook up the rabbit, which despite the sand and occasional shattered bone is pretty good. As we're finishing our meal, under the meagre glow of a solar-powered light bulb, a young man walks into to the dining room. He works for the local immigration authority, busy handling the population of Angolan refugees in the area.

After I promise to keep his name out of the story the official confides that things are bad at the nearby Nangweshi refugee camp. That day he'd seen a man in the camp bleeding from his eyes, ear and nose, which he says are symptoms of Marburg hemorrhagic fever (While bloodshot eyes can be a side-effect of Marburg, most bleeding occurs internally). When I suggest that the only outbreaks of Marburg have occurred in Angola's remote Northern Province he balks. "These people travel", he says. "It can come here."

The next day I've all but dismissed the immigration official's story, more out of denial than reason

Waiting for "Fernando Pavarotti"

. Besides, I have bigger fish to fry. As we bump along the road out of Shangombo I'm day-dreaming about my future. Living in Zambia is quickly becoming a means to the productive end of my writing. I have a rare opportunity here, with a seemingly endless trove of stories and the chance to write more or less full-time.

But I can feel the soles of my feet itching. My ambition to wander and write has only increased since I left Seoul, where everyday for the last six months of my tour I thought about Africa. Now, as productive and stimulating as my ride here has been so far, I'm thinking about my next post; Australia.

On that dreary road from Shangombo I'm doing the math. I'll be 28 in a few days. Still so very young, so full of ideas. Working in a winery in Australia, living in cosmopolitan Melbourne, travelling to obscure places like Tasmania and Norfolk Island, for decades the penal colony of penal colonies.

I have a list in my head that grows almost daily; a blue-skying exercise that let's my imagination and ambition roam free. Oz, Arabia, Asia, Europe. I have a lot to live and so much to write. I am impatient and have nothing to lose.

But for now I'm in a place where patience is a virtue. Back at the ferry crossing we wait an hour and a half for the captain to finish his lunch. By the waterfront a fish peddler calls attention to his stock, a half-dozen bream and a few larger tiger fish tied to a stake, floating gently and lifeless in the Zambezi. The ferry "Fernando Pavarotti" rests idly in the sandy harbour, named in memory of the father of the famous opera singer, who donated the pontoon boat to the Zambian government.

On board the ferry is an old women I recognize from the day before. On the other side of the river, a wild and ragged man cuts down nearby trees branches for traction on the sand quay leading down to the boat launch. We'd seen him while waiting for the ferry the previous day, asking us for money for his efforts and eliciting howls of laughter and derision from locals. He seemed to be the village clown, and the old women, and the baby she carried, his wife and child. They made an appalling sight, but at least the man was working for his money.

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