Gorgeous Victoria Falls bw. Zimbabwe and Zambia
Trip Start
Jun 29, 2008
1
11
14
Trip End
Aug 31, 2008
Victoria Town,
Zimbabwe
Sunday, August 10, 2008
"Arg I am definitely starving here!"
. As a poor and unconventional student, I rather walked around with Michelle and Thabo beginning with the Victoria Falls, the Zambian border (Livingstone village and so on), the Livingstone statue (David Livingstone is THE man who discovered those falls "first" according to the Britons, disregarding the previous tribes who lived there for thousands of years before he came...). We also visited the Rainforest and its rich and tropical biodiversity. Some baboons (sort of Apes) crossed our way, I am so happy to see them finally because at Cape Point there weren't any except on the many warning signs!! I saw also a wind pork but he was too busy shovelling ground to find a nice meal and hence I could not take any good picture of him, poor piggy you will never become a celebrity!! The view of the falls is astonishing, it virtually takes your breath away, and not only because you have to keep your breath as long as possible while going through the huge spray of the falls!! I had wet trousers and curly hair for quite a while there!! The river starts in Congo and goes through many African countries before coming to the Vic Falls and eventually get lost in the sea in Mozambique. Local people named it the "Smoke that Thunders" in reference to the huge spray formed by the fall of the water all over the Cobalt cataracts. Ancient tribes gave several names to the trees surrounding this area but nor Thabo, nor Michelle could give me the meaning of those names, so I concluded that the language is a very old one, which has evolved since then
"Closer I said!!"
. Botswana is not far from the place at all, is it a around 70 km. And if you go on you arrive at the 4-countries border where Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet! The bridge leading to the Zambian border is a great spot to do bungee-jumping. It is approx.110 meters high. Cape Town claims to have the highest in the world with its 216 meters, I read this in a touristic brochure so I am waiting for any comments or rectifications concerning this statement. After the shower, we went to the Kingdom, a huge hotel and mall complex personally opened by President Mugabe himself. This is where you can gamble, drink, eat and shop more as reasonable but beware of the prices they are in USD and here everything is very expensive in comprison with the rest of the country! There are even mini-Vic Falls at the entrance of the hotel lobby and the whole architecture of the building is of traditional Ndebele-Shona cultures inspiration. What I most liked was the huts and especially the roofs of the huts, it is so typically African! then we went to several markets. Actually the prices there where not so high for high-quality and hand-made, local products!! I bought a couple of things there for my family for almost nothing in USD, maybe it is also because for me as a European the USD currency is low anyway. But the money I saved I had to give it away in a Wimpy Restaurant where the prices of the food were ridiculously high: I had to pay 100 rands for a single burger and tap water!!!!
"Come closer little girl"...
! that is 10 euros. Then for the chips another 70 Rands so that is 17 euros in total which would be more than 20 USD!!!! shame, shame (as they say it here al the time). But anyway, I could taste local food as well at Rumbi's house. I ate Sazza, which is the Zimbabwean variant of the South-African (Pap). They just take the Maize Meal and add boiling water to it instead of sour milk or the various other things that South-Africans add to it, and NO SALT PLEASE!It appeared very strange to them as I asked for salt, for my Western taste it really was very flaw although I loved the texture. They told me they even could not eat it with a bit of salt at all: different cultures, different tastes I guess. This is all a matter of habit and conditioning.
There was a blackout Sudnay night and we had dinner at candlelights, what could be more romantic. I had also to read with a candle etc, the following morning I woke up with the "cocorico" (that is the French version at least..) of the Local Casanova (the neighbour's cock). Meanwhile during my whole trip I finished "Meet the Rainbow Nation" a book of Hanneke du Preez over multiculturalism in South Africa. I strongly recommand it to anyone who is interested in that country. It is a marvelous, straight-to-the-point book and I learned a lot over black culture. It gave me even a better insight in my own culture. As I am confronted every day to the things that she decribes in her book like the visible "lazyness of black employees", the fact they walk close to you, speak loudly etc etc, I really can really now have a better understanding of all those things and be better prepared to cope with them and not be too ethno-centered as I may have been in the beginning just like anybody else who does not understand the whole concept of the African "Ubuntu (community)-culture" at first sight. I will not begin to write a whole chapter of this here I can just recommand you to read that only book if you ever plan to discover South Africa in a deeper way than just by watching the Bafana Bafana soccer team play.
