Zambia

Zambia At the Malawi border, after the customs formalities, we get through fairly quickly I must say, one of the fastest African borders. We head onto the main road from east to west towards Lusaka, the capital. The kwacha is the name of the local currency. At the first village where we stop after hours of travelling, I get out and see little shops where black men sew trousers on treadle Singers in full view of everyone. Proper tailors, a bit rare to see; they remind me of my mother when she did the seamstress course after the war. In fact at home she still has a treadle Singer, which in the meantime has been modernised with the addition of an electric motor. Nicola, my travel companion, says that here the currency is 4 to 1 while in Malawi 3 to 1; it makes little difference to me, the strength of a local currency depends on purchasing power.

We arrive at Lusaka just in time for lunch, all 22 of us get down from the truck that has been carrying us for more than a month from Kenya, and we vanish, each on his own. A need that comes over you after you've been living elbow to elbow for days and looking each other in the face for at least eight hours a day. I first went into a travel agency for some information, then into a little restaurant to eat something. The Truck Africa truck was always parked in the same spot. The passers-by are all black; they don't even notice us and ignore us. The city, compared with those just seen, seems a little more modern; some buildings put on a fine show for themselves. Zambia was formerly Northern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe Southern Rhodesia; they were governed by whites like South Africa, and as long as they were there progress was evident.

From the moment of the handover for independence, progress literally stopped, in fact it feels like being 30 years behind. 752,000 square km and 12 million inhabitants; here there are little-known national parks free of mass tourism, and one of the things that holds many people back is the visa, which has to be obtained at the embassy before leaving and paid for, plus other things, and the low standard of the accommodation. But Zambia will sooner or later be a destination of mine again; I like it here, and above all I'd really like to visit Kafue Park; those who've been say it's full of animals and above all there are the African wild dogs. You drive on the left-hand side of the road; we notice many trucks carrying earth with a big number written on the cab; we realise they're building a new road. Good, so when I come back it'll already be ready for me to use.

We sleep at the roadside near Livingstone; we pitch our tents there. The fence on both sides of the road had been up for hours, and not having found a clearing, here we are. Thank goodness that with the dark the traffic thinned out and disappeared during the night. The lamp posts are the ones with 25 wires, like once at home. One of us, who works as an electrician in New Zealand, tells me they aren't power wires but telephone wires, and to prove it to me he climbed onto the roof of the truck parked right there below, and calmly touched them with both hands at once. Very few volts pass through and they're imperceptible to the palm of the hand. The next morning Nicola points out to me that the two New Zealanders and the two English girls have swapped tents, that is, a boy with a girl and vice versa. Better for them, I say; better late than never.

Nicola, on the other hand, had been noticed by the group by the English girl Claire, a pretty girl who however was there with Ripe, her boyfriend; a real shame for Nicola, though a few days later he manages to kiss her anyway. We arrive at Livingstone, a Zambian town where we fill the truck with diesel since here it costs less than in Zimbabwe. This is a border town with fast-growing tourism, ever since Zimbabwe fell from grace thanks to the dictator Mugabe, its president, who won't hear of giving up power. So the planes from South Africa full of tourists land here at Livingstone, a more tranquil place from where you can see Victoria Falls well and go rafting. Which Nicola and I do, and we have a whale of a time. Bye