Zambia by born2travel.it

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05.10.2010 South Luangwa National Park (ZAMBIA)

Our tired truck struggled along the dusty dirt roads of Zambia, every now and then the engine hiccuped until it decided to abandon us. We were in the middle of nowhere, in an unspecified place in Zambia, along a deserted and sandy road...

The red dust rose into the sky and filled the air... It coloured our T-shirts and khaki shirts and soaked into our nostrils...

Suddenly dozens of curious children in torn clothes pop out of nowhere... It is not every day that ten white people stop with a big and strange truck in front of their huts!

Fannie curses as he untangles himself between one part of the engine and another... Stefania and I take advantage of it, after having made a little friends with the children, to visit their huts... I fall silent before that pitiful sight... A hut of mud and straw inside which there is a blanket spread on the bare ground, two pairs of flip-flops, a few pots and some clothes hung on the wall... a child sleeps... the lady of the house asks us for a photo with her four children... She smiles showing the upper incisors she doesn't have... she is 25, she looks 40... we don't tell her our age. Stefania is 26 but looks like her daughter, and I say it with sadness.

There are some children with stunning features. I look at them, I observe them and inside myself I grow sad thinking about their difficult future...

At 16-17 they will already have a couple of children with another poor soul from their village, they will build a miserable hut of straw and mud and will start to survive on their own...

Fannie is covered in grease and oil. The thermometer on my watch reads 42.2°...

I see mirages of ice-cold coca cola cans everywhere...

Our truck really doesn't want to start. A truck carrying maize stops; it tows us for 50$... in Africa white people are dollars on two legs!

40 km on the trailer of a lorry sitting on sacks of grain... we were the attraction of the whole road as we crossed the various small villages...

I still had in my eyes, in my heart and in my mind the time spent with those people in their small world. I thought about the woman to whom I had given a soap and whose first action had been to bite into it believing it was to be eaten, or about the joy of the child discovering that the little car I had given him was actually a pencil sharpener!

South Luangwa National Park is truly picturesque! A tall giraffe walks beside us... just five minutes to put up the tents and we are already in the jeep for the night safari with Wilson and Said!

We are exhausted from the long day and not even that enthusiastic about yet another safari but as soon as the sun sets we dive 100% into the life of the savannah...

What an emotion! Wilson points the spot light on an immense plain... slowly various antelopes and impala appear as in a show... some graze, some rest, some watch us curiously... suddenly a spotted hyena pops out warily... head low, looks around a bit and heads towards the impala... the herd thins out in a few seconds...

We drive around in our jeep for hours, we meet crocodiles, elephants, hippos, monkeys until along a little path, hidden between two bushes I glimpse a spot different from all the previous ones... Said and Wilson carry on indifferent... I follow my instinct and have the jeep stop... We go back a little and a marvellous specimen of leopard appears before our astonished eyes! The cameras go crazy while, satisfied, we admire this such elegant animal!

A few hours later at dinner we do nothing but tell each other our sensations!

"Be careful tonight!" - the sweet little Dutch girl Eef orders us: "hippos and elephants usually walk near our tents, don't go out"!

Instead I decide to sleep in the open air! All the premises are there for an unforgettable evening. The sky is super starry, there is a fresh breeze that caresses your face, the soundtrack is curated by the hippos swimming a few metres from us...

At night everything changes! It is as if the animal kingdom took possession again of its own realm. A braver impala ventures too close to the river to drink hoping not to end up in the mouth of the crocodile of the moment...

I stay chatting until 2.30 when I hear noises not far from my back... I jump and point the torch. I notice only four eyes watching me... I can't understand what animal it is... Moments of thrill until the ranger arrives and we discover that it was two frightened impala that had come to take refuge there to escape a leopard spotted not far away... Anyway he advises us to change place because of a cobra that every now and then popped out right from those parts...

Everyone in the pool! Struggling with the mosquitoes we collapse for about an hour, just the time to admire a wonderful sunrise!

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