Zambia

Visited in April 2002. I arrived at Mpulungu after sailing down Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma. I travelled south to Lusaka and visited Livingstone and Victoria Falls before hitching a ride along the Great East Road to Malawi.

Northern Zambia
Kasama to Lusaka
Livingstone & Victoria Falls
South Luangwa NP
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Lusaka
Chipata

Mbala, Lusaka & Petauke
Livingstone & Victoria Falls
Mosi-oa-Tunya & S Luangwa

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Travel notes from Lusaka

Hi Everyone,

It took me ten days, but on Wednesday night I finally arrived in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I left Dar Es Salaam on a Sunday evening at 17.00 taking the central line train the 1,251km to Kigoma travelling via Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, which looked from the train more like a large village than a city, and Tabora, the central line rail interchange. I had a first class sleeping berth booked for the 40-hour journey and for an African train it was very comfortable, with food and beer available on board. In the compartment next door to me were two girls all the way from Brighton in Sussex, who were also heading to Kigoma, so I had some company for the long, sometimes monotonous, journey across the empty plains of central Tanzania.

We finally arrived on Tuesday morning at 09.30, only half an hour late. Kigoma sits on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, just south of the border with Burundi; it is Tanzania's major port on the lake. I checked into a local guesthouse for a night and dropped off my luggage and rushed down to the port. This is where the next stage of my journey to Zambia would begin; there is a weekly ferry that sails from Bujumbura in Burundi to Mpulungu in Zambia via Kigoma. Before leaving Dar Es Salaam I had managed to phone the shipping company and reserve a first class cabin; for any of you who have experienced Tanzania's telephone network you will appreciate that this was an achievement in itself. To my surprise they had my reservation written down on a scrap of paper and I paid for my ticket, US$55.

The two girls from Brighton and myself went off to the small village of Katonga where there is a chimpanzee sanctuary run by the Jane Goodall Institute. Unfortunately it was closed because the chimps had been attacking visitors, so instead we went to visit the Jane Goodall Institute offices in Kigoma. We managed to get a meeting with the project manager who explained to us all the conservation work they are doing in the area. After the meeting the project forestry manager took us on a tour of the forests they are planting and conserving and explained to us the problems caused by the felling of the Mninga tree. This tree is used locally for everything from boat building to furniture making and is disappearing fast, which will have a serious effect on the local economy. The institute is pioneering a planting programme of the Mninga, which is almost impossible to germinate from seed in a nursery.

The ship, the MV Liemba, departed Kigoma at 18.00 on Wednesday; on board were two other lads travelling, one from Germany and the other all the way from Bournemouth in Dorset; we concluded that it's a small world. The ship has a long and colourful history. She was built in Hamburg around 1910 when Tanzania was known as German East Africa. She was shipped to Dar es Salaam and then transported by rail to Kigoma and reassembled on the lake, making her first sailing in 1914. With the outbreak of WW1 the ship was fitted with cannons and went into battle against the Belgian forces from Congo and the British from Northern Rhodesia. In 1916 the Germans decided to hide the ship; they removed the engines and equipment and hid them in the hills surrounding Kigoma and then deliberately sunk the boat. She remained on the bottom of the lake until 1924 when the British refloated her and she once again sailed up and down the lake. The original steam engines lasted until 1979 when they replaced by two diesel engines; in 1993 she had a complete refit, although today you wouldn't have guessed.

We arrived in Mpulungu at 08.00 on Friday, 38 hours later. Zambia is a landlocked country, so I thought it quite ingenious of me to arrive by boat at the only port in the country. I spent a night in Mpulungu, which is described as the crossroad's of East, Central and Southern Africa; in reality it is a quiet, dusty, hot town sitting at the bottom of the 1000m escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. I took a minibus the 40km to Mbala where there is an excellent museum, described as one of the best in the country, the Moto Moto Museum.

The second highest, single vertical drop waterfall in Africa, Kalambo Falls is just outside Mbala. I borrowed a bicycle from someone in town and cycled the 40km to the falls across the hot and dusty African bush along a deserted, rough, dirt road. It took me three hours to reach the falls, which were spectacular. The way back to Mbala was uphill most of the way and took me four and a half hours. Unfortunately on the way back, after about 10km, I came down a steep, bumpy stretch of road and accidentally lost my water supply; suddenly the day became challenging, I still had 30km to get back to Mbala. After another 20km the first vehicle of the day came down the road; I managed to flag them down and they gave me a bottle of water, just enough to get me back to Mbala without hallucinating.

I took a minibus to Kasama and picked up my first puncture on this trip. I waited in Kasama for 34 hours for the next train to come through to Kapiri Moshi, the terminus of the TAZARA (Tanzania Zambia Rail Authority) railway, about 200km short of Lusaka. I bought a ticket for a first class sleeping berth and at 22.00, when the train arrived all chaos broke out as about 300 people tried to find their seats in a train that had no lighting. Midday, 14 hours later, we arrived in Kapiri Moshi, from where I boarded the bus from hell to Lusaka. It finally broke down about halfway to Lusaka, a common problem with the chicken busses in Zambia. I managed to flag down a passing minibus and left my fellow passengers standing by the side of the road and finally arrived in downtown Lusaka at 19.00 on Wednesday.

Regards

Geoff