Long journey to Lusaka almost ends in a fire disaster

We enter Zambia through the Chipata border post. Perhaps as testament to the porous borders, the conductor of the bus, as we approach the border yells out, “We are approaching the border. Please take out your passport, ID or voter’s card for inspection.” The border officials clearly know that not everyone who will be crossing from one country to the other is necessarily a passport holder. We get our exit stamps and walk across to get our entry stamps in to Zambia.

On the Zambian side of the border, there is a gadget with four buttons that travellers can press to rate the service of the immigration officials, with a green smiley face meaning great service and a sad red button highlighting worst service.  Getting into Chipata fills me with nostalgia for old music and suddenly dude and I are singing out that old Anna Mwale hit lustfully, “from Chipata, into Zambia ekescuse me …mama Mwale.” Fortuantely for us, after all these years, the heir no longer gets embarrassed and just looks at us, laughs and wants to know what song it is.

There are lots of bicycle taxis on the long route between Chipata and Lusaka. When we stop at bus parks, vendors come on the bus selling books. This is all sort of appealing to the book buyer in me and I curb my literary snob side that I am unlikely to read Ellen Banda-Aaku or get a copy of Lusaka Punk as the books are the motivational types.

HUNGER PANGS

What is most important for me is that there is enough book-buying business for vendors to sell them on the bus in the same way they sell cold drinks and chips. I hope the next person who throws the ‘Africans and books’ cliché has not been to Zambia. 

One thing that we all automatically notice is that there are not as many vendors in Zambia as there were in Tanzania or Malawi. We wonder whether this is a suggestion of a country doing better economically.

The road is mostly good except for a two kilometer diversion onto a dust road where the road is being repaired. There are also, right from the border, until Lusaka eight hours drive away, many posters for the incumbent, Edgar Lungu as election date approaches. Although we are all looking keenly from the bus window, I fail to see a single poster of the leading opposition candidate Hakainde. Later on, one of our fellow travellers tells us the reason is that Lungu is from the East, where we came in through, so it is possible that the opposition man did not put up any posters or that they may have been taken down. I smile at how my African countries echo each other in some ways.

We finally arrive in Lusaka in the evening after a whole day on the road. From the bus park, we take a cab to my filmmaker friend and younger sister, Jessie, who will be hosting us for the next few days. Load-shedding is currently in effect so the power is out when we get there. We are starving but Jessie informs us power will return at 9pm, so we have to grin and bear our hunger for an hour while we wait. When the food finally arrives, the guys dig in but I can barely eat. I am recovering from a stomach flu which started in Lilongwe and I am incapable of having solid foods. All I find myself having, therefore, is rooibos tea. We share a meal with a young woman who is running as a councillor for the opposition.

At 22, she has achieved more than many people twice her age have and Jessie seems to believe she will easily win the seat. From the age of 15, she started a charity to educate orphans and has been managed to educate over 500 children in her selected constituency. As she says goodbye to us to drive back to the village, we all cannot help feeling a bit like underachievers.

When we finally go to bed, we are all exhausted, having been on the road since 6am. This is how we almost all sleep our way through a burning bathroom. With the toilet light off, Jessie has been the gracious host and put a candle in the toilet on top of the shank for flushing. The one in her bathroom is made of plastic.

Sadly, we all forget to put out the candle when we go to sleep and wake up to a burning bathroom full of smoke. We manage to put the fire out, but a new toilet is now required. We are all, however, glad to be alive.