Victoria Falls at the End of the Dry Season Pt. 2

The classic view of Africa is the safari adventure so when not swimming next to the falls we took a day trip to Botswana to take in the classic Africa.   I have heard stories that the leader of Botswana is extremely passionate about animals and apparently he uses his army to protect them.  Poachers can be shot on site and even just hitting a wild animal with your car on the road can get you jail time.  So the wildlife parks there are flooded with animals and at the end of the dry season the only place where the animals can get water is at the river.  We took a boat trip along the river and saw cape buffalo and elephants by the hundreds.  Hippos, crocs and antelope were also very abundant.  And there were too many species of bird too count.

Here are some pictures.

Cape Buffalo

Saddlebilled Stork

Hippo with a Croc

Elephants Cross the River

Kudus

Elephants with 500 Pound Baby

Swimming Next to Victoria Falls

There was a ledge about 5cm under water and 1 meter from the edge of the falls that kept us from going over.

First Rains

After 7 months of pure uninhibited sunshine all of that heat accumulated into the biggest thunderstorm in my memory.  We were cooking lunch that afternoon when the clouds rolled into the village.  They made a flashy show of it too with their lightning and they boastfully howled out with thunder and and wind.  When the rains came pounding down the tin roof of our house made muted every other sound in the air.  The show was spectacular but it was the wind that did us in.  The strongest wind in 6 years was around us and after ten minutes it stole the tin roof off of our kitchen.   The rain came pouring in and the house was soaked.  After the storm passed the house was a mess, almost everything was soaked.  It was a very humbling experience.

The next day the builders came to fix the roof,  we washed and dried everything in the house and threw out everything we couldn't salvage or we didn't need.  That night we were tired but slept well under our fixed roof. Three days after the storm the house was even cleaner than before the storm because the storm forced us to throw out all of the junk that accumulates in any home over the years. Five days later we finally, after two months, got our battery to hold charge from the solar panel on the roof so we could charge our cell phones and have light at night.  Seven days later I moved into my brand new office at school.  So in Eight months time I may look back on the time when the rains came in as the time when I started living life in style in Zambia.

It has rained five times since the first rains each time more gentle then the last.  But the rains are still very heavy, with more than an inch falling in 20 minutes.  Everything has turned from brown to green and everyone is busy in the fields planting the food they will eat all of next year.  They let me plow with a team of two cows for 4 minutes but it requires some practice.  Otherwise the next few week for me will be occupied with multicrop seeding of maize(corn) with sugar cane, maize with potatoes, peanuts and a whole assortment of vegetables.  There's plenty of land to go around here so there should be enough land to feed the extra North American at the table. 

Independence Day

On October 24 Zambia celebrates its freedom from the white people who controlled the former Northern Rodesia which happened in 1964.  For the people of Mboole they were very happy to include me, the only white person in the village, in their celebrations.  The celebration for me took on two parts, the soccer games and the school’s Independence Day celebration.

The soccer games are a day long event where everyone goes and watches soccer games all day long.  I practice with one soccer team but they weren’t able to register me in time so I can only play friendly games.  So I just tagged along to watch.  Because it was day long event our team made some gela for lunch which is just ground corn meal cooked and mixed with milk.  Four guys just squat around a dish and eat away, it was interesting taste experience.  Because I had been in town the day before I told my team I would buy them a treat for after the game.  So I got them some bread and peanut butter.  Now please allow me to defend this choice of mine.  The people who live out in the villages maybe have bread once a year, for Christmas or Easter maybe and bread is without a doubt a real luxury item here.  So they all eagerly downed their one slice of bread.  After all was said and done I packed up the little bit of remaining peanut butter and went home.  At home my host mother said that a few of the other guys on our team had walked by earlier. They were talking excitedly about how the white guy had got them some bread.  The one said “Yeah and there was this brown stuff to put on top”.  Which I found strange because everyone in the village grows their own peanuts and they eat peanuts all the time but peanut butter is only found (but found abundantly) in the towns and the cities.

The school’s Independence Day celebration was very interesting but very stressful.  In the days before Independence Day the school collects about 50 cents from as many students as can afford it (this was my job to collect money and write down the crazy Tonga names like Chilileko Chuulabantu).  Then on the Independence Day there is traditional singing and dancing then for those that paid the school cooks a full course meal (consisting of Nshima, cooked cabbage and goat or chicken meat).  My grade 8 class insisted tat I join in the traditional dance, so they dragged me out there and the whole school roared with laughter from the from the moment I busted my first dance move.  Also may I say that cooking for 300 people on wooden fires is very stressful but very satisfying when finished.

Grade 8 Girls Preform on Independence Day

a more melo preformace 

May I just put in one request to all the physicists.  If they find the Higgs Boson this year someone let me know please.