There used to be three countries that started with Z-Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. After a civil war in 2000, Zaire renamed itself to Congo. In a flash, the choices for Z were now down to either Zambia or Zimbabwe. I could not help feel that time was running out, as Zimbabwe was also going through an upheaval, and could just as quickly rename itself as well. It seemed unlikely that Xanabia was going to be high on any usurper's list of new names for a country.
In the summer of 2001, I went to see the solar eclipse in Luangwa in Zambia. To get there, I rode a bicycle from Malawi along the Zambian Grand Trunk highway. Originally, I planned to ride the bike back to Malawi, with a stop at South Luangwa National Park. However, the bike was acting temperamental, and I was running low on time. After the eclipse was over, I thought it best to hitch to Chipata, and catch public transportation to the park. With five hundred kilometers ahead of me, I started early in the morning, and snagged rides as far as I could go. By late afternoon, I managed to get as far as the crossroads of Petauke and the main trunk highway, nearly three hundred kilometers from Luangwa. The traffic dwindled as the sun began to set, and I had to stay overnight.
I woke before dawn and wheeled my bike to the highway. As the morning sun clambered over the horizon, I stood at the crossroads with a barely functioning bicycle and my thumb out. The bike, though rideable, had a bent hub, and would probably not make it to Chipata, more than two hundred kilometers away. It certainly would break before getting to South Luangwa National Park, my final destination in Zambia.
With neighbouring Zimbabwe suffering under Mugabe’s rule, cross border trade had sputtered, and gasoline prices skyrocketed. Consequently, few people could afford to drive, and traffic along the highway dwindled. Considering how sparse the traffic was, I was not sure whether I would get to Chipata before nightfall. Fifteen minutes later, a pickup stopped beside me and offered me a ride all the way to Chipata. I could hardly believe my luck, and hastily loaded my bike into the back of the pickup.
Two men in the back of the pickup helped me load my gear, and I quickly jumped into the truck. With more than two hours of travel ahead, we eased ourselves onto a rolled carpet in the back of the pickup. As we pulled back onto the highway, I turned to one of the men and asked him what he did. He looked at me with a smile, and said "I am a representative of the Church of Jehovah." As that was sinking in, the other man mentioned that he was also a member. I now had to look forward to two hours of saving my soul. Through amazing twists of conversational dexterity, my religious beliefs did not get mentioned once during the entire two and a half hour journey. Either they were missionaries in training, or it was their day off.
It was only nine thirty when we arrived in Chipata. After thanking the driver, I wheeled the bike to a campsite and set up my tent. With the entire day to collect information, I ambled to the bus station to find out what time the bus was leaving. Like almost every bus station in Africa, it was a textbook example of building without a plan. There were no signs, no bays, and no visible ticket office. Rusty old busses pulled into the station and parked themselves haphazardly, while other busses waited patiently for enough passengers to leave. Though not apparent, there was some order somewhere. I just had to find it.
Eventually, I found someone who knew the bus schedule. He told me that the bus to South Luangwa left around one in the afternoon, and there would be no bus tomorrow. As it was now 11:30 AM, I raced back to the campsite to pack up. After stowing the bike at the campsite, I bought some snack food and rushed back to the bus station.
By now, it was 1:30, and I worried that the bus had already left. Fortunately, it was still half empty, and I climbed into the rusty half bus to get myself a seat. There were three other travellers on the bus. Two of them, Alex and Marcel, were Dutch, and the third man was an American by the name of Jeremy. Once settled, I took a look around. About half the seats were full, and the aisles and racks were littered with bags and boxes. By Zambian standards, the bus may as well have been empty. I had a sinking feeling we would be waiting some time before the bus got full enough to leave.
In the heat of the afternoon sun, we sat at the back of the bus, watching each new arrival and hoping that would be the trigger to start the bus. By three, the bus was still sitting in the station. Jeremy hypothesised that he was the reincarnation of one of Hitler’s generals, and this was his punishment.
I was ready to start hitching to the park, figuring that anything was better than just sitting at the station. Before making such a move, I decided to get an idea of if and when the bus would leave. Shortly after the conductor stepped onto the bus. I asked him how many more people it would take, and he said about five or six. This seemed reasonable, so I stayed put.
An hour later, the requisite six had stepped on the bus, but there was still no indication that the bus would be leaving. The driver’s seat remained empty, and the conductor was nowhere in sight. A thin young man ambled up to the side of the bus and identified himself as the manager of the bus station. He said that the bus was not full enough to leave, but if everyone would get onto a smaller bus, we could leave as soon as we finished loading. He motioned to a van that rolled up beside the bus.
I looked at the dented twelve seater Toyota van with some skepticism. There were twenty two people on the half bus, with enough luggage to fill the aisles. I tried to explain the impossibility of the situation to the station manager but my concerns fell on deaf ears. With a complete ignorance of the compressibility of solid matter, he assured me that we would easily fit in the van, and be on our way within minutes. Had he been born in North America, he could have made his fortune as a pointy haired boss.
Realizing that we were moving to the van irregardless of the impossible physics, I scrabbled into the back of the van and secured two seats for Jeremy and myself. Marcel managed to contort his way around two Zambians to a seat across from us. Unfortunately for Alex, he ended up half sitting on the edge of the last seat, with one leg hanging out the back. Simultaneously, a pyramid of luggage was growing on the roof. Inside, more baggage encroached into the spaces around our legs.
While we squeezed against the growing mound of luggage, the conductor said that everyone needed to make some space, as there were still two people to get inside. Alex, who was only half on the bus snapped back "You can't even close the door. What are you going to do? Cut off my leg, and then we'll go?"
The bus staff seemed convinced that they could repack everything to squeeze in two more people. After another half hour of rearranging luggage, they came to the same conclusion the rest of us had reached an hour earlier. Their solution was to put us in another vehicle. The station manager pointed to the van beside us, and told us to load onto that one.
The new vehicle was an identical Toyota van, except that the inside had been arranged to have fourteen seats instead of twelve. Resistance was useless, and they were going to try again, no matter what anybody said. Once again, a scrum ensued amongst the passengers fighting to get in. This time, Alex and Jeremy crawled through the back door, and secured themselves two seats. Marcel pushed his way into the front, and got a seat for himself, and maybe half a seat for me. Meanwhile, the bus crew was busy transferring all the luggage from one bus to the other.
The roof began sagging under the weight of the luggage, and the support struts inside the van started popping out. One of them sprung out, striking Marcel in the head. Luckily for me, I was still outside the bus, trying to get in. After much exhaling and contorting, I squeezed inside, and sat down in the half space between two seats. I was not looking forward to riding this way for the next four hours.
Outside the bus, the manager was busy tying down the mountain of luggage strapped to the roof. His bloodshot eyes explained why his speech seemed so slow and slurred. He muttered about government corruption and the bad roads, cursing incoherently as he knotted strips of rubber inner tube in the final act of securing the luggage.
The van was completely full. Not surprisingly, there were still two people who could not get inside. This was of no concern to the staff, who were now distracted by someone who had not paid their fare. We were packed like sardines, but there was still no sign of a driver. As I watched the sun sink towards the horizon, I idly wondered if someone was going to start the engine. The argument about the missing money continued, gradually growing more and more heated. Finally, the passenger reached into his wallet and grudgingly handed over a small wad of bills to the conductor.
With that hurdle out of the way, the bus driver mysteriously appeared and started the engine. We slowly rolled out of the station into the fading light. At last, the cursed bus station would be behind us, and in only six hours (apparently, the staff grossly understated the estimated time to get there) we would be at the park. We drove out of the station amid much screaming, and came to a halt 50 m away.
The luggage of the two stranded passengers was still strapped to the bus. In the encroaching darkness, we watched them unload several bags and armfuls of jerry cans. I never found out what kind of expedition the two passengers were on, but suspect that they were gasoline smugglers. Fortunately, our luggage did not take any unscheduled walks, though it was hard to tell as it was nearly pitch black by the time all the luggage was unloaded.
We piled back into the van and headed back toward the station. Fortunately, we turned before getting into the station, and continued on the way. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, we eased back for the journey ahead. We had been on the van for more than five hours, and just left the station. Finally, we were on our way. Jeremy asked rhetorically what else could go wrong, which in hindsight was exactly the wrong thing to say. As the living incarnation of Hitler’s most evil general, he would have been wiser to keep quiet. Marcel asked me how far I could have gone on my bike, but I tried to push the thought out of my mind.
One hundred meters later, the van stopped, and the driver disappeared into the night. The conductor told me he had gone to say goodbye to his family. Another passenger told me he had gone home to get some dinner. We stood around outside the van, waiting in the dark for the driver to return. With the conflicting stories, nobody was sure who to believe. After forty five minutes, we were now certain that the driver was happily eating at home, but were unsure if he planned on coming back. Almost on cue, the driver reappeared, and we stuffed ourselves back into the van.
The van started moving. The tension rose, as everyone waited for yet another unannounced stop. After a few hundred meters of uninterrupted forward motion, we relaxed, believing we were now on the way. However, a new problem arose. Because the back door was unable to completely close, exhaust fumes permeated the air inside the van. Now I was both perilously balanced between two seats and getting nauseous from the fumes. Although we were moving in the right direction,it was going to be a terribly uncomfortable and sickening six hours.
Soon, we turned onto the dirt road to the park, and passed several pedestrians walking along the road. It was nearly pitch black, yet they were walking along the road in the middle of the night with no lights. Where were they going at that hour and why were they walking? Perhaps it was faster than taking the bus.
A few minutes later, the engine began making unhealthy squealing noises. The driver stopped the van, and began tinkering under the hood. While he was fixing the engine, the Zambians in the van began muttering about the state of the roads and government ineptitude. By the time the driver had fixed the problem, the mutterings had turned into a multilingual discussion of government corruption. The talk quieted down as soon as the engine started and we began puttering along the road.
About five minutes later, the engine started squealing again and rekindled the discussion. While the driver was poking around under the hood, the discussion grew more heated, and became increasingly multilingual. After fifteen minutes, the driver got back in the bus, and started the engine again. Alex and Jeremy started betting on how long it would be before we stopped again. Alex wagered three minutes, and Jeremy wagered two.
Barely a minute later, the engine started squealing again. This time, the driver got out and asked "Has anyone got a spanner?" I had a bad feeling when I heard those words. When nobody answered, he shrugged and starting working on the engine again.
By now, everyone had caught on that it might be some time before we moved again, and got out of the van. While we were loitering about in the dark, an empty pickup drove up the road. One of the passengers flagged down the pickup and started speaking with the driver. Suddenly, a rush of passengers ran back to the van, grabbed their luggage, and piled into the pickup.
An argument broke out between the driver and one of the people now on the pickup. He wanted a refund, and the driver refused to give it to him. Another passenger ran back to the van, grabbed a tool from the driver’s kit, and returned to the pickup, hoping to ransom it off. The driver chased the man to the pickup, where a loud argument started. After a few minutes, the driver returned, and began to work on the van again. I watched incredulously, as the pedestrians we passed earlier trundled into the view, and disappeared past us into the night.
Perhaps half an hour later, the driver finished the repair, and we clambered back into the van. Because several passengers had vacated the van for the pickup, it was almost comfortable inside. The driver turned the engine, and then turned around the van. We were heading in the wrong direction, away from the national park.
A few minutes later, we stopped beside some people drinking beer. Except for two fluorescent lights in the distance, it was pitch black. The driver and conductor got out of the van, and disappeared into the night. According to one of the passengers, they had gone to look for a fan belt.
About half an hour later, the driver and conductor returned. Against all probability, they had a brand new fan belt, still in the cardboard packaging. They proceeded to open the engine, only to discover that the fan belt was the wrong size. They disappeared again, and returned ten minutes later. The driver started the van, and we continued back along the road to Chipata.
Inexplicably, the driver stopped the van. After fifteen minutes, he started the van again, and we continued. Marcel and I looked at each other, puzzled as to what had just happened. Soon, it started getting hot inside the van. When steam from the engine started shooting into Marcel’s grocery bag, we knew what the problem was. The driver and conductor stopped the van once more, waited for the radiator to cool and refilled it. We continued the stop and cool method until we arrived in Chipata.
By the time we arrived in Chipata, it was around eleven at night. At the main market, the driver stopped the van and disappeared again. After twenty minutes of waiting, the driver returned and we drove back to the station.
When we arrived at the bus station, the driver parked the van. After everyone but us got off the bus, the conductor told us that they had found a fan belt and would fix the van. We would leave when the fan belt was replaced. He assured us it would not take long. We waited at the station while the driver and conductor went off to get the fan belt. It had been 10 hours since I stepped on the bus, and technically, we were actually further from the national park than we were when we started.
About forty five minutes later, the driver returned and began fixing the engine. Fifteen minutes later, I heard the hood slam shut. We climbed back into the van with all the remaining passengers and waited for the van to start. In the confusion, the driver was nowhere in sight. I asked another passenger where the driver was, and he pointed to a restaurant in the station. "He's inside the restaurant, having dinner."
Another forty minutes later, the driver returned and we were once again on our way. He started the engine, drove 100 m, and stopped. One of the driver's friends got out and waved goodbye as we turned around and headed back towards the station. I was getting tired of seeing the station. I watched with trepidation as it loomed ahead of us, but at the last minute we turned away and started towards the park.
After 50 m, the driver stopped, and got out with the conductor. They disappeared into the night. While waiting for them to return from whatever mystery errand they had, I started thinking about the day. We had gone a grand total of 50 m, and it had taken about twelve hours. At this rate, we would cover 100 m each day, meaning we should arrive in about three years. While I was pondering how to extend my vacation that long, I noticed the driver and conductor behind the bus. They were feverishing filling the rear tire with a bicycle pump.
Soon, they finished pumping the tire, and we started again. I could not believe it when we drove ten minutes without stopping. Eventually the novelty of moving without stopping wore off, and I drifted into unconsciousness. I woke up a few hours later, and we were still moving. Was that really happening, or was I just dreaming? With impeccable timing, the driver stopped the van and filled the radiator again.
Around four in the morning, the driver stopped the van, announced to the passengers that he needed a break, and fell asleep in the driver’s seat. We waited for three quarters of an hour, decided that enough was enough, and woke the driver. After waking up, he turned the key, and nothing happened. The engine would not start. Unfazed, the driver stepped outside and began tinkering. He got the engine working fifteen minutes later. Once again,we were on the road to the park, and still moving in the right direction.
About the same time the sun rose above the trees, we stopped again to refill the radiator. Typical for the journey, the hut closest to the van had no water. The conductor and driver grabbed some containers and disappeared down a trail. A few minutes later, they returned and filled the radiator.
After several more stops to let off the remaining passengers, we arrived at the campsite. They had a space for us to camp but they were also completely booked that day for any activities into the National Park. In other words, we could stay at the campsite, but could not get into the park. It was a fitting end to a disastrous journey.
That was the only time I took a bus in Zambia. Other people thought I was brave for riding a bicycle, but given my experience, I tip my bike helmet to the brave souls who had no other choice but endure the Zambian bus system.
Rating
Apart from public transportation, Zambia was pretty good value. Outside the national parks, most costs were very cheap and reasonable. Although nsima was the main dish, other foods were also available. While the landscape was somewhat redundant, it was quite attractive. The national park was also full of those animals you see on National Geographic. Like most places in Africa, there was little to see in terms of monuments or buildings.
Text and images copyright © by Curtis Marr. All rights reserved.