Today I shipped home my tenth two kilo box out of Zimbabwe. My parents are going to wonder what I didn’t buy in southern Africa. When Rich and I were at the post office in line, who should come find us but Simon, – the Aussie doctor we’d sailed down the Nile with the Egypt! After seeing all those people from Malawi we were getting used to the idea tat you see people again, but we last saw Simon in Luxor many months ago. We caught up with him and after sending our chess sets off we all loaded ourselves back into the truck to finally leave Zimbabwe. We all knew we were leaving Zim, but we also knew we were leaving any sort of Westernization behind us as well. As we were doing a northbound trip we were heading into the true Third World countries – we hadn’t been able to appreciate Zimbabwe’s modernization because we hadn’t been anywhere hard yet. I said it to a few people, “The safari starts now.” We were all going to get to know each other a lot better because the harder bits are still on their way.
The truck left the Vic Falls campground, crossed over into Zambia and stopped at the market I’ve been frequenting for the past week so everyone else could “have a go” at buying some malachite animals. After our brief stop we headed north transiting our way through Zambia. Zambia’s not known for much, other than Lusaka, the capital city which is supposed to have more crime than Nairobi. (Hard to believe.) We drove endless hours with piss stops where I’d go running off into the jungle, not because I had to pee, but just because I was off the truck. After at least ten hours of driving the truck pulled off the road and drove over a barbed wire fence into this field. This is where we were to camp for the night.