Day 5. Wed 25th September
Livingstone Memorial. Mpika.
We swap vehicles today. Chris and Pete decide to stay where they are, so
Nathan, Amanda and I join Chris and Ken in the Discovery, while Kate, Sue
and Andy travel with Pete and Auxies in the Defender. This pattern of swapping
seems to work for everyone and we stick with it throughout the trip.
After leaving Kasanka NP we take a short detour to the Livingstone
Memorial. On the way Ken decides to call in on one of the Bemba villages
along the road to give us a closer view of the African village culture.
He warns us that we are off the beaten track and many villagers may never
have seen a white face. We should respect the villagers and their way of
life, not treat them as museum pieces and above all not photograph them
without their permision. He points out that, while he does this on each
trip, he tries not to visit the same village twice. The warning is well
given. The first village we stop at has only an elderly woman and a few
children in residence, all the men must be away working. Although she is
receptive to Ken's initial overtures, when she sees the rest of us pile
out of the vehicles she panics and rushes into a hut shouting, while one
of the older children shrieks at us. We leave immediately.
Our reception at the next village is quite different. This time Ken
ensures that there are men around, and when we stop he immediately asks
for the headman. The headman is apparently away, but his son is happy to
give us permission to visit and photograph, and we are soon surrounded
by grinning men and women and giggling children. Adults and children alike
are fascinated when I take their photograph with my digital camera and
immediately show them the the picture on the screen, and they cluster round
laughing and putting grubby fingerprints on the camera. Unfortunately they
then expect everyone else with a camera to do the same! It ocurs to me
that if I could find a little handheld printer I could actually give them
a printout on the spot - I shall look into this for any subsequent trips.
Meanwhile the villagers give us a demonstration of how they pound cassava
to make meal.
We drive on to Chitambo's village to see where David Livingstone's heart
(and, indeed, all his internal organs) were buried before his body was
carried to Dar es Salaam and thence back to England to be buried in Westminster
Abbey. A member of staff at the memorial gives us a prepared talk, but,
while the English is fine, his pronunciation is so bad that much of it
is unintelligable, and we all have to suppress giggles.
We head back to the Great North Road and continue on towards Mpika. The
itinerary calls for a visit to the Kundalila Falls, but unfortunately the
Defender breaks down once more, this time with a blocked fuel line. Auxies
fixes it without any trouble, but Ken says that to get to the Falls we
must drive down a steep track, and if the Land Rover breaks down at the
bottom we could be in big trouble, so, reluctantly, he decides to skip
the Falls, but promises us an additional excursion somewhere along the
way to make up for it.
Mpika is just a stop over on the way to Lake Tanganyika. There is nothing
here, but the accomodation is OK, and has electricity so I can charge up
my camera battery. (I spent ages trying to discover what sort of mains
adapter to bring, but it turns out that all the mains electricity uses
standard British 3-pin sockets - this makes sense when you remember that
all three countries we visit were British colonies).