14 to 18 September – The drive through Zambia to Malawi

We set off from our Lusaka campsite after breakfast on 14 September and headed east for the 350 mile drive to Chipata near the border with Malawi.  At first the tarmac road from Lusaka was good but as we headed further east it deteriorated and once again we spent the day dodging deep potholes and ancient, overheating lorries crawling up the hills at walking pace.  The altimeter dropped slowly as we headed downwards from the high central plateau and the temperature in the vehicle cab rose to 40 degrees C.  Even the act of blinking seemed to make one sweat!  The hours passed monotonously and when Ian took his turn at driving I sat in the passenger seat and thought back over the last two months of the trip. 

It seems amazing to think that we have now covered nearly 7000 miles through 5 countries since the expedition began in Capetown 10 weeks ago and yet we have not seen a single drop of rain. Winter in southern Africa is so very dry.  I thought back over the route we had taken.  We had begun by driving up the west (Atlantic Ocean) coast of Africa but now we were heading diagonally east across the continent for 5000 miles towards the Indian Ocean coast.  The journey seemed endless - Africa is such a large place.  If, during the boring winter months ahead you find an old atlas in your bookshelf at home then cut out India and place it over Africa.  You will find that the continent of Africa is nearly five times larger than India.  This will give you an idea of its enormous size and the distances one has to cover on a trip like our one.

It is presidential election time in Zambia at present and President Banda is seeking re-election on 20 September for a second term in office.  Some say he will lose to the main opposition opponent.  Posters proclaiming Banda are everywhere.  As we pass through the many villages en route we find most people are wearing his T shirts, trucks have his banners stuck to their sides and rallies for his supporters are taking place.  I suggested to a local that with such support Mr Banda would surely win.  He smiled.  Everyone, he said, wore Banda T shirts to avoid getting beaten up but when they went to the voting booths, many would vote for the opposition.  To bear this out, at one stage I saw two frightened young teenage boys chased and grabbed by Banda supporters who roughed them up until they agreed to put on Banda T shirts.  They were then released unharmed.

During the day we had to swerve at one stage to avoid a speeding convoy of shiny 4x4 vehicles with tinted windows racing down the middle of the road, led by a police car, and we wondered if it might be Banda himself or perhaps a member of his cabinet.

Last night the drums beat until the early hours and singers extolled Banda’s virtues through loudspeakers placed along the highway near our camp in Chipata.  Many people were drunk and we decided it would not be a good time to be seen in town so we kept a low profile!  So far we hear campaigning in Zambia has been largely peaceful, unlike the elections of its neighbours.  This might be because Zambia (once Northern Rhodesia) embraced democracy some 15 years before Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) and Zambia’s first President, although fairly totalitarian in his method of rule, did not follow Mugabe’s marxist beliefs and allowed democracy to grow. 

To the north of Zambia is Zaire which we hear remains a troubled country and to the east is Malawi where we are heading.  We are told by Zambian acquaintances that the current Malawian president is becoming increasingly corrupt and autocratic and this has led to riots in recent months and the deaths of a number of protesters shot by the police.  When the British ambassador subsequently criticised the president publicly in a speech, he was immediately expelled from Malawi and the president announced he would not accept criticism from Britain and the West.  Since then we hear Britain and other European countries have reduced their aid to Malawi and there are now shortages of many imported goods.

After a night at Chipata we drove 80 miles north to South Luangwa National Park, one of the best known of the Zambian wildlife parks. We spent two pleasant nights here, setting up our tents on the banks of the Luangwa River in a remote concession area leased by the Wildlife Society of Zambia from National Parks. 

Temperatures by day rose to 40 degrees C and when I got up at 0550 hours on the first morning, after a hot night lying on my camp bed without a sleeping bag, it was still nearly 30 degrees in the early dawn light.  South Luangwa is a large and beautiful Park but much of it is unused, remote and relatively inaccessible.  Most of the tourists fly in and congregate in the luxury camps situated in a few small areas on the eastern side of the Park and do their game drives just inside the boundary.  Fees for two people to enter the Park in their own vehicle are now a hefty US$75 a day.  Compared to Mana we had only brief sitings of game, probably due to the heat and the fact that there is no need for animals to concentrate near waterholes as the river flows through the Park all the year round.  Over the two days though we saw a small herd of elephant cross the river on the second day and spotted from our campsite giraffe, kudu, bushbuck, impala, warthogs, crocodiles and hippos.  At night lions roared in the distance. 

We had planned to spend a day in the Park but a chance conversation with a South African visitor put paid to our plans.  He had just been in Malawi and left a week early as he found there was no vehicle fuel available due to a lack of foreign exchange currency (forex).  I rang the wildlife campsite we were planning to stay in near Lake Malawi and they confirmed this fact, warning us that there was no likelihood of more fuel arriving in the near future. This was a major problem as we had to pick up Ian’s wife and daughter at Lilongwe Airport on 20 September and therefore, like it or not, had to go through Malawi.  The only answer was to buy sufficient fuel in Zambia to get us all the way through the country to Tanzania.  I did the sums and found we would need to carry 180 litres of diesel with us, but our tanks when full would only hold 140 litres. 

We abandoned our plan to visit the Park and drove to a nearby village.  Here we bought two old 20 litre plastic, cooking oil containers for the princely sum of 5 US dollars, washed them out with spare fuel and drove back to Chipata.  We then went to a bank and drew out 1,200,000 kwacha (the exchange rate is 5000 kwacha to a US dollar so we temporarily became millionaires!) to spend filling up all our tanks and the extra containers with fuel.  We sealed the containers in black plastic bags to reduce the smell of diesel in the vehicle and drove to the border, hoping we would not be stopped for carrying so much fuel! No one was interested.  In fact it was the smoothest border crossing we have had on the trip and within one hour we were in Malawi.

Malawi is one of the smallest countries in the region.  One fifth of it consists of Lake Malawi which lies along the line of the Rift Valley, a natural fault running southwards from Kenya.  It is similar in size to Cuba and is less than half the size of the UK.  By comparison its neighbour Zambia is six times larger.  South Malawi is the most populated and developed part of the country and north Malawi is the least populated.  The capital Lilongwe (our destination)is in the centre of the country and sits on the central African plateau  in a cool and pleasant climate.

We reached Lilongwe an hour before sunset on 17 September.  The campsite I had chosen from the map was small, dusty and very full of young European travellers drinking beer so it was not attractive.  However we had passed the Lilongwe Golf Club on the way and had noticed it had a campsite too so we drove back there instead.  The club is sited in open woodland near the centre of town and has a wonderful bird population which takes refuge in the trees along the golf course to escape the busy streets.  We were the only campers.  As the sun set we could hear Muslim evening prayers being chanted by a cleric from the minaret of a mosque nearby.  This was repeated at dawn the next morning, raising us reluctantly from a deep sleep.  We remembered hearing Muslims being called to prayer during our stay in Lusaka too.  I do not recall this from earlier visits so perhaps the Moslem population of southern Africa is growing?

Looking ahead, we will pick up Ian’s family at Lilongwe airport on Tuesday 20 September and they will then travel with us up into Tanzania over the next 9 days.  This means we now have a couple of days in which to do much needed administration and get some rest.  Tents and clothes must be washed, the vehicle, its storage boxes, the plates, saucepans and cutlery must all be scrubbed until they shine – newcomers to the expedition are probably horrified by the dusty conditions we now happily live in so we feel we should try to improve things a little so they get a good impression on arrival! 

I am not sure where or when I shall find an internet café to send my next blog from but hope it might be somewhere in northern Malawi in the next few days.