8.18.09 @ 11:30pm
The plane that carried myself and 11 other Zambians from Johannesburg touched down at the teensy Ndola airport around 6pm yesterday evening. After going through immigration and grabbing my bags (which all happened in the same little cement block), I began pushing my way through the men crowded around the backdoor, eagerly searching for a piece of paper with my name on it. I received an email a few days back stating that my transport for the 4 hour journey to Chimfunshi Sanctuary could no longer come because they do not like to drive at night. I hadn't really come up with an alternate plan, maybe I would just hitch a ride to the closest hostel.. but that idea wasn't very appealing with all my cumbersome luggage. But fortunately, as I was pushing my way through the crowd, a Zambian man with a wide, sweet smiling face appeared out of nowhere and said "ah yoo Jehsikahh?" Christopher had come after all and like an angel, was a comfort and relief to travel the last 4 hours of my tiring 18 hour journey with. He told me all about growing up in Zambia and some of the issues that they are dealing with here. As we drove through the rural northern part of the country we passed mine after mine, where they are extracting cobalt, malachite and copper from the earth. I asked him how it was possible that northern Zambia had remained largely conflict free when just a few km north of us, in the DRC, violence and turmoil is raging over raw minerals (tungsten, tin etc) that fuel the western world's hunger for technological advancement. His reply: "we are not ready to give up our peace" followed by that sweet African musical laugh that you hear so frequently.
About an hour outside of Ndola we began to see bush fires, which seemed to increase in size, intensity and frequency as we drove further. Once the sun had set we drove directly through large fields which had been set ablaze, filling his old truck with dark smoke. I began to drift off around 7pm but was woken by the truck aggressively swerving sharply left and right. Christopher started laughing and said "in Zambia, it is the opposite.. you are drunk if you drive straight". As my vision focused, I could see large sections of the road missing, the remaining asphalt was punctuated by enormous pot holes. All this didn't seem to slow Christopher down though. He maintained his bat-out-of-hell speed even down the last 15 km off road through the bush to the sanctuary. The cacophony created by the rocky trail and his rattling truck was silenced only for a few seconds at a time when the wheels left the ground and we went flying through the air before slamming back down to the ground. At this point I couldn't help but laugh deliriously and we laughed the whole rest of the way to Chimfunshi.
