June 7 - Zambia: Karibu Campsite, Zambize River, and Buffalo Bean Campsite
Today we woke up and canoed the lower Zambezi River. The weather was wonderful, although a little windy so the river was kind of rough. Our guide - Jarris - was going to take us about 15km downriver to where we would camp tonight.
We each got a bucket with a lid to put our stuff in and to take with us on the canoe. (This little fact is important to later in the story.) After a few hours, we stopped for lunch at a pretty little beach, where we waited out the worst heat of the day. This is where Mathilde - from Amsterdam - taught us a ridiculous song she learned at camp:
The sun has got its hat on,
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hooray.
The sun has got its hat on,
It's coming out to play.
Ever since she sang it, it's been in our heads and is driving us crazy!
See if you can guess which canoe isn't with our group
After lunch, we canoed more, saw some hippos and some beautiful birds. Around 3:00, Jarris pulled us over to a bank and we got out and followed a path into a little village in the Kafue District. All the buildings were cement, and there was some electricity but most of the buildings were without it. The children were thrilled to see us and kept asking for pens. Some of our group had been thoughtful enough to bring crayons and pens, and Jon and I wished we had some. They wanted sweets, too, but they would rather have had the pens. At the end of our village tour, all the villagers gathered around a group of boys sang and danced and played the drums for us. It was like something out of National Geographic.
Russian Capsize
The 4 Russians sound like they are constantly fighting, but I guess it's just a factor of their dialect. At any rate, the two who speak English - Vladimir and Paul - shared a canoe together. Vladimir was in the Russian Army for 20 years, and Paul is some sort of doctor. They are all extremely stubborn ("We will only cook if there are no women around to do the cooking"), but their hearts are honestly in the right places most of the time. Vladimir is a plethora of historical information. Quite impressive, actually, and Paul smiles and jokes a lot. But the funny thing about their canoe partnership is that Vladimir - the stern colonel - got into the front of the canoe and Paul got into the back. Just after the trip began, Paul took off his life jacket, lathered on some suntan lotion, and stretched out to get some sun. Vladimir, on the other hand, was fully suited up with life jacket and shirt and cap and was doing all the paddling work. Now if you know canoeing, then you know that 80% of the work is done by the person in the back. So Vlad and Paul were operating at about 20% capacity. Vladimir would occasionally yell something in Russian at Paul and Paul would do some paddling, but it never lasted for long. Paul was usually videoing or photographing something with his fancy equipment. It was quite entertaining to watch.
This is important because, just after we left the village, Jon and I heard a splash and looked over to see Vladimir and Paul in the water and hanging onto the flipped canoe for dear life. Since Jon and I were the closest to them, we canoed over to rescue one of the buckets rapidly floating away. Paul was very upset about losing his camera and kept trying to leave the overturned canoe to try and find it. Jarris - our guide - was frustrated because Paul wasn't listening to him and this is hardly the river to have people splashing about. After about 15 minutes, Jarris finally got them to a marsh in the middle of the river where they could stand and get back into the canoe. As we neared the marsh, we couldn't help but notice the 3 hippos across the way whose curiosity was clearly peaked, but they didn't come any closer. After all this was over, we'd lost about 45 minutes and the sun was going down. So Jarris had us pick up the pace to get to our campsite - Buffalo Bean.
Buffalo Bean Campsite
Our campsite was considered a "bush site", as we were definitely roughing it. There was no shower aside from a bucket of river water, no toilet apart from the hole we dug into the ground, and a whole lot of prickly plants to step on. We had a delicious beef stew for dinner and sat around the campfire drinking beer and laughing at Vladimir and Paul's recollection of the capsize. Paul swore he didn't move at all, but none of really believe that Vladimir was the slacker in the situation. After all, it was Paul's bucket that was open and consequently lost in the river - cameras and all. Clearly, he was fiddling with his bucket and toys and did something to tip the boat. The look on Vladimir's face was priceless! This kept us entertained long after we'd finished our beer supply.
The moon was so bright that we didn't need a torch to get around the campsite from one tent to another. And the stars were some of the most amazing I'd ever seen. I forget that there are stars like this in the sky. I'm so used to NYC where you can't see anything beyond the skyscrapers.