The first morning a group of us set out to visit the falls. As we left the hotel, someone said we should take a rain coat or umbrella as you might get wet. I thought, OK and retrieved an umbrella. As we approached the falls, we saw a place where you could rent rain coats, but we had an umbrella. There is a deep gorge that the water drops into, but the gap across the gorge is not that wide, so we set out on the path to look at the falls from directly across from it. A short way down that path, it began to sprinkle. A little further it began to pour and then blow the water sideways. Lots of good an umbrella did. As we continued, we soon realized that we were going to get soaked no matter what.
Coming to a small bridge, we met a group coming from the other side. As we passed, one woman soaked to the skin and wearing a rain coat shouted above the roaring of the falls, “It is not for the faint of heart.” The stairway itself was a series of small waterfalls, with 2-3 inches of water flowing down the pathway. We continued on across the face of the gorge, only about 200 feet from the falling water. It was amazing. The rain was created by the rising mist (smoke) and the wind was generated by the falling water as it pushed the air out of the gorge. We were in the midst of a tropical rainstorm on a sunny day. The effect around the edges of the falls it that you see rainbows almost everywhere you look, particularly if the sun is behind you.
Fortunately the water and the day were warm, but it still took hours to dry out our clothes. If I had known, I would have worn swimming trunks and a tee shirt with crocs. (Some people did, but not in our group.) Fortunately I had taken a plastic bag to wrap the camera in or it might be in the repair shop by now.
We also climbed down the backside of the gorge to the area called the boiling pot, a half mile long trail that dropped the full 530 feet and was a bit challenging in places. From there we had a good view of the bridge to Zimbabwe where people with money and courage bungee jump into the gorge (not on my bucket list, but fun to watch). This gorge is not very wide, but must be quite deep and the water really moves along. We thought we would be gone maybe an hour, but it ended up being a 3 hour visit overall.
The first part of the trip was a combination of excitement of visitors and boredom of long rides by car. We did take advantage of one day in the car (7 am until 11:30 pm) to have a long and detailed management meeting for the business entity ZambiaWorks. We were mostly done by dark and just watched the brush go by or dozed for five hours. The team was mostly from Chicago, with two WR leaders and a videographer from California thrown into the mix. The videographer missed the first leg of his flight and had to come by himself in a small car the second day. The car had two flats and rolled the last 50 km on the steel rim. He was saying his prayers and telling God to take good care of his family should he not make it back alive. We all got a chuckle out of that, but if it was my first time in the middle of nowhere, I might have felt the same way. He was a great guy and very talented. If you watch CNBC or Fox documentaries, you have probably seen some of his work.
One very unique event that happened on this trip was an audience with a second level chief in Mongu. He hosted us in his “palace” as ZambiaWorks and Hands of Hope, our Chicago partner, had build an 8-classroom school block in one of his villages. We had to follow the traditional customs where men and women used different entrances. The ladies said they had to kneel on a mat before entering. We were allowed to sit in chairs, but the under chiefs sat on reed mats and bowed and clapped to call the chief from his home. He came out with a military guard, a very English hat and some kind of animal tail, wisp, whip or scepter that is his symbol of power. The guard is assigned to protect the tail as if this is stolen by the people, he loses his authority and power.
We had a good conversation with him and talked about the school. He mentioned that he would love to host us in his office and not keep us out in the hot sun, but it was too small and falling down (a subtle hint that we could build him a new one). We also had all our bags with us as we were switching hotels that morning. The guard thought these were gifts and told us we could unload them around back.
The school handover celebration was a big deal and quite political as all the “big” people showed up and had to introduce each other according to seniority/protocol. We had four such introductions to get to the main speaker of the day. There was lots of traditional dancing and some of it quite interesting, but not very edifying. It took the better part of five hours to complete the ceremony. Lesson learned: we won’t do it the same way next time we build a school.
All in all it was a great experience.
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