Chapter 15 - To Kalungu

We had a pleasant day, though very dusty and crumpled, pushing on for hundreds of miles up the Great North Road which runs from the Cape to Cairo and is the only main road in the territory of the Northern Province. First 76 miles to the Chambezi River where we crossed over on a pontoon of wood manhandled by pulling on a cable stretched from side to side of the river. Here it was at the end of the 1914 war the Germans came to sign the surrender, and the story goes that General Von Lubeck, arriving there and finding only a sergeant in charge, took himself and his men back to Abercorn to surrender to a more suitable officer. There is a small cannon on the river bank which marks this historic occasion.

On. On past the turn-off south to Broken Hill and Lusaka. and turn right to the North, up the long hard sweep of Danger Hill where the rocks tumble down from the 'Koppies' and deep fissures onto riverbeds hid all kinds of game and many lions and leopards live. Then large dambo's - these huge plains, often marshy where nothing seems to grow but grass and game is to be seen grazing in the early morning or at dusk.

We picnicked by the roadside near a small river, Unit making the fire for tea, and no vehicle of any kind passed us, and the only human beings were one or two women with paraffin tins on their heads coming down to the river for water, and stopping to greet us with the graceful and quaint curtsey peculiar to those parts on those days. This curtsey appeared extravagant and a little embarrassing to us at first, but we found that it was the custom among themselves also and not just too much obeisance to the white people. They would drop to the ground, lower the head and clap softly with their hands, saying 'Mwapoleni, mukwai' and we would answer similarly. They were such polite and charming people in 1949, but the winds of change were coming, and those who persisted in the old greetings were laughed to scorn, were made to appear ridiculous by the younger villagers who were beginning to wander off to the towns and come back with new ideas of how to behave and how to get the good things of life in so many ways that were not arduous, then, after bedazzling the village with their traveller's tales, they were off again, with new recruits, and then they were gone sometimes for good, often to drift from job to job, of in and out of prison for stealing, forgetting their sound tribal laws and code of behaviour, and not understanding or accepting the Govts. Justice. They might get off on a technicality or because of no proof, and then they would consider the Govt. stupid and laugh at how easily hoodwinked the white man could be.

We stamped out the fire and on again, passing through little Isoka with it's red roads lined with trees, it's three or four European houses and many villages hidden off the road, and out again into the last stretch of our journey.

At last we reached the turn-off, a little more obvious now with the traffic of a few vehicles and many feet having marked it's way, and there on the left of us approached from the back and facing the river was our new home. There was already a colony of kias built on the right of the path and the cooking fires were kindling and smoking while the women prepared the main meal of the day. Simon had not yet returned but his kia had been built near the house and Unit took it over in the meantime.

Hilda and I were charmed with the house which smelt grassy and fresh and musty all at once, and we lost no time in getting the beds up and made, in their respective bedrooms, while a table was put up in the open veranda and Unit helped the men to prepare a meal. The Dover stove glowed out in it's little kitchen, and it was not long before we were all sitting down to our supper as if we had lived in the bush all our lives.

The mosquito netting had not yet been fixed in the window spaces and as each bed foot pointed towards a window space I hoped the leopards would not be encouraged to drag us out during the night. They have a habit of stealing dogs from verandas in the bush stations, and it was not impossible that they might try us instead. The windows were soon attended to and we felt slightly safer, and with our big white mosquito nets well tucked round our beds we sailed away into our dreams at night like enchanted persons borne off in a white cloud.