Chapter 8 - Bulawayo to Livingstone

Our party consisted of our two younger children, my husband and myself and our bitch 'Orchid', and for two days and nights, the Brown Arrow, our 1936 Ford V8, was our home. We decided to aim it in the direction of Livingstone, on the border between Southern and Northern Rhodesia, so on we drove through hundreds of miles of fairly uninteresting country, myriads of spindly trees and shrubs, an occasional camp of round native huts, and many timber bridges over small rivers. We decided to go as far as we could in a day and if it happened that we were nowhere near a hotel or rest house, then we would camp down where we landed.

It was wonderful to get up in the rosy dawn and see the men preparing the fire, and smell the ham and eggs cooking, and to see Orchid cavorting after an especially good night spent 'en famille'. We washed in the nearby river with no thought of crocodiles or bilharzia, and came back to a comfortable seat from the car, set to windward of the fire, and prepared to enjoy our breakfast; but the inevitable nearby village was astir! One after another came upon us and stopped to watch with the greatest of interest, every move we made. The women, with heavily laden baskets on their heads, put them down and settled in to a morning's entertainment, so after a few fatuous remarks and maternal looks at the piccanins slung on their backs, we packed up and went on our way.

About 100 miles further on we knew there was a game reserve, and decided to drive through it as we were very keen to see some wild animals. At that time we must have imagined that wild animals were confined to these reserves, for it did not occur to me that they might prowl around our camp at night. We stopped for tea, my husband carefully lifting out a box with our crockery, when the bottom of the box opened, and all fell out. We gathered the pitiful remains which fortunately was enough to hold our tea, and had a happy picnic, afterwards washing the few dishes and our drying cloth while standing in the fast flowing water. A large and handsome car drew up on the bridge, and the owner hailed us 'are you aware there are liable to be crocodiles in any of these rivers?'. We had not realised it and rather sheepishly we thanked him and remembered it in future.

The Wankie Game Reserve happened to be closed to traffic and we were rather disappointed. We drew into the little railway community at Dett and chatted to a man in his garden. He told us that there was a narrow, sandy road near the reserve where we might see some elephant, so we thought we would try it. We had a .22 rifle and felt comparatively safe!. The road twisted and turned and was too narrow to turn in. At every bend we expected to be confronted with a large grey shape, but though we saw huge imprints of elephant beside the path, and their droppings, fortunately, I think, we only came upon a herd of Kudu drinking from a muddy pool. We withdrew to camp for the night, and this time we did think that sleeping in the open was a bit risky, but we knew of no hotel in the vicinity. The men kept a good fire going and again 'came the dawn' for all of us.

Wankie (or Wonkie as the old timers called it) was our first mining town, and what we saw of it was all mine-dust, smoke and dust from the coal. We stopped long enough to have a bath and a meal and to meet a few begrimed men who were off duty, and then on again north to the Victoria falls.

As we approached, the air was softer and the vegetation greener and more plentiful - it was growing dark - we just had time to buy some groceries at the general store we saw through the customs barrier, and to book one of the several rest houses clustering south of the Falls. We had not seen the Falls yet but the wonderful thunder of them was sounding continuously.

Next morning we were early astir, so leaving the African who 'went with' the rest house, to do the chores and some badly needed laundering we set off towards the 'smoke that thunders' as the African is said to call it. In Britain I had rebelliously decided that the spectacle of the Falls was probably over-rated, and on reading the handbook about the Rain Forest and the donning of waterproofs, the Devils Cauldron, The Boiling Pot, the luxury Hotel and the air trips over the falls, I had come to the conclusion that it was probably spoiled by organised sight-seeing, but it was not. It is too big, too grand; the few conveniences for tourists are lost in the spectacle. Only the baboons and their blasé behaviour testify to a succession or tourists with cars and picnic hampers. They swarm on ones car almost as it stops, and automatically 'frisk' it. Their bored indifference to human beings puts one in ones place.

We walked through the Rain Forest where trees of all kinds flourish in the moist air, right up to the grassy bank overlooking the tremendous fall of water, shining and glinting in the sun. The spray drenched us, our hair dripped rivulets of soft warm water the ceaseless terrific weight beat down over the edge of the chasm. It was peaceful, soporific and lonely. The few other tourists seems to float past us in a haze with no jarring contact.

The roads in Southern Rhodesia were 'strips'. 12" wide strips of tarmac set a car-width apart. Overtaking and passing were achieved by moving one wheel off the strip onto the dirt while trying to keep one wheel on a strip. It was very tricky and dangerous especially when the dirt had worn away and left the tarmac several inches high. The dust thrown up from the dirt helped to obscure what you were doing.

Our old car had belonged to the Agriculture department and painted brown - hence our name for it. Later we repainted it silver and it became 'the silver arrow'. It burned a lot of oil but we used oil drained from lorries and cars at services. We even used gear oil and never had any complaints from the car. I once drove her over 200 miles including crossing the Chambesi ferry, with no clutch when the clutch had siezed up when the car had been laid up for a while. The clutch freed itself in the last mile outside Mpika!!. We used to take the bench front seat right out at night and make up a large bed inside for Mom and Hilda while my Father and I slept 'protected ' by the seat, under the lights of the car. We all loved her.

I'm not sure what we thought a .22 rifle was going to do for us among buffalo, kudu, and elephant but it obviously gave us confidence and demonstrated just how 'green' we were in those early months in Africa. The Afrikaaners had a word for people like us 'rooinek's' .. red necks.

 After lunch we found a steep stairway leading down to another angle of the Falls. The steps were cut from rock in places, and in others where the rock was too sheer wooden steps took its place, and a handrail. In places the steps were broken and the descent precarious but we had to go down out of the sun into the drenching spray at the bottom to look up at a wall of glistening water churning into a white, lacy froth. We were in dark shadow and I was reminded of illustrations by Gustave Durer of Dante's Inferno. Going up again was difficult. I had recently been a little ill and was not as fit as usual, but I rested on the larger ledges and nearer the top had to cry for sheer weakness. The Falls Bridge is a marvel of Engineering, and so necessary to the present day, but I chose to ignore it as part of the view. It must have been intensely interesting to build.

On again past wide, flat stretches of the Zambesi River, powerfully making towards the Falls, dotted with little islands of dainty greenery and fringed with trees and bushes curving down to it's flow, past a small wired game reserve where we looked and looked again at a motionless giraffe and zebra. At first I thought it was a museum, the animals were so still and sleek, and that a marvellous taxidermist had been at work, but the giraffe gently pulled at the leaves on his high tree and the zebra cropped the grass.

Livingstone is seven miles on and has atmosphere. The spray from the Falls can be seen, and the air seems to hold some of the warm moisture. Many people there complain of the humidity though I prefer it to the dry, dusty heat further north. The native women here dressed more colourfully than any I had seen before, and there were not so many European dresses. They had skirts full and frilly at the back with decided bustles and a certain wiring, and I was told that this fashion carries on from when the first women missionaries brought it to the country. The shops were not up to the standard of those in Bulawayo main streets, but they were interesting as the first we had seen since leaving there, and we enjoyed hotel meals and baths.