Zambia World Wide

Flooded roads

Groblersbrug to Palapye:-

Coming back from a vacation in Durban we decided that we would sleep at the Sherwood Ranch Hotel. It was an old place but had a lot of character and the food was good. When we got to Potgietersrus it was raining cats and dogs and at times I had to slow down. When we reached the Border Post at Groblersbrug we found that they had already closed. Pauline and I decided that it would be better to sleep at the Border Post in the car than to drive back to Potgietersrus some 200kms away. We had just settled in when another car arrived. The driver wanted to know if we would like to go through as he was going to speak to the Border Post officials. I gathered they knew each other as they were on first name terms. The official only let me through once I convinced him that we were going to sleep at the Sherwood Ranch Hotel. According to him the road from Sherwood Ranch onwards was flooded and no cars had been able to reach Sherwood Ranch from Palapye.

The next morning we had hardly left Sherwood Ranch when we realized why no cars could get through the previous day. The road in places had become a river and in other places it went through lakes. With the latter being acquainted with the distance that telephone open wire routes were from the road I could easily judge where the centre of the road should be. Cars that had tried to negotiate the road the previous day stood stranded along the road. For most of the 100km stretch the road was approximately 200mm under water. To cover the 100km took us just on seven hours.

Palapye to Francistown:-

We reached Palapye after lunch and I decided to stop at Neville Parr’s house for something to eat or drink as we were by now feeling hungry. Neville Parr was the Post Office Technician stationed at Palapye. After we had something to eat and drink we were once more back on the road. We expected to cover the 167kms in two hours. That was not to be. Just outside Palapye one of the streams running into the Lotsane River was still in flood and vehicles could not pass. Some good Samaritan eventually pitched up with a tractor and started pulling the trucks through. I had with me a roll of masking tape and I used it to tape up all the doors except mine and requested the tractor driver to pull us through. The water came up to the door handles and within days my wheel bearings and breaks had to be replaced.

A farm road near Tsessebe:-

Don Bush who had recently started working with us requested that he accompany me when I go out on a farm line fault. I waited until I had a fault on the longest farm line, which ended near to Totome, which is west of Ramaquabane where Haskins and Sons had a shop. To save time I decided to start working from the tail end as I could use the Francistown to Maun road close to Dukwe and then travel in a northeasterly direction to the farm line. Although all the main roads were gravel it was far better than using the farm roads as on them your average speed was about 16kms per hour on a good day. With this trip we were lucky that I had a Land Rover but the bad luck was on our way the rain came down in buckets. Just before reaching the shop we managed to get through a stream, which was by now rising fast. Once we crossed we realized there is no turning back and the Land Rover would have to remain in four wheel drive. With the Bedford truck I would make my way to the nearest farm and stay there until the road was negotiable. We found the fault close to the shop and fortunately by now the storm was starting to subside.