Zambia World Wide

In Zambia we had a large range of creatures that could be found in the houses and gardens, mainly gardens. The spiders were unlike any we had seen in England, there were so many different sizes and colours many of which were really pretty to look at. One I remember in particular was about the size of a fifty pence coin, black with bright yellow stripes, long hairy legs and very large eyes. We never destroyed spider webs around the outside of the house, since the spiders lived by eating insects they helped keep the mosquitoes and flies away from the house. When we had lived in England Jan had been terrified of spiders, and so one day I asked why was she not afraid of the spiders here as they were much larger. The answer I got was classic “these aren’t spiders, they are animals” there was nothing I could say to that. There were many other insects native to Zambia, some we had never heard of and others we had learnt about when we were at school. The stick insect I am sure most of us have heard of, the locust is similar to a grass-hopper but camouflaged and much larger, a serious pest in Africa as they destroy large areas of crops. The grass hopper is bright green in colour and a source of food. There is a large variety of lizards all of which are harmless, the Blue Skop is easy to spot as it has a green body and blue head. There are a number of small lizards which are mixed in colour and are usually known as rainbow lizards, these are generally found in rocky terrain but often seen in houses. They are completely harmless and most people just leave them alone, to catch them and put them outside would be almost impossible, they are so fast. One lizard that fascinates me is the Chameleon, these have the ability to change colour to fit in with their surroundings. Unfortunately they change colour so slowly that we have often seen a bright green chameleon on a brown tree branch. The chameleon is very slow moving and relies on its camouflage to prevent being spotted in most types of terrain. Most Zambians are very superstitious and keep well clear of chameleons as they believe the chameleon will bring them bad luck. The last of the common lizards and the largest is the Monitor lizard, I don’t know what length they grow to but we have seen many that are about 6 feet in length. They are not easy to find as their habitat is along river banks and around the edges of lakes and dambo’s “they are very good swimmers” they are often mistaken by people who think they have seen a small crocodile only to find out it was a monitor lizard. We were walking along the bank of the Zambezi one afternoon with a friend who’s name was Dave, he gave a sudden Yell! And almost fell over. He said he had stood on a crocodile which was lying on the bank. Jan and I laughed and said that if he had stood on a crocodile, he would not have got off so lightly. We looked into the river and saw a monitor lizard swimming away from the bank. It must have been really annoyed having it’s afternoon siesta spoilt by Dave. It did take some time for Dave to live that one down.

One evening we went to Keith and Eileen’s for the evening, during the evening Keith said that he had been told about a place called Mita Hills. It was apparently a good spot for a weekend fishing trip, so last weekend he drove out there to find out just how good the fishing was. Although the fishing was quite good he decided it would be a nice place to take his family for a long weekend. After some discussion we decided to spend a long weekend there as a group. We decided to take the two boats as there would be eight of us in all, four adults and four children. We were a little hindered at the time as we still had our Cortina, however Keith had a Toyota Pickup. This we could load most of the bulky gear in, the largest item would be the cool-box, which would contain our food and drink. It was impossible to buy a cool-box of the size we would need whenever we went away for some time therefore we would make our own. One thing we did learn in Zambia, was that if you needed something then often the only way to get it was to make it yourself. To make a large cool-box we would find an old fridge and completely gut it, as we only needed the cabinet. We would then seal all the holes with araldite, then drill a hole in the end near the bottom and fit a copper tube and plug, “the rear of the fridge would be the bottom as we needed the cabinet door at the top”. Before leaving on a trip we would make ice blocks by filling empty ice-cream contains with water and freezing them. While camping we would drain the water off once a day, and open the cool-box as little as possible. By doing this we found that food would stay frozen for as much as ten days, this was adequate as we rarely went camping for longer periods than that. Apart from the cool-box which was packed with our food and drink we also had to carry spare petrol for the boats and vehicles. Although there were a few garages on our route, it was quite common to pull in only to find they had no petrol. We would also need to carry enough water for the duration of our stay, although we could wash and bathe in the dambo we needed water for cooking and drinking. It sounds as if getting ready for a camping trip would take an age, however we were so well organised that it rarely took us more than 30/45 minutes to pack all the gear we needed and be on our way. Our route to Mita hills would be on tar roads as far as Kapiri Mposhi, at which point we would turn off the tar and onto dirt roads for the rest of our journey.