Zambia World Wide

He was quite small in stature, with grey frizzy hair and a grey beard, I don’t know his age but he appeared to be quite elderly. Over the years he never seemed to age and was always happy and smiling. His love and enthusiasm for what he called his pets was apparent the moment he spoke of them. On this occasion he took Jan into the lion enclosure, so that she could stroke his pet lions. They did appear to be quite docile while he was present. Having left the lion enclosure he decided to walk round with us and talked about the animals as we wandered round. We were walking past an enclosure which contained a cheetah, as we walked round the enclosure we noticed that the cheetah’s head was following our movements. We asked the warder why! He explained it was because of the children, they were fair game although a cheetah would never attack an adult. Cheetahs’ are very fast and to prove his point, he suggested that Jan and Gary run the length of the enclosure. At first the cheetah seemed to be

uninterested, he then took off in pursuit at such a speed that he was just a blur as he flashed by where we were standing. When he reached the far end of the enclosure, he leapt up the fence and put one leg right through in an effort to reach Gary. The speed and ferocity of the charge was incredible! The only way we could get him off the fence was to throw lighted matches in front of his face. While this was happening Dave took a cine-film, we never have seen the film. Dave said that when he reached England and had the film processed he would send us a copy, however that was probably the last thing on his mind.

Apart from the incident in the Game Park the trip went as planned, we all had a good time and Dave was glad that he was able to visit the falls before leaving Zambia. The journey back to Kitwe was uneventful until we came to a police road block near Choma. We came to a stop and a police officer asked me to turn the engine off. I tried to explain that we had no starter but he insisted, after a number of questions “where are you from, where are you going etc” he said we could drive on. I got out of the car with a large screwdriver in my hand, Dave moved into the driver’s seat. As I walked to the front of the car the policeman pointed his rifle and said that I was holding an offensive weapon. I convinced him that without it I would be unable to start the car. Having returned to the car I noticed that Dave and Jan were both grinning, we drove off and I asked them what was so funny. Jan explained that all the time I was under the bonnet the policeman had his rifle pointing at me and did not move it until I was back in the car. We thought that was it, nothing else could go wrong or could it! We were travelling along the Fisenge Road with about 50 miles to go when the ignition warning light came on. We pulled off the road and checked under the bonnet, fortunately the fan belt was OK which meant that it was an alternator fault. I knew if we turned the radio off and the cold air fan we would make it to Kitwe, the battery power would be enough to power the ignition system. About an hour later we arrived home, hot, tired but relieved. I have never known so many faults occur in the course of just a few days.