Zambia World Wide

It continually frustrated me that her gigantic, wobbly girth probably was the visible result of the eager consumption of my (and a hundred others) stolen half egg. However, when confronted by a 30 stone female, who could casually crack your skull with one mighty blow of her meaty, muscled fist (and it has been my deep misfortune to meet many of them over a mis--shapen career), I have always found it sensible to remain silent and suffer, without complaint, whichever injustice is being visited upon me at the time. But we're in East Lusaka now, not North London, so forgive the longwinded background detail to explain why being parachuted into the depressing austerity of Longacres Government Hostel was not a new experience.

As usual, I was ravenous, once awakened from a short nap of several hours; and, predictably, food had been served to the now invisible inmates much earlier in the evening, so no sustenance remained for the ill-advised latecomer, into which category I firmly fell. The hinterland beyond Longacres had no late night convenience stores in 1965 (and I'll bet my pension that it still hasn't), but, in any case, I wasn't about to run the gauntlet of the black-clad mob of homicidal black-hued pedallers once again, nor expose myself to the rabid wildlife that stalked the suburbs of Lusaka in search of the unwary, about which I had been warned by the howling exaggerations of the returning expats on the plane journey over.

In any case, I was refreshed and too excited to sleep, but had only the deserted communal facilities at my disposal. Since these consisted only of a few ancient, unspeakably stained, easy chairs, partnered in antiquity by scratched and battered, government-issue coffee tables (sans any coffee, unless you chose to suck the table top) it was easy to plump for wandering the corridors in search of amusement; or, if not that, then some nourishment. Neither was available, nor any human contact.

I'm sure that there is more fun and caloric reward available in a madrasa in the Tora Bora mountain ranges, than there was in this mid-60's African suburban gaol. At the very least, there you may meet a wild-eyed Taliban warrior with a cheery line in Islamic putdowns and an offer to admire his Kalashnikov, but at least the possibility of an hospitable chapati. Not so in the Hostel from Hell. If any Lonely Planet compilers are reading this, my advice is to delete any reference to Longacres as a visitable pleasure palace.

And so the longest and hungriest night of my callow life was spent hunched miserably in my government cot: no television, no radio, no company and no hope, the silence broken only by my noisily rumbling stomach and the chattering cicadas. I began to fantasise lasciviously about the indigestible and frankly disgusting fare that BUA reluctantly had provided all of the way across the various oceans and the African continent. Believe me, for a Scots Lad, then possessing a libido with the potency of a small nuclear device, only truly powerful forces could generate such a huge re-direction of effort from the usual evening activity. Acute food deprivation was such a force.

The fortnight-long night passed eventually and I repacked the traveller's kit, of scratchy woollen knickers, 13-gauge, sturdy Scottish knitwear, twill shirts, tweed trousers and brushed winceyette pyjamas, that my mother had insisted were absolutely de rigueur pioneer wear in the tropics, paused momentarily to look longingly at the still empty buffet counter and trudged wearily to the entrance to Cell Block Longacres, to await collection by the Chauffeur de Hades and his raddled companion Morris, the shooting brake.