Zambia World Wide

And there he was, resplendent in capped, epauletted & beautifully creased uniform whites and highly polished footwear. Full of apathy, but empty of bonhomie, wallet contents or any vestige of human kindness, he nevertheless was quivering with the joy of delivering the news that he was to transport me to Lusaka railway station to embark for my ultimate destination, Customs & Excise HQ in Livingstone; 300 miles further south and an unpalatable 18 hours of travel i.e. a damn sight longer than the flight time from Gatwick.

Even to an immigrant enthusiast, eager for adventure and the experience of being a part of a newly formed infrastructure which would help provide the engine room for the impetus necessary to launch a brand new country into the brotherhood of independent nations (at the tender age of 19, you naively believe all the hopeless puffery that the Crown Agents used to dream up to attract applications), the thrill of it all was beginning to pall somewhat.

True, sitting steerage atop a quartet of throbbing Rolls-Royce aero engines, whilst being forced to impersonate an airborne sardine all the way across Europe and Africa; then, in sequence, being robbed by a future colleague, starved and incarcerated in solitary confinement before being sentenced to the prospect of an endless rail journey to gawd-knows-where, can have that effect on a chap. Putting the best face possible on it, it wasn't the most stimulating of starts to my new life in my land of opportunity.

But, dammit, the morning air was fresh and exotically aromatic and the temperature, even at 5-30 am, was already inviting. All around were unfamiliar flora brightly and abundantly on show, framing new sights, like the enormous, knackered-looking, rolling stock of Central African Road Services, coughing themselves into action, the better to pollute a pure, new day. Even so, it was all so much more stimulating than starting a day's labour by trudging through damp, crowded streets to the station, then sharing a heavily graffitoed Tube with a thousand other melancholy, grey commuters.

And there was a further attraction. Bryson assured me that there definitely would be a well-stocked buffet car on the train. He was callously bending the truth, of course, but I didn't know that then and his dissembling at least had the benefit of encouraging my recently flattened spirits to perk up a bit. Hell, there might even be bacon butty in my immediate future or, possibly, that, plus an inviting young female for company in my carriage.

If only he'd remembered to pass on the envelope of subsistence expenses cash that had been allocated for my journey, my happiness quotient might have moved up to sub-average. Unfortunately and equally unsurprisingly, that part of his delivery instructions had accidentally slipped his venal mind; something else about which I was unaware, until I was called to account for them by the audit department at headquarters.

Things could only improve, could they not? Bring on Day 2. This starving and abandoned Scots Lad was (almost) ready for it.

COPYRIGHT: GERRY HODES 2011

Episode #4: The Scots Lad en Training