Zambia World Wide

The word �thrill� doesn�t have sufficient import to describe how this pale-faced city boy felt. I was overwhelmed with the beginning of comprehending just how different my upcoming adventures were to be over the next three years, quite neatly encapsulated by observing a labouring dung beetle coping resolutely with an enormous elephant turd, which it was rolling purposefully towards its own ordure-furnished domicile. What a day; what brilliant country.

Despite my current position halfway along my sixth decade, I�m fortunate still to have an inspirational uncle alive, who has always been as much of a father to me as my own Dad, of blessed memory. His contributions to my lifetime development have been manyfold, including unobliging cantankerousness and extreme pedantry, where use of language (especially mine) is concerned. Foremost of these, however, has been his love of automobiles, with which disease he thoroughly infected me, despite his regrettable failure to pass on his technical skills to this mechanical dumbkopf.

I mention Uncle Harold just because the journey back from Wankie imbued in me the same feeling of sated happiness that he generated, when he merrily transported his family and mine down to the Ayrshire coast, most weekends. How he managed to cram eight people and several pressure cookers, each filled with soup, dumplings and potatoes, plus a couple of primus stoves, assorted rugs and, at least, a hundredweight of bakery goods, choc-a-bloc with heart-stopping fillings, into an old Morris shooting brake will always be a triumph of his masterly seat allocation over designed interior capacity and a supreme mystery to me. I�m sure that 21^st century health and safety commissars would be hysterical with regulatory disapproval, but I cared not a jot, then or now. All I knew was that I was plonked ecstatically in the middle of the front bench seat and encouraged to time the gear changes whilst he worked the pedals. Seat belts, pah! Uncle Harold rules, OK?

All that was missing from our Wankie sojourn, was a stop at a delightful caf� such as Nardini�s of Largs, to use as a midway resting place, as did mon oncle. This world-famous art deco watering hole enabled us kids to gorge ourselves with fish & chips and home-made Italian ice cream, even though, mostly, we puked it up just outside Elderslie, nearer home, but the magic was there anyhow. Still, the Victoria Falls hotel was not a bad stand-in for tea and perfect scones, plus the sight of an exquisite frame of the spray from the Falls, reaching up towards the heavens. Some 46 years later, I�m memory perfect on the Wankie trip, just as I am on Uncle Harry�s seaside charabanc from a decade before that. Fairy dusted journeys all.

Back at the Customs Mess, Tommy and Wobbles retired to their room for their customary sexual gymnastics, whilst the frustrated rest of us extended the evening into the night, settled out of earshot in the living room, with beers and chattering recall of the amazing sights we had just experienced. Given the dire state of my financial liquidity, the coming Sunday was definitely going to be a non-spending day of rest for me, so I was happy to toddle through to my room in the wee sma� hours, to be confronted by the unlaundered laundry that I had refused to throw on the floor, on the Socialist basis that it was demeaning to our house servant. It was early in the trip to be instructed on not messing around with long-established domestic mores, but properly educated I certainly was. Drunk or sober, onto the floor it went, from then on.

Dung beetles, dusty roads and dirty laundry filled my slightly tipsy head as I drifted off to sleep on my second night in Livingstone. The Scots Lad had almost three years of this ahead of him. Would he cope? Could he cope? Bien sur!

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Copyright:Gerry Hodes 2011

Episode #6: The Scots Lad at the feet of a Bronzed God